Astrid Knie, APA picturedesk.com, Getty Images
Current performance of “Medea” with Sandra Cervik and Joseph Lorenz at the Theater in der Josefstadt. Infos: josefstadt.org
An historical costume for a performance of “Medea”. Right, above: Grillparzerhaus in Perchtoldsdorf 1930 – Grillparzer spent the summer of 1846 in Perchtoldsdorf, Wiener Gasse 9. Right: the Imperial Archive, where Franz Grillparzer worked.
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performed today and certainly not only because Austrian theaters have an educational mandate to fulfil – it has long been impossible to release a playbill solely aimed at secondary school classes. Currently, for example, there is a very appealing production at the Theater an der Josefstadt directed by Elmar Goerden, with Sandra Cervik in the title role. Set in modern times without compromising Grillparzer’s writing and featuring a final surprise: suddenly everyone ends up as one big, happy family. Grillparzer’s extensive oeuvre revolves around themes that still need to be discussed today – in Medea, for example, it’s xenophobia, and Ottokar is about the hubris of those in power. It is also worth noting that young Franz was certainly not born into a career as a poet. “I was born in Vienna on the 15th of January, 1791. My father was a lawyer, quite strict, a man who took his own counsel. Since his career and his natural reticence did not allow for much time spent with his children, since he died before I was eighteen years old, and since in the last years of his life illness, the terrible years of the war and the deterioration of his domestic circumstances brought about by both only increased this reticence, I cannot give an account to myself or others of the inner workings of his character. His outward manner was somewhat cold and brusque, he avoided all company, yet he was a passionate friend of nature. He used to cultivate his own garden, later rented a larger plot and grew flowers of all kinds, which was practically his only source of amusement. Only on walks, during which, across incredible distances, he sometimes took the whole family, but often only me, still a child, did he become joyful and communicative,” wrote Grillparzer in his “autobiography”, published in an almanac. Not a very joyful family – both a younger brother of Grillparzer’s and his mother took their own lives. Grillparzer’s encounter with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German prince poet, is legendary. He was dining at a separate table with others, and when Goethe invited him for a private conversation, he simply walked away – out of fear, or stubbornness? Either way, he simply left. In Vienna, Grillparzer is of course commemorated in the Burgtheater not only with the performance of his plays, but also with a bust on its façade. A pompous monument is also erected in the Volksgarten.The most important reminder of Grillparzer, however, is the Literature Museum of the Austrian National Library, which is housed in the so-called Grillparzerhaus: here – in the former Imperial Archives – the Viennese dramatist held sway as Director of the Archive until 1856. His original study has been preserved to this day and provides an insight into the everyday life of the imperial and royal official who was such a gifted writer. onb.ac.at/museen/literaturmuseum 25
