Die Jungfrau von Orleans: Eine romantische Tragödie (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek)

Von Friedrich Schiller

Mit seinem 1801 erschienenen und uraufgeführten Drama "Die Jungfrau von Orleans" hatte Friedrich Schiller zu seinen Lebzeiten großen Erfolg. Die Geschichte des lothringischen Bauernmädchens Johanna von Orleans, das - unter Berufung auf göttliche Eingebung - die französischen Truppen von Sieg zu Sieg führte, dann in die Hände der Engländer fiel und 1431 als Hexe verbrannt wurde, rückt Schiller aus den Grenzen des bloßen Geschichtsdramas heraus - Johanna wird bei Schiller nicht auf dem Scheiterhaufen verbrannt, sondern erlebt die Apotheose auf dem Schlachtfeld.

Formal nimmt diese "romantische Tragödie" eine Sonderstellung in Schillers Werk ein: die dramatische Entwicklung wird durch lyrische Passagen unterbrochen, die Versformen sind ungewöhnlich vielfältig und reichen vom Blankvers über die feierliche Form der Stanze bis hin zum jambischen Trimeter, dem Dramenvers der antiken Tragödie.

Text aus Reclams Universal-Bibliothek mit Verszählung der gedruckten Ausgabe.

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: Reclam Verlag
• Erscheinungsdatum: 23. Nov. 2012
• ISBN: 9783159600475

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller, ab 1802 von Schiller (* 10. November 1759 in Marbach am Neckar; † 9. Mai 1805 in Weimar), war ein Arzt, Dichter, Philosoph und Historiker. Er gilt als einer der bedeutendsten deutschen Dramatiker, Lyriker und Essayisten.

Rezensionen für Die Jungfrau von Orleans

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Schiller's work on this play in 1800-1801 overlapped with the writing of Maria Stuart. The proposed first performance in Weimar in spring 1801 didn't take place, but it was presented in Leipzig in September of that year, and the text was published a month later.(Irrelevant fun fact: my edition quotes a letter from Schiller to Körner dated 5 January 1801, where he talks about his progress with the play and says he has "closed the old century productively". None of this innumerate nonsense we had twenty years ago when people thought the century ended in December '99!)Maybe it wasn't s good idea writing two plays about tragic female figures, one "bad" and one "good", close together: Schiller seems to have struggled with the construction of this play, and put a lot of effort into researching the trial scenes before deciding to abandon them altogether and revise history slightly(!) by having Joan escape from English captivity and die gloriously on the battlefield.Schiller's Joan, as we might expect, is a romantic-nationalist heroine, a young rebel whose business is to knock heads together on the battlefield as well as in the conference room to encourage the leaders of France and Burgundy to forget their petty local quarrels and unite to drive out the foreign occupying army. Any resemblance to the situation in Germany in 1801 is purely coincidental! Religion doesn't play a very large part in Schiller's presentation of the story: Joan uses religious language, of course, but the French and English leaders all, rather implausibly, seem to be children of the age of Voltaire, supremely cynical about Christian belief.There's an interesting little bit in III:iv, which raises a few little questions about historical determinism, free-will, prophecy, and hindsight: Joan prophesies to the newly-crowned Dauphin (now Charles VII) that his descendants will be glorious kings — but only until the French Revolution:Dein Stamm wird blühn, solang er sich die LiebeBewahrt im Herzen seines Volks,Der Hochmut nur kann ihn zum Falle führen,Und von den niedern Hütten, wo dir jetztDer Retter ausging, droht geheimnisvollDen schuldbefleckten Enkeln das Verderben! Joan is more like one of Schiller's impetuous young men (Posa, in particular) than any of his women, although he does make the tragedy pivot on her sexuality: The moment when Joan feels a brief sexual attraction to an English knight she's about to kill in battle is the moment when she starts to lose her absolute certainty in the divine origin of her mission to unite France, and the moment when she becomes vulnerable to the accusation of witchcraft — which comes, interestingly, not from the Church or the political establishment, but from her father. Schiller clearly doesn't approve of fathers. (The Dauphin, of course, also had a somewhat problematic father...). This is really a one-girl play. The men, led by the Dauphin and Dunois (the Bastard) all have relatively minor parts; the Dauphin's mother, Isabeau of Bavaria, gets a nice, if not very extensive, bad-girl part, while his mistress, Agnes Sorel, is presented more sympathetically, but also doesn't get a huge amount to do.