The Denken/Handeln Topos: Hamlet in Post-1945 Germany

Abstract

The above extract from Goethe’s “Problem” was featured in Wolfgang Rihm’s Deutsches Stück mit Hamlet, a composition for mezzo-soprano, baritone and orchestra. Written to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the (ultimately failed) German revolution of 1848, the piece also featured extracts from two works directly inspired by Hamlet, Freiligrath’s 1848 poem “Deutschland ist Hamlet” and Heiner Müller’s Die Hamletmaschine (1977). Despite their chronological, tonal and formal differences, both extracts focus on the absence of the individual’s freedom to act and the resulting paralysis for Hamlet, and by extension, the citizens of the Germany they are addressing – the Germanic states of 1848 and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) of the 1970s. A closer look reveals that the theme of mental and physical freedom or entrapment, and the individual's ability or inability to act runs through all of Rihm’s chosen texts, including the Goethe excerpt above. Not only then is Hamlet (the play) or Hamlet (the character) foregrounded in the work’s title and in its structure, in which the Freiligrath and Müller extracts are chronologically centred, but the play’s central theme of Denken and Handeln – the weight each should be accorded, the question of how best to act and so on – forms the key message of this musical exploration of German national identity. The theme of the dichotomy of thought and action, mind and body in Hamlet is rooted in the Elizabethan belief in the perpetual conflict endured by human beings between reason (soul) and passion (matter or body), the latter of which should be conquered in order that an individual might achieve moral goodness. This conflict has long been a key theme in German thought, yet the ideal balance has remained a point of controversy. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that this dilemma has driven the German obsession with Hamlet and its protagonist since the first translations of the play in the late eighteenth century.