When It Comes to the interpretation of change, historical and fictional narratives belong to two strictly separate fields, each involving very different truth claims. Yet, beginning with the philosophical reflection on the nature of history in the late eighteenth century, the interrelatedness of history and fiction also began to be recognized and studied. The need for meta-historical fictions becomes apparent especially when a historical narrative wants to mark a beginning and end, when framing devices and models for the plot of history are called upon. One such master narrative is the figure of the happy fall, which posits man’s banishment from Paradise as his liberation from the instinctual bond, which means the condition of the possibility of progress and history in an emphatic sense. This narrative of the felix culpa could be called the meta-historical fiction for an optimistic Enlightenment approach to understanding change as progress. In the wake of Kant’s critical philosophy as much as the aftermath of the French Revolution, however, the status of this master narrative of man’s happy fall began increasingly to be called into question.

This essay will analyze how Kleist’s Der zerbrochne Krug (The Broken Pitcher) deals with the problem of interpreting change: how to interpret the removal of Adam, the corrupt judge, from his position in a Dutch village following the review by a legal administrator. On the one hand, the plot of the play invokes the category of historical change in terms of a transition from a premodern traditional order of justice and administration to a modernized juridical order based on the universalized, codified law. On the other hand, a reading of Der zerbrochne Krug as an optimistic Enlightenment affirmation of this change as progress toward rationalization is rendered considerably more complicated through the elaborate play with both meta-historical framing devices and concrete historical references.

There is not only the story of Adam’s fall, or even his multiple lapses, but there is also the story of the broken pitcher, involving historical references to the Dutch wars of independence, told by Marthe.