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Suicide, Sex, and the Discovery of the German Adolescent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Sterling Fishman
Sterling Fishman*
Affiliation:
The University of Wisconsin
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Extract

Thus our society has passed from a period which was ignorant of adolescence to a period in which adolescence is the favourite age. We now want to come to it early and linger in it as long as possible.

Philippe Ariés

“For the great dramatists of the late nineteenth century,” writes the critic, Eric Bentley, “a play was a bomb to drop on the respectable middle classses.” In the winter of 1890–1891, the young playwright Frank Wedekind created his bomb, the explosive drama, Spring's Awakening (Frühlingserwachen), in which he bitterly attacked the moral hypocrisy of his day. In dealing with the sexual problems of adolescence, Wedekind harshly condemned middle-class prudery and an education that taught German children the facts of German history, but not the facts of life. In one frank scene after another, he explored the tragedy of this situation. Fourteen-year-old Wendla becomes pregnant without ever discovering how she conceived. She finally dies from the effects of “abortion pills.” Her lover, Melchior, searches for answers to his sexual questions and finds dishonor instead. He commits suicide. His friend, Moritz, is unable to help and wanders in despair at the final curtain. Only the self-righteous parents and teachers, who have crushed “spring's awakening,” survive.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Summer 1970 , pp. 170 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 History of Education Quarterly 

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References

Notes

1. Bentley, Eric, “Notes,” The Modern Theatre, (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1960), 6, 286.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. 287.Google Scholar

3. Quoted from Frank Wedekind's Was ich mir dabei dachte, in The Modern Theatre, p. 287.Google Scholar

4. Gurlitt, Ludwig, “Schüler-Schauspiele” in Bühne und Welt. Zeitschrift für Theaterwesen, Literatur und Musik IX, Jahrgang Nrs. 10 and 11 (February and March 1907).Google Scholar

5. See Aries, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1962) for a brilliant discussion of the discovery of childhood. The vagueness of the German terms describing these stages of development is discussed at length in Adolf von Grolman, Kind und Junger Mensch in der Dichtung der Gegenwart (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt Verlag, n.d. [early 30s]), ch. I, sec. 2.Google Scholar

6. See the Berliner Morgenzeitung of June 16, 1892, as noted in Siegert, Gustav, Das Problem der Kinderselbstmordes (Leipzig: R. Voigtländers Verlag, 1893), p. 11.Google Scholar

7. Quoted in Das Problem der Kinderselbstmordes, p. 8.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., p. 11.Google Scholar

9. Quoted in ibid., p. 40.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., p. 61.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., p. 86.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., p. 90.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., p. 87.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., pp. 90–91.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., p. 88.Google Scholar

16. Gurlitt, Ludwig, Der Deutsche und sein Vaterland.; Politisch-pädagogische Betrachtungen eines Modernen 2d ed.; Berlin: Verlag von Wiegandt & Grieboy, 1902), pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

17. Gurlitt, Ludwig, Schülerselbstmorde (Berlin: Concordia Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, n.d.).Google Scholar

18. Ibid., pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., p. 57.Google Scholar

20. In the Sammlung zwangloser Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der Nerven- und Geisteskrankheiten, Band X, Heft 6 (1914).Google Scholar

21. Ibid., pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. 30.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., pp. 33–34.Google Scholar

24. Wedekind, Frank, Spring's Awakening act 1, scene 2, in The Modern Theatre, vol. 6, ed. Bentley, Eric, pp. 104–05.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., act 3, scene 1, p. 140. Bentley's translations of these names are used here.Google Scholar

26. See von Grolman, Adolf, Kind und Junger Mensch p. 44, for an evaluation of the importance of Wedekind's play to this genre.Google Scholar

27. Translated and published as On Probation, in Poet-Lore. A Quarterly Magazine of Letters, XIV (1902–1903), 40–113.Google Scholar

28. (Leipzig: Verlag von L. Staackmann, 1901).Google Scholar

29. (München, 1905).Google Scholar

30. Traumulus, R. Piper & Co., act 2, p. 53.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., act 2, p. 59.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., act 5, p. 160.Google Scholar

33. Hicks, W. R., The School in English and German Fiction (London: Soncino Press, 1933), pp. 76–77.Google Scholar

34. Stilpe: Ein Roman aus der Froschperspective (4th ed.; Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1902).Google Scholar

35. Ibid., p. 40.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., p. 96.Google Scholar

37. Quoted by Hicks (The School, p. 107) from Die Neue Rundschau of June 30, 1930.Google Scholar

38. Mann, Thomas, Buddenbrooks trans. Lowe-Porter, H. T. (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, Inc., n.d.), p. 553.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., p. 560.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., p. 570.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., p. 564.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., p. 580.Google Scholar

43. Ibid., p. 582.Google Scholar

44. Ibid., p. 591.Google Scholar

45. Freund Hein: Eine Lebensgeschichte (München: Georg Müller Verlag, 1936).Google Scholar

46. (Berlin, 1902). See especially vol. 2, pp. 31–32, for a bitter description of school life and insensitive teachers.Google Scholar

47. See Laqueur, Walter, Young Germany (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1962), for a good history of this phenomenon.Google Scholar

48. The German language soon reflected this change as well. Whereas in 1880 a popular German educational encyclopedia contained only two entries under the heading of “Jugend,” by 1913 a comparable work contained some 50 entries, including such terms as “Adolescent or Juvenile Welfare,” “Law,” “Associations,” etc. See Walter Hornstein, Jugend in ihrer Zeit (Hamburg: Marion von Schröder Verlag, 1966), p. 20, for a more complete discussion of this change.Google Scholar