"Wir dichten die Geschichte." Adaption und Konstruktion von Historie bei Friedrich Dürrenmatt (review)

As the title suggests, this study explores the process by which Dürrenmatt adapts historical material (Stoff) for his fiction while also investigating Dürrenmatt's reflections on historical writing. Bursch concentrates on the use and adaption of history in Romulus der Große, Die Wiedertäufer, and Achterloo and explores sources that Dürrenmatt knew in order to investigate intertextual conditions that create tension between the tragic and the comic in Dürrenmatt's historical works. This monograph also examines such prevalent themes in Dürrenmatt's oeuvre as justice (Gerechtigkeit) and, in particular, nihilism as they relate to historical discourse and to Dürrenmatt's adaption of historical material in his fiction.

The introduction offers Dürrenmatt's views on historical writing. Bursch quotes Dürrenmatt's reflections on history, the writing of history, and the use of historical material in his own fiction. Dürrenmatt contends that Wallenstein has become a timeless persona that can be reinterpreted, regardless of whether or not he ever existed. Wallenstein is no more or less real than Hamlet. Dürrenmatt views historians as "Romanciers." He believes that an artist must reduce the historical figures to their essence and then parody them. Through parody he transforms them into the opposite of what they historically were, allowing the artist free creative reign to develop this (historical) material. Bursch introduces his theoretical framework, New Historicism, with which he elucidates historical texts that Dürrenmatt read. He presents a brief overview of New Historicism (Louis Montrose, Michel Foucault, Ingo Breuer) and adopts the theories of the metahistorian Hayden White which become the underlying theoretical structure for this study.

Bursch begins his analysis of Dürrenmatt's Romulus der Große by exploring two sources that Dürrenmatt was known to have read, Prokop von Kaisareia's Anecdote in which Prokop quotes the words of Petronius, the author of the well-known Satiricon, which parodies The Odyssey. Dürrenmatt believed that historical figures such as Nero and Caesar possess an allure for authors because of their mythic proportions. Bursch demonstrates how various roles and motifs, particularly Petronius's sarcastic attitude toward Roman history and culture, influenced Dürrenmatt's Romulus. Prokop's history included an anecdote about Kaiser Honorius and his rooster. Here the oxymoron "ungeschichtlich historisch" manifests itself in Dürrenmatt's comedy because suddenly this anecdote becomes central to the plot itself, depicting a shameful Kaiser whose chickens are more important to him than the Roman empire. Bursch demonstrates within White's theoretical framework how Dürrenmatt takes historical sources, parodies them, remolds them until they become his own creation to be used for metahistorical purposes. Aristotle asserts that the historian relates what has happened, whereas the author of fiction communicates what could have happened. Bursch then turns to a frequent topic in Dürrenmatt scholarship, namely how he created the dialectic of tragic and comic in his works. Bursch deftly cites the interpretations of leading Dürrenmatt scholars (Elisabeth Brock-Sulzer, Beda Allemann, Ulrich Profitlich, Jürgen Kost, Gerhard P. Knapp, and Heinz Ludwig Arnold) regarding this topic. Dürrenmatt himself admits that the tragic and comic are very narrowly separated.

Similarly, Bursch interprets another historically based play, Die Wiedertäufer. First he analyzes sources that Dürrenmatt had referenced: an article in Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche and Georg Tumbült's Die Wiedertäufer. Tumbült relates the same story of the Anabaptist events in Münster 1534–35, but in contrast to the encyclopedia, conveys a blend of sadness and anger together with humor that results in a tragic comedy. Bursch ascertains that Dürrenmatt was neither interested in the Anabaptists as a social-political revolt, nor in portraying the anabaptist faith on the stage. Rather Dürrenmatt creates with this material another story, one that exhibits seduction where it encounters faith, desire for power, and sexual attraction. Dürrenmatt...