Prince Friedrich of Homburg Page 2

  As a means of clarifying this psychological process, three other works by major writers may be cited which deal with precisely the same theme. Friedrich Schiller’s imagination was so gripped by this problem that he violated historical fact in his play Mary Stuart (1800) in order to be able to present the protagonist’s search for a meaningful death. Mary was executed in 1587 because of her certain involvement in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth, the Queen of England. In Schiller’s drama, however, Mary is totally innocent of this particular crime, for which she must now ascend the scaffold. On the other hand, she did conspire to murder her second husband, Darnley, in 1567, a crime which has gone unpunished. Therefore, rather than suffering death as a purely external and thus meaningless event, Mary transforms Elizabeth, her executioner, into that unwitting force which permits her to atone before God for her earlier deed. Mary declares: “By this undeserved death [on the scaffold], God allows me to atone for an earlier bloody crime.” With this thought in mind, Mary is able to walk with dignity and serenity to the scaffold.

  In the twentieth century, Franz Kafka’s short story “The Judgment” (1912) describes how the protagonist, Georg Bendemann, is condemned to death by his own father for various transgressions. Because he recognizes his guilt, the protagonist is able to carry out the verdict himself and dies happy and at peace with the world. Finally, Brecht’s didactic play, The Measures Taken, which bears particularly close affinities to Kleist’s drama, treats the fate of a young communist who admits that his personal feelings caused him to disobey the strict orders of the party, thus undermining its struggles with the enemy. He recognizes his guilt and voluntarily accepts execution for the good of the party. Thus, Prince Friedrich, Mary Stuart, Georg Bendemann, and the young comrade all manage to face their certain deaths by affirming their executioners. On the very threshold of death, each feels nothing but forgiveness and love in his heart for the human instrument of his destruction. By a process of voluntarily accepting guilt and punishment, these characters believe that their lives, previously marked by mere personal desire and petty whim, have been transformed and crowned by a higher meaning. Self-negation is the price of providing one’s existence with transpersonal value, a value that can only be bestowed from outside by an absolute. Although the personal cost is the highest conceivable, the individual, by negating the self, liberates himself from the terrors inherent in thoughts of physical extinction.

  The Prince’s heroic transformation into a model citizen and soldier in the final scenes becomes readily comprehensible only from the perspective of his traumatic fear of death. He is no more mature at the end of the play than he was at the beginning, and he has not undergone a profound psychological development. Rather, the vision of his grave has precipitated a dialectical reversal of his persona. Beneath his new-found self-denying attitude of humility toward the state is now a greater egoism than ever before. His ego has expanded, as it were, to include within its personal self the glory and immortality of the whole state. He declares to his comrades that victory on the battlefield is paltry in comparison to victory over one’s worst inner enemies, defiance and arrogance. But the Prince expects a reward for such personal victory, namely the freedom to die an exemplary death both in order to atone to the state and to affirm its eternal rules of law before others. He is veritably overcome by thoughts of this higher, more sublime act of heroism, an act which will be quite as public as was his victory over the Swedish enemy. Thus, the desire for fame and distinction continues as before to be the hallmark of his character. His yearning to die for the good of the state is as irrational as were his earlier dreams of personal glory in the moonlit castle garden. Therefore, the dazzling romantic conclusion of the drama is totally appropriate. Rather than being merely a superfluous conclusion tacked on to the end of the play for reasons of symmetry or because Kleist wished to conclude the work in a fashion both visually striking and highly dramatic, its parallels to the first scene emphasize that the dream of the state has but replaced a dream of the self; the Prince remains a dreamer. The mind of man cannot face the fact of death for more than a very short period of time. Thus, the existence of death in a world without the metaphysical absolute of God has generated a new illusion, the secular absolute of the state.

  The modern spectator, having witnessed in recent history the systematic moral corruption of willing individuals living under totalitarian regimes, cannot help but experience the Prince’s ecstatic affirmation of the Elector and the state with ambivalence. Of course, such ambivalence would be completely unjustified if the Elector were an unflawed, quasi-divine figure of justice and truth. But the Elector, whose motives for judgment should transcend the human-all-too-human factors which taint the behavior of lesser men, acts in several irrational ways which are not explicable in terms of the duties of his office and which are potentially more disruptive to the state’s well-being than was the Prince’s impulsive charge into battle. Three instances may be cited which reveal the presence in the Elector of deep-seated feelings of competition and jealousy arising from his fear that he will eventually be overshadowed and displaced by the Prince, whom he has raised from boyhood as his son.

  The presence of the father-son configuration, from which the unconscious mutual rivalry derives, is immediately revealed by the Prince himself, who, in his dream, addresses the Elector and the Electress as father and mother, which in reality they are not. The Elector-father, driven at once by curiosity and by fear of what he may yet discover, tempts the Prince to further revelations by way of a test: he offers him his chain of office, a wreath symbolizing heroic victory, and his niece and ward, Princess Natalia, as well. When the Prince accepts everything so naturally, the Elector, perhaps shocked at seeing his own secret fear confirmed, becomes quite embarrassed at having eavesdropped upon the Prince’s innermost feelings.

  As a direct consequence of this revelation, the Elector assigns the ambitious and exuberant Prince a passive role in a decisive battle, while he himself, the mature leader and battle’s strategist, takes the most active and heroic role in the forefront of the assault. Moreover, as if to secure his position as the center of interest, he has the vanity to ride a gleaming white horse into the fray. Before the battle is over, however, the Prince and the Elector exchange roles again, as if to confirm that the original assignments were unnatural.

  The Elector’s error is twofold and has the gravest consequences both for the state and for several individuals. First, he jeopardizes his own life needlessly, thereby also jeopardizing the future of Prussia, which, at this point in its history, requires stable and mature leadership. The Elector’s vanity also costs the life of his faithful groom, Froben, who finally persuades his master to let him ride the white horse, whereupon he is immediately struck down by enemy bullets intended for the Elector. Second, the Elector has good cause to know that the Prince is unable to await orders passively; the impetuous young Homburg has already cost the Elector two previous victories because of his impulsive conduct. Moreover, the Elector tells the Prince during the dream scene that the fame, the glory, and the love he seeks are not to be won in dreams but are only earned upon the battlefield. The Elector therefore appears to have put the Prince in a position where he will be forced into disobeying his orders. However, by breaking the law in this manner, the Prince runs headlong not into the Elector himself but into his impersonal military court. In other words, if the Elector cannot eclipse the Prince by heroism in battle, he is still able to don the mask of head of state and allow the law to take its course, thereby ridding himself of the Prince without having to recognize the personal nature of the conflict. But this maneuver in turn has the effect of jeopardizing the state once again, for the Prince’s imprisonment and the court-martial’s harsh sentence threaten to bring the army to the point of insurrection, thereby undermining that very rule of law which the Elector is supposedly affirming by remaining aloof and refusing to pardon the Prince as he is empowered to do.

  Finally, since the Elector acts not from stup
idity but from unconscious motives, it becomes apparent why he feels he must allow the law to punish the Prince so severely for his small transgression while he is able to ignore and even condone what may be viewed as the far more treasonable acts of Kottwitz and Natalia, both of whom seem to be part of a conspiracy to free the Prince by force. It should be added in defense of the Elector’s perception of the danger facing him, if not of the hypocritical manner in which he chooses to deal with it, that the threat from the Prince is a real one. Upon the apparent death of the Elector in battle, the Prince immediately (if naïvely) advances into the center of the Elector’s family and his state: he declares that henceforth he will assume the protection of the Elector’s throne as well as of Natalia, whom he now expects to marry forthwith. News of the Prince’s precipitate assumption of the Elector’s position was doubtless innocently conveyed to him by the Electress. The Elector’s response is equally precipitate: without further inquiry as to the Prince’s fault, he simply assumes the Prince took part in battle, disobeyed his orders, and must be sentenced to death.

  A comparison with Kafka’s short story “The Judgment” provides a most economical way of illuminating a pivotal occurrence in the denouement of the father-son rivalry in Kleist’s drama. In Kafka’s work, the father accuses the son, Georg, of subtly and hypocritically attempting to usurp his position in the world. But the most blatant single act of aggression against the father, which now causes him to condemn Georg to death, is his son’s plan to marry; for by establishing his own family Georg will be forcing his father into the periphery of active life. In Kleist’s play, Count Hohenzollern has a similar perception: totally ignoring the question of the Prince’s military insubordination, Hohenzollern suggests, while visiting the Prince in prison, that the real reason for the Elector’s disfavor arises from the Prince’s rashly announced plan to marry Natalia without ever having obtained prior permission. That the Prince so readily accepts this explanation points to the presence of unconscious guilt feelings at having transgressed the Elector’s right to control Natalia’s destiny. Hence, the Prince immediately gives her up. And Natalia, as if having a presentiment of the rivalry between the Elector and the Prince, not only also renounces the Prince but, in her pleading for mercy before the Elector, stresses that the Prince has been reduced to a state of total capitulation: he is no longer the romantic hero on horseback, no longer the suitor for her hand. The Elector may now pardon him, may even reward him generously with Natalia’s hand, because he is no longer a rival.

  Has the Elector been affected by the events that he has precipitated? He must recognize that he himself has acted both too impulsively and too rigidly. Those closest to him—Hohenzollern, Natalia, and Kottwitz—have not spared him the most severe criticism. The Elector’s miscalculation of the army’s reaction to the Prince’s death sentence has almost led to insurrection. He is, indeed, tottering on the edge of disaster when he is suddenly inspired to place the Prince’s fate in his own hands by sending him the letter. Unknown to everyone but himself, the Elector’s fate and that of the state, too, now lie in the hands of the Prince, who does, most fortunately, emerge to teach the rebellious soldiers the Elector’s lessons of obedience to the law. The Elector alone knows how easily his improvised strategy could have failed.

  Whereas the Prince reveals his every thought and feeling throughout the play to anyone who will listen and thus provides the actor with a brilliantly histrionic role, the Elector hides his reactions beneath the lofty impersonality of his office. Thus, his role is the more subtle and difficult one, for he must be played not as a figure of divine truth and not as a pompous moralizer but rather as a lonely and sometimes frightened man. Though the Prince undergoes a radical external change while remaining inwardly essentially the same, the Elector has the reverse experience.

  The Elector’s final situation in the play lends a certain tragic dignity to his life. The Prince in a rather childlike fashion has found a new anchor for his chaotic existence in his blind adoration of the Elector and the state. But where can the Elector find comfort and security, now that he has so profoundly experienced “the inherent weakness in the world’s order” (“die Gebrechlichkeit der Welt”), not only as it menaces the happiness of the individual but also as it threatens the stability of the state?

  Diana Stone Peters

  Frederick G. Peters

  Columbia University in the City of New York

  November 1977

  To Her Royal Highness

  Princess Amalie Marie Anne,

  née Princess of Hessen-Homburg,

  wife of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia,

  Brother of His Majesty the King.

  The poet, plunged in the middle of the turbulent affairs of ordinary men, plucks the strings of his harp as he gazes up toward the heavens. The sounds he creates sometimes bring comfort and other times sorrow, but he cannot delight in any answer to his song. And yet he believes there’s one within the crowded circle to whom he can dedicate his innermost feelings. She holds the prize in her hands which will fall to him, and if she crowns him, then he is crowned by all the world.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  FRIEDRICH WILHELM, the Elector of Brandenburg

  THE ELECTRESS, his wife

  PRINCESS NATALIA OF ORANGE, his niece; commander-in-chief of a regiment of dragoons

  FIELD MARSHAL DÖRFLING

  PRINCE FRIEDRICH ARTHUR OF HOMBURG, general in charge of the cavalry

  COLONEL KOTTWITZ, of the Princess of Orange’s regiment

  HENNINGS and COUNT TRUCHSS, infantry colonels

  COUNT HOHENZOLLERN, attached to the Elector’s suite

  CAVALRY CAPTAIN VON DER GOLTZ

  COUNT GEORGE VON SPARREN, STRANTZ, and SIEGFRIED VON MÖRNER, cavalry captains

  COUNT REUSS

  A SERGEANT

  Officers, corporals, cavalrymen; courtiers, ladies-in-waiting; pages, castle guards dressed as Hungarian foot soldiers; servants; people of every age and sex.

  Act I

  SCENE 1

  Scene: Fehrbellin. A garden in the old French style. In the background a castle from which a ramp descends. It is night.

  [The Prince of Homburg, bareheaded and dressed in a shirt open in front, is seated under an oak tree—half asleep, half awake. He is weaving a wreath. The Elector, his wife, Princess Natalia, Count Hohenzollern, Cavalry Captain Goltz, and others steal secretly from the castle and look down upon him from the railing of the ramp. Pages with torches.]

  HOHENZOLLERN: There is our brave cousin, the Prince of Homburg, who, at the head of his troops, has been vigorously chasing the retreating Swedish army for the past three days. He’s just now returned to headquarters here at Fehrbellin, completely out of breath. But didn’t you give him quite specific orders not to remain here longer than the three hours necessary to procure supplies? Wasn’t he then supposed to advance to the Hackelberg and wait there for our attack against the Swedish General Wrangel, who has been trying to entrench himself along the Rhyn?

  ELECTOR: That’s correct.

  HOHENZOLLERN: Well, now, the leaders of all the squadrons, in accordance with this plan, were instructed to prepare to leave the city at the stroke of ten, but the Prince—he throws himself upon a pile of straw like a panting hunting dog and wants to rest his weary bones for a while before the coming battle starts at daybreak.

  ELECTOR: So I’ve heard—and?

  HOHENZOLLERN: The hour has struck, the whole cavalry is mounted, the horses are pawing at the ground before the city gates—and who’s still missing? The Prince of Homburg, their leader! Our hero is sought with torches, lights, and lanterns—and he’s found! Where? [He takes a torch from a page’s hand.] Behold the sleepwalker on the bench down there, where the moonlight led him, fast asleep—though you never wanted to believe that he does such things! Look at him! See how preoccupied he is with dreams of his own future as he winds himself a splendid wreath of glory.

  ELECTOR: How ridiculous!

  HOHENZOLLERN: It�
��s true! Just look: there he sits!

  [He shines the light upon the Prince from the ramp.]

  ELECTOR: Deep in sleep? It’s not possible.

  HOHENZOLLERN: Fast asleep. If you call out his name, he’ll fall right down.

  [Pause]

  ELECTRESS: The young man must be very ill.

  NATALIA: He needs a doctor.

  ELECTRESS: I think we ought to help him and not waste time making fun of him.

  HOHENZOLLERN [handing back the torch]: My dear compassionate ladies! He is quite well. By God, he’s no less healthy than I am myself—as the Swedes will find out tomorrow on the battlefield. Believe me, his conduct is nothing more than a passing aberration of the mind.

  ELECTOR: Good God—and I thought you were making it all up! Follow me, my friends! Let’s have a closer look at him.

  [They descend the ramp.]

  COURTIER [to the pages]: Keep the torches away!

  HOHENZOLLERN: Leave them where they are, it doesn’t matter! The whole place could go up in flames and his mind would be no more aware of it than the diamond sparkling on his finger.