Theater for an Urban Audience: Adam Gottfried Uhlich's Der Jungfernstieg and Der Götterkrieg

Summary

TO SCHOLARS OF GERMAN THEATER in the first half of the eighteenth century—and particularly those with an interest in the Hamburg theater scene before the arrival of Lessing—Franz Ferdinand Heitmüller is a name with serious currency. His studies Hamburgische Dramatiker zur Zeit Gottscheds und ihre Beziehungen zu ihm (Hamburg Dramatists in Gottsched's Lifetime and Their Relation to Him) from 1890, Holländische Komödianten in Hamburg (1740 und 1741) (Dutch Comedians in Hamburg 1740 and 1741), and Adam Gottfried Uhlich, both published in 1894, are, even well over a century later, still indispensable starting points for all research in the field. Heitmüller's studies are rich in details, events, and names long sidelined by the grand narratives of literary history—which inevitably makes them also rich in comments we would not expect to find these days. It would be rare, for example, to find any scholar today describing the decades between 1730 and 1760 as an era hallmarked by the loss of an entire generation of great literary talents who “went to the dogs” one by one in their combined battle to usher in the new literary ideals most prominently expressed and promoted by Johann Christoph Gottsched. Heitmüller here explicitly refers to an observation made by Eduard Devrient in the second volume of his 1848 Geschichte der deutschen Schauspielkunst (History of Acting in Germany):

Gleichwohl … ist es eine Freude, auf den reichen Dichterfrühling hinzusehen, der mit Lessing über Deutschland aufgegangen war. Wie rasch hatten sich überall die Blüthen der Nationalpoesie entfaltet, und wie eifrig hatten sie sich alle der aufgehenden Sonne des nationalen Theaters zugewandt! Es zeugt von der gewaltigen Anstrengung, welche der deutsche Geist daran setzte, daß dieser Aufschwung so viele schöne Leben rasch verzehrte. Elias Schlegel war früh gestorben, Chronegk, der hoffnungsvolle Brawe, Abbt, Mylius, Michaelis, Schiebeler, Löwen, die dichtenden Schauspieler Krüger und Uhlich. Alle welkten sie früh dahin, ohne der Bühne die Verheißungen ihrer Talente erfüllt … zu haben.

[It is joyous to observe the rich spring of German poets coinciding with the arrival of Lessing. How quickly the blossoms of national poetry unfurled everywhere, and how avidly everyone had turned to the rising sun of our national theater! It is a testimony to the tremendous effort the German Geist invested in seeing how many beautiful lives were devoured by that upsurge.