Franz Grillparzer
born Jan. 15, 1791, Vienna [Austria]
died Jan. 21, 1872, Vienna
Austrian dramatist who wrote tragedies
that were belatedly recognized as the
greatest works of the Austrian stage.
Grillparzer’s father was a lawyer who
died in debt in 1809; his markedly
neurotic mother committed suicide 10
years later. Grillparzer studied law at
the University of Vienna and spent much
of his life in government service.
Beginning in 1814 as a clerk in the
department of revenue, he became a clerk
in the treasury (1818) and later
director of the treasury archives. His
hopes for a higher position were never
fulfilled, however, and he retired from
government service in 1856.
In 1817 the first performance of
Grillparzer’s tragedy Die Ahnfrau (The
Ancestress) evoked public interest.
Previously he had written a play in
blank verse, Blanka von Castilien
(Blanche of Castile), that already
embodied the principal idea of several
later works—the contrast between a
quiet, idyllic existence and a life of
action. Die Ahnfrau, written in the
trochaic Spanish verse form, has many of
the outward features of the then-popular
“fate tragedy” (Schicksalsdrama), but
the characters are themselves ultimately
responsible for their own destruction. A
striking advance was the swiftly written
tragedy Sappho (1818). Here the tragic
fate of Sappho, who is depicted as
heterosexual, is attributed to her
unhappy love for an ordinary man and to
her inability to reconcile life and art,
clearly an enduring problem for
Grillparzer. Work on the trilogy Das
Goldene Vlies (1821; The Golden Fleece)
was interrupted by the suicide of
Grillparzer’s mother and by illness.
This drama, with Medea’s assertion that
life is not worth living, is the most
pessimistic of his works and offers
humanity little hope. Once more the
conflict between a life of meditation
and one of action seems to lead
inevitably to renunciation or despair.
More satisfying, both aesthetically
and emotionally, is the historical
tragedy König Ottokars Glück und Ende
(written 1823, but because of censorship
difficulties not performed or published
until 1825; King Ottocar, His Rise and
Fall). Here the action is drawn from
Austrian history, and the rise of
Rudolph of Habsburg (the first of
Grillparzer’s characters to avoid guilt
and tragedy) is contrasted with the fall
of the tyrant Ottokar of Bohemia, so
that Ottokar’s fate is not presented as
representative of all humanity.
Grillparzer was disappointed at the
reception given to this and a following
play and became discouraged by the
objections of the censor. Although he
loved Katharina Fröhlich (1800–79), whom
he had met in the winter of 1820–21, he
felt unable to marry, possibly because
of a conviction that as an artist he had
no right to personal happiness. His
misery during these years is reflected
not only in his diaries but also in the
impressive cycle of poems entitled
Tristia ex Ponto (1835).
Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen
(1831; The Waves of Sea and Love), often
judged to be Grillparzer’s greatest
tragedy because of the degree of harmony
achieved between content and form, marks
a return to the classical theme in
treating the story of Hero and Leander,
which is, however, interpreted with a
psychological insight anticipating the
plays of Ibsen. Hero, the priestess, who
lacks a true sense of vocation, forgets
her vows in her blind passion for
Leander and, when her lover is ensnared
to his death, she dies of a broken
heart. The following of vital instincts
is shown to rob the individual of inner
harmony and self-possession. Der Traum
ein Leben (1834; A Dream Is Life) owes
much to Grillparzer’s intensive and
prolonged studies of Spanish drama. This
Austrian Faust ends happily, for the
ambitious young peasant Rustan only
dreams the adventures that involve him
in crime and awakes to a realization of
the vanity of earthly aspirations.
Grillparzer’s only comedy, Weh dem, der
lügt! (1838; “Woe to Him Who Lies!”),
was a failure with the public, chiefly
because the theme—the hero succeeds
because he tells the truth when everyone
thinks he is lying—was too subtle and
too serious for comic treatment.
Grillparzer wrote no more for the
stage and very little at all after the
1840s. The honours that were heaped on
him in old age came too late. In 1861 he
was elected to Vienna’s upper
legislative house (Herrenhaus), his 80th
birthday was the occasion for a national
celebration, and his death in Vienna in
1872 was widely mourned. Three
tragedies, apparently complete, were
found among his papers. Die Jüdin von
Toledo (The Jewess of Toledo), based on
a Spanish theme, portrays the tragic
infatuation of a king for a young Jewish
woman. He is only brought back to a
sense of his responsibilities after she
has been killed at the queen’s command.
Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg (Family
Strife in Hapsburg), a profound and
moving historical tragedy, lacks the
theatrical action that would make it
successful in performance and is chiefly
remarkable for the portrayal of the
emperor Rudolph II. Much of
Grillparzer’s most mature thought forms
the basis of the third play, Libussa, in
which he foresees human development
beyond the rationalist stage of
civilization.
Apart from his critical studies on
Spanish drama and a posthumous
autobiography, Grillparzer’s finest
prose work is Der arme Spielmann (1848),
the story of a poor musician who
cheerfully accepts life’s failures and
dies through his efforts to help others.
Grillparzer’s work looks back to the
great Classical and Romantic
achievements and the painful evolution
from the disillusionment of idealism to
a compromise with reality. Grillparzer
was unusually gifted not only as a
dramatic poet but also as a playwright
capable of creating dramas suitable for
performance. Unlike his great
predecessors, Goethe and Schiller, he
distinguishes between the speech of the
cultured person and that of the
uneducated. He also introduces
colloquialisms, humour, and elements
from the popular farce. Although the
central dramatic conflict of
Grillparzer’s plays is often rooted in
his personal problems, it is presented
objectively. Grillparzer’s solution is
renunciation rather than acceptance. He
undoubtedly suffered from the censorship
and repression imposed by the Metternich
regime, but it is probable that his
unhappiness originated principally in an
inability to resolve his own
difficulties of character.
