Ferdinand Raimund

Raimund, Ferdinand (pseudonym of Jakob Raimann, 1790–1836), Austrian dramatist, actor, and director who, along with Johann Nestroy, cultivated the fairy‐tale farce and transformed it into high art. Raimund was strongly influenced by the baroque theatre and the commedia dell'arte and combined elements of social satire with romance to write unique dramas about Austrian society and the folk tradition. His first two plays, Der Barometermacher auf der Zauberinsel (The Barometer Maker on the Enchanted Island, 1823) and Der Diamant des Geisterkönigs (The Diamond of the King of Spirits, 1824) were rough experiments in the fairy‐tale genre. Beginning with Das Mädchen aus der Feenwelt oder der Bauer als Millionär (The Maiden from Fairyland or The Farmer as Millionaire, 1827), Raimund showed his remarkable ability to endow the fairy‐tale play with deeper meaning and great humour. In this farce the powerful fairy Lacrimosa is stripped of her magic powers because she falls in love with a human and gives birth to a daughter. She can only regain her powers if her daughter marries a poor young man before she reaches her 18th birthday. In another fascinating play, Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind (The King of the Alps and the Enemy of Man, 1828), Raimund depicts a rich, misanthropic landowner named Rappelkopf, who refuses to allow his daughter to marry an artist. In order to punish Rappelkopf and reform him, Astralagus, King of the Alps, transforms Rappelkopf into his own brother‐in‐law, and the king assumes Rappelkopf's identity to show the misanthrope how cruel he was. In the end, Rappelkopf reforms and becomes kind and gentle, and allows his daughter to marry the artist. Raimund's last great play, Der Verschwender (The Spendthrift, 1834), concerns a nobleman named Julius von Flottwell, endowed with great wealth by the fairy Cheristane. However, Flotwell likes to spend his money without regard for the consequences despite Cheristane's warnings. Soon he loses his fortune, and his friends and servants turn on him. Gradually he learns his lesson, and Cheristane helps him regain his wealth and position in society. Raimund wrote three other fairy‐tale plays, Moisasurs Zauberfluch (The Magic Curse of Moisasur, 1827), Die gefesselte Phantasie (The Fettered Imagination, 1828), and Die unheilige Krone oder: König ohne Reich, Held ohne Mut, Schönheit ohne Jugend (The Unholy Crown or: King without Kingdom, Hero without Courage, Beauty without Youth, 1829), which were unsuccessful attempts to introduce tragic elements into the fairy‐tale tradition.

Bibliography

• Crockett, Roger, ‘Raimund's Der Verschwender: The Illusion of Freedom’, German Quarterly, 58 (1985).
• Harding, Laurence V., The Dramatic Art of Ferdinand Raimund and Johann Nestroy: A Critical Study (1974).
• Hein, Jürgen, Ferdinand Raimund (1970).
• Holbeche, Yvonne, ‘Raimund and Romanticism: Ferdinand Raimund's “Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind” and E. T. A. Hoffmann's “Prinzessin Brambilla”’, New German Studies, 18 (1994).
• Jones, Calvin N., Negation and Utopia: The German Volksstück from Raimund to Kroetz (1993).

— Jack Zipes

Raimund, Ferdinand, real name Raimann (Vienna, 1790-1836, Pottenstein, Lower Austria), was a prominent exponent of the Volksstück. The son of a turner who died when the boy was 14, Raimund was at first apprenticed to a confectioner, but his passion for the theatre led him to go on the stage at 18. His early appearances with small touring companies were failures. In 1814 he secured an engagement at the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna, but was unsuccessful in the tragic roles which it was his ambition to play. In his comic parts, however, he immediately won the applause of a large public. In 1817 he transferred to the better-known Theater in der Leopoldstadt, where he was the principal draw for the next decade. He married perforce the actress Luise Gleich, daughter of the comedy-writer J. A. Gleich, in 1820. The marriage was a failure and a separation order was made in 1822. For the rest of his life Raimund maintained a liaison with Antonie Wagner, whom he was not free to marry.

During the years at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt Raimund began to write plays, beginning with Der Barometermacher auf der Zauberinsel, performed in 1823. This magic farce (see Volksstück) was followed by similar, though more ambitious, works, Der Diamant des Geisterkönigs, performed in 1824, Das Mädchen aus der Feenwelt oder Der Bauer als Millionär, in 1826, Moisasurs Zauberfluch, in 1827, Die gefesselte Phantasie, and Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind, both performed in 1828. In that year Raimund was made director of the Theater in der Leopoldstadt, for which he wrote Die unheilbringende Zauberkrone, 1829, a tragi-comedy which ended his run of popular successes. He resigned as director in 1830 and thereafter won acclaim as a guest in various theatres. His last and most ambitious play, Der Verschwender, was performed in 1834. Though Raimund was outwardly prosperous, living on the scale of a well-to-do burgher, he was a deeply unhappy man, hypersensitive and quick to suspect persecution. During a stay at his country villa in 1836 he was bitten by a dog and believed himself to have contracted hydrophobia. While on the way to Vienna to consult a doctor he shot himself.

The theatre which Raimund knew and wrote for was the popular theatre of Vienna, with its dialect, its local allusions, obligatory songs, and limited range of emotions. Though fully successful in this unpretentious type of play, he felt impelled to write works of wider purport and deeper feeling. In Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind and especially in Der Verschwender he revealed new possibilities in the Volksstück, which he did not live to exploit. None of his plays were published in his lifetime. His collected plays were issued in 1837 by J. N. Voglas Sämtliche Werke (4 vols.), the contents of which are: (1) Der Diamant des Geisterkönigs, Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind; (2) Moisasurs Zauberfluch, Das Mädchen aus der Feenwelt; (3) Der Barometermacher auf der Zauberinsel, Die gefesselte Phantasie; and (4) Die unheilbringende Zauberkrone and Der Verschwender.

The historisch-kritische Ausgabe (6 vols.), ed. F. Brukner and E. Castle, appeared in 1924-34, and Sämtliche Werke, ed. F. Schreyvogl in 1960, Werke in zwei Bändern, ed. F. Hadamowsky, in 1971.

Raimund, Ferdinand (fĕr'dēnänt rī'mʊnt) , 1790–1836, Austrian actor and dramatist. From 1817 he was a popular comedian in Vienna, and in 1823 he began to produce his own plays. Raimund wrote fine comedies of Viennese life, among them Der Bauer als Millionär [the peasant millionaire] (1826), Der Verschwender (1833, tr. The Spendthrift, 1949), and Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind (1828, tr. The King of the Alps, 1850). Blending humor with pathos, these plays raised the Viennese folk comedy to a high literary level. Subject to depression, Raimund shot himself at a time when his public favor had temporarily ebbed.

Bibliography

See study by D. Prohaska (1973).

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