Schicksalstragödie

Schicksalstragödie, term applied to plays in vogue during the Romantic movement (see Romantik), in which individuals or the entire members of a family perish, either on a fated day or through a fatal weapon (or both), usually as a consequence of some past crime. The first Schicksalstragödie is considered to be Blunt, oder der Gast by K. P. Moritz (1781), and the best example is Z. Werner's Der vierundzwanzigste Februar (1806), which was influenced by Schiller's Die Braut von Messina (1803, a tragedy which has analogies with Sophocles' Oedipus rex). Others are Der neunundzwanzigste Februar (1815) by A. Müllner, who had acted in Werner's play and is also the author of Die Schuld (1816), and Das Bild (1821), Die Heimkehr (1821), and Der Leuchtturm (1821), all by Baron von Houwald. These writers favour the trochaic verse with four accents, borrowed from Spain and widely used by the Romantics. Grillparzer's early play Die Ahnfrau (1816) was branded as a Schicksalstragödie, much to his dismay, for the standard of plays associated with the term remained poor, and their actions were crude: the crime which begins the series of fateful repetitions is usually particularly horrifying, incest or parricide being the most frequent, and the perpetrator's awareness or ignorance of the relationship is immaterial.

Parodies of such fate tragedies include Der Schicksalsstrumpf (1818) by Castelli and A. Jeitteles and Die verhängnisvolle Gabel by A. von Platen (1826).