{"id":3131,"date":"2013-06-11T15:32:53","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T19:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/?page_id=3131"},"modified":"2021-12-30T14:36:24","modified_gmt":"2021-12-30T19:36:24","slug":"gabriele-eckart-glossen-36-2013","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/archive\/archive-most-recent-issue-glossen-362013\/gabriele-eckart-glossen-36-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabriele Eckart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defending SED Party line: G\u00fcnther R\u00fccker\u2019s Der Nachbar des Herrn Pansa <\/em>(1969)<\/strong><\/p>\n

G\u00fcnther R\u00fccker\u2019s adaptation of Cervantes\u2019s novel Don Quixote<\/em>, Der Nachbar des Herrn Pansa <\/em> (Mister Panza\u2019s Neighbor<\/em>), is a SED party-line interpretation of the historic events during the Prague Spring in 1968, portraying the leader of the Czech reform movement, Alexander Dub\u010dek [1<\/a>], as a quixotic dreamer whose actions would threaten the existence of the socialist system by supporting the class enemy.\u00a0 Contrary to most of German reworking of Don Quixote<\/em> that has touches of romanticism, R\u00fccker follows the hard approach \u2013 parodying Don Quixote as an eloquent fool.\u00a0 According to R\u00fccker, Quixote\u2019s sentimental humanitarianism leads him to treason, which represents a serious threat to the revolution.\u00a0 This example of re-interpreting Cervantes\u2019s main protagonist clearly demonstrates that not only GDR literature was written with the fantasy that it had a direct social utility, but also that classic works of world literature were adapted for that purpose.<\/p>\n

As Laura Bradley states, many of the GDR\u2019s citizens followed the Prague Spring closely through Western television, investing \u201ctheir own hopes in the events in Prague\u201d (75).\u00a0 Among them were many theater practitioners who after the massive military invasion of Czechoslovakia by the tanks and soldiers of the Warsaw Pact States on August \u00a021, 1968 tried to express their outrage about this invasion on stage.\u00a0 As Bradley notes, \u201cThe autumn after the Prague Spring was felt not only in Czechoslovakia, but in the theaters of East Berlin\u201d (110).\u00a0 To outline the context in which R\u00fccker rewrote Don Quixote of La Mancha<\/em>, two examples should be pointed out.\u00a0 The first is the controversial staging of Goethe\u2019s Faust I<\/em> at the Deutsches Theater, which had its premiere on September 30, 1968.\u00a0 Although with its fixed text it did not refer directly to the invasion that happened a few weeks earlier, \u201cits theatrical rebellion and topical cabaret betrayed a complete disrespect for authority\u201d (Bradley 110).\u00a0 Its iconoclasm and the allusions to censorship sparked a scandal.\u00a0 A second critical reaction to the invasion of Prague was the adaptation of Aeschylus\u2019s play Sieben gegen Theben <\/em>\/ (Seven against Thebes<\/em>), performed at the Berliner Ensemble in 1969.\u00a0 As Bradley shows, it provocatively alludes to the crushing of the democratic reforms in the neighboring country, as, for instance, in the following lines: \u201ckeiner will \/ Zum Herrscher den, der eignes Volk \/ anf\u00e4llt mit fremdem Heer\u201d \/ (\u201cno one wants \/ as their ruler a man who attacks \/ his own people with a foreign army\u201d) (Bradley 109).\u00a0 As the critic wisely states, \u201cthese lines included a coded reference to Dub\u010dek\u2019s Soviet-backed successor, Gust\u00e1v Hus\u00e1k\u201d[2<\/a>\u00a0](109).<\/p>\n

As Bradley demonstrates in great detail, the Party responded to these critical performances with different actions of censorship.\u00a0 However, as will be shown in this study, it also responded more creatively by having staged a play that condemns the Prague Spring as a counter-revolution and preaches to maintain the traditional hard-line approach of the Party.\u00a0 Camouflaged as an \u201cinnocent\u201d new adaptation of a classic work of literature, Miguel de Cervantes\u2019s Don Quixote of La Mancha<\/em>, R\u00fccker\u2019s play Der Nachbar des Herrn Pansa<\/em> cleverly justifies the military invasion of Czechoslovakia and the crushing of the democratic reform movement.<\/p>\n

Anatoly Lunacharsky\u2019s [3<\/a>] play Der befreite Don Quichotte <\/em>\/ (The Freed Don Quixote<\/em>) (1922) serves as a stepping-stone from Cervantes\u2019s novel to R\u00fccker\u2019s play.\u00a0 As Elisabeth Frenzel noted, both the Russian writer and R\u00fccker \u201cerprobte[n] den Humanit\u00e4tsglauben des spanischen Ritters an einer Klassenkampfsituation\u201d \/ (\u201ctested the Spanish knight\u2019s belief in humanitarianism in a situation of class struggle\u201d) (177).\u00a0 In fact, some of R\u00fccker\u2019s main protagonists depend so strongly on Lunacharsky\u2019s characters that one feels reminded of Miguel de Unamuno\u2019s observation that over the centuries Don Quixote<\/em> is not only Cervantes\u2019s creation any more but also \u201clo que puso libremente el esp\u00edritu de los lectores\u201d \/ (\u201cwhat the spirit of the readers freely added\u201d) (see Varela Iglesias 44).\u00a0 As Unamuno states, \u201ccada generaci\u00f3n [\u2026] ha ido a\u00f1adiendo algo a este Don Quijote\u201d \/ (\u201cevery generation [\u2026] has added something to this Don Quixote\u201d) (379).\u00a0 He does and says things in those texts that he did not do and say in Cervantes\u2019s novel.\u00a0 As a result, something is formed over time that Unamuno calls \u201cla figura de Don Quijote fuera del Quijote<\/em>\u201d \/ \u201cthe figure of Don Quixote outside the Quixote<\/em>\u201d) (379).\u00a0 He strongly encourages us to \u201crecoger las distintas maneras como han extendido la figura del hidalgo manchego los distintos escritores que sobre \u00e9l han escrito\u201d \/ (\u201cgather the different ways how the different writers who wrote about him have extended the figure of the hidalgo from La Mancha\u201d) (379).<\/p>\n

In the case of Der Nachbar des Herrn Pansa<\/em>, we must include the examination of extensions and changes that communists such as Lunacharsky, for instance, have made to Don Quixote<\/em> during the twentieth century \u2013 Quixote being a revisionist who must be restrained before he can do more damage to the historical progress.\u00a0 This does not mean that Lunatcharsky and R\u00fccker would portray Don Quixote unsympathetically as a malicious traitor; as in Cervantes\u2019s text, he is a passionate idealist \u2013 his actions are driven by his belief in mercy and love; he always means well in whatever he does.<\/p>\n

However, given the situation of class struggle after a revolution, both Lunacharsky and R\u00fccker maintain in their adaptations \u00a0that Don Quixote’s idealism leads him to political naivet\u00e9 that will result in treason and prove disastrous for the revolution.\u00a0 Since R\u00fccker\u2019s play is much shorter than Lunacharsky\u2019s (the number of characters is reduced and their dialogues are less complex), Don Quixote\u2019s image seems that of a caricature.\u00a0 Also, as a critic of R\u00fccker\u2019s play noted correctly, \u201cdie Gef\u00e4hrlichkeit seiner [Don Quixote\u2019s] neuen Aktivit\u00e4ten\u201d \/ (\u201cthe dangerousness of his [Don Quixote\u2019s] new activities\u201d) (Linzer 30) is increased in R\u00fccker\u2019s play compared to Lunacharsky\u2019s.\u00a0 Consequently, Don Quixote\u2019s portrait looks more like a sketch with the feature of lunacy grotesquely exaggerated.<\/p>\n

R\u00fccker\u2019s play Der Nachbar des Herrn Pansa<\/em> begins with Don Quixote setting out into the world to generate more justice with the motto \u201cBarmherzigkeit\u201d \/ (\u201cmercifulness\u201d or \u201clovingness\u201d) (R\u00fccker 49).\u00a0 As in Cervantes\u2019s novel, Sancho accompanies him; on horse and donkey they move through the plains of Castile.\u00a0 Their most outstanding adventure is that they free prisoners who, as it turns out later, are revolutionaries.\u00a0 Like in Cervantes\u2019s novel, the freed prisoners steal Sancho\u2019s donkey.\u00a0 Count Murzio\u2019s brutal police force arrests Don Quixote and Sancho for having freed the prisoners and puts them behind bars.\u00a0 There, they meet a prisoner with revolutionary sympathies.\u00a0 Murzio\u2019s executioner beheaded his father, and the prisoner is dreaming of a revolutionary overthrow of this brutal society.\u00a0 The prisoners, whom Don Quixote and Sancho had freed at the beginning of the play, overthrow Murzio\u2019s regime and conquer the castle. They set the prisoners, including Don Quixote and Sancho, free and give Sancho his beloved donkey back (the freed prisoners do not give it back in Cervantes\u2019s text).\u00a0 Count Murzio is arrested, put in front of a revolutionary court, and sentenced to death by execution; the sentence is supposed to be carried out the following morning.<\/p>\n

At this point, R\u00fccker\u2019s Don Quixote tries to mediate the conflict.\u00a0 He says to his former neighbor and present squire who, as in Cervantes\u2019s text, represents common sense:\u00a0 \u201cIch bin gl\u00fccklich, dass wir hier sind, Sancho.\u00a0 Mit mir wohnt der Ausgleich hier, der alles in einen vers\u00f6hnlichen Ausgang leiten und lenken kann, zum Erstaunen und Gl\u00fcck der Parteien.\u00a0 Wen sollte ich hassen?\u201d \/ (\u201cI am happy that we are here, Sancho. With me there is compromise here that can lead things to a conciliatory resolution to the surprise and happiness of the parties.\u00a0 Whom should I hate?\u201d) (47) Afterwards, Don Quixote asks Vermillon, the leader of the revolution, to pardon Count Murzio.\u00a0 Vermillon reminds him of the crimes that Murzio has committed against the peasants and others; but Quixote goes on to beg for Murzio\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

In this struggle between Quixote and the revolutionaries about the question of pardoning Murzio or not, in historical disguise, some of the most important arguments between the two types of communists, the hardliners and the reformists, or, to use the protagonists\u2019 names from Stefan Heym\u2019s famous novel Collin <\/em>(1979), the Uracks and the Havelkas, are presented. \u00a0However, there is one important difference: while Heym\u2019s novel takes sides with Havelka, who represents the open, liberal \u2018third-way\u2019 approach (Zachau, 41-56), R\u00fccker\u2019s play argues for the Uracks, the hardliners. The audience of R\u00fccker\u2019s play Der Nachbar des Herrn Pansa <\/em>is supposed to learn, once and for all, that the traditional hard-line approach is the only correct one and that there could be no alternative to the present totalitarian form of socialism, a form of state that is characterized by the imposition of decisions instead of more consensual policy making.<\/p>\n

That the political backdrop of R\u00fccker’s play is the late 1960s is obvious from its contemporary ideological jargon.\u00a0 As a critic noted, \u201cDas geht bei R\u00fccker bis an die Grenze, wo ein h\u00e4ufig direkt aus heutigen Diskussionen entlehntes Vokabular [\u2026] in einen anachronistischen Widerspruch zum \u00fcberlieferten Habitus der Gestalt ger\u00e4t\u201d \/ (\u201cThat goes in R\u00fccker\u2019s play to the point where a vocabulary that is borrowed directly from the present discussion [\u2026] gets into an anachronistic contradiction to the handed-down characteristics of the figure\u201d) (Linzer 3).<\/p>\n

There are also many direct examples indicating that R\u00fccker\u2019s figure of Don Quixote is intended to personify Alexander Dub\u010dek.\u00a0 For instance, with persuasive eloquence Quixote points to the similarity of the new communist regime to the old capitalist and fascist regimes in the sense that both are undemocratic and violate human rights:<\/p>\n

Wie schnell ihr euren Feinden \u00e4hnlich geworden seid.\u00a0 Seid in ihre Kleider geschl\u00fcpft und ihre Rechtfertigungen, schlaft in ihren Betten, sitzt auf ihren Thronen, sprecht Recht und Tod, als h\u00e4tte man euch selbst nie zum Tode verurteilt, fragt nach nichts als dem Nutzen, pr\u00fcft die Mittel am Zweck, nicht am Gewissen, eure Stimme, die, mit ehernen Notwendigkeiten sich entschuldigend, Freiheiten einschn\u00fcren und Menschen vernichten kann, spricht leise, man mu\u00df auf sie h\u00f6ren, eure Kommandos unterscheiden sich in nichts von den Kommandos eurer Feinde, eure Generale wie alle andern Generale, eure Regimenter, ihre Regimenter, Schlachtordnung wie Schlachtordnung.\u00a0 Wie schnell seid ihr euren Feinden \u00e4hnlich geworden. \/ (How fast you have come to resemble your enemies.\u00a0 You have put on their clothes and use their justifications, sleep in their beds, sit on their thrones, judge about law and death as if you never had been sentenced to death yourself, ask for nothing but the benefit, check the means against the ends, not against the conscience; your voice, using the excuse of iron necessities, can constrict civic liberties and destroy people; it speaks softly, one has to listen; your commands do not differ from those of your enemies; your generals are like their generals; your regiments are like theirs; the battle formations are the same.\u00a0 How fast have you come to be like your enemies.)\u00a0 (50)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the expression of \u201cusing the excuse of iron necessities\u201d is a reference to orthodox Marxist philosophy, against which Czechoslovak Reform Marxists were protesting during the Prague Spring — with Dub\u010dek strongly supporting their proposed changes.<\/p>\n

In the end of R\u00fccker\u2019s play, the revolutionaries do not pardon Murzio; however, they give in to Don Quixote\u2019s request to be at least allowed to talk to Count Murzio; he wants to urge him to change, to become more human and just.\u00a0 During this conversation, Murzio, as can be expected from R\u00fccker\u2019s black-and-white dichotomy, manipulates the na\u00efve knight.\u00a0 The defeated Count tells Quixote that he plans to take a potion that seems to be poison, but is not; instead, it makes the person who has taken the potion be seemingly dead for three days.\u00a0 After this time, Quixote and Sancho should open the coffin and let Murzio free.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, although it is hinted that the potion has been produced in Peru, the miracle drug is called \u201cdie amerikanischen S\u00e4fte\u201d \/ (\u201cthe American juices\u201d) (57) instead of the \u201cPeruvian\u201d or at least the \u201cSouth American\u201d potion.\u00a0 This wording hints at R\u00fccker\u2019s likely intention to interpret the Prague reform movement as having been infiltrated by the United States.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the expression \u201cAmerican juices\u201d maliciously hints at the fact that Dub\u010dek\u2019s father had moved from Chicago to Czechoslovakia after World War I with the result that \u201cDub\u010dek was conceived in Chicago, but born after the family relocated to Czechoslovakia\u201d (\u201cAlexander Dub\u010dek\u201d 1).\u00a0 In 1989, in an interview with Andras Sugar that was broadcasted on Hungarian television, Dub\u010dek describes how much it had hurt him that the Rude Pravo <\/em>(the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia), after his political downfall, maliciously commented on his having been conceived in the United States.\u00a0 Bitterly, Dub\u010dek states, \u201cI have my own opinion of these ideologists who claim that they are Marxists, Leninists, and who knows what.\u00a0 In my opinion, they are rather base people, they are not civilized\u2026\u201d (Dub\u010dek 23).\u00a0 Commenting on the tacit assumption that the place where he was conceived was a cause for the Prague Spring movement in Czechoslovakia, Dub\u010dek goes on to say: \u201cIn the next such article, perhaps they will say the following: \u2018So here you are, his roots, the roots of his opportunism, his revisionism go back to the United States of America\u2019\u201d (23-4).\u00a0 No doubt, the example demonstrates that the media of the new socialist regime had become as unethical as the old capitalist media was.<\/p>\n

In returning to R\u00fccker\u2019s plot, we find that the potion works as promised.\u00a0 Three days after Murzio\u2019s funeral, Quixote and Sancho open the coffin and let the count free.\u00a0 One of his reasons for saving Murzio is Quixote\u2019s belief that people, regardless of what social class they belong to, have the ability to change for the better: \u201cWei\u00dft du, ob er nicht, anger\u00fchrt durch alles, was geschehen ist, und zuletzt durch deine Milde ein neuer Murzio werden kann?\u201d \/ (\u201cDon\u2019t you know that he could become a new Murzio touched by everything that has happened and by your clemency?\u201d) (53)\u00a0Don Quixote\u2019s other justification for helping Murzio is that it also would help the revolutionaries by preventing them from committing a crime of political terror:<\/p>\n

Unsere Freunde sind blind geworden gegen alles, was nicht von ihnen kommt.\u00a0 Wenn diese Leute an die Macht gekommen sind, verengt sich ihr Blick und ihre Fantasie verliert sich. Wir m\u00fcssen ihnen helfen.\u00a0 Die Revolution ist gegen die Unterdr\u00fcckung.\u00a0 Wenn die Revolution\u00e4re an der Macht sind, und die Unterdr\u00fcckung h\u00f6rt nicht auf, schadet das der Revolution; dann ist es die Pflicht der Leute, die das wissen, selbstst\u00e4ndig zu handeln. Und der Tag ist vielleicht nicht mehr fern, an dem man sagen wird: Die wirkliche Revolution, die wahre Revolution begann heute und hier auf diesem Friedhof.\u00a0 Und das wird in B\u00fcchern zu lesen sein. \/ (Our friends have become blind against everything that doesn\u2019t come from them.\u00a0 When these people have taken power, their vision is narrowing and their imagination is getting lost.\u00a0 We must help them.\u00a0 The revolution is against oppression.\u00a0 When the revolutionaries are in power and oppression does not stop, it damages the revolution; then, it is the duty of the people who are aware of it to act independently.\u00a0 And perhaps, the day is not too far away when they will say: the real revolution, the true revolution started today and here at this cemetery. And this you will be able to read in books.) (77)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The last sentence insinuates that Don Quixote\u2019s humanitarianism would be mixed with vanity and a craving for recognition; what the history books will say about him seems to be more important for him (Dub\u010dek) than the well being of his fellow citizens.\u00a0 However, ironically, it turned out that R\u00fccker\u2019s Quixote was right.\u00a0 What we read in the history books today is much more positive about Dub\u010dek\u2019s attempt to give socialism a human face during the Prague Spring than about his hard-line communist adversaries who crushed his attempt and knocked him out with the words: \u201dyou are a traitor\u201d (Dub\u010dek 99).<\/p>\n

Murzio, after having been set free by Don Quixote and Sancho, does not spend his time to reinvent himself as a better person, but crushes the revolution with the help of a foreign king who was approaching with his troops.\u00a0 In other words, in R\u00fccker\u2019s eyes, a compromise is not possible between class enemies; the author clearly calls for preserving the friend-enemy dichotomy of Stalinism.\u00a0 That means that, according to R\u00fccker, the revolutionaries in the play \/ the hardliners in the party had been right all along; Quixote \/ Dub\u010dek should have listened to them.<\/p>\n

What Dub\u010dek concretely meant with his call for political liberalization is expressed in the following statement in Andras Sugar\u2019s interview with the Czech reform politician:<\/p>\n

I would say that if somebody is a Marxist, he has to understand that other phenomena, which are non-communist, or which do not comply with the policy of the Party and the state, must also exist.\u00a0 This has to be.\u00a0 This is not accidental; it is a rule of natural law.\u00a0 They have to exist.\u00a0 So if somebody demands that they should not exist, it means that you have to grab a whip.\u00a0 But I cannot agree to that. (67)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The metaphor of the whip for using totalitarian measures in a socialist society had been used by Ilya Ehrenburg satirically in his famous novel Julio Jurenito<\/em>, which was forbidden in the Soviet Union after its first publication in 1922.\u00a0 In this text, a powerful communist in the Kremlin says to the protagonist: \u201cWe are leading humanity towards a better future.\u00a0 Some people, who find this not to their advantage, are hindering us in every way [\u2026].\u00a0 We must eliminate them, killing one man to save a thousand.\u201d (252) Cynically, he adds:<\/p>\n

Others resist us because they cannot understand that their own happiness lies ahead, because they\u2019re afraid of the heavy march, because they cling to the pitiful shadow of last night\u2019s shelter.\u00a0 We are driving them forward, driving them to paradise with iron whips. (252)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From 1922 (when Ehrenburg\u2019s satire was published) to 1968, forty-six years had passed; it is obvious that Dub\u010dek and his fellow reform communists had learned the hard way that the time for \u201cgrabbing a whip\u201d was over, once and for all; it had to be over if one wanted socialism to survive.\u00a0 In his interview with Sugar, Dub\u010dek answers the question if during the Prague Spring he had already positively proclaimed \u201cthe principle of glasnost.\u201d\u00a0 Of course he had.\u00a0 He goes on to state: \u201cThis was precisely why the military intervention happened.\u00a0 Here, within the country, not only were there no counter-revolutionary forces, there were no forces at all that could have endangered socialism\u201d (67). Dub\u010dek explains:<\/p>\n

If something was endangering socialism \u2013 we know very well \u2013 it was the dogmatism of Brezhnev!\u00a0 This endangered socialism, weakened the position of the Party, weakened the parties of the international communist movement, social democracy, the left-wing socialist parties.\u00a0 And why?\u00a0 In order to serve a kind of policy which was out of step with the interests of democracy, socialism and the people. (67-8)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, Brezhnev, not Dub\u010dek, was out of touch with reality during the late 1960\u2019s; Brezhnev was the Quixote.<\/p>\n

In the last scene of R\u00fccker\u2019s play, there are horrible fires everywhere.\u00a0 While Sancho tells Don Quixote that the soldiers of Count Murzio have set the peasants\u2019 houses, stables, and gardens on fire as a revenge for their uprising against him, Don Quixote sees \u201cFreudenfeuer\u201d \/ (\u201cbonefires\u201d) (80) instead.\u00a0 In his blindness to reality, he thinks they have been lit to celebrate the reconciliation between Murzio and the revolutionaries:<\/p>\n

Sancho: Sie sto\u00dfen die Bauern ins Feuer!<\/p>\n

Quijote: Nein, nein, Sancho! Man springt \u00fcber die Feuer, das ist ein alter Brauch bei Freudenfesten.<\/p>\n

(Sancho: They \u2019re pushing the peasants into the fire!<\/p>\n

Quixote: No, no, Sancho! They \u2019re jumping over the fires; that\u2019s an old custom during celebrations.) (80)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sancho will have the last word in R\u00fccker\u2019s play: \u201cEs brennt doch wirklich, Nachbar!\u201d \/ (\u201cThere are really fires, neighbor!\u201d) (80); in Friedo Solter\u2019s staging of the work in the Deutsches Theater, Sancho, played by Horst Hiemer, even knocks down Don Quixote, played by J\u00fcrgen Hentsch (Linzer 31).<\/p>\n

Since Sancho Panza represents the people, this ending suggests that the Czechoslovakian people in the majority would have condemned Dub\u010dek as being blind to reality, which is on fire so to speak in 1968.\u00a0 However, as statistics suggest, the opposite was true; Dub\u010dek was enormously popular during the Prague Spring.\u00a0 The \u201cPublisher\u2019s Preface\u201d to Andras Sugar\u2019s interview with Alexander Dub\u010dek says:<\/p>\n

In spite of the fact that he represented a discredited communist party, public opinion polls in that year showed that almost 90 per cent of Czechoslovakian citizens backed Dub\u010dek.\u00a0 They supported his program of building democratic socialism, and only 5 per cent wanted a return to capitalism. (8)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

R\u00fccker\u2019s play was performed in the Deutsches Theater in 1969, that is, after the troops of the Warsaw Pact-States had crushed the \u201cprocess of renewal\u201d (Dub\u010dek 58) of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party and the nation as a whole.\u00a0 The Prague Spring was over; Dub\u010dek was in the process of being expelled from the Party together with almost half a million other Czech and Slovak party members.\u00a0 A large wave of emigration was sweeping the country, and there were suicides by self-immolation.\u00a0 In the GDR at this time, party members were obliged to take a public stand and make declarations of loyalty to the East German state that claimed it had supported the military intervention.\u00a0 Those who voiced their opposition were silenced.\u00a0 Robert Havemann, the most renown of the protesters, was punished with an occupational ban and put under house arrest.\u00a0 Exactly under these circumstances, not during the Prague Spring, but after the other members of the Warsaw Pact crushed it, was R\u00fccker\u2019s play \u201cDer Nachbar des Herrn Panza\u201d staged!\u00a0 A play that vindictively presented Alexander Dub\u010dek on stage as a dangerous fool and sent the dogmatic message that in the situation of class struggle between socialism and capitalism, easing the regime\u2019s strict rules and changing Party-doctrine would be treason.<\/p>\n

R\u00fccker\u2019s play strongly refers to the adaptation of Don Quixote<\/em> by Lunacharsky, who had re-written Cervantes\u2019s story from the point of view of class struggle before R\u00fccker; the plot and main protagonists are similar.\u00a0 The fact that R\u00fccker\u2019s character of Don Quixote compared to Lunacharsky\u2019s seems to be so simplified that it resembles a caricature, results from two major changes: the motivation for Don Quixote\u2019s liberation of Murzio and the restructured epilogue.\u00a0 Lunacharsky\u2019s Quixote is \u2013 as was Cervantes\u2019s \u2013 a knight who thinks highly of courtly love and cannot resist the urge to help a \u201czartes Wesen\u201d \/ (\u201ca tender being\u201d) (Lunacharsky 94).\u00a0 Consequently, Quixote\u2019s main reason for letting Murzio out of his coffin in Lunacharsky\u2019s text is to help the pretty lady Maria Stella, who is in love with the count.\u00a0 In R\u00fccker\u2019s adaptation, Maria Stella\u2019s role is reduced; the Don helps Murzio for other, mainly political, reasons; this change has Quixote look much less sympathetic and his lunacy seems more dangerous.\u00a0 Furthermore, in Lunacharsky\u2019s epilogue, Don Quixote regrets that he freed Murzio and wakes up from his delusion that a brutal count like Murzio could become a more just man and ruler.\u00a0 Disillusioned, he says to Sancho: \u201cDieses letzte Abenteuer hat mich v\u00f6llig gebrochen.\u00a0 Ich f\u00fchle eine t\u00f6dliche Wunde in der Brust meiner Seele\u201d \/ (\u201cThis last adventure broke me completely; I feel a deadly wound in my soul\u201d) (104).\u00a0 This ending resembles that of Don Quixote in Cervantes\u2019s novel according to which Quixote faces reality and renounces the illusions of knight-errantry.\u00a0 When the victorious revolutionary Don Balthasar (who has defeated in the meantime the counter-revolution led by Murzio) says in Lunacharsky\u2019s play, \u201c[Wir] werden die Macht des Menschen \u00fcber das Schicksal erringen, Siegen oder sterben \u2013 die endg\u00fcltigen sind wir\u201d \/ (\u201c[We] will gain the power of man over destiny; to be victorious or to die \u2013 we will have the last word\u201d) (103), Quixote wishes him all the best: \u201cStolze Worte. Gott gebe es.\u201d \/ (\u201cProud words.\u00a0 God help you!\u201d) (104). In R\u00fccker\u2019s version, to the contrary, such lines are missing.\u00a0 Don Quixote does not wake up from his madness.\u00a0 His fantasy that the peasants would have lit bonfires to celebrate the peace under the improved rule of a changed count Murzio shows that he is still as blind to reality as he was in the beginning.<\/p>\n

The reason for the East German R\u00fccker\u2019s choice of a much coarser brush with which to paint Quixote might have to do with the fact that the Russian writer wrote the play immediately after the October Revolution, R\u00fccker forty-four years later.\u00a0 By 1968, the system that had developed in Eastern Europe had become so oppressive that most people saw Dub\u010dek who wanted to reform this system as a revolutionary.[4<\/a>]\u00a0 This makes sense because he argued that human beings must be free to act as revolutionaries; Breshnev and the leaders of the other Warsaw Pact states appear from this perspective as the reactionaries.\u00a0 Since the myth of Don Quixote is that of a man who remains caught in the past while the new time is stepping over him, Lunarcharsky\u2019s interpretation of Don Quixote as a counter-revolutionary makes sense; R\u00fccker\u2019s does not at all.\u00a0 His attempt to teach us with a raised index finger that Dub\u010dek was the reactionary and his Soviet adversaries were revolutionaries was absurd and hard to swallow for the majority of theatergoers who still sympathized with Dub\u010dek in 1969.<\/p>\n

Also East German critics interpreted R\u00fccker\u2019s play and its performance in the Deutsches Theater as a condemnation of Dub\u010dek\u2019s reform movement.\u00a0 One example was Martin Linzer\u2019s review \u201cDer dritte Weg des Don Quijote\u201d \/ (\u201cThe Third Way of Don Quixote\u201d) published in the prestigious Theater der Zeit<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cDer dritte Weg\u201d \/ (\u201cThe Third Way\u201d) was an expression used at the time for denouncing any attempt to reform existing socialism as an endeavor to find a third way between capitalism and socialism.\u00a0 Linzer compares the play with Lunacharsky\u2019s that was staged at the theater in Magdeburg in 1969 and notes some shortcomings in R\u00fccker\u2019s work.\u00a0 Nevertheless, he praises the play overall and its performance in the Deutsches Theater and thereby, between the lines, approving of the military invasion of Czechoslovakia and condemning any liberalization trends in GDR society.\u00a0 The theme of the play, according to Linzer, is the conflict of the \u201cabstrakten und realen Humanismus in den K\u00e4mpfen der Klassen\u201d \/ (\u201cabstract and real humanism in the struggle of social classes\u201d) (31), thus euphemistically calling the aggressive hard-line policy of Breshnev and his comrades \u201crealer Humanismus\u201d \/ (\u201creal humanism\u201d).<\/p>\n

Let us have a closer look at one more of Don Quixote\u2019s statements in R\u00fccker\u2019s play that strongly resonate with Dub\u010dek\u2019s point of view:<\/p>\n

Aber m\u00fcssen nicht im Gang der Zeiten welche kommen, die zum erstenmale die Macht, die ihnen gegeben wird, br\u00fcderlich verwenden? Nach blutigem Fall in finsteren Zeiten Freiheiten schenken allen? Die so rein sind, da\u00df sich der Schmutzige seines Schmutzes sch\u00e4mt, der Listige seiner List, der Unentdeckte seiner heimlichen Schuld? \/ (But, over time, shouldn\u2019t there be some people who for the first time use the power that is given to them in a brotherly way? Who after a bloody fall in dark times give liberty to all? Who are so pure that the dirty one is ashamed of his dirt? The deceitful one of his deceit? The one who has not yet been discovered of his secret guilt?) (54)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quixote\u2019s vision \u201cto use power in a brotherly way\u201d clearly resonates with Dub\u010dek\u2019s dream to give socialism a human face.\u00a0To trace the background of the fact that Dub\u010dek in 1968 decided that it was the right time to turn his dream into reality, Williams describes the power struggle that erupted in Prague in late 1967 and its relation to the country\u2019s social condition.\u00a0 This struggle \u201cresulted from the decision of an important faction of party and state officials to trust the population\u201d (4). According to this faction, the Party had learned over the years that it had to accept that it could \u201cnot know or understand everything, and had to allow experts to make decisions\u201d (4). According to the sociologists among those experts, changes were necessary \u201cthat would acknowledge and facilitate the shift that was already happening towards a differentiated, sophisticated yet fair and open, industrial society\u201d (Williams 10).\u00a0 As Williams points out, given the fact that the urban and rural middle classes had been demolished during the years since the communist seizure of power \u201cthere was no reason to fear that an anti-communist outlook might find a social basis for political mobilization\u201d (5).\u00a0 Furthermore, the intelligentsia that was starting to challenge the existing order was, by and large, \u201ca new one, consisting largely of people of working-class origin who had moved up in the world thanks to class war, education, and the patronage of party god-fathers\u201d (5). In other words, Dub\u010dek was not a quixotic dreamer but an experienced politician who knew that the majority of the population was in favor of a democratization of society and that there was no reason to fear a counter-revolution.\u00a0 R\u00fccker distorts this situation to make it fit his purpose of defamation.<\/p>\n

Assuming that Dub\u010dek would have started a counter-revolution during the Prague Spring of 1968 was part of the vicious \u201cdemagoguery\u201d (Dub\u010dek 98) of the other party leaders of the Warsaw Pact States after their armed aggression against Czechoslovakia had been successful.\u00a0 It seems to have hurt Dub\u010dek the most that some of his Czechoslovakian associates in the reform movement, under pressure, participated in this demagoguery.\u00a0 He states bitterly:<\/p>\n

They agreed to abolish the Action Program; they adopted the description of the Party leadership as opportunist and revisionist; they adopted all those statements that there had been a counter-revolution, and that \u201cthere would have been a civil war if the troops had not marched in\u201d [\u2026] and so on and so forth.\u00a0 All this demagoguery, all this stupidity which they dared to say to the face of this cultured and adult nation is much worse than if somebody spits in your face! (98)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The question must be asked: Is there another possibility to interpret AlexanderDub\u010dek as a quixotic figure without denouncing his reform-efforts from a R\u00fcckerian \/ Stalinist point of view as a form of counter-revolution? The answer is yes.\u00a0 Andras Sugar in his interview with Dub\u010dek asked him if he did not expect a military invasion of the Warsaw Pact countries.\u00a0 He answered: \u201cI did not believe it would happen, for I considered it to be such an extreme solution that it would be a catastrophe not only for us but for the whole socialism\u201d (57).\u00a0\u00a0 This remark indicates that Dub\u010dek in 1968 was a loyal Marxist who meant well and attempted to help socialism to survive with his plan for democratic reforms in his country.\u00a0 This is not quixotic.\u00a0 However, being blind to the monster of Stalinism that was lurking around the corner up to no good is indeed quixotic.\u00a0 As Dub\u010dek said in the interview, he felt that the leaders of Poland and Hungary, who were also members of the Warsaw Pact would not participate in the invasion; and therefore it could not take place.\u00a0 His reasoning was that \u201cCzechoslovakia is [also] a member of the Warsaw Pact.\u00a0 The Warsaw Pact cannot pass any resolution; it cannot launch a campaign against a socialist country without that country\u2019s approval\u201d (58).\u00a0 In other words, Dub\u010dek still trusted the other communist leaders completely, at least those from Poland and Hungary, to play a fair game according to the rules of the Warsaw Pact.\u00a0 From today\u2019s view, this trust was na\u00efve to the extreme.\u00a0 It was na\u00efve for a man who had known the communist power machine for so many years.\u00a0 In fact, Dub\u010dek\u2019s belief that at least the leaders of Poland and Hungary would play according to the \u201crules\u201d of the Warsaw Pact and not participate in the illegal invasion of Czechoslovakia corresponds to Don Quixote\u2019s ability to think completely logically within the system of his illusions, but never to question this system.\u00a0 The other players, Quixote is convinced, would think like him and play according to the system\u2019s rules.\u00a0 Instead of Quixote\u2019s system of knight-errantry, in Dub\u010dek\u2019s case, the system was that of what is known today as real existing socialism.\u00a0 That he takes these rules (the rules of the Warsaw Pact) at their word and moves straight towards his goal of giving socialism a human face is indeed quixotic.\u00a0 Dub\u010dek behaved in summer 1968 as if there were no Breshnez, Ulbricht, Gomulka, and the others with their powerful military machine waiting at the borders to crush Czechoslovakia!<\/p>\n

In retrospect, this element of quixotism in Dub\u010dek\u2019s personality and behavior has us looking at him even more sympathetically.\u00a0 In the interview with Sugar, he says, when \u201cI am moving towards a goal, then I follow my own line\u201d (92).\u00a0 The obstinacy with which Dub\u010dek followed it is, if we follow the romantic approach of Don Quixote that sees Cervantes\u2019s main protagonist more as a hero than a fool, very idealistic.\u00a0 After Dub\u010dek had been silenced in 1969, he worked as a forestry worker in Slovakia.\u00a0 However, in 1989, more or less twenty years after the Prague Spring had been smashed, he set out for Prague again.\u00a0 As Don Quixote would set out on his horse for a new adventure, Dub\u010dek set out to participate in a student demonstration held to mark the 50th anniversary of a similar student demonstration against the Nazi forces.\u00a0 \u201cThe peaceful event was brutally suppressed by the police and Dub\u010dek himself was detained briefly\u201d (\u201cPublisher\u2019s Preface\u201d 2).\u00a0 After the regime that had humiliated him so much was swept away, Dub\u010dek standing on a balcony alongside Vaclav Havel on November 24, 1989, said: \u201cPraguers, I hope you\u2019re glad to see me back\u2026.\u201d As a response, \u201che was given an enthusiastic and emotional reception by an enormous crowd\u201d (\u201cPublisher\u2019s Preface\u201d 2).\u00a0 Before reading the end of the \u201cPublisher\u2019s Preface\u201d to Sugar\u2019s interview with Dub\u010dek, one should think about Don Quixote, not only about his tall and skinny looks, but also how one would imagine the knight had he won the battle with the Knight of the Moon in the end of Cervantes\u2019s novel after he had not expected it anymore to succeed: \u201cThis tall, frail figure turning 68 had been overtaken by the events of November 1989, but remained a symbol of popular democracy for Czechoslovakia\u201d (2-3).<\/p>\n

To summarize, R\u00fccker\u2019s play Der Nachbar des Herrn Pansa<\/em> responded to the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 not by condemning the invasion of that country by the military of the Warsaw Pact States as other East German theater practitioners did, but rather by justifying it.\u00a0 For his theatrical defense of the party line, R\u00fccker portrays Alexander Dub\u010dek negatively as a Don Quixote \u2013 a humanist fool whose actions would support the counter-revolution.<\/p>\n

\n

Notes<\/strong>
\n1 Alexander Dub\u010dek (1921-1992), First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, 5 January 1968-17 April 1969.<\/p>\n

2 Gust\u00e1v Hus\u00e1k (1913-1991), President of Czechoslovakia 1975-1989.\u00a0 \u201cSupported by Moscow, he was appointed leader of the Communist Party of Slovakia in as early as August 1968, and he succeeded Dub\u010dek as first secretary [\u2026] of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969 (\u201cGust\u00e1v Hus\u00e1k\u201d 2). He presided over widespread purges of communists who had supported Dub\u010dek\u2019s reform plans and reversed policies for the democratization of society instituted by Dub\u010dek.<\/p>\n

3 Anatoly Lunacharsky (1875-1933) was a Russian revolutionary and writer who became the People\u2019s Commissar of Enlightenment responsible for culture and education in the first Soviet government.<\/p>\n

4 An example for the adoration that many East Germans felt for the Czechoslovakian leader, is Brigitte Struzyk\u2019s protagonist Ulla Wasser in the novel Drachen \u00fcber der Leninallee<\/em> \/ (Dragons over the Lenin Alley<\/em>) (2012) who in September 1969 spontaneously wrote \u201cmit wei\u00dfer Lackfarbe\u201d \/ (\u201cwith white lacquer\u201d) (104) the name Dub\u010dek on the asphalt of her street in East Berlin.\u00a0 Struzyk goes on to state: \u201cIhr Herz hatte bis zum Hals geschlagen. [\u2026] N\u00e4mlich h\u00e4tte sie einer der Nachbarn beobachtet, w\u00e4re sie schon damals in den Knast gekommen, aber keiner sah ihr zu\u201d \/ (\u201cHer heart was in her throat. [\u2026] Because, if some of the neighbors\u2019 had watched her, she would have already been jailed then, but no one was watching her\u201d) (104).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/strong>
\n\u201cAlexander Dub\u010dek.\u201d [Online.] >http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alexander_Dub%C4%8Dek< 28 June 2012<\/p>\n

Bradley, Laura. Cooperation and Conflict: GDR Theatre Censorship, 1961-1989<\/em>.\u00a0 Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010.<\/p>\n

Cervantes, Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de.\u00a0 Don Quixote of La Mancha<\/em>.\u00a0 Trans. Walter Starkie.\u00a0 New York: Penguin Books, 1964.<\/p>\n

Dub\u010dek, Alexander.\u00a0 Dub<\/em>\u010dek speaks: Alexander Dub<\/em>\u010dek with Andras Sugar<\/em>.\u00a0 London: Tauris, 1990.<\/p>\n

Ehrenburg, Ilya.\u00a0 Julio Jurenito<\/em>.\u00a0 Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1958.<\/p>\n

Frenzel, Elisabeth.\u00a0 Motive der Weltliteratur<\/em>.\u00a0 Stuttgart: Alfred Kr\u00f6ner, 1980.<\/p>\n

\u201cGust\u00e1v Hus\u00e1k.\u201d [Online.] >http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gust%C3%A1v_Hus%C3%A1k< 28 June 2012<\/p>\n

Linzer, Martin.\u00a0 \u201cDer dritte Weg des Don Quijote: \u2018Der Nachbar des Herrn Pansa\u2019 von G\u00fcnther R\u00fccker am Deutschen Theater.\u201d\u00a0 Theater der Zeit<\/em> 24 (1969) 12, 30-31.<\/p>\n

Lunatscharsky, Anatoly.\u00a0 Der befreite Don Quichotte<\/em>.\u00a0 Berlin: Volksb\u00fchnen- Verlags- und Vertriebs G. m. b. H, 1925.<\/p>\n

\u201cPublisher\u2019s Preface\u201d Dub\u010dek, Alexander.\u00a0 Dub<\/em>\u010dek speaks: Alexander Dub<\/em>\u010dek with Andras Sugar<\/em>.\u00a0 London: Tauris, 1990, 1-3.<\/p>\n

R\u00fccker, G\u00fcnther.\u00a0 Der Nachbar des Herrn Pansa<\/em>. [Manuscript.]\u00a0 Berlin: Archiv der Akademie der K\u00fcnste.<\/p>\n

Struzyk, Brigitte.\u00a0 Drachen \u00fcber der Leninallee<\/em>.\u00a0 Hamburg: Fixpoetry, 2012.<\/p>\n

Unamuno, Miguel de.\u00a0 \u201cSobre la lectura e interpretaci\u00f3n del Quijote<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 George Haley. (Ed.) El Quixote<\/em> de Cervantes<\/em>.\u00a0 Madrid: Taurus, 1980, 375-386.<\/p>\n

Varela Iglesias, Fernando.\u00a0 \u201cRealismo e idealismo en la recepci\u00f3n del Quijote.\u00a0 Una vision pendular.\u201d Klaus-Dieter Ertler, Alejandro Rodr\u00edguez D\u00edaz. (Eds.)\u00a0 El Quijote hoy: La Riqueza de su Recepci\u00f3n<\/em>.\u00a0 Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2007, 43-77.<\/p>\n

Williams, Kieran. The Prague Spring and its Aftermath.<\/em> Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.<\/p>\n

Zachau, Reinhard.\u00a0 \u201cThe Stasi as the Force of Evil: Collin\u2019s Faustian Struggle with the Stasi Boss Urack in Stefan Heym\u2019s Collin<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0German Writers and the Politics of Culture: Dealing with the Stasi.\u00a0 Eds. Paul Cooke and Andrew Plowman.\u00a0 Houndmills: Palgrave, 2003, 41-56.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defending SED Party line: G\u00fcnther R\u00fccker\u2019s Der Nachbar des Herrn Pansa (1969) G\u00fcnther R\u00fccker\u2019s adaptation of Cervantes\u2019s novel Don Quixote, Der Nachbar des Herrn Pansa (Mister Panza\u2019s Neighbor), is a SED party-line interpretation of the historic events during the Prague Spring in 1968, portraying the leader of the Czech reform movement, Alexander Dub\u010dek [1], as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":394,"featured_media":0,"parent":3092,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3131","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/394"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3131\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}