The Prince of Homburg (play)

The play has been filmed a number of times, and inspired the opera Der Prinz von Homburg by Hans Werner Henze (premiere 1960).

He fails initially to grasp the seriousness of the situation, and starts to be truly concerned only when he hears that the Elector has signed his death warrant.

In the famous and controversial "fear of death scene" (Todesfurchtszene) the Prince begs for his life, prepared to give up all that is dear to him in return.

Hohenzollern goes further and attributes the guilt to the Elector, as he caused the Prince's confusion and consequent insubordination by the trick he played on him, and therefore bears the responsibility himself.

At the time when Kleist was writing the play, there were a number of topical instances of insubordination which could have provided the inspiration behind it: The weakness and passivity of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III towards Napoleon's constant expansion of his power, was a great problem for many of his subjects and contemporaries.

In the face of the threat presented by the French to the country's very existence a wave of Prussian patriotism arose, to which Kleist himself was not immune.

In 1809 under the command of Major Ferdinand von Schill many unsanctioned military actions against the French oppressors were carried out by the Prussian Freikorps.

The author dedicated his work to Princess Marianne of Hesse-Homburg, the protagonist's great granddaughter and wife of Prince William of Prussia.

In a shortened version under the title Die Schlacht von Fehrbellin it had its premiere in Vienna in 1821, but after only four performances was taken off when Archduke Karl objected to it.

This was a convention that really only disappeared shortly before the First World War, when it did become possible to portray an aristocrat as a figure of comedy, for example Baron Ochs in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Der Rosenkavalier.

The play's popularity outside Germany may be traced to the famous 1951 Avignon production by Jean Vilar, with Gérard Philipe as the prince and Jeanne Moreau as Natalie.

[5][6] In 2009, Marie-José Malis toured, with a French-language version created with the help of Alain Badiou, explicitly asking audience members in a session held prior to the staging whether there were any other possibility than the death of the Prince, and making discussion on the topic part of the experience of the play.

[7][8][9] The Prince of Homburg, an English stage adaptation by Dennis Kelly, was premiered at the Donmar Warehouse from 22 July to 4 September 2010, with the Elector played by Ian McDiarmid.

This change of ending was criticised by drama critics, including Michael Billington of The Guardian[11][12] In the Soviet Union, Kleist's play was disparaged as a "celebration of the Prussian military".

[13] Hans Werner Henze based on it his opera Der Prinz von Homburg, in three acts, first performed in Hamburg in 1960.