Theatrical Negotiations of Interreligious or Interdenominational Coexistence. German-Language Sixteenth-Century Esther Plays

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Cora Dietl
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature)
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 550226928

"The Jews have the right to take revenge" (l. 1227). This is not the only line in Jos Murer’s Hester (1567), which gives his play contemporary relevance. The planned project takes ist starting point from possible irritations that might arise from the use of a central Jewish text on Christian stage, or from an early modern Christian play’s appeal to ist audience to identify with Jewish figures on stage. It explores the early modern drama’s fascination for the figure and history of the biblical Queen Esther. Recent scholarship dealing with the (rather rarely preserved) early modern Yiddish or English dramatizations of the Book of Esther has mostly been ignoring the tradition of Esther plays from the German speaking countries, which exist in significantly larger numbers. Former scholarship has discredited the German texts as mere exemplary literature of minor quality. The project in contrary demonstrates how the plays use the potential of the biblical narrative and the public sphere to discuss elementary religious, political, social and interpersonal problems, and how they relate to contemporary political discourses. Hereby, the major focus is on the questions how diverse religious groups could coexist, and which responsibility a good government should take in a situation of denominational partition. The project enquires how the plays manage to transfer the interreligious problematic of the biblical book to contemporary Christian interdenominational tensions, and how they try to give a persuasive statement to the outcomes of Reformation. The primary objects of the planned study are three sixteenth-century Swiss-German Esther plays, two Zwinglian ones from Zurich and Berne, and a Catholic one from Fribourg. They dramatize different sections of the Book of Esther. All three are wedding plays, i.e. the addressees can partly be reconstructed. The project analyses the historical, social and denominational backgrounds of the plays. It asks about their treatment of their sources and about the use of theatre as an audio-visual medium, how it serves the plays’ assumed purpose to discuss in public the need to preserve the political unity of the Swiss Confederation and the responsibility and tasks of a (civic) government. It will be important to examine intertextual and extra-literary references of the plays, forms of symbolic communication, theatrical means of evaluation, the use of space and music, and self-reflections of the dramatic literature. A monography will compare the Swiss plays with older German plays about Esther, and a series of accompanying studies will carry-on the comparisons, widening the view also to Latin plays. An international workshop will open the perspective to the German-Dutch-English cultural area. Two plays that are preserved in manuscripts only will be edited. Performances of Esther plays and an exhibition will serve the transfer of knowledge.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Israel, Switzerland
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Elisabeth Dutton; Professorin Dr. Chanita Goodblatt