Arnolt Bronnen
Arnolt Bronnen was an Austrian playwright and a significant figure in early 20th-century theater, known for his controversial and provocative works. Born Ferdinand Bronner, he adopted the pseudonym Arnolt Bronnen and also wrote under the name A. H. Schelle-Noetzel. After studying law and philosophy in Vienna, he served in World War I, where his experiences deeply influenced his writing. Following the war, he moved to Berlin, where he became part of a vibrant literary scene that included notable contemporaries like Bertolt Brecht.
Bronnen's breakthrough came with the premiere of his play "Vatermord" in 1922, which sparked significant controversy due to its taboo themes, including incest and patricide. The play's scandalous nature earned him immediate fame and established him as a leading figure of expressionist theater. Throughout his career, Bronnen explored the darker sides of human emotions and relationships, often pushing societal boundaries. His work was characterized by a blend of experimental styles and intense subject matter, which sometimes led to conflicts with authorities. As a result, he became known as a provocative and influential voice in the German theatrical landscape.
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Arnolt Bronnen
Writer
- Born: August 19, 1895
- Birthplace: Vienna, Austria
- Died: October 12, 1959
- Place of death: Berlin, Germany
Biography
The son of Ferdinand Bronner, a teacher at a Viennese humanistische gymnasien, and his wife, Martha Schelle Bronner, Arnold Bronner changed his name to Arnolt Bronnen and sometimes also wrote under the name A. H. Schelle-Noetzel. The young man studied law and philosophy at the University of Vienna before enlisting in the Austrian army during World War I. He was wounded in the DolomiteMountains in 1916 and interred by the Italians in Sicily. Unlike many who were involved in it, he was invigorated by the war. He felt disgraced, however, by the German surrender in 1918 and by Austria’s loss of the southern Tirolean region to Italy.
Bronnen had begun writing during his student days and continued to write during his internment in Sicily. Upon returning to Vienna in 1919, he realized that his future as a dramatist was in Berlin rather than in his native city. In Berlin, he involved himself in the literary group that had formed around Otto Zarek and Alfred Wolfenstein. Another member of this group was Bertolt Brecht, who was still an unknown at the time. In 1920, Wolfenstein published two of Bronnen’s plays, Die Geburt der Jugend (the birth of youth) and Vatermord (patricide), in his expressionist journal, Die Erhebung. In the same year, Vatermord appeared as a separate volume, followed two years afterwards by the publication of Die Geburt der Jugend in a separate volume.
To support himself, Bronnen took menial jobs, first as a sales clerk and then as a bank clerk. On April 23, 1922, however, Vatermord had its premiere in Frankfurt, and, because it was viewed as a scandalous play, plunged Bronnen into overnight fame. Publisher Ernst Rowohlt gave him a one-year contract that enabled him to become a free-lance writer. Within the month, the group know as Die junge Buehne (The Young Stage), founded to promote antiestablishment plays, chose Vatermord as the first play it would present at the Deutsches Theater.
Tightly compressed into a three-and-a-half-hour time frame and set in a confined space, the play deals with forbidden topics such as masturbation and incest. The protagonist, Walter, slips into an affair with his mother, who also has sex with his father on alternate nights. When Walter eventually kills his father, the mother wants to continue her sexual relationship with her son, but he refuses. Played with expressionistic sets, this play evoked riots in the theater when it was performed. The emotions the play evoked assured Bronnen’s future as a playwright.
For the next several years, Bronnen focused on the violent aspects of eroticism and produced plays that were completely in tune with the mood of the times. He worked with Brecht on the production of highly experimental dramas, some of which were closed by the police, which only added to their allure and to Bronnen’s reputation as the bad boy of the German stage.