Reinhard Goering
Reinhard Goering was a German dramatist and physician, born in Fulda, Hesse. His early life was marked by tragedy, as both of his parents committed suicide during his teenage years, a fate he would ultimately share. Educated initially in a boarding school, Goering pursued law and later medicine at various universities. He established a medical practice prior to World War I, during which he served as an army physician. Goering was also a playwright, with his early poetry and stories reflecting traditional forms, while his later works became more experimental. His first major play, "Naval Encounter," garnered acclaim and won him the Schiller and Kleist Drama Prizes, although his subsequent works received mixed responses, sometimes reflecting the complex emotions surrounding German naval defeats. After the war, Goering returned to medicine but faced professional challenges, including a brief commitment to a mental institution. He continued to create, working on an unfinished play about Peter the Great and completing an operatic adaptation of one of his plays, but the rise of the Nazis led to the suppression of his work due to its themes of defeat. Goering's reputation as a dramatist has not seen significant rehabilitation in the post-war era.
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Reinhard Goering
Writer
- Born: 1887
- Birthplace: Fulda, Hesse, Germany
- Died: 1936
- Place of death: Bucha, near Jena, Germany
Biography
While Reinhard Goering was still a teenager, both his parents committed suicide; Goering would meet the same fate. Born in Fulda, Hesse, Germany, Goering was educated in a boarding school following his parents’ deaths. He then studied law at the University of Jena before studying medicine at Jena and at the Universities of Bonn and Munich. Goering established a medical practice before World War I. During the war he was an army physician.
Albert Rausch, editor of Das lyrische Jahrbuch (the poetic almanac, 1912), had already published Goering’s early poetry, which was stilted and traditional, as were his early stories. His emerging drama, however, was more experimental. His first full-length play, Naval Encounter, about the battle of Jutland, was received with reverential awe. It presents the emotions of seven German seamen fighting against their British counterparts. When the play was presented, it was followed by an appreciative silence, not by applause. Naval Encounter won its author both the Schiller and Kleist Drama Prizes.
Goering’s Scapa Flow focused on another naval battle. Act one takes place on a ship the Germans voluntarily sink rather than have the British capture it. Act two takes place on a British ship whose crew admires the stalwartness of the Germans in sinking their ship and in giving up their lives. Although this play was well received, it was not a rousing success the way his first play had been. The defeat it depicted may have disturbed German audiences.
Goering departed from military drama in two plays of the World War I era: Der Erste (the first one) and Der Zweite (the second one). In the former, a priest, Antonio, saves a woman, Paula, from drowning. He then falls in love with her, which complicates his life enormously. During a rage, he strangles her immediately before her former lover arrives. Not realizing Paula is dead, the ex-lover strikes her with an ax, is duly charged with murder, and sentenced to die. Before the scheduled execution, however, Antonio confesses to the crime, thereby sparing the condemned man. This play depends so much on coincidence that it fails to convince.
Goering resumed his medical practice when the war ended. In 1922, he established a private practice in Brunswick, Germany, where his heterodox methods of treating patients alarmed his colleagues to such an extent that they had him committed for a short time to a mental institution. Immediately before Goering committed suicide, he worked on a play about Peter the Great that remained unfinished. He had, however, completed an operatic version of one of his more noted plays, Suedpolexpedition des Kapitaens Scott (Captain Scott’s expedition to the South Pole), eventually set to music by Winifred Zillig and presented as an opera. The Nazis barred Goering’s work because some of it depicted German defeats. After World War II, few efforts were made to rehabilitate Goering’s reputation as a dramatist.