So, Let That Be My Story
The adaptation of taboos from
Frühlings Erwachen: Eine Kindertragödie to Spring Awakening: A New Musical
24 October 2011
Anouk Abels 3250911
Ina Boudier-Bakkerlaan 21-4
3582 VD Utrecht
Master Thesis
MA Literary Studies
Tutor: Birgit Kaiser
Index
1. Introduction
4
2. Adaptation
10
2.1. The Discussion on Infidelity
11
2.2. The Discussion on Definition
13
2.3. Infidelity within the Adaptation Process
14
2.4. Adaptation, (In)fidelity and the Awakening of Spring
16
3. Summary
18
4. Transposition
20
4.1. The Assumed Superiority of the Adult World
20
4.2. The Inferior Status of the Adolescent World
24
4.3. Shame and its Dangerous Consequences
26
4.4. Conclusion: A World of Parallels
29
5. Analogy
30
5.1. A Taboo of Abuse
31
5.2. Struggles for Moral and Intellectual Freedom
33
5.3. Conclusion: An Adapter’s Chance to (Re-)invent
35
6. Commentary
36
6.1. Female Weakness Vs. Female Strength
37
6.2. Suicide and the Status of the Self-killer
39
6.3. The Identity and Morality of Heroes
42
6.4. Conclusion: Making It Your Own
45
7. Conclusion
46
8. Epilogue
47
2
Appendix:
49
- Summary of Frühlings Erwachen
49
- Summary of Spring Awakening
52
Bibliography
57
3
1. Introduction
At the end of Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play Frühlings Erwachen, the character of Melchior is
contemplating suicide. As a representative of death, the ghost of his friend Moritz – who
killed himself earlier on in the play – emerges from beyond the grave, urging Melchior to join
him in the afterlife. Subsequently, a Masked Man appears on the scene to persuade Melchior
to live on. In an attempt to discover the identity of this mysterious man and whether he can be
trusted, Melchior asks him several questions. When asked about his opinion on morality, the
Masked Man answers as follows: “Unter Moral verstehe ich das Reelle Produkt zweier
imaginärer Größen. Die imaginären Größen sind Sollen und Wollen. Das Produkt heißt Moral
und läßt sich in einer Realität nicht leugnen” (Wedekind, 84).
The first production of Frühlings Erwachen at the Kammerspiele, Berlin, 1906,
with Frank Wedekind playing the Masked Man (second on the left)
The moral problem of Frühlings Erwachen is perfectly captioned by this Product of Morality.
As Peter Jelavich states, the play considers morality to be “the guidelines by which the
individual leads his or her life” (Jelavich, 139): it is a constantly evolving product of the
expectations of society on the one hand and individual desires on the other.
4
Frühlings Erwachen revolves around a group of teenagers in a nineteenth-century
bourgeois environment, within which they have to deal with the expectations and taboos set
by their parents, teachers and the Church. At the same time, they are trying to form their own
sense of morality. The story touches upon themes of abuse, atheism and suicide. In addition,
the adolescents are in the middle of discovering their own sexuality in a society that avoids
any discussion on this topic. During their struggle to find any sense in their development of
sexual feelings, the young characters experience masturbation, homosexuality, masochism
and rape. As shocking as these subjects might have been to Wedekind’s contemporaries,
Wedekind himself did not consider them scandalous per se. As Stephanie Libbon puts it, it
was the censored speech and sexual taboos in society that Wedekind considered as “the true
perversion in that it instilled fear and ignorance in the children and in Frühlings Erwachen
eventually led to the death of one of the adolescents” (Libbon, 47).
However, it was the sexual nature of the play that made it hard for Wedekind to get
Frühlings Erwachen to the stage in the first place, as much of its content was considered to be
a taboo. The work, first published on paper in 1891, was staged for the first time in 1906, in a
heavily censored form: the scenes featuring masturbation and homosexuality had been cut.
Productions of Frühlings Erwachen during the following decades were frequently censored as
well, or banned shortly after they premiered. More than often, they triggered public
controversy. The first performance in English took place in New York in 1917, but closed
after only one night amid “public outrage and charges of obscenity” (Franzen1). Stuart Walton
discusses another case in which two performances at the Royal Court Theatre in London in
1963 were permitted by the Lord Chamberlain “on condition that the words “penis” and
“vagina” were excised from the script, some less juicy substitute would be found for the
masturbation game in the reformatory, and that [...] there was to be “no kissing, embracing or
caressing” between the boys” (Walton, 329).
Frühlings Erwachen continues to appear in several reincarnations today. However, it
remains debatable whether these new versions suffer from censorship as well – by adding or
thoroughly modifying storylines and characters, these new texts do more than merely cutting
away what is considered to be inappropriate. Some versions add new aspects to the story. For
example, the New Theatre Company’s Project Spring Awakening intertwines the structure of
the original play with real-life experiences of the cast “to show just how relevant and vital this
1
Cited from the blurb of Franzen’s translation of Spring Awakening (Franzen, J., Spring Awakening. Wedekind,
F., Spring Awakening: A Children’s Tragedy. Trans. Franzen, J. New York: Faber and Faber, Inc 2007).
5
hundred-year-old text still is to the lives of young people” (Arbor2). Other performances seem
to take Wedekind’s fight against social taboos one step further. In 2009, Zeitgeist Stage
Company produced a version of Frühlings Erwachen in Boston that, for the first time,
featured an “age-appropriate cast” (Scherer3) of very young teenagers. Conversely, some
productions have taken on taboos that were not included in the original piece. In 2011, a
theatre group in Basel even moved the story from a school to a home for the elderly, changing
the subtitle into “eine Kindertragödie in der Zweiten Hälfte des Lebens” (Theater Basel4),
exchanging the teenage cast for a group of elderly people struggling with their sexuality.
However, the commercially most successful reworking of the story came exactly a century
after the first onstage performance of Frühlings Erwachen. In 2006, a musical version of
Wedekind’s play premiered at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York. The work, Spring
Awakening, is an adaptation written by Steven Sater (book and lyrics) and Duncan Sheik
(music). Its instant critical success eventually enabled the producers to make the prestigious
move to Broadway, where the musical went on to win eight Tony Awards.
The musical production in question includes quite a number of controversial scenes
that can also be found in Wedekind’s narrative. It includes onstage sex and masturbation, a
masochistic scene in which a boy is violent towards a girl, a gay kiss and a case of teen
suicide. In other words: Spring Awakening encompasses some of the aspects that must have
shocked the contemporaries of Wedekind most effectively. Still, it is radically different from
the original, since Sater modified some of the piece’s crucial plot points as well as characters
and other events. In his introduction to the script, Sater mentions he initially vowed to
“remain true to Wedekind’s fierce original intent”, but gradually decided on “altering the
structure, even the substance, of our source material, to account for the places those songs had
taken us” (Sater, VIII).
2
Arbor, A., “The New Theatre Project Debuts Final Installment of The Spring Awakening Project”. <
http://www.encoremichigan.com/article.html?article=3267> 27 September 2011.
3
Scherer, J., “Zeitgeist Handles Disturbing ‘Awakening’ with Aplomb”.
<http://www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/arts_culture/view.bg?articleid=1166956> 27 September 2011.
4
Theater Basel, “Frühlings Erwachen”. < http://www.theater-basel.ch/spielzeit/stueck.cfm?s_nr=4298> 27
September 2011.
6
The graveyard scene in Spring Awakening, with the original 2006 Atlantic Theater Company and
Broadway actors as Moritz, Melchior and Wendla
A good example of this is the graveyard scene. The 2001 workshop version includes
the Masked Man convincing Melchior to live on as well as a demonic version of the ghost of
Moritz tempting his friend to commit suicide. In the workshops of 2005, the ghost of Wendla
replaces the Masked Man to serve as Melchior’s saviour and as the opposite of the still
included suicide-promoting Moritz5. The final version of the graveyard scene included in the
2006 version has Wendla and Moritz both appearing to prevent Melchior from committing
suicide, without anybody present luring him towards death. Other substantial changes were
made to the script even after the musical’s initial premiere. Charles Isherwood wrote reviews
for the New York Times after seeing a very early version of the musical as well as a
performance later on in the run. He says the plot “moved further away from the Wedekind
play” and explains that a major plot moment – a sex scene between two of the main
adolescent characters, which can be identified as a rape scene in the original play – “has been
thoroughly softened from confused ambiguity into a consensual act” (Isherwood6).
Sater’s modifications were most harshly criticised by Jonathan Franzen in an
introduction to his English translation of Frühlings Erwachen. Firstly, he expresses his
discontent about the rape scene being changed to a “thunderous spectacle of ecstasy and
consent” (Franzen, x). Moreover, he comments on the way the scene involving a boy
5
In 2001, the graveyard scene included a reprise of The Mirror-Blue Night. The 2005 version included a song
called The Clouds Will Drift Away. Both songs – including snippets of dialogue – show the different stages of
the adaptation process of this scene. They are made available on Youtube:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmCeg3o24G4&feature=BFa&list=PLCDD2F5B5CC79F245&lf=results_
main> and <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0llO8f0NWX4>.
6
Isherwood, C., “Sex and Rock What Would the Kaiser Think?” New York Times.
<http://theater.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/theater/reviews/11spri.html?pagewanted=all> 27 September 2011.
7
masturbating has turned out in the musical. According to Franzen, “Wedekind showed the
young sensualist Hansy resisting masturbation”, while the musical treats the audience “to a
choreographed orgy of penis-pumping, semen-slinging exultation” (x). In addition, Franzen is
furious about the fact that the physically abused Martha has been transformed into a “young
emblem of sexual abuse” (x). Accusing the makers of being a “team of grown-ups [creating] a
musical whose main point is selling teen sex” (xi) by writing a “censored” (xi) version of the
original narrative, he points out that “even the cruellest bowdlerisations of a century ago were
milder than the maiming a dangerous play now undergoes in becoming a contemporary hit”
(ix-x).
Nevertheless, Sater’s efforts to write Spring Awakening entail something different
from the “cruellest bowdlerisations of a century ago” of Frühlings Erwachen’s previous
censors that Franzen compares Sater with. Censors such as the Lord Chamberlain implied to
stage the original play while putting their own moral stamp on it, while Sater eventually chose
to create his own interpretation of the narrative by writing an adaptation. During an
adaptation process, the adapter transposes a certain work to a new form: a work can be
adapted to a new art form, genre, perspective, timeframe or place, etc. In the case of Spring
Awakening, a play has been adapted to a musical. This thesis introduces two new terms to
describe the infidelity resulting from the adaptation process. The new form provides a
different storytelling toolkit than the old form. As a result, there is technical infidelity: the
writer of the adaptation cannot tell the same story as the original author, because he does not
have the same means to do so. At the same time, the different tools provide him with the
ability to tell the story in a way that was unavailable to the original author. In Spring
Awakening, the technical infidelity lies within music, lyrics and dance. In addition, the
adaptation is shaped by the intentions of its new author: he interprets and influences the
narrative according to his own motivations, shaping creative infidelity. As for Spring
Awakening, creative infidelity lies within all the changes Sater has made to the structure and
substance of the narrative. These two variables are what makes an adaptation different to a
copy: the original and the new version share an intertextual bond because they are based on
the same narrative, but at the same time they contain individual aspects that make each of
them stand on their own.
In both musical and play, the adolescents need to find their own morality by
combining society’s wishes with their own. In the musical, Wendla knows her life differs
from what society had planned for her because of her sexual experience and her pregnancy. In
the song Whispering, she stresses she now leads the life she made for herself and sings: “So,
8
let that be my story” (Sater, 83). A similar thing goes for the adapter (an adaptation’s writer):
he writes his own story, deciding to what extent creative infidelity should have a role in the
adaptation process. In The Novel and the Cinema (1975), Geoffrey Wagner distinguishes
three different types of adaptation: transposition, commentary and analogy. In the case of
transposition, an original work is adapted with “the minimum of apparent interference”
(Wagner, 222). Analogy, on the other hand, represents a “considerable departure for the sake
of making another work of art” (227). Commentary takes place in a situation where “an
original is taken and either purposely or inadvertently altered in some respect” (223).
Within the scope of this thesis, it is discussed whether Wagner’s three types of
adaptation play a role in the development of taboos during the adaptation process of Frühlings
Erwachen to Spring Awakening. In Spring Awakening, the adolescents struggle with quite a
few of the same moral boundaries as Wedekind’s characters do. At the same time, Sater has
included some brand new taboos for them to struggle with. Furthermore, the softening of
some of the play’s shocking nature suggests that Sater considers some of the developments in
Wedekind’s work as taboo subjects as well. First, the world of Adaptation Studies will be
explored further, taking a closer look at the developments within this field of research and its
most important theories. Subsequently, the adaptation process and infidelity will be discussed
by reflecting on Wagner’s theory. Next, short summaries of Frühlings Erwachen and Spring
Awakening will be provided. After that, a discussion on the adapted taboos in Spring
Awakening is explored, divided according to Wagner’s classifications of transposition,
analogy and commentary. Lastly, a comprehensive conclusion will be presented.
9
2. Adaptation
Whenever an adaptation is compared to its original, the subject of fidelity is likely to arise.
Quintessentially, an adaptation is always unfaithful to the adapted work, because complete
fidelity is as unattainable as it is superfluous. Firstly, a faithful adaptation would be
redundant, as it would be nothing but a copy of what has already been done before. Secondly,
an adaptation telling the exact same story as the original work did, in the exact same way,
would in fact be impossible: each presentation of the same narrative offers an author different
boundaries and opportunities for storytelling, which inevitably leads to technical infidelity. In
Adaptation Studies, the impossible nature of absolute fidelity has been widely recognised. In
fact, the field bases its research on the differences between adaptation and adapted work.
However, an adaptation’s infidelity is often linked to a judgment of quality. The value of
fidelity – whether complete faithfulness would be considered a good or bad thing – initially
played a considerable role in the theories developed within Adaptation Studies, but became
less apparent in later research. Eventually, Adaptation Studies moved towards the conclusion
that an adaptation’s infidelities provide interesting challenges for those studying it rather than
grave offences towards the original work.
The decreasing importance of quality judgment has also led to questions about the
definition of Adaptation Studies and adaptation itself. The field began as a part of Film
Studies and has mainly been concentrating on literature-to-movie-adaptations. Its main
consensus has long been the idea that cinema is inferior to literature and that cinematic
adaptations are therefore always of poorer quality than the book they are based on. This
chapter shows that, with the importance of quality judgment gradually waning, the field is
now letting go of the idea that the superiority of certain art forms should form its main point
of interest. Even more so, Adaptation Studies is starting to acknowledge other art forms might
be considered as adaptations, too. These realisations lead to new questions: if adaptations can
appear in any form, is “adaptation” still the right term to use? In fact, does Spring Awakening
– a musical reworking of a play – count as an adaptation, or is that name reserved for
cinematic reworkings of literature? Such questions also force the definition of the field of
Adaptation Studies to be questioned.
Even though a play-to-musical adaptation, such as Spring Awakening, is the result of a
less radical change of medium than literature-to-movie adaptations, discussions on and
theories about movie adaptations prove to be very useful in the study of all kinds of
adaptations. This thesis focuses on the adaptation process and the choices the adapter makes
10
during that process: how did the fidelity and infidelity of Spring Awakening come into
existence? Geoffrey Wagner’s basic types of adaptation – transposition, analogy and
commentary – serve as a helping hand in establishing to what level the adapter is able to
influence the adaptation process. At the end of the chapter, specific attention is paid to the
link between the two debates discussed, Wagner’s types of adaptation and the adaptation of
taboos in Frühlings Erwachen and Spring Awakening, followed by a preliminary conclusion.
2.1.
The Discussion on Infidelity
The fact that adaptation cannot exist without what this thesis refers to as technical infidelity
has been accepted even before the conception of Adaptation Studies. In “The Cinema” (1926),
Virginia Woolf argues there is a distinct difference between the technical abilities of films and
literature, a difference that undeniably plays a part in the adaptation process. She expresses
her disdain towards literature-to-movie adaptations by explaining how cinema is a less
capable art form compared to the book. According to Woolf, film has a destructive power
over literature. Failing in its ability to transfer the “spirit” of the book to the screen, the
cinematic adaptation falls “upon its prey with immense rapidity, and to this moment largely
subsists upon the body of its unfortunate victim” (Woolf7). Thirty years later, the field of
Adaptation Studies came to existence when George Bluestone wrote the founding work
Novels into Film (1957). Bluestone also argues that in literature-to-screen adaptations
“changes are inevitable the moment one abandons the linguistic for the visual medium”
(Bluestone, 5). He does not make any assumptions on literature being superior to cinema like
Woolf does, but states, just like Woolf, that the task of the film-maker is to “catch the
essence” (Bluestone, 68) of the book. In Adaptation Studies, this idea is called the fidelity
approach. According to Christa Albrecht-Crane and Dennis Ray Cutchins, this theory is
“built upon the foundation of a transposable essence that lies at the heart of any text”
(Albrecht-Crane & Cutchins, 16). None of the supporters of the fidelity approach present a
clear definition of the so-called essence, but they determine the value of the adaptation on
how much of that essence can be found in the reworking.
Others have taken elements of the fidelity approach to create new theories built around
a quality judgment. Geoffrey Wagner (1975) bases his classifications of infidelity on the idea
7
Woolf, V., “The Cinema”. Arts 1926. ,<http://modvisart.blogspot.com/2006/04/virginia-woolf-cinema-
1926.html> 27 September 2011.
11
that an unfaithful adaptation can be a “violation” (Wagner, 224). Nevertheless, he rejects the
fidelity approach by stressing transposition is the least satisfying type of adaptation: he argues
that, since film is never able to catch the true essence of a novel, any transposition is “more
likely to dissatisfy than not” (Wagner, 223). The fidelity approach has also been mirrored by
what could be called an infidelity approach. For example, Gene D. Phillips expresses the
desire that the cinematic adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd had
been less faithful to its source material:
“Hardy often does not provide clear-cut motivations for his character’s actions. We are drawn
to probe beneath the surface of the characters for the motives that lurk behind their actions.
But Hardy gives us little help, and the film, in being faithful to the novel, follows his lead”
(Phillips, 231).
Robert Stam is one of the scholars to most openly defy the quality judgment apparent
in any of these approaches, as it has its roots in emotions rather than reason: “Words as
infidelity […] in this sense translate our feeling, when we have loved a book, that an
adaptation has not been worthy of that love” (Stam, 14). In addition, he points out that when
critics refer to the essence of a text this actually denotes the “critical consensus within the
interpretative community” (15). According to Stam, the original text is “an open structure,
constantly reworked and reinterpreted by a boundless context”, based on the idea that it can
trigger “a plethora of possible readings” (15). The fidelity and infidelity approaches,
focussing on personal rather than academic opinion, fail to recognise the importance of
infidelity in Adaptation Studies. After all, it is the differences between adapted work and
adaptation that make it a relevant field of study. Another scholar opposing the fidelity
approach is Linda Hutcheon. Back in 1926, Virginia Woolf already assumed there was a
qualitative hierarchy in which literature stood miles above literature, not in the last place
because it was the original. Hutcheon argues this idea has been influential in Adaptation
Studies for far too long: “to be second is not to be secondary or inferior; likewise, to be first is
not to be originary or authoritative” (Hutcheon, xiii). As Eckart Voigts-Virchow points out,
the criticism within the field of Adaptation Studies in favour of the fidelity approach is
“presumably long-dead” (Voigts-Virchow, 123): current research mostly argues along the
lines of critics such as Stam and Hutcheon and often criticises the fidelity approach as if it is
still there. Nevertheless, there is a hardly a scholar who actually reasons with this theory as a
point of departure – this thesis included. However, the discussion on infidelity has opened up
12
the way for discussion on the definition of adaptation, eventually leading to a broadening of
the term and the inclusion of other sorts of adaptations, such as Spring Awakening, as part of
Adaptation Studies’ subject matter.
2.2.
The Discussion on Definition
Originally a part of Film Studies, the field of Adaptation Studies has been focussing itself
mainly on book-to-screen adaptations. However, the argument that film adaptations are not
automatically a secondary, but a second version of a narrative provides reason to debate the
subject matter of the field: is it possible to turn matters around and study cinema-to-literature
adaptation? In Adaptations: from Text to Screen, Screen to Text (1999), Deborah Cartmell
states that the influence of cinema on literature is just as important as the influence of
literature on cinema. Wanting to tear down the boundaries between high and low culture, she
argues that the existence of novelisation shakes off what used to be a “fundamental belief that
in the beginning was the word” (Cartmell, 144). If literature is no longer considered to be the
origin of adaptation, then what is? Even more important is the question: what cannot be an
origin of adaptation? Movies are adapted from video games (Tomb Raider) and theme park
rides (Pirates of the Caribbean); historical events constitute material for comic books (From
Hell, based on the Jack the Ripper murders – which was, in turn, adapted for the screen); and
characters in children’s literature are turned into all sorts of merchandise (Dick Bruna’s
Miffy).
Miffy book and Miffy merchandise: is there such a thing as “book-to-crockery adaptation”?
In fact, without broadening the definition, we could not refer to Spring Awakening as an
adaptation. Does “adaptation” need to be redefined in a way that also covers works outside
the world of literature and cinema?
Some have argued Adaptation Studies would be helped by a subdivision of definitions.
Brett Westbrook mentions Constantine Verevis’ distinction in movies between “adaptation”
13
and “remake”, but argues against it: this classification system does not address “how this
degree of separation functions when the remake is based on an earlier film that is based on a
literary or other more standard source” (27). In addition, this typology still only includes
cinema as a valid form of adaptation. Others have introduced the idea to rename the subject of
Adaptation Studies altogether. In Adaptations of Shakespeare (2000), Daniel Fischlin and
Mark Fortier list the various ways to which reworkings of Shakespeare’s work have been
referred to in the past, including “alterations”, “imitations”, “spin-offs” and “offshoots”. They
mention the term “appropriation” as a potentially useful label, but dismiss it because the word
“suggests a hostile takeover, a seizure of authority over the original in a way that appeals to
contemporary sensibilities steeped in a politicised understanding of culture” (Fischlin &
Fortier, 3). Quintessentially, the term “adaptation” is the only term covering all these
variations upon the theme: it is so comprehensive, that, as Fishlin and Fortier put it, “writ
large, [it] includes almost any act of alteration performed upon specific cultural works of the
past and dovetails with a general process of cultural re-creation” (4).
With that in mind, it is more important to change the field of study – Adaptation
Studies – than the subject of study. Of course, the field has its roots in cinematic studies.
However, since the term adaptation can be used for so many different types of art forms, it is
an interesting subject of study for any line of cultural study. The technical infidelity enables
adapters to shed new light on stories already told; their re-readings can be of great value to
any student of literature, but also to students of society, for example, in the case of adaptation
of historical events.
2.3.
Infidelity within the Adaptation Process
In every adaptation process, the adapter is the one to give shape to the variables of technical
and creative infidelity. Firstly, he decides on a form that shapes the right amount of technical
infidelity for his interpretation of the narrative. Secondly, he determines the degree to which
he wants the adaptation to be changed according to his interpretation, generating creative
infidelity. The way in which both choices intertwine and interact with each other determines
whether the work shares an incredibly close intertextual bond with the original piece or hardly
shows any relation to it at all. Geoffrey Wagner comes up with three classifications, each
representing a certain amount of infidelity: transposition, analogy and commentary. In the
case of transposition, the adaptation is written with the minimum input of infidelity: the writer
stays as close to the story as the technical infidelity of the new form allows him to. When
14
there is an analogy, the adaptation is very much unfaithful to the adapted work: the original
work is used as a point of departure to tell an entirely new, autonomous story. In a situation of
commentary, the adaptation is, to a certain extent, faithful to the original: however, the
narrative is re-emphasised or re-structured according to the adapter’s motivations and
interpretation.
The way Wagner elaborates on the typology in his own research contains a number of
elements that cannot be applied. Firstly, he continually involves terms of quality in his essay.
He keeps emphasising an adaptation can never live up to its original. With the idea of
literature’s superiority over cinema firmly embedded in his theory, he expresses how comic
books and films are “assaults on classics of fiction” (223), and states cinema can never be
more than “a book illustration” (223). Therefore, he argues an adapter should not have fidelity
and transposition as its goal; instead, he should avoid any violation towards the original work.
He states that a commentary “seems to represent more of an infringement on the work of
another” (223), but goes on to explain it is often “a different intention” on the part of the
adapter than an “outright violation” (224). He poses that good analogies cannot be considered
a “violation”, because the director did not intend “to reproduce the original (227). On the
other hand, a bad analogy can be “a violation with a vengeance” (228).
Secondly, Wagner assumes each adaptation can only be classified by one of the types.
However, his attempts to apply this idea when studying specific adaptations turn out to be
quite problematic – it proves to be difficult to determine the boundaries between each
classification. For example, in his study of the 1938 cinematic adaptation of Wuthering
Heights, Wagner considers the adaptation to be a “typical machine-made Hollywood
transposition” (232). Nevertheless, he points out Wyler set out to “domesticate Wuthering
Heights to soap opera standards” in order to give society “the kind of film it wants” (240).
With this, Wagner suggests the adapter re-interpreted the narrative with the motivation to
make it more suitable for the target audience, and thereby contradicts his own definition of
transposition – even though the film stays incredibly close to the storyline of the book, it also
contains elements of commentary, where the adapter re-interprets certain aspects of the story
to tell the story in the way he wants to. Most crucially, it is often impossible to put merely one
label on a single adaptation.
Nevertheless, the basic classification Wagner introduces is quite useful, once the
boundaries he creates around his typology are removed. For example, Lydia Martin bases her
reading of pre-1995 and post-1995 cinematic adaptations of Jane Austen novels on Wagner’s
system. In her essay, she argues that the more recent adaptations, being commentaries and
15
analogies, moved further away from the original text in style, acting, camera and sound work.
Departing from Wagner, she concludes with a statement denying a link between an
adaptation’s form and its quality: “A novel and its translation can echo back and forth and this
‘inter-mediality’ enhances the qualities inherent in each medium that otherwise would have
remained unnoticed” (78). In Nabokov’s Cinematic Afterlife (2011), Ewa Mazierska also takes
Wagner’s theory as a point of departure: she uses all three classifications to interpret one
single film adaptation. As Mazierska puts it, “the three functions are closely connected: each
adaptation is simultaneously a transposition, a commentary and an analogy. For example, by
the very act of transposing/transporting the characters into a new space, the adapter comments
on the source book” (Mazierska, 7).
2.4.
Adaptation, (In)fidelity and the Awakening of Spring
As a relatively new adaptation in a form that has been discussed very little so far, Spring
Awakening has not received much attention in Adaptation Studies or other academic fields at
the time of writing. In fact, most comments on the musical version are to be found in reviews
in newspapers, magazines and on the Internet, where it has been praised as well as reviled.
Unsurprisingly, reviewers always tend to base their texts on a judgment of quality. However,
the few academic commentaries on the musical seem to include a similar verdict. As was
touched upon in the introduction, Jonathan Franzen describes the alterations made to
Frühlings Erwachen as “maiming” (x), while, in her essay “Rude Awakening”, Shawn-Marie
Garrett argues that softening the play’s rape scene to consent is “criminal or offensive” and
“the moral equivalent of marrying Cordelia off to Edgar at the end of King Lear” (Garrett8).
When studying the differences between adaptation and adapted work – as is done in
Adaptation Studies – it is less relevant to decide which form or which version is aesthetically
or morally most pleasing, or to link the amount of fidelity to quality. Instead, the intertextual
bond between original and adaptation offers the questions worth asking. For example, in what
way does the new form affect the narrative, or to what extent could the adaptation be seen as
the adapter’s interpretation of the narrative? Does this story add an extra layer to the original,
or is it an autonomous work serving well on its own, but possibly gaining depth because of
the original? Spring Awakening is an ideal subject of study for those interested in such
questions because of its themes: the complex collection of similarities and differences
8
Garrett, S., “Rude Awakening”. < http://www.hotreview.org/articles/rudeawakening.htm> 27 September 2011.
16
between the play and the musical constitutes a treasure chest of transposed and altered
controversy.
Wagner’s classification theory was written for literature-to-cinema adaptations. In
addition, it was introduced by a fervent supporter of quality judgment within the analysis of
adaptations. Nevertheless, Wagner’s theory itself proves how his classification is perfectly
capable to serve as the foundations for a reading of Spring Awakening as a play-to-musical
adaptation. Quintessentially, this research is an analogy adaptation of Wagner’s research: the
framework of his theory – the terms transposition, analogy and commentary – is used as a
point of departure for writing our story: it forms the backbone of a thesis within which the
adaptation is considered to be of equal value to the adapted work, where all three
classifications appear and where they are used to describe the adaptation of one particular
aspect of the narrative, namely, society’s taboos and restrictions.
17
3. Summary
This short summary explains the basic plot of Frühlings Erwachen and Spring Awakening and
includes a reflection on the most obvious differences between the play and the musical. In the
appendix, a more elaborate summary can be found of both play and musical.
The story introduces several adolescent characters going through their first
experiences with sexuality and clashes with the adult world, but mainly revolves around
Melchior Gabor, Moritz Stiefel and Wendla Bergmann. Melchior is smart, self-assured and
the only teenager in his community familiar with the concept of sexuality and its possible
consequences. His friend Moritz is not the best student, but is terribly pressured by his parents
to do well in school. He also struggles with the sexual stirrings he is experiencing for the first
time; unfamiliar with anything to do with sex, he has no understanding about what is
happening to him or how he came into the world in the first place. Melchior offers to help out
his friend by writing an essay on sexual intercourse. Subsequently, the boys discuss the part of
the essay on the female sexual experience. In Wedekind’s piece, Moritz expresses how he
envies that experience, while Melchior feels disgusted even talking about it. In Sater’s work,
the roles are reversed: Melchior enjoys imagining what it feels like for a woman during sexual
intercourse, while Moritz is scared to talk about it at all.
While Moritz keeps struggling with his sexual confusion as well as his schoolwork,
Melchior experiences a strange encounter with Wendla, a fourteen-year-old girl who is just as
much in the dark about the subject of sexuality as Moritz. In fact, her mother refuses to
answer any of her questions about conception truthfully. Instead, she tells her daughter that a
woman can only become pregnant when she loves her husband with heart and soul, in a way a
teenager is unable to. As the story progresses, Wendla continually shows an interest in
masochism. When her friend Martha explains she is regularly physically abused by her
parents – and also suffers sexual abuse in the musical – Wendla expresses the wish to take
Martha’s place. During her encounter with Melchior, she once more expresses her
masochistic urges by asking him to strike her with a stick. He refuses at first, but eventually
gives in and beats her severely. Once he realises what he is doing, he stops and flees.
Meanwhile, Moritz has discovered he failed his exams. Afraid of his parents’ reaction
to his failure, he writes a letter to Melchior’s mother, Frau Gabor, the only adult treating him
well so far. In this letter, he asks her for financial help for running away and expresses that he
might kill himself if she will not help him. After she replies that she cannot and will not help
him, Moritz sets out to kill himself. Just before he pulls out a gun, he meets Ilse, a childhood
18
friend returning home after spending some time as a model for a group of dangerous
Bohemian painters in an artist colony. Ilse tempts Moritz to join her, but he refuses her offer.
After she leaves, he kills himself. Meanwhile, Wendla approaches Melchior, who is hiding
away in a hayloft. At first, Melchior is reluctant towards her, but suddenly becomes aroused.
In the play, he proceeds to rape her; in the musical, he convinces her to consent and goes on to
make love to her. In Wedekind’s version, Wendla subsequently wanders around her garden,
terribly confused about what has happened to her, but with nobody to talk to. In the musical,
both Melchior and Wendla experience that confusion.
In Frühlings Erwachen, Moritz’s funeral shows how his father and other adults
condemn him for committing suicide; in the musical, there is mourning instead. In the
meantime, the teachers have discovered Melchior’s essay on sexual intercourse amongst
Moritz’s belongings. Accused of playing a big part in Moritz’s moral downfall leading up to
his suicide, Melchior is expelled. Meanwhile, Wendla’s mother has discovered what
happened to her daughter and informs Melchior’s parents. Shocked at their son’s behaviour
towards both Moritz and Wendla, they send him to a reformatory. At the same time, Wendla
has fallen ill and is told by the doctor she will be feeling well again in no time. Not much
later, her mother informs her she is not ill but pregnant. Now understanding the connection
between her experience with Melchior and her pregnancy, she asks her mother why she was
never told about the facts surrounding sexuality and conception. Her mother proceeds to make
arrangements for an abortion.
In the play, Melchior is struck by guilt over what he has done to Wendla, but is
determined to make it up to her: he wants to run away with her and start over somewhere new.
In the musical, Melchior’s finds out Wendla is pregnant and decides to take her away as well.
He escapes the reformatory and, after some time, ends up in a graveyard. There, he discovers
Wendla’s gravestone, which states she died from anaemia. Melchior realises her death is the
result of a faulty abortion and is subsequently determined to take his own life. In Wedekind’s
work, he is then visited by the ghost of Moritz and a mysterious Masked Man. Moritz tries to
convince his friend to join him in the grave, but the Masked Man eventually succeeds in
convincing him to carry on living despite what has happened. In Spring Awakening, the
ghosts of Melchior and Wendla visit Melchior to urge him to live on. They promise to watch
over him always. Melchior decides to go on and live life to the fullest.
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4. Transposition
Earlier, this thesis mentioned the Masked Man’s Product of Morality – the search for the
perfect combination between what one “has to” and one “wants to” – a fitting description of
the moral problem the adolescents in Frühlings Erwachen are faced with. The Product of
Morality is successful only if the person in question decides on the right amount of each
variable: the “has to” variable represents the authority of the adult world, while “wants to”
represents the authority of the adolescent world. The Product of Morality challenges two
taboos that have a place in Frühlings Erwachen’s society: it breaks with the idea that adult
authority is absolute, but also with the notion that teenagers have no authority at all over their
own lives. In addition, both musical and play present the muddled conversation between the
adult and the adolescent world as an obstacle in the process. This particular obstacle is linked
to a third taboo the play argues against: Frühlings Erwachen breaks with the idea that talking
about a shameful topic, such as sexuality, is not done. Both versions of the narrative underline
the danger of the three taboos by creating situations in which the fact that they are still in
place leads to tragedy.
Quintessentially, Sater has transposed all three taboos to Spring Awakening.
According to Wagner, transposition takes place when the adapter applies “the minimum of
apparent interference” (Wagner, 222): in an ideal situation of transposition, there would be no
infidelity at all. In Spring Awakening, we see the adolescents in situations that sometimes
differ greatly from the original, but they are still seen to struggle with the three
aforementioned taboos. In other words: the circumstances have been altered, but the taboos
themselves have been transposed without any interference. The Product of Morality and the
two taboos linked to it are firmly embedded in Spring Awakening, even though the musical
does not include the Masked Man and his musings. It is important to note that the Masked
Man does not create the Product of Morality, but merely serves as the messenger defining the
problem. His absence has no influence on the existence of the dilemma he articulates: in
Spring Awakening, the young characters are still faced with the task of forming the right
combination between their own wishes and their parents’ and educators’ desires. In addition,
the musical also includes the taboo on sexuality and the sorrow it causes.
4.1.
The Assumed Superiority of the Adult World
Wedekind gave Frühlings Erwachen the subtitle Eine Kindertragödie, identifying the young
characters in the play as the ones involved in catastrophic events. Even though the teenagers
20
are partly responsible for their own demise, the mistakes made by the adult world affect the
tragic developments substantially. Wedekind challenges the idea that an adult’s authority is
absolute by presenting situations in which grown-ups make destructive decisions regarding
the teenagers they parent, treat or teach. Even though Sater has modified some of the
situations, Spring Awakening just as well stresses the importance of questioning what parents,
teachers and the Church assume to be best. In both versions of the narrative, adults behave in
ways harmful and ridiculous at the same time. The teachers, clergymen and doctors are
presented as shallow creatures that do not care about the teenagers’ fates at all. The parents
show they care a great deal about their children, but often only pay attention to them to suit
their own desires. Throughout the narrative, it becomes apparent that only Melchior’s mother,
Frau Gabor, is capable of recognising an adolescent’s responsibility as well as applying selfcriticism when situations go wrong.
Some of the narrative’s greatest sadness lies within the comedy that ensues as soon as
the working adult characters take the stage. With dark humour, Wedekind recounts how the
professionals in Frühlings Erwachen do not care about the fates of the teenagers with whom
they work. When a group of teachers comes together to talk about the existence of a
“Selbstmord-Epidemie” (Wedekind, 56) in their school, they spend most of their time
discussing whether or not to open a window. In the reformatory, Doctor Prokrustes complains
about one student falling from the skylight. Instead of worrying about the pupil’s fate, he nags
about “die ganze Schererei mit dem Abholen, Hinbringen und Beisetzen” (71) the boy created
with his fall. When one of Melchior’s schoolmates, Hanschen, tells Professor Sonnenstich
another pupil has died of a brain fever, he replies by saying “So? […] Hast du von letzter
Woche her nicht noch zwei Stunden nachzusitzen?” (33). Sater does not include such scenes,
but has two teachers reappearing throughout the play, exploiting their power over Melchior
and Moritz. To make sure “the good name of [the] school is secure” (Sater, 42), they
purposely fail Moritz; after Moritz’s suicide, they blame Melchior, because “it’s war.
Naturally, there must be casualties” (73). In addition, the working adults’ careless attitudes
are emphasised by their names. These are similar to the names Roald Dahl gave to the
children-devouring giants in The Big Friendly Giant. While Dahl named his monsters “The
Fleshlumpeater”, “The Childchewer” and “The Bonecruncher” (Dahl, viii), Wedekind’s
schoolteachers are called Knockenbruch, Knüppeldick and Fliegentod. In addition, there is a
Pastor Kahlbauch and a sadistic Doctor Prokrustes, who is named after the gruesome innkeeper in Greek mythology famous for cutting off or stretching out his guests’ legs to
accustom them to the size of their beds. Spring Awakening has kept most of these characters
21
in the story and even introduced a new adult character, Fraulein Grossebustenhalter, the piano
teacher starring in Georg’s sex dreams. These caricaturist names serve to stress the superficial
nature of the way in which the adult world communicates with the adolescent world.
The parents in the musical and the play do express interest in the fate of their children.
Nevertheless, they mainly do so because they see their children as an extension of their own
reputation. In both the play and the musical, Wendla’s mother Frau Bergmann’s true
intentions are implicitly revealed after she discovers her daughter’s extramarital pregnancy,
which would cause outrage in society in general and in the Church in particular. She considers
her own reputation, her own purity, to be of more importance than her daughter’s health and
well-being. In the play, the first thing the mother asks her daughter after hearing the news is
“warum hast du mir das getan!” (74). In the musical, she is still concerned her own reputation,
but also involves her daughter’s fate: “what have you done? To yourself? To me?” (80). In
order to avoid any loss of reputation, Frau Bergmann decides to send her daughter to an
individual that seems to have little medical knowledge, willing to perform an abortion in
secret. In Wedekind’s play, Wendla has to go to a helpful neighbour, “Schmidts Mutter aus
die Gartenstraße” (Wedekind, 75) – in no circumstances a doctor with sufficient medical
knowledge or tools to perform a safe abortion. In the musical, Frau Bergmann brings her
daughter to Herr Schmidt in the dark of the night on the recommendation of a “doctor friend”
(Sater, 85). When Frau Bergmann asks him about the procedure, Herr Schmidt is unable to
promise the procedure will be safe – still, she decides to send her daughter to an abortionist
who is unable to guarantee that her daughter will survive the experience. In both versions,
Wendla’s gravestone emphasises her mother’s all-consuming desire to keep the Bergmann
reputation clean is still a priority after Wendla’s death. Wedekind’s stone states Wendla died
“an der Bleichsucht” (Wedekind, 79) while Sater’s stone mentions “anaemia” as the cause of
death – Wendla’s pregnancy and abortion are left unmentioned. In the play, a biblical
message can also be found carved into the stone, referring to the importance of living without
sin: “Selig sind, die reinen Herzens sind” (79). In a world in which the adult is considered the
absolute authority, it is only the adult morality that is taken into account: the taboo on
sexuality causes Frau Bergmann to choose an existence without shame over an existence with
her daughter.
Moritz’s father also prefers his own morals and therefore his own reputation over his
son. In the musical, he does so before Moritz’s death. When Moritz tells his father he failed
his exams, Herr Stiefel scolds him for putting him and his wife to shame:
22
“So, now, what are your mother and I supposed to do? You tell me, Son. What? How can she
show her face at the Missionary Society? What do I tell them at the Bank? How do we go to
Church? What do we say? My son. Failed” (Sater, 51-52).
Judging from Frau Gabor’s letter, it is this confrontation that leads Moritz to his suicide: the
only options to escape his father’s anger about the shame Moritz has caused the family is to
either run away or to commit suicide. When the first option turns out to be impossible, Moritz
can only head towards ending his life. In the song Left Behind, Melchior voices Herr Stiefel’s
thoughts after Moritz’s suicide. From this, it becomes clear Herr Stiefel perfectly knew about
his son’s anguish: “All of the crying you wouldn’t understand, you just let him cry – “Make a
man out of him”” (71). Quintessentially, Herr Stiefel puts his family’s reputation over his
son’s well-being, indirectly pushing Moritz towards suicide. In Frühlings Erwachen, Herr
Stiefel’s fear for the loss of his reputation manifests itself after Moritz’s death. The sinful
nature of Moritz’s suicide leads Herr Stiefel to feel so ashamed about his son that he denies
him repeatedly: “der Junge war nicht von mir! Der Junge hat mir von kleinauf nicht gefallen!”
(Wedekind, 60). Once again, Wedekind seems to mock the absolute authority of the adult
world with dark humour. However, Wedekind’s remarks on this particular scene in a 1911
letter give the scene an even darker edge:
“Der Plan […] setze sich aus persönlichen Erlebnissen und Erlebnissen meiner
Schulkameraden zusammen. Fast jede Szene entspricht einem wirklichen Vorgang. Sogar die
Worte: “Der Junge war nicht von mir”, die man als krasse Übertreibung vorgeworfen, fielen in
Wirklichkeit” (Wedekind II, 107)
This comment emphasises the tragedy of a situation in which adults only consider their own
opinions and morality: in the case of Moritz, and of Wendla, death is the consequence.
Frankly, the only adult taking into account the adolescents have a certain amount of
authority over their own lives is Frau Gabor. In Frühlings Erwachen, she raises her son by
telling him he should do what he wants, as long as he can justify his actions: “Du bist alt
genug, Melchior, um wissen zu können, was dir zuträglich und was dir schädlich ist”
(Wedekind, 33). Sater’s Frau Gabor gives Melchior a similar message: “Surely, you boys are
now of an age to decide for yourselves what is good for you and what is not” (Sater, 34). Her
behaviour opposes the way in which Frau Bergmann and Herr Stiefel treat their children. In
the letter she sends to Moritz, in which she refuses to offer financial help for running away,
23
she also emphasises, unlike Moritz’s father, that failing in school is not the end of the world.
On the contrary, many people have succeeded in life despite being “sehr schlechte Schüler”
(Wedekind, 45), and “gone on to brilliant careers” (Sater, 53). Furthermore, both versions of
Frau Gabor find, as opposed to Herr Stiefel, that Moritz’s well-being is more important than
schoolwork. Finally, she opposes Frau Bergmann’s prude nature when she protests against her
husband when he, following the schoolteachers’ ideas, considers Melchior’s essay to be proof
that their son is “corrupt” (82), or suffers “moralischer Irrsinn” (Wedekind, 66). However, she
is also capable of realising her son has done wrong and that she and her husband, as
Melchior’s parents, need to take up on their parental authority for the sake of their son’s
future. In the play, she decides it is time to send Melchior to the reformatory when she realises
her son has raped a girl. In the musical, she does so when she understands Melchior “knew the
danger”, the possible consequences, of sexual relations, but still “went ahead” (Sater, 83).
4.2.
The Inferior Status of the Adolescent World
In the worlds of Frühlings Erwachen and Spring Awakening, the majority of the adults is not
only convinced of their absolute authority, but also of the idea that the opinions and questions
posed by adolescents are inferior to theirs. Horrible things can happen when an adult fails to
recognise a teenager’s responsibility and only involves his own desires in the upbringing and
education. However, a taboo on adolescent authority causes a second dangerous situation,
where the teenagers are not able to form and express their opinions, because whatever they do
is directly devalued by the adult world. As a result, they are raised to blindly follow in their
parents’ and educator’s footsteps and grow up to become just as destructive to adolescents as
the previous generation was. The musical and the play each show parents that have become
destructive to their own children because of their upbringing; in addition, there is one child
who seems to be heading towards becoming part of the next generation of dangerous adults:
Thea.
In Frühlings Erwachen, we find Wedekind’s Hanschen Rilow throwing a replica of
Palma Vecchio’s Venus in the toilet after masturbating.
24
Palma Il Vecchio’s Venus
In a secretive soliloquy, he compares flushing the picture with sacrificial murder: “du stirbst
nicht um deiner, du stirbst um meiner Sünden willen!” (Wedekind, 41). Herr Rilow appears to
be guilty of similar “sins”: Hanschen recounts how he previously found nude pictures in his
father’s “Geheimfach seines Sekretärs” (41). According to Jelavich, the “closet eroticism” of
youths and adults in particular suggested here is the “product of the fact that discussion of
sexuality was banned from the public sphere” (Jelavich, 134): for generations, that public
sphere – a combination of Church and society – has enforced the idea that shame is the
greatest good. In the case of Hanschen, there is no particular damage done: he acts the same
as his father, but hurts no one in the process. In Wedekind’s piece, the role that same
suppressed sexuality played in Frau Bergmann’s upbringing as well as the way she now raises
her daughter has devastating effects for Wendla.
When Wendla finds out she is pregnant, she asks her mother why she did not enlighten
her about sex and its consequences earlier. In reply, Frau Bergmann refers to her own
upbringing: “Ich habe an dir nicht anders getan, als meine liebe gute Mutter an mir getan hat
(Wedekind, 74). Frau Bergmann bases all her actions on the decisions her parents made when
she was a teenager; she still considers their judgment to be absolute, refusing to question it at
all, even now she is a parent herself. In all probability, she is only the latest woman in
generations of mothers not giving their daughters the information they might desperately
need. In Spring Awakening, it turns out that the pressure put on students in school has also
been passed on for several generations. Once again, Herr Stiefel has become this destructive
because of his upbringing. In response to his son’s failure in school, he expresses his anger
and disappointment by referring to Moritz’s grandfather: “thank God my father never lived to
see this day” (Sater, 53). The disastrous downfall of Wendla and Moritz signifies the dangers
of assuming an adolescent not being able to think for him or herself – after all, a teenager
25
eventually grows into an adult who, not knowing any better, will treat his or her kids with
similarly devastating consequences.
Melchior is the only adolescent to eventually recognise his responsibility over his own
life – in the play, the Masked Man helps him realise he is the one in charge of compiling the
right Product of Morality, and in the musical, he comes to a similar conclusion when the
songs All That’s Known and Those You’ve Known are being performed. Melchior finds a
strange counterpart in the character of Thea, who is one of Wendla’s friends. Even though, in
musical and play, she serves as a background character, the limited number of lines she has
are essential in depicting the dangers of a taboo on adolescent authority. More importantly,
her utterances indicate she will turn out just as destructive to adolescents when she becomes
an adult. In Spring Awakening, she asks “but how will we know what to do when our parents
don’t tell us?” (Sater, 44), suggesting she has already accepted the role division installed by
the adults of today. In Wedekind’s piece, she already plans to treat her children as an
extension of herself, quite literally, by imagining them as accessories:
Wenn ich Kinder habe, kleid’ ich die ganz in Rosa. Rosahüte, Rosakleidchen, Rosaschuhe.
Nur die Strümpfe Schwarz wie die Nacht! Wenn ich dann spazieren gehe, laß ich sie vor mir
hermarschieren” (Wedekind, 20).
By introducing Thea, the narrative demonstrates that the taboo on adolescent authority is not
only a problem of previous generations. On the contrary, it is a dangerous idea that can have
grave effects in the future as well.
4.3.
Shame and its Dangerous Consequences
The origin of shame forms a topic of discussion for several characters in both versions of the
narrative. In Spring Awakening, Father Kahlbauch considers it to be “deeply rooted in our
sinful Human Nature” (Sater, 32), while Melchior declares “shame is nothing but a product of
education” (32). In Frühlings Erwachen, Moritz refers to one’s sense of shame as “ein
Produkt seiner Erziehung” (Wedekind, 12), as opposed to Melchior, who considers it to be
part of the human disposition. Neither of the two works expressively chooses sides in this
argument. Nevertheless, each version emphasises the fact that shame plays a significant and
often damaging role in the way the narrative’s adults educate and raise their children.
Triggered by the standards of the Church and society, an exorbitant respect for shame has led
26
the adults to the idea that sexuality is never a valid topic of conversation between an adult and
an adolescent. Both versions of the narrative consider sexuality to be part of human nature
and deem denying this an abomination. Wedekind lets Moritz, as a virgin, come to that
realisation just before he kills himself: “Sie kommen aus Ägypten, und haben die Pyramiden
nicht gesehen?!” (Wedekind, 47). In Spring Awakening, it is Melchior who points out
sexuality is a natural part of life: “does the mare feel Shame as she couples with a stallion?
Are they deaf to everything their loins are telling them until we grant them a marriage
certificate?” (Sater, 32). The musical and the play show the dangers of a situation in which the
taboo on sexuality denies the human sexual predisposition. In the case of Moritz, we see how
the taboo on sexuality contributes to his suicide – the sudden discovery of sexuality and
reproduction brings him to a lethal state of crisis. In the case of Wendla, we see how that
same taboo leads Frau Bergmann to put her daughter in the situation that leads to death.
In both play and musical, Moritz’s downfall is heavily influenced by this fear and lack
of knowledge originating from society’s silence about sexuality. He struggles with the first
appearance of sexual urges: his wet dreams, which he describes in the musical as “mortifying
visions” (Sater, 23), only bring him, as he says in the play, “Todesangst” (Wedekind, 13).
Moritz is scared and confused about these new stirrings, as he has no clue what is happening
to him or what reproduction actually entails. In the play, Moritz’s sudden discovery of coitus
lands him into an existential crisis: it is not so much the confusion about sexuality, but the
confusion about his own birth that leads to his demise. One of the last remarks before he kills
himself reveals that, now he has finally discovered how reproduction works, he is convinced
he turned out to be the wrong gender: “ich war ein säugling, als ich zur Welt kam – sonst wär
ich wohl auch noch so schlau gewesen, ein anderer zu werden” (46). As Peter Jelavich says,
Moritz is plagued by “the confusion of sexual roles generated by repressed eroticism”
(Jelavich, 132). He yearns for the feminine: he considers the female sexual experience to be
“der inbegriff aller irdischen Seligkeit” (Wedekind, 35), and Ilse’s prepositions to girl him up
– “ich will dir Lokken brennen und dir ein Glöcklein um den Hals hängen” (52) – almost
convince him not to kill himself. In addition, minutes before he pulls the trigger, he screams
out what he truly wants: “du sein, Ilse! […] Dieses Glückskind, dieses Sonnenkind – dieses
Freudenmädchen auf meiner Jammerweg!” (53). His death symbolises the solution to his
existential crisis, bringing him as close to a female identity as possible – as Gerald Izenberg
states, “his very mode of suicide, blowing off his head, is an act of emasculation, a symbolic
castration” (Izenberg, 51). The influence of the taboo on sexuality has a different effect on
Moritz in Spring Awakening. Here, the situation puts him into an educational crisis. His first
27
wet dreams keep him up at night, making it impossible for him to stay awake and concentrate
at school. Melchior’s essay only makes matters worse: “I can’t focus – on anything. Even
now, it seems like… Well, I see, and hear, and feel, quite clearly. And yet, everything seems
so strange” (Sater, 33). Despite his efforts, Moritz’s grades keep on dropping. When his
teachers have to fail somebody, they choose the “neurasthenic imbecile” (27) Moritz, who is
such a bad pupil anyway. His father’s disappointment leads Moritz to the conclusion there is
no way out: he needs to kill himself.
In both versions, Wendla’s demise is a direct result of her mother’s shame, resulting
from society’s suppressed eroticism. The musical’s opening number, Mama Who Bore Me, is
a prophetic song, sung by Wendla, predicting how her mother’s reluctance to talk about
sexuality eventually will lead to her shameful, pregnant condition:
“Mama who bore me.
Mama who gave me
no way to handle things.
Who made me so bad” (Sater, 15).
As we have seen in the two previous subchapters, Frau Bergmann indeed fails to
provide her daughter with a sexual education and is therefore indirectly responsible for her
daughter’s pregnancy. In addition, she puts her reputation before her daughter’s life when she
makes Wendla undergo an abortion. In the musical, the importance of a shameless reputation
is emphasised by Wendla’s observations of those around her – in response to her pregnancy –
in the song Whispering:
“See the father bent in grief,
The mother dressed in mourning
Sister crumples, and the neighbours grumble
The preacher issues warnings…” (82)
Both events take place because of the taboo on sexuality, prohibiting parents to talk to their
children about intercourse. However, it also turns those who break with that taboo by actions
into social pariahs.
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4.4.
Conclusion: A World of Parallels
Following Wagner’s classification system, this chapter uses the term “transposition” to
acknowledge that the parallels between original and adaptation are just as much results of the
adaptation process as the additions and alterations to the story.
Most importantly, this chapter poses an overview of the transposition of three
particular restrictions from Frühlings Erwachen to Spring Awakening. The first two are linked
to society’s power structure: the idea that the authority of adults is never to be questioned is
accompanied by the idea that adolescent authority is not to be taken into account. The third
taboo is the idea that sexuality is never to be a topic of conversation, let alone something to be
acted upon.
Sater has been faithful in transporting these elements of the narrative from the original
to his musical version. Nevertheless, the adaptation process from Frühlings Erwachen to
Spring Awakening has also led to many infidelities. The next chapter concentrates on the
results of analogy in adaptation: here, it becomes clear that Sater has added two brand new
taboos for the adolescents to struggle with.
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5. Analogy
In musicals, songs can have different purposes. They may serve as a part of the action, but
they can also be a departure from the storyline. According to Scott McMillin, a musical exists
in two timeframes. As he puts it, “the dimension of song suspends book time in favour of an
incongruous moment of lyric time” (McMillin, 8). What happens during lyric time does not
necessarily move the plot forward, but often serves to “give its own dimension to the scene”
(8). During this temporary departure of book time, it is possible to show the story and its
characters from a different angle. Quintessentially, songs that do so are little analogies within
the bigger picture of the musical, each telling a new tale about a certain aspect of the
storyline. In Spring Awakening, the songs are there to provide a new outlook on the
adolescents, who are the only characters singing in the musical – this emphasises the gap
between the adult and adolescent world9. More importantly, the lyric time allows him to do
two other things. Firstly, he uses the songs to move the action to modern times temporarily.
Most crucially, he uses them to shed a light on the hidden emotions of the story’s adolescents.
The musical’s dialogue, décor and clothing are all set in the nineteenth century, but as
soon as there is singing, the teenagers are transported to the twenty-first century. The songs
are performed in ‘rock style’: during the original production, the actors grabbed microphones
to sing in, momentarily changing the theatrical play into a pop performance.
Melchior and Moritz performing Touch Me, ‘Rock style’
9
Left Behind and The Song of Purple Summer are the odd songs out. The stage directions before Left Behind
indicate Melchior “begins to sing, giving voice to Herr Stiefel’s inner thoughts” (Sater, 70). In The Song of
Purple Summer, the adults also sing. However, this song forms the musical’s coda and is not part of the actual
narrative.
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In addition, the lyrics contain American popular language and references to modern culture.
For example, in My Junk, Hanschen sings “I go up to my room, turn the stereo on” (Sater, 31).
The time shift serves to link the action set in the nineteenth century to the modern day,
indicating present-day teenagers still struggle with the same taboos as the adolescents in the
narrative. These teenagers express their daily frustration as a modern teenager often does: he
goes to his room to drown his sorrows in loud music, singing to the mirror whilst pretending
to be a rock star. However, the songs’ main function is to shed light on the teenagers’ feelings
and frustrations. In Frühlings Erwachen, some of the young characters express their
frustrations in desperate soliloquies heard by no one. In the musical, these unheard
frustrations are captured in music and lyrics: whenever the young characters experience
feelings they are unable to express towards their elders or their fellow adolescents, the
narrative freezes and the bottled up frustrations manifest themselves onstage through the
medium of song. Whereas Wedekind condemns taboos by showing situations in which their
existence has destructive consequences, Sater also uses music and lyrics to condemn taboos:
he shows how their existence leads to great frustration within the teenagers.
Two songs are directly linked to taboos that had no place in the original piece.
According to Wagner, adapters writing an analogy adaptation do not attempt “to reproduce
the original” (Wagner, 227), but use “hints from their sources” (230) as a point of departure to
write a new work of art. Instead of using the entire play as a point of departure, Sater has used
two taboos as a stepping-stone in creating two entirely new taboos. The negative
consequences of each of these fresh taboos are captured by the teenagers’ frustrations
apparent in lyric time. The first taboo is of a sexual nature, and is linked to Martha’s song,
The Dark I Know Well. The second taboo is of an intellectual nature, and is connected to
Melchior’s song, All That’s Known.
5.1.
A Taboo of Abuse
In both versions of the narrative, teenager Martha Bessel is regularly ill-treated by her parents.
In Frühlings Erwachen, she recounts to her friends how her father and mother hurt her on a
daily basis: “Papa schlat mich krumm, und Mama sperrt mich drei Nächte ins Kohlenloch”
(Wedekind, 18). In Spring Awakening, she is not the only one being mistreated by her parents.
When asked why she does not run away, Martha points out she does not want to end up like
Ilse, who fled her violent home to live with a group of Bohemians: “just look what’s become
of Ilse now! Living who knows where – with who knows who?!” (Sater, 44). In addition, the
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song The Dark I Know Well reveals both girls are victims of their father’s sexual abuse. In
Frühlings Erwachen, Herr and Frau Bessel enforce the taboo on sexuality on their daughter;
convinced that Martha’s natural sexual development is sinful, they subject her to beatings.
Sater has used this situation as a stepping-stone to introduce a new taboo with which the
adolescents are forced to struggle. This time, the parents enforce the idea on their children that
sexual abuse is not to be discussed.
In Frühlings Erwachen, Martha tells her friends about the last time her parents
maltreated her when she came home wearing a blue ribbon through the yoke of her chemise.
She relates how her mother “riss mich am Kopf zum Bett heraus”, her father ripped “das
Hemd herunter” and how she spent the night naked, outside, “im sack” (19). Carolin Hagl
interprets this particular case as an indication that Martha’s parents mistreat her “aufgrund
ihrer bloβen körperlichen Entwicklung” (Hagl, 51). This makes sense when the placement of
the ribbon is considered; the yoke of a chemise is placed by a woman’s breasts and Martha’s
ribbon most probably emphasises that part of her body. In the eyes of her parents, this is a
way of drawing attention to her curves in a highly sinful fashion; a woman should not talk
about sexuality or behave in a sexual manner. Subsequently, the Bessels rip their daughter’s
dress off and force her to sleep outside – after all, it was Martha who wanted to go “so auf die
Strasse hinunter” (19). Her mother reasons it is all part of their daughter’s upbringing: “sie
wollen noch sehen! – Meine Mutter wenigstens sole ich einmal keine Vorwürfe machen
können” (19). However, Martha has no idea she is punished for behaving sinfully. In fact, she
is unaware of the sexual connotations of the position of her ribbon, because the taboo on
sexuality has made it so that she has never talked with her parents about sexuality in the first
place. In Spring Awakening, Martha’s beatings are not necessarily inspired by a taboo on
sexuality – she is beaten by her father whenever she does not “do as he likes” (Sater, 43).
In The Dark I know Well, the taboo on sexuality turns out to have brought about a
second, more specific taboo related to sexual abuse. Martha and Ilse sing about the things they
are unable to tell anyone about – neither their friends nor the other adults around them. As
they sing in the first line: “there is a part I can’t tell about the dark I know well” (45). The
song reveals both girls are sexually abused by their father:
“You say all you want is just a kiss good night,
Then you hold me and you whisper, “Child, the Lord won’t mind.
It’s just you and me.
Child, you’re a beauty”” (45).
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Martha is left with two options: she can either run away and lead an uncertain and what she
considers to be a degrading life with Bohemians, or stay and suffer in silence; the taboo on
sexuality embedded in society also includes a taboo on sexual abuse, and therefore prohibits
Martha and Ilse of telling anybody about the abuse they suffer. As Martha chooses the second
option, she chooses to stay silent. And even though Ilse does choose to run away from home,
she never talks about what her parents did to her. The only adult who knows about the abuse
is Martha’s mother, but she keeps quiet about it as well: “mom just smiles that smile, just like
she never saw me” (45). Just like the other songs in the musical, The Dark I know Well serves
to show the frustrations the teenagers in question are incapable of expressing aloud: in a
society where sexuality cannot be discussed, sexual abuse is just as much of a taboo subject.
5.2.
Struggles for Moral and Intellectual Freedom
Wedekind has his teenage characters struggling with schoolwork and frequently welcomes
heartless teachers to the stage. Still, the only direct interaction between student and teacher
during the course of the play takes place outside of the classroom, when the school’s teachers
tell Melchior they hold him responsible for Moritz’s “moralische Zerrüttung” (Wedekind, 57)
prior to his suicide. Quintessentially, they consider Melchior’s essay on copulation as a work
that breaks their taboo on sexuality. Whenever Melchior tries to defend his ideas about the
essay, the teachers silence him: “Sie haben die genau prätizierten Fragen, die ich Ihnen
vorlege, mit einem schlichten und bescheidenen “Ja” oder “Nein” zu beantworten!” (59). This
accusation scene has its place in the musical too, transposed without much creative infidelity.
However, Spring Awakening also includes a second confrontation between Melchior and a
teacher before Moritz’s death. This situation has a lot in common with the original accusation
scene: Melchior tries in vain to debate a taboo posed by his teacher. Nevertheless, the taboo is
of a different nature. Sater departs from the set of taboos Wedekind considers to be
dangerous, introducing a taboo of intellectual nature.
In Wedekind’s work, the accusation scene presents a confrontation between a
schoolteacher, Herr Sonnenstich, and Melchior. Here, Melchior is found morally corrupt by
the adult world for writing and defending a piece on copulation, challenging the idea that
sexuality should never be discussed. Sonnenstich points out the essay Der Beischlaf is a
“Sittlichkeit” (58) – a crime against decency. Melchior confesses he is the author, but also
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asks his teacher to look at what he has written and “eine Unflätigkeit darin nachzuweizen”
(59). In reply, Sonnenstich calls his pupil a “Schandbube” (59) for having no “Anstandsgefühl
für das dem Menschen eingewurzelte Empfinden für die Dekretion der Verschämtheit einen
sittlichen Weldortnung” (59), and refuses to go into discussion with a “Hanswurst” (59) like
him. In Spring Awakening, Melchior and Sonnenstich clash during Latin class, in a way that
shares quite some similarities with the original accusation scene. Here, Melchior is scolded
for presenting and defending a theory that challenges a taboo posed by the adult world. This
time, the taboo is of an intellectual rather than a moral nature. When Moritz recites Virgil’s
Aeneid using a wrong conjecture, the teacher scolds him for his error. Melchior tries to help
his friend by pointing out Moritz’s error could be interpreted as a “fresh rhetorical balance”
(Sater, 20). Subsequently, Sonnenstich considers Melchior’s theory to be nonsense: “our
world has been littered with more than sufficient critical commentary on textual conjecture”
(20). In reply, Melchior asks his teacher: “are you then suggesting there is no further room for
critical thought or interpretation?” (20). Paralleling the accusation scene, Herr Sonnenstich
refuses to discuss matters any further with Melchior, silencing his pupil by means of a slap
with his cane.
The effect of the existence of a taboo on critical thought becomes clear when Melchior
starts to sing. In All That’s Known, the lyrics provide a peek into the frustrations Melchior
experiences over the lack of room for critical thinking:
“All that’s known in History, in Science,
Overthrown at school, at home, by blind men
You doubt them, and soon they’ll bark and hound you –
Till everything you say is just another bad about you” (21).
Adding the adults around him argue that “thought is suspect” and merely expect him to “trust
in what is written” (21), he reveals how trapped he feels in a world where the only goal of
education is to follow in the footsteps of the consensus views of society. Whereas The Dark I
Know Well shows that Martha reluctantly accepts the dire situations the adult world has
created for her, All That’s Known refers to the fact that Melchior will choose to escape at the
end of the musical:
“But I know there’s so much more to find –
Just in looking through myself, and not at them.
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Still, I know to trust my own true mind,
And to say: “there’s a way through this”
[…]
You watch me – Just watch me –
I’m calling, and one day all will know…
Quintessentially, the song functions as the Masked Man, urging Melchior to follow his own
ideas, on moral and intellectual level, rather than blindly comply with the ideas of the adult
world.
5.3.
Conclusion: An Adapter’s Chance to (Re-)invent
Analogy provides the point where the adapter departs from the original story to come up with
something brand new. In Spring Awakening, Sater has created two original restrictions for the
teenage characters to struggle with. He introduces a taboo that is closely related to the
restrictions on sexuality: the idea that sexual abuse is a topic that should never be discussed.
Secondly, he describes a situation in which a teenager is limited in his intellectual freedom
and the idea that a teenager is not supposed to criticise what is written by adults is enforced.
With the creation of these constraints, Sater has taken the opportunity to invent new
situations for the existing characters, thereby re-inventing them completely. Nevertheless,
another kind of re-invention manifests itself in Spring Awakening through what Wagner refers
to as “commentary” – the next chapter shows how he has kept certain elements in the story,
but altered them in a certain way to fit into a version of his story that is capable to accompany
a new sense of morality.
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6. Commentary
In his introduction to the script of Spring Awakening, Sater mentions that “the two biggest
shifts we made to the tale occur at the ends of Act One and Act Two – in the hayloft and then
in the graveyard” (Sater, x). During Wedekind’s hayloft scene, Melchior conducts a horrible
act by raping Wendla, while the same scene in Spring Awakening constitutes a courteous
Melchior awaiting Wendla’s approval. During the graveyard scene in Frühlings Erwachen,
the ghost of Moritz appears with his head under his arm, tempting his friend to join him in the
grave; in the musical, Moritz’s ghost is angel-like and serene while he is joined by Wendla’s
spirit to convince Melchior to live on. Furthermore, the musical removed the character of the
Masked Man – there is nobody to scold Moritz’s ghost or to tell Melchior the whole situation
will seem less dire “mit einem warmen Abendessen im Leib” (Wedekind, 70). Indeed, the
changes made to these scenes are quite major. Nevertheless, one other moment in the play has
undergone even more radical changes during the adaptation process: the scene in which
Melchior and Moritz talk about the female sexual experience. The changes made to this scene
branch out to intertwine themselves with the rest of the storyline, giving birth to new and
transformed action and dialogue, including the graveyard and hayloft scenes. They are prime
examples of commentary adaptation: the ideas Wedekind introduced in this scene were
considered to be taboo and were therefore either re-interpreted or re-emphasised in the
musical.
During the conversation on female sexuality, Wedekind introduces a clear separation
of gender roles. As Peter Jelavich puts it, Wedekind equates masculinity with “activity,
intelligence, civilisation, mental and physical strength, maintenance of selfhood”, while he
associates femininity with “passivity, sensuality, nature, mental and bodily submission, loss
of self” (Jelavich, 132). The conversation on the female sexual experience sees feeble Moritz
– who eventually kills himself – associating himself with the passive feminine state: “das
Mädchen […] hält sich bis zum letzten augenblick von jeder Bitternis frei, um mit einem
Male alle Himmel über sich einbrechen sehen” (Wedekind, 30). Meanwhile, Melchior
– the only one of the three main characters to survive the narrative – solely identifies himself
with the male active state: “ich will nichts, was ich mir nicht habe erkämpfen müssen!”
(Wedekind, 35). Wendla does not take part in the conversation as talker or topic: however, her
search for and frequently state of submission throughout the play fits the separation of gender
roles as presented in this conversation perfectly.
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In Spring Awakening, the conversation is altered to such an extent that the separation
of gender roles is no longer clear. Within the conversation, the roles are reversed: here, Moritz
is frightened to think about female sexual experience: when they continue their conversation
and talk about genitalia, the stage instructions state “Moritz abruptly rushes out” (Sater, 36).
On the other hand, Melchior loves to think about it: “defending yourself, until, finally, you
surrender and feel Heaven break over you? I just put myself in her place – and imagine” (34).
Moritz’s weakness is no longer linked to female desires and Melchior’s activity is no longer
coupled with masculinity; as a result, three of Wedekind’s ideas have been turned into taboos.
Firstly, the character of Wendla is now linked to the idea that the female gender has to be seen
as equal to the male gender. Secondly, the character of Moritz is connected to the idea that
suicide is never a sign of weakness. Finally, the character of Melchior is linked to the idea that
the hero is not supposed to have a questionable identity.
6.1.
Female Weakness Vs. Female Strength
Wedekind’s conversation on female sexuality indirectly positions Wendla, as the main female
character, in a different role than the male characters around her. According to Melchior and
Moritz, the predisposition of a woman manifests itself during sexual intercourse: the man
attacks to achieve pleasure, while the woman defends herself before giving in to pleasure. As
Moritz puts it: “das Mädchen wehrt sich dank seine Veranlagung” (Wedekind, 35). The
passive role of the woman during sex is associated with a weakness of body as well as mind.
As we have seen in the chapter on Transposition, Moritz – the boy who is so weak he gives
up on life itself – likes to be associated with the feminine. During the conversation he
expresses the desire to experience the female sexual experience, which he imagines to be
heaven on earth. However, it is Wendla who truly symbolises the weak nature of femininity:
throughout the narrative, she finds herself in situations where a male overpowers her. Once,
Melchior her in that position, but other times, she longs for such situations and deliberately
ends up in them. In Spring Awakening, Wedekind’s idea that the female is weaker than the
man is considered to be a taboo: therefore, the aspects of the narrative implying the inferior
status of women have been altered. As a result, Wendla has undergone an exhaustive change
of character.
In Wedekind’s piece, Wendla expresses her belief in the inferiority of her own gender
multiple times. When asked whether she would rather be a mother to sons or to daughters, she
happily replies “Jungens! Jungens!” (Wedekind, 20). Moreover, she thoroughly enjoys being
37
part of the inferior female party. Even though she has no knowledge about the sexual nature
of her utterances, she is convinced “es muss doch tausendmal erhebender sein, von einem
Manne geliebt zu werden, als von einem Mädchen” (20). In addition, Wendla revels in her
female inferiority and longs for a masochist experience from the hands of a man. Jealous of
the physically abused Martha, she convinces Melchior to beat her with a stick. In Spring
Awakening, Wendla’s maternal wish for sons and her reasoning for wanting to be a woman
have disappeared – however, the musical does include Wendla’s masochist nature. When
Martha says her father beats her, Wendla follows the original narrative and says “I just wish I
could somehow go through it for you” (Sater, 44). In addition, she tells Melchior about her
masochist fantasies: she dreams about “being a little girl, who spilt my father’s coffee. And
when he saw what I had done, he yanked out his belt and whipped me” (48). Then, just like
Wedekind’s Wendla, she proceeds to ask Melchior to hit her with a stick. However, where the
play’s Wendla seems to handle out of eagerness and eventually convinces Melchior to hit her
by simply persisting, Sater’s Wendla actually persuades him with a reason. She wants to be
beaten because the society around her, with its suppressed eroticism, makes her feel numb:
“my entire life. I’ve never… felt… […] Anything” (Sater, 48-49). She longs to “feel”
something – whether it is pain (during the masochist scene), pleasure, or both at the same
time.
That same desire to escape the numbness of her existence leads Sater’s Wendla to give
Melchior her consent during the hayloft scene. In the play, she ends up in Melchior’s hands
against her will: “Melchior! – Nicht küssen! […] Man liebt sich – wenn mann küßt – – – – –
Nicht, nicht! – –” (Wedekind, 43). In the musical, this element of rape is replaced by a
situation in which Wendla has a reason to want sexual intercourse with Melchior: she wants to
feel something. This is emphasised by Melchior’s words that eventually persuade her to
consent: “Then why [not]? Because it’s good? […] Because it makes us “feel” something?”
(59). As we can see from the stage directions, she subsequently gives her consent: “Wendla
considers, then suddenly reaches and pulls Melchior to her. […] Wendla hesitates, then nods.
[…] Wendla takes his hand, places it back on her breast” (Sater, 59). By placing his hands on
her body, she literally puts herself in Melchior’s hands. Now, she finds herself in the same
position as Wedekind’s Wendla; however, in this version she chose to be there.
By providing Wendla with reasoning behind her masochist desires, Sater has removed
the idea that she longs to be mistreated by a man because of her female disposition. Moreover,
the consensual sexual relations she has with Melchior grants Wendla a sense of activity the
original play finds incompatible with the feminine. However, there is one more alteration that
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emphasises the equality between Melchior and Wendla, representatives of the male and
female during sexual relations. While Frühlings Erwachen leaves open whether Melchior has
had sex before, Spring Awakening reveals he definitely has not. During the conversation on
the female sexual experience, Melchior starts to admit he is a virgin, before being interrupted
by his friend: “Moritz, not that I’m saying I myself have ever –” (36). In the original, we only
see how Wendla feels elevated and different after her sexual experience. In the musical, we
see them both go through that in the song The Guilty Ones:
“Pulse is gone and racing –
All fits and starts.
Window by window,
You try and look into
This brave new you that you are” (65)
This alteration stresses the equality situation of the hayloft scene in the musical: with both
parties going into the sexual experience inexperienced, they have no previous knowledge
about the situation to overpower their counterpart with.
6.2.
Suicide and the Status of the Self-killer
As discussed in the chapter on Transposition, the original Moritz finds himself in an
existential crisis: society’s suppressed sexuality has led to a situation where he keeps
fluctuating between femininity and masculinity. Often, he ends up longing for the female
identity; the clearest example of this lies within the conversation on the female sexual
experience. Here, Moritz and Melchior are presented as two opposite characters – while
Melchior only wants to be associated with the strong and active male role, Moritz longs for
the feminine, which represents weakness and passivity. By killing himself, Moritz chooses for
an eternal state of passiveness in death, giving up on the active state of life: the option he
chooses is associated with femininity, ergo weakness. When he returns to the narrative as a
ghost after his death, the weak nature of his choice is emphasised by the Masked Man, who
scolds him for committing suicide. Moritz is presented as a weakling for failing to recognise
his own responsibility over his life: suicide is presented as a sign of weakness. In Spring
Awakening, Wedekind’s idea that those who kill themselves are ‘losers’ is considered to be a
39
new taboo – instead, Moritz is depicted as the ultimate victim of the bourgeois society that
surrounds him.
Just before he commits suicide, Sater’s Moritz prophetically announces “I’ll be an
angel” (70). However, he can only be an angel if he does not make the wrong choice. In the
musical, Moritz’s suicide is not seen as a choice – instead, it is the inevitable cause of the way
the adult world treats him. The original work has Moritz constantly placing himself in the role
of the victim when it comes to his suicide. However, each time he does that, there is
somebody to tell him off. In her letter to Moritz, Wedekind’s Frau Gabor, the only adult
approaching teenagers in a selfless way, tells him off for threatening to kill himself:
“Sie ein Unglück noch so unverschuldet, man sollte sich nie und nimmer zur Wahl unlauterer
Mittel hinreißen lassen. Die Art und Weise, wie Sie mich, die ich Ihnen stets nur Gutes
erwiesen, für einen eventuellen entsetzlichen Frevel Ihrerseits verantwortlich machen wollen,
hat etwas, das in den Augen eines schlecht denkenden Menschen gar zu leicht zum
Erpressungsversuch werden könnte” (Wedekind, 44)
Frau Gabor does not like the fact that Moritz places himself in the role of the victim by
putting the blame for his future suicide on her. At the end of the play, the Masked Man tells
him something similar. When Moritz’s ghost implies his parents’ morals were the death of
him, the Masked Man informs him he is solely responsible for dying: “geben Sie sich keinen
Illusionen hin, lieber Freund! Ihre lieben Eltern wären so wenig daran gestorben wie Sie”
(Wedekind, 85). Spring Awakening has cut these remarks from the narrative. In addition, the
musical has changed the way in which the other adults, the ones that enforce the taboo on
adolescent authority on their children, talk about Moritz after his suicide. Now, it is
emphasised that the blame lies with the parents instead of the self-murderer. In Frühlings
Erwachen, instead of Herr Stiefel denying his son, he realises he has had a hand in his son’s
demise in the song Left Behind. In addition, the appearance of the teachers saying “wir hätten
ihn ja wahrscheinlich doch nicht promovieren können! […] Und wenn wir ihn promoviert
hätten, im nächsten Frühling ware er des allerbestimmtesten sitzengeblieben…! (61) has also
been cut.
Spring Awakening also emphasises Moritz’s victim status by introducing scenes in
which the adults are horrible to and about him while he is still alive, as he comes face to face
with his teacher and, later on, his father. In both situations, Moritz is scolded for failing. In
fact, especially during the confrontation with Herr Stiefel, Moritz is heavily reprimanded, as
40
his father’s anger also takes form in a slap in his face. Moritz’s victim status is furthermore
emphasised by a conversation between two of his teachers. In Frühlings Erwachen, Moritz
presents his own theories about the motivations of his teachers: “wozu gehen wir in die
Schule? Wir gehen in die Schule, damit man uns examinieren kann! – Sieben müssen ja
durchfallen, schon weil das Klassenzimmer oben nur sechzig faβt” (Wedekind, 11). In the
musical, those theories are actualised by the teachers themselves. When Herr Knockenbruch
remarks the upper grade only offers room for sixty of their sixty-one students, Fraulein
Knuppeldick indicates she will fail Moritz for the next finals: “Remember, it is I who shall be
marking them” (42). In other words: the adult world, both causing him to fail and judging him
for having failed, cause Sater’s Moritz to commit suicide – there is no choice left.
The appearance of Moritz’s ghost during the graveyard scene also differs greatly from
Wedekind’s version. In the stage directions, Wedekind describes how Moritz enters the
graveyard scene: “Seinen Kopf unter dem Arm, stapft über die Gräber her” (Wedekind, 67).
This ghastly materialisation of Melchior’s deceased friend seems worlds apart from the angellike manifestation in Spring Awakening, where “Moritz appears – in song light – as if rising
from his grave” (Sater, 89). In Frühlings Erwachen, Moritz’s headless state symbolises the
passive, feminine state he already longed for during the conversation on the female sexual
experience and, even more clearly, his story about the Headless Queen.
A headless Moritz, Melchior and the Masked Man in a 2010 production
of Frühlings Erwachen in the Pforzheim Theater in Germany
Even if the taboo on female weakness had no place in the musical, this piece of symbolism
would have been absent, because the piece does not set out to depict Moritz as a weakling. He
still shoots himself in the head, but the symbolism is lost as soon as he appears onstage with
his head firmly resting on his shoulders.
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Moritz’s ghost’s appearance in the musical is that of an angel, while he is more devillike in the original. In Angels: A Very Short Introduction, David Albert Jones discusses a plot
device often used in comics: here, “the inner struggle of conscience and temptation” is
depicted “as an argument between a devil […] and a guardian angel” (Jones, 106). In
Wedekind’s graveyard scene, a similar thing seems to be going on. Moritz’s ghastly
appearance already points towards the conclusion he is the “shoulder devil”. In addition, he
tries to make Melchior give in to the temptation of the passivity of death: “wir verkehren nicht
untereinander, aber wir sehen und hören alles, was in der Welt vor sich geht. […] Wir sind für
nichts mehr erreichbar, nicht für gutes noch Schlechtes” (Wedekind, 80). The Masked Man
arrives to serve as the “shoulder angel”: he is there to prevent Melchior from killing himself
and mock the devil, or in this case, Moritz. In fact, he literally refers to Moritz’s diabolic
state: “Pfui Teufel noch mal!” (82). When Moritz asks why the Masked Man was not there
when he was about to commit suicide, the Masked Man implies he offers his services as a
guardian angel to more desperate souls – however, he cannot help it if those souls do not
listen. He tells Moritz: “Erinnern Sie sich meiner denn nicht? Sie standen doch wahrlich auch
im letzten Augenblick zwischen Tod und Leben” (85). The fact that Moritz chose death has
turned him into the demon he is: according to Wedekind, he made the wrong choice. In
Spring Awakening, a similar “inner struggle” plagues Melchior in the song Those You’ve
Known. Nevertheless, Moritz now arrives – together with Wendla – to tell Melchior to live
on, because “there’s so much more to find” (Sater, 91). Death is still described as a passive
state. However, in the musical, they watch over them rather than laugh at them: “those you’ve
known, and lost, still walk behind you. All alone, they linger till they find you” (89). This
indicates this Moritz is active in his passiveness: he watches over his friend, like a guardian
angel, now functioning as a shoulder angel to keep Melchior from killing himself. With
Moritz and Wendla already taking the role of angels, the Masked Man loses his purpose in
this scene and disappears completely. As a result, there is nobody to mock Moritz for killing
himself: his suicide is the result of what others did to him.
6.3.
The Identity and Morality of Heroes
In Frühlings Erwachen, Wendla’s and Moritz’s weakness is opposed by Melchior’s
masculine strength. During the conversation on the female sexual experience, he admits to
feeling a strong preference for the active male role. Even more so, he expresses his disgust
towards the passive female role. When Moritz asks why Melchior claims to not want his
42
sexual bliss to come from “Almosen”, he answers: “Ich will nichts, was ich mir nicht habe
erkämpfen müssen! […] Denke sie dir, wie du magst, aber behalte sie für dich. – Ich denke
sie mir nicht gern… (35). In Spring Awakening, Melchior’s preference and disgust are
replaced with the opposite desire. With Moritz afraid to even talk about what a woman feels,
let alone fantasising about it, Melchior tells his friend: “I just put myself in her place – and
imagine” (Sater, 34), before actually doing so in the song Touch Me. With this alteration,
Sater has given Melchior the ability to put himself in the shoes of others. The other changes
linked to this particular alteration show he is kinder towards those that Wedekind’s Melchior
considered to be weaker than him: the poor classes of society, women, and Wendla in
particular. According to Frank Northen Magill and Laurence Mazzeno, Wedekind sees
Melchior as the perfect example for living: “as long as the Melchiors of the world – in
Wedekind’s world, he is the hero – survive, there is a glimmer of hope that the human instinct
can be explored and celebrated” (Northen Magill & Mazzeno, 6248). In Sater’s world, the
idea that the original Melchior, with his uncompassionate and selfish nature, is the hero
representing humanity’s only hope is inconceivable. With the alterations made to Melchior’s
personality, Sater has created a new taboo: the idea that heroism cannot be accompanied by
egoism.
The first alteration supporting the new taboo is found within Melchior’s comments on
contemporary society. Both Melchiors are politically engaged: each version of the character
occasionally discusses the ways of the world with other teenagers, and Spring Awakening’s
Melchior repeatedly writes opinionated essays in his diary. They both disapprove of the ideas
spread by Church and agree on the thought that beating a child will never do any good.
Nevertheless, their opinions about society’s lower classes differ. In Frühlings Erwachen,
Melchior considers it ridiculous that the Church makes the adolescents go on charity visits to
the poor out of “opferfreudigkeit” (Wedekind, 27): “Kann der Geizige dafür, daß es ihm keine
Freude macht, zu schmutzigen kranken Kindern zu gehen. […] Und doch soll er dafür des
ewigen Todes sterben!” (27). In Spring Awakening, Melchior does not doubt the reasoning
behind the visits to the poor. Instead, he wonders whether those “Sunday School deeds really
make a difference” (Sater, 38), as the “Industry is fast determining itself firmly against them”
(38). Wedekind’s Melchior does not so much hate the weaker, lower class, but lacks empathy
towards them – to refer back to the conversation on the female sexual experience, he does not
like to be associated with a situation in which he is dependent on the charity, the “Almosen”,
of another. The musical’s Melchior is indeed able to show that empathy.
43
In the musical, Melchior also wishes for a “more progressive world” in which boys
and girls “could all attend the same school” (38). In this political statement, he emphasises
Sater’s newly created taboo for a second time: instead of staying away from the weaker
gender, Melchior pleads for a situation where boys and girls are confronted with each other on
a daily basis. Sater seems to have used an earlier conversation between Melchior and Moritz
in Wedekind’s version of the narrative as a source of inspiration. Here, Moritz thinks of a
solution for the overriding sense of shame plaguing future teenagers like him:
“Wenn ich Kinder haben, Knaben und Mädchen, so lasse ich sie von früh auf im nämlichen
Gemach, wenn möglich auf ein und demselben Lager, zusammenschlafen, lasse ich sie
morgens und abends beim An- und Auskleiden einander behilflich sein” (Wedekind, 12)
In response, Melchior approves of the idea, but wonders what would happen in such a
situation when the girls start giving birth, explaining his belief in the natural sexual instincts
of humanity. However, he hesitantly adds he does not know about female instincts: “Nicht,
daß das Mädchen gerade… Man kann das ja freilich so genau nicht beurteilen…” (13). As
this remark and the conversation on the female sexual experience later on proves, he is unable
to envision the experience of a female as a sexual being. Sater’s Melchior, on the other hand,
longs to “truly talk” (Sater, 38) with and get to know the opposite gender: he wants to go to
school with them to get an even better picture of those creatures that he does not know well.
Nevertheless, Melchior’s lack of empathy and, indeed, egoism in the play culminate in
the way he treats Wendla during the hayloft scene. Even though Wendla begs him to stop,
Melchior proceeds to rape her. During that process, he actually explains his view on life is
based on the concept of egoism: “O glaub mir, es gibt keine Liebe! – Alles ist Eigennutz, alles
Egoismus! – Ich liebe dich so wenig, wie du mich liebst” (Wedekind, 43). During the hayloft
scene in the musical, Melchior is not sure about the existence of love – “Love? I don’t know –
is there such a thing?” (Sater, 58) – but he is definitely set on making love to Wendla. He
awaits her approval and subsequently touches her to deliver her pleasure: While he “reaches
inside Wendla’s undergarments, [and] strokes her gently”, Wendla sighs: “Now, there – now,
that’s... […] Yes” (Sater, 61). In the scenes that follow, he repeatedly shows empathy for
Wendla’s situation. While he is in the reformatory, he sends her letters, revealing his plans to
“build another world” together, and to “let ourselves breathe and move again in that Paradise”
(79) they found themselves in during the hayloft scene. For Wedekind’s Melchior, that ability
44
to feel empathy only comes after the hayloft scene. Fully aware and ashamed of what he has
done to Wendla, he puts himself in a woman’s place for the first time:
“Wenn ich an sie denke, schießt mich immer das Blut in den Kopf… […] Sie haßt mich – sie
haßt mich, weil ich sie der Freiheit beraubt. Handle ich, wie ich will, es bleibt
Vergewaltigung. – Ich darf einzig hoffen, im Laufe der Jahre allmählich…” (Wedekind, 70)
Consequently, he wants to do everything to make Wendla’s situation as bearable as he can. In
a letter sent to Wendla, he writes “daß ihm seine Handlungsweise keine Ruhe lasse, er habe
sich an ihr versündigt” and that he “werde indesse natürlich für alles einstehen” (68). He also
adds that “der Fehltritt könne auch zu ihrem Glück führen” (68). Subsequently, when he sees
her gravestone, he feels more guilt about what he has done to her: “Ich bin ihr Mörder” (79).
However, in the final scene Melchior’s offence towards Wendla is not even considered to be
an offence by Moritz’s ghost or the Masked Man. Even more so, the latter assures Melchior
he is not the one who put an end to Wendla’s life: “Sie war musterhaft gebaut. Sie ist lediglich
den Abortivmitteln der Mutter Schmidtin erlegen” (83). Instead, Melchior is praised for the
way in which he has been active in making choices in his own life. As for Sater’s Melchior,
he was never guilty of anything – only of breaking with the moral constraints put on him by
the adult world: the flawed hero has been replaced by a hero of the resistance against the
society from which he originates.
6.4.
Conclusion: Making It Your Own
Whereas transposition provides a way to stay close to the original work and analogy serves to
depart from it entirely, commentary makes it possible for the adapter to make the words of
another his own.
Sater rejects the idea that a woman’s natural disposition is one of weakness, replacing
it with a situation of equality between genders. In addition, he opposes Wedekind by arguing
that suicide is not an act of weakness, presenting the story’s suicidal character as a victim
rather than a loser. Finally, Sater is against the idea of a hero with a flawed personality,
replacing Melchior’s anti-social behaviour with a sense of social awareness.
45
7. Conclusion
Wagner’s classification system has definitely been useful in structuring the adaptation of
taboos from Frühlings Erwachen to Spring Awakening. Firstly, it has been demonstrated how
Sater has transposed three taboos he considered to be of importance in the way he sees the
narrative. In addition, the taboos referred to as analogy adaptations show how he has used the
technical infidelity of song to generate creative infidelity in the storyline. Finally, the
commentary taboos on weak femininity, suicide and flawed heroes suggest a different
mindset, quite possibly connected to the timeframe in which the work was written – a
suggestion one could write another entire thesis about. Quintessentially, these findings
support the idea that an adaptation is never just a transposition, analogy or commentary, but
always a combination of those factors. However, they also indicate the three types do not
appear as separate entities within one adaptation. Even though these findings have been
presented per type in separate chapters, they interact and intertwine with each other, creating a
link between the faithful and unfaithful parts, namely, the taboos, of the reworking.
Sater has transposed the taboos on adult inferiority, adolescent authority and the taboo
on sexuality without any interference. Also, both works equally warn for the dangers the
taboo on sexuality creates in the life of an adolescent. Fundamentally, the analogy taboo on
sexual abuse is a continuation of that taboo. However, the two other taboos, linked to the
Product of Morality, are balanced out differently in each version: whereas Wedekind mainly
emphasises the responsibility of an adolescent, the destructive idea that an adult has absolute
authority over a teenager’s life is considered to be more important. The taboos defined as
analogies are in fact extensions of that new balance: the taboos on critical thought and sexual
abuse are created by the adult world to constrain the adolescent world. The same can be said
about one of the commentary taboos: Moritz’s new status as a victim stresses once more the
parents are to blame for the tragedy of the play. These findings support the idea that referring
to the changes Sater has made to the narrative as “censorship” – as Franzen did – is cutting
short what Sater actually has done. Most importantly, Spring Awakening is a rereading of
Frühlings Erwachen that contributes to the intertext around the original narrative. The
alterations re-emphasise some of Wedekind’s moral intent. At the same time, it criticises
Wedekind’s moral views: just like Melchior in the classroom scene, Sater relies on the idea
that there should always be room for critical thought and interpretation, even in creative
writing.
46
8. Epilogue
It is exiting to realise Spring Awakening, as a musical, is also subject to adaptation itself. In a
few years time, the musical will be adapted for the screen by Terminator director McGee,
with “the assistance of Steven Sater” (Wigler10). In addition, several theatre companies have
already taken Sater’s piece and made it their own. In June 2011, I myself finally had the
opportunity to see a performance of Spring Awakening, produced by Scottish theatre company
Sell A Door and performed at the Greenwich Theatre in London.
The cast of Sell A Door Theatre Company’s 2011 production of Spring Awakening
The staging and choreography were different from the Broadway production, but the music,
lyrics and dialogue were the same. Nevertheless, just before the intermission, something
remarkable happened during the hayloft scene. Without changing the text, and only through
stage directions, Wendla became the one to instigate the sexual intercourse. Here, her words
of refusal were acted out in an ironic, light manner and in no way served the goal of selfdefence; she uttered the words “we’re not supposed to”, while pulling Melchior close to her.
This version presented a passive Melchior and a very much active Wendla: the exact
opposites of the leading characters Frühlings Erwachen introduces. The change had a
profound effect on the balance of the narrative: the passive nature of femininity had
disappeared completely, and so had Wendla’s everlasting innocence. When the curtain fell for
intermission, I was quite flabbergasted: could they have strayed any further away from
10
Wigler, J., “McG Brings ‘Spring Awakening’ from Broadway to Hollywood” <
http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2009/04/14/mcg-brings-spring-awakening-from-broadway-to-hollywood/> 27
September 2011.
47
Wedekind’s original work? Initially, I felt shocked about the fact this theatre company felt
like they could change such an important part of the story. However, soon I realised I had
experienced what Jonathan Franzen probably felt when he was watching the Broadway
version of Spring Awakening: a work he loved had been altered quite a bit. The adaptation of
adaptation I had witnessed here symbolises the moral intent of these adapters and an
interesting continuation of the debate around the narrative Wedekind once created. This was
their take on it: so, let that be their story.
48
Appendix
Summary of Frühlings Erwachen
Act I
Frau Bergmann gives her daughter Wendla a long dress on her fourteenth birthday. Wendla
asks her mother if she can wear her old, short dress for one more summer and says she
sometimes dreams she will never reach adulthood. Shocked, Frau Bergmann allows Wendla
to wear the old dress, but worries she might catch a cold. Wendla teases her mother by saying
she will be dressed like a “fairy queen” underneath the long dress once she wears it.
Elsewhere, a group of schoolboys complain about their homework. They all go home, except
for Moritz Stiefel and Melchior Gabor. Moritz explains how much pressure his parents put on
him when it comes to academic results. Melchior and Moritz first talk about school some
more and then about “shame”. Melchior deems it a natural feeling, but according to Moritz, it
is a product of somebody’s upbringing. Hesitantly, Moritz asks Melchior about his
experiences with sexual “stirrings”, explaining how his own dreams about legs in blue
stockings scare him to death. He feels horrible about his sexual feelings and thinks he is a
disappointment to his parents, without knowing how he became their son in the first place.
Melchior says he knows about sex from books and observations of nature – he only felt
slightly ashamed after his first wet dreams. He realises his friend has no knowledge about
reproduction at all and offers to tell him everything, but Moritz asks him to write it down
instead. Melchior calls his friend a girl, but promises to do what he asks.
Wendla and her friends Thea and Martha are outside enjoying the rough weather.
Martha tells the other girls her parents beat and mistreat her. They talk about how they would
raise their own future children differently. They agree you have to be married to have
children, but also realise marriage does not automatically lead to children. All of them would
rather have sons than daughters. Martha says she would have been happier as a boy herself,
but Wendla thinks it is better to be loved by a man than a woman: therefore, it is better to be a
girl. When the girls see Melchior pass by, Thea swoons. To Thea’s disgust, Martha prefers
Moritz. Wendla informs her friends that Melchior does not believe in God, the afterlife, or
anything else.
Back in school, Moritz has sneaked into the Headmaster’s office to discover he has
passed his exams. In a jubilant state, he tells his classmates the good news. Two teachers see
49
Melchior and Moritz leaving the school grounds together and wonder how it is possible the
best student of the school has befriended Moritz, the worst. Later, Melchior and Wendla
stumble upon each other in the forest. They discuss the charity visits Wendla makes to the
poor. Melchior explains he does not believe in the joy of self-sacrifice the Church encourages;
in turn, Wendla tells him she does not understand why he will not get confirmed – even just to
please his mother. Wendla then says she fantasises about being beggar child, physically
abused by her father. Melchior thinks no child is ever improved by beatings and is shocked to
hear Wendla’s friend Martha is often mistreated by her parents. Explaining she has never been
beaten before, Wendla asks Melchior to hit her. He refuses at first, but as she persists, he
breaks and succumbs her to a violent beating. Suddenly, he stops and flees.
Act II
Moritz visits Melchior and tells him about the strange feelings he has been experiencing for
the last couple of days. He has been working hard, but keeps falling asleep in class. When he
listens to the sound of nature outside, he thinks of a story his grandmother used to tell him
about a queen without a head, who met a king with two heads who gave her one of his. Moritz
explains how he keeps seeing girls without a head. He imagines himself to be headless and
thinks that one day somebody might put a new head on him. Frau Gabor enters and comments
on Moritz looking unwell; she tells him health is more important than school. She notices the
boys are reading Faust and wonders whether the book is appropriate for them. However, she
trusts the judgment of her son: as long as he does not give her reason to deny him things, he is
wise enough to realise what is good for him.
Frau Gabor leaves. Moritz tells Melchior he has read the essay his friend wrote for
him. He is fascinated about the girl’s passive role during sexual intercourse and envies that
position. Melchior refuses to imagine what a woman feels and stresses he could not envy her
position, because he does not want anything without fighting for it. Meanwhile, Frau
Bergmann informs Wendla the stork has brought her sister Ina another baby. Wendla says she
does not believe in the stork anymore, threatening to ask the chimney sweep to tell her where
babies come from if her mother refuses to tell her. Reluctantly, Frau Bergmann says that, in
order to have a child, a woman must love her husband as she can only love him, with all her
heart and soul, in a way of which somebody of Wendla’s age is simply incapable. When
Wendla leaves to visit Ina, Frau Bergmann reminds herself to sew a ruffle on the bottom of
Wendla’s dress.
50
Hanschen Rilow is masturbating while looking at a reproduction of Palma Il Vecchio’s
Venus. In the past he has stolen other nude pictures from his father’s secret cabinet and his
brother’s lecture notes. Accusing Venus of eating away his brain by remaining in such a
chaste position, he says he feels sorry about having to murder her. He throws the picture in the
toilet and closes the lid.
Wendla finds Melchior hiding in a hayloft. Melchior, still ashamed about the beating,
tries to make her go away at first. When she comes closer to him, he becomes aroused. He
kisses a protesting Wendla, declaring love is not real and all is selfishness. Eventually, he
rapes her.
Frau Gabor writes a letter to Moritz, who has failed his classes after all. He asks her
for financial help so that he can run away. Subsequently, he expresses that he is thinking
about killing himself if he cannot leave. She explains that fleeing and suicide are no solutions:
he just has to keep his head up high. Meanwhile, Wendla wanders around in the Bergmann’s
garden. Confused, but smiling, she says she is ready to put the longer dress on, and wishes
there was somebody she could talk to. After receiving the letter, Moritz takes a gun out by the
river to kill himself. Just before he is about to pull the trigger, Ilse stumbles upon him. The
young girl tells of the past few days, which she spent in the city with a group of dangerous
bohemian artists. On her way home, she asks whether Moritz would like to go home with her.
He refuses, but as soon as Ilse has gone, Moritz wishes he had said yes. He burns Frau
Gabor’s letter and proceeds to kill himself.
Act III
The teachers gather to discuss Moritz’s suicide, but spend more time talking about whether or
not to open a window than the matter at hand. The essay on copulation they found in Moritz’s
belongings is considered to have been influential in Moritz’s decision to kill himself – looking
at the handwriting, they realise Melchior is the author. Despite an attempt to defend himself
against the accusation, the essay is deemed a sign of moral insanity. As a result, Melchior is
expelled. Sometime later, during Moritz’s funeral, Pastor Kahlbauch and other adults call
Moritz’s suicidal act profane and selfish: Rentier Stiefel disowns his son. As the adults leave,
the adolescents come to pay their last respects. Ilse shows Martha Moritz’s gun: she found it
close to his headless corpse and keeps it as a souvenir. In the meantime, Melchior’s parents
discuss their son’s future. Frau Gabor thinks the school uses him as a scapegoat for something
for which he is not responsible. Herr Gabor disagrees and talks about the depraved nature of
51
his son’s writing: he thinks their son should be sent to a reformatory. Frau Gabor refuses, until
her husband shows her a letter his son wrote to Wendla about the things he did to her. In this
letter, Melchior says he takes responsibility of his actions and he proposes to find happiness
together elsewhere.
In the reformatory, a group of boys is playing a masturbation game. Melchior keeps
away from the group. He feels horrible about having raped Wendla and hopes that one day
she will forgive him. In addition, he thinks of a way to escape the reformatory. Meanwhile, a
doctor visits an ill Wendla and tells her she has anaemia. However, her mother informs her
she is pregnant and points out how her daughter has ruined the Bergmann reputation. Soon,
Wendla realises her mother did not tell her what she needed to know. Frau Bergmann tells her
she treated Wendla as she was treated by her own mother. Schmid’ts Mutter arrives to
perform an abortion.
Later that night, Melchior has successfully escaped. Exhausted, he ends up in a
cemetery. There, he discovers Wendla’s gravestone and realises she died because of his
actions. Suddenly, the ghost of Moritz emerges, carrying his head under his arm. Glorifying
the passivity of death, he tries to convince Melchior to join him in the hereafter. Before
Melchior has the chance to give in, a Masked Man appears to convince Melchior to live on.
He explains that Wendla has died of an unnecessary abortion and that Melchior will feel
better after he has had a warm meal. Melchior decides to live on after he hears the Masked
Man’s Product of Morality. Moritz admits he lied about the afterlife: he hates it. After
Melchior has said goodbye to his old friend, he walks away with the Masked Man, leaving
Moritz behind.
Summary of Spring Awakening
Act I
Wendla Bergmann sings Mama Who Bore Me, a prophetic song about her mother’s refusal to
sexually educate her. Then, her mother appears and comments on the shortness of her dress.
She proceeds to tell Wendla the stork brought her sister another baby. Wendla informs her
mother she does not believe in the stork anymore and asks her to explain how ‘it’ happens.
After refusing at first, her mother tells her daughter that, in order to conceive a child, a
woman must love her husband as she can only love him, with her whole heart. Wendla is
joined by a group of girls; together, they sing a reprise of Mama Who Bore Me.
52
In school, Herr Sonnenstich tells off Moritz Stiefel for reciting the wrong conjunction
of a Latin sentence. When Melchior suggests this new conjunction could be seen as an
interesting re-interpretation of the old text, Herr Sonnenstich hits him with his cane and urges
him to proceed with the right conjunction. Melchior sings about the frustrating boundaries the
adult world provides for him in All That’s Known. On a whispering volume, Moritz then
thanks Melchior and explains he could not think of the right answer because he hardly slept
the night before; he suffered inexplicable, horrific phantasms about legs in blue stockings.
Melchior realises his friend has experienced his first wet dreams. All the boys in the class sing
about their repressed eroticism in The Bitch of Living. After class, Melchior explains he
knows what Melchior is “suffering from” and proposes to write an essay for him with the
necessary information on the topic. Meanwhile, Herr Knockenbruch and Fraulein
Knuppeldick pass by the boys and wonder how it is that Melchior, one of their top students,
has befriended one of the worst, Moritz.
Wendla, Anna, Thea and Martha are talking about a friend who is getting married and
who they would like to marry. Martha really likes Moritz, while the others swoon over
Melchior and the fact that he does not believe in anything at all. The girls are joined onstage
by the boys and together they sing about their sexual urges in My Junk. Halfway through the
song, we see how Georg fantasises about his piano teacher Fraulein Grossebustenhalter. There
is also attention for Hanschen, who masturbates while looking at a painting on a postcard.
Occasionally, he is disturbed by his parents knocking on the bathroom door.
In Melchior’s study, Moritz tells Melchior he hardly slept after reading Melchior’s
essay, “The Art of Sleeping With”. Frau Gabor enters to bring tea and Moritz tells her he has
been up all night studying. She replies, saying health is more important than school. She is
surprised to find out the boys are reading Faust, but muses that they are probably old enough
to decide what is good for them and what is not. After she has left the room, Moritz goes on to
explain he cannot stop thinking about the female sexual experience: he cannot get his head
around it. Melchior explains you just have to imagine, and then does so in Touch Me. Halfway
through the song, we see Melchior and Moritz talk about the sexual act and Moritz fleeing
away. Frau Gabor comes in to clear the tea, wondering whether Faust is really the best thing
for the boys and then leaves. The song comes to a close. Sometime later, Wendla and
Melchior run into each other in the woods and talk about the dangers the looming industry
causes for the poor. Melchior muses about schools where boys and girls go to together. They
lay down by a river for a while. In The Word of Your Body, they sing about the electricity they
53
feel between their bodies and how they realise they are going to “wound” each other
eventually.
In the schoolyard, a group of students gather around Moritz. Apparently, he sneaked
into the headmaster’s office without being seen. Overjoyed, he tells the other pupils –
including Melchior – that he has passed the middle-term exams. Herr Knockenbruch and
Fraulein Knuppeldick pass by referring to the small capacity of the upper-grade classroom. In
unison, they decide to fail Moritz for his final exams. Meanwhile, Martha tells her friends
Wendla, Thea and Anna how her father and mother mistreat her on a daily basis. Wendla is
exceptionally interested in this. Martha explains she will not flee her home because she does
not want to end up like runaway Ilse. Martha is joined by Ilse and together they sing about the
sexual abuse they also suffer from when they are home in The Dark I Know Well.
Moritz finds out he failed his exams, while Melchior is writing in his journal about
Parentocracy in the Secondary Education. Wendla runs into Melchior again and tells him
about Martha’s beatings. She adds that she has been fantasising about undergoing the same
fate and subsequently asks him to beat her. At first he refuses, but when she explains she
wants it because she has never felt anything in her life, he obliges. Melchior strikes her softly,
but then loses himself and beats her severely. Suddenly realising what he is doing, he flees
into the woods, leaving Wendla on the ground, sobbing.
At home, Moritz asks his father what would happen if he failed school. Herr Stiefel
realises Moritz has indeed failed. He repeatedly strikes his son and utters his disappointment
by explaining how his failure puts him and his wife to shame in the eyes of society and the
Church. Somewhat later, Moritz receives a letter from Frau Gabor. It turns out to be a reply to
a request for financial help – Moritz either wants run away or commit suicide. She writes she
cannot give him the money he requests and tells him to forget his suicidal thoughts: she urges
him to keep his head high and carry on. Moritz expresses his disappointment about what she
has written in And Then There Were None.
Still distraught about what he has done to Wendla, Melchior hides in a hayloft, whilst
singing The Mirror-Blue Night. Wendla comes in and comments on the fact that Moritz has
been missing all day. She apologises for what she has asked Melchior to do earlier. Melchior
apologises for hitting her and then asks her to leave. Wendla comes closer to him and cradles
her head against his chest. All of a sudden, Melchior kisses Wendla and presses his body
towards her: he wants to have sex. At first, Wendla refuses, but as Melchior points out it will
make them feel something, she pulls him towards her. A background choir sings I Believe,
while Melchior makes love to Wendla.
54
Act II
In church, Father Kahlbauch delivers a sermon on the importance of honouring parents and
educators. Meanwhile, Wendla and Melchior express the strange feelings they have after their
sexual encounter in The Guilty Ones. Moritz abruptly bursts onstage, waving everybody
away. In Don’t Do Sadness, he sings about his wish to lose all the pressure that is on his head
– he is about to kill himself, but he will not cry about it anymore. He gets his gun out of his
pocket, but is frightened by Ilse, who suddenly wanders onstage. Ilse recounts how she has
been living a dangerous life in the bohemian artist colony Priapia, working as an artist model.
In Blue Wind, she reminisces over the childhood she and Moritz shared with Melchior and
Wendla. Ilse, on her way to her old house, then invites Moritz to join her. Moritz refuses and
tells her he has lots of homework to do. He reprises Don´t Do Sadness; Ilse joins in with Blue
Wind. After Ilse has left, Moritz wishes he had said yes to her offer. He announces he will be
an angel now – he puts a gun in his mouth – the light fades out. Sometime later, a group
gathers on the cemetery around Moritz’s coffin, each offering a flower. Herr Stiefel stands by
the grave. Melchior comes onstage to sing Herr Stiefel’s thoughts in Left Behind. At the end
of the song, Herr Stiefel collapses in grief.
Herr Knockenbruch and Fraulein Knuppeldick come together to discuss how to battle
the epidemic of teenage suicides at hand. They call Melchior to the headmaster’s office and
confront him with the essay on copulation, found among Moritz’s belongings. They prohibit
Melchior from explaining what he did; they only want to hear whether he is the author of the
essay. Melchior laments his cumbersome situation in Totally Fucked. He then admits he wrote
the essay. Meanwhile, in a vineyard, Hanschen and Ernst experience a homosexual rendezvous and sing a reprise of The Word of Your Body.
An ill Wendla is in her bedroom, reading a letter Melchior sent her. Doctor von
Brausepulver comes in and tells her she is anaemic, but then whispers something different in
Frau Bergmann’s ear. After the doctor leaves, Frau Bergmann tells Wendla she is pregnant.
When she realises the evening in the hayloft was the cause, she desperately asks her mother
why she never told her. In reply, Frau Bergmann hits her and then demands to know who got
her pregnant. While Wendla sings about the importance of reputation and that she accepts the
consequences of what she has done in Whispering, Herr and Frau Gabor decide to send
Melchior to a reformatory.
There, Melchior reads a letter from Wendla. A group of boys is playing a masturbation
game, but then notice Melchior and start to bully him, threatening him with a razor. They grab
55
the letter and read aloud, to Melchior’s surprise, that Wendla is pregnant. Melchior breaks
free, steals the razor and runs away. Meanwhile, Frau Bergmann drops Wendla off by Herr
Schmidt for an abortion. Some days later, Thea, Anna, Martha and Ilse gather around a letter
Melchior sent to Ilse, instructing her to bring Wendla to the graveyard at Midnight: he is
planning to start a new life with her. The girls lament the fact that Melchior does not know
what has happened to Wendla.
At Midnight, Melchior reaches the graveyard, set to start a new life with Wendla.
Then, he discovers Wendla’s gravestone – which states she died of anaemia – and realises she
must have died from an abortion. Dedicated to follow Moritz’s actions, he grabs the razor he
is still carrying with him and puts it to his throat, until, all of a sudden, the ghost of Moritz
appears. Soon, he is joined by Wendla, and both of them urge him to live on in Those You’ve
Known: they promise to look over him always. After the ghosts have left, Melchior decides to
live on to learn about everything the world has to offer. In the coda, all the boys, girls and
adults sing The Song of Purple Summer.
56
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