Ödön von Horváth: Heavenwards/With the Ead through the Wall

Ödön von Horvth: Heavenwards / Head through the Wall. Edited by Nicole Streitler- Kastberger under the collaboration of Sabine Edith Braun and Martin Vejvar. (= Vienna Edi- tion of the Complete Works. Edited by Klaus Kastberger, Vol. 7) This new volume makes two little-known dramas by Ödön von Horvth, Heavenwards and Head through the Wall accessible to scholars for the first time. Written in the years 1934/35, they document Horvths struggle to find an adequate response to Nazi Germany and to re- position himself as an author and dramatist. The genesis of the dramatic fairytale Heavenwards can be traced back to 1931: as Horvth began to write his popular play Casimir and Caroline, he was working in parallel on a magi- cal farce entitled Heavenwards. However, following the completion of Faith Love Hope (1933), he transformed this early material into a fundamentally different play bearing the same title. The action takes place in parallel in three locations, On Earth, In Heaven and In Hell. Luise, the protagonist, makes a Faustian pact that drives the plot, selling her soul to the devil in exchange for success as an opera singer. She breaks the contract at the last possi- ble moment and renounces her artistic ambitions for the sake of lesser happiness with the former assistant stage director Lauterbach, who in the meantime has become a mere waiter. In this new edition, the source for the plays final version a theatre manuscript published by the nazified Neuer Bühnenverlag is supplemented with sketches and typescripts drafted by Horvth during the run-up to the plays première at the Freie Bühne in der Komödie in Vienna in 1937. The volumes second section is dedicated to the comedy Head through the Wall (1935). Here Horvth takes a (self-)ironic look at the German film business, in which he himself against his better judgment was involved as a screenwriter in the years 1934/35. This new edition shows Horvths working processes, demonstrating how he was gradually able to emanci- pate himself, not only from his dark comedy The Unknown Woman from the Seine from 1933, but also from Hertha Paulis short prose piece Linconnue de la Seine from 1931, which had given him the original impetus to write his own play. It is remarkable how the is- sues of intellectual property and (co)-authorship surrounding the plays conception find their way into the play itself, which is designed as a highly sophisticated, ironic intertextual game. Its complex genesis is reconstructed here beginning with a preliminary version followed by three different draft outlines, each one corresponding to a modification of the plays title: The Unknown Woman from the Seine, Linconnue de la Seine, The Unknown Life and finally Head through the Wall. Three of the plays four final versions are included in the volume, made available both in the original wording of the typescripts as well as in standardized or- thography. In this way, the plays development can be followed for the first time in all its complexity, made transparent not only to scholars, but also to an interested general reader- ship.