When Kotzebue was exiled to Siberia
The tear gland playwright: August von Kotzebue
Quelle: picture alliance/United Archives
August von Kotzebue was the most famous dramatist of Goethe’s time. On April 23, 1800, he was arrested at the Russian border without giving a reason and promptly banished to Siberia. What happened?
Before Kotzebue was murdered, something else exciting happened in his life. Namely, he was arrested on April 23, 1800 at the Russian border without giving a reason and immediately banished to Siberia. At the border, he was separated from his wife and a few randomly selected children, whom he had taken with him as travel companions. It is Tsar Paul I himself who orders the banishment of the theater director and playwright August von Kotzebue to Siberia. However, it is a kind of banishment de luxe: As soon as he arrived in Siberia, Kotzebue immediately began to write a book about his exile. It was later released under the title The Strangest Year of My Life.
This title is an exaggeration that is absolutely typical for Kotzebue. In reality, he stayed in Kurgan, the destination of his exile, for just 22 days. So after just three weeks he was told out of the blue that his ban was lifted. He immediately travels to Petersburg and meets his wife again. Even if Kotzebue does not find out to the last why he was banished, it turns out why he was suddenly released again: Paul I had fallen into Kotzebue’s old drama “Der alten Leibkutscher Peter III”. He read it and liked it immensely. Here is a synopsis of the drama: The tsar is kind. – End –
Kotzebue was often referred to as the “tear lock director” because everyone had to cry all the time: the audience because Kotzebue’s plays contained such touching scenes; the actors, because Kotzebue’s stage directions said so; and the critics because Kotzebue’s dramas were just so appallingly bad. If there were a worldwide competition for the most boring plays, “The Old Coachman Peter the Third” would certainly end up in the top 1. But one can only ask of a tsar that he oppresses his people and not that he should develop aesthetic taste.
Some say that Goethe was unfair when, after reading Kotzebue’s report on the exile, he wrote: “I am certain that when one of us walks across the meadows from Oberweimar up to Belvedere in spring, we will encounter something a thousand times stranger in nature than that Kotzebue on his whole journey to the end of the world.” That is clear: if Goethe had been banished to Siberia, he would of course have determined all the bark of the trees driving past with his obsession with observation, discovered a color that was still unknown in the color spectrum and 300 carriages full of minerals collected and taken home. Kotzebue, on the other hand, actually only discovered that several of his plays are being performed at the theater in the Siberian town of Tobolsk. But Goethe was not at all unfair, because Kotzebue himself wrote: “The landscapes passed me by unseen.”
August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue (1761 – 1819)
Quelle: picture alliance / imageBROKER
According to the Gregorian calendar, Kotzebue and Paul I were not murdered on the same day, but on the same day: the tsar on March 23, 1801, the theater thousand sasa on March 23, 1819. There are two possible explanations for this coincidence of dates. First: It is very strange and mystical, since the world spirit always allows itself grotesque jokes. Second, it’s not weird at all, it’s completely banal, given that it’s not uncommon for different people to die on the same day.
It is said that all writer’s life is paper. In this series, we provide evidence to the contrary.