The Persians and Die Hermannsschlacht: Two Military Clashes Onstage

Abstract

The paper seeks to identify the parallels between two plays foregrounding historical battles: between Aeschylus’ Persians and Heinrich von Kleist’s Hermannsschlacht. For the most part, this comparison is meaningful only if Kleist’s text is understood as a metaphor for the early 19th century French-Prussian armed conflict, as it is often assumed. Viewed in this light, the two plays reveal both fascinating similarities and surprising differences. The Persians stresses the differences between the Greek and Persian attitudes to freedom and slavery, but avoids hinting at the collective Persian responsibility for their catastrophic defeat. Die Hermannsschlacht, on the other hand, comes as a surprise with its black-and-white logic, expressed primarily by the titular hero. However, the status of the play as a great patriotic text is challenged by the fact that the hero’s standpoint can hardly be equated with Kleist’s own.