Georg Kaiser, Das Floss der Medusa [„The Raft of the Medusa“], manuscript
![Manuscript: Georg Kaiser, Das Floss der Medusa [„The Raft of the Medusa“]](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/kaiser-georg-das-floss-der-medusa-manuskript-en.jpg?__blob=normal&v=1 "Manuscript: Georg Kaiser, Das Floss der Medusa [„The Raft of the Medusa“]")
Georg Kaiser, Das Floss der Medusa [„The Raft of the Medusa“], manuscript
Und wir müssen den schmerzlichen Sieg des Bösen unter diesen Kindern, die mitleidlos vom totalen Krieg erfasst worden sind, miterleben. Erschüttert werden wir der eigenen Schuld bewußt. Das ist das Große an dieser Kindertragödie von Georg Kaiser; dadurch wird sie zum packenden Dokument unserer Zeit.
[And we have to witness the painful victory of evil among these children, who have been mercilessly caught up in total war. Appalled, we become aware of our own guilt. That is what makes this children’s tragedy by Georg Kaiser so great – it is a gripping testimony of our times. (trans. ed.)]
Review of the première of Georg Kaiser’s Das Floss der Medusa [„The Raft of the Medusa“], Der Bund, 27 February 1945
Georg Kaisers immense creative power remained in full spate after 1933 and during the seven years of his exile in Switzerland. Between 1938 and 1945, he wrote nine dramas in all; these were premièred at theatres in Basel and Zurich and published by Querido and Oprecht. They included the anti-militaristic work Der Soldat Tanaka [Tanaka the Soldier] (premièred in 1940), which was cancelled after only a few performances because of the Japanese envoy’s intervention and on the grounds that Switzerland was bound to remain neutral. They also included the children’s tragedy Das Floss der Medusa [The Raft of the Medusa] (premièred in 1945), inspired by a newspaper report dating from 1940 which described the torpedoing of a refugee ship that was meant to evacuate children from England to Canada. Both works are pacifist, accusatory testimonies to an age of inhumanity: “The writer's condemnation is no longer directed at his political enemies or at a specific system, but rather at humanity as such and at the whole misguided history of the West.” (Schürer, 1973, p. 279) This exhibit is a collage consisting of the first five pages of the manuscript of Das Floss der Medusa, which is kept in the Swiss Literary Archives; the author’s crossings-out and corrections are clearly visible.
Further reading:
Schürer, Ernst: Verinnerlichung, Protest und Resignation. Georg Kaisers Exil. In: Die deutsche Exilliteratur 1933–1945. Hg. von Manfred Durzak. Stuttgart 1973, S. 263–281.
Mittenzwei, Werner: Exil in der Schweiz. Frankfurt am Main: Röderberg-Verlag 1979, S. 267-281.
Kunst und Leben. Georg Kaiser (1878–1945). Hg. von Sabine Wolf. Berlin: Akademie der Künste 2011.
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