Agnes Bernauer

   by Friedrich Hebbel. Premiered 1852. In some ways, Agnes Bernauer emulates the precedent of class conflict in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Emilia Galotti and Friedrich Schiller's Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love), since the title character is the daughter of the court barber. Her incomparable beauty predictably attracts numerous aristocratic suitors, chief among them Albrecht, heir to the Wittelsbach dynasty in Bavaria. Albrecht, however, is no licentious duke who preys on young women. He sincerely loves her, and she accepts his offer of marriage as an act of God's will. Albrecht's father, Duke Ernst, accepts the situation and allows his son to marry Agnes, but disinherits his son in order to protect the dynasty. He names nephew Adolf as his heir, but when Adolf is killed in a tournament, the duke realizes he must take drastic action. That action is to drown the beautiful and completely innocent Agnes in the Danube River. Agnes's distraught husband Albrecht then launches a revolt against his father and nearly succeeds in killing him; an imperial order conveniently arrives to preserve the duke's life, but it also excommunicates him and bans him from succession to the Bavarian throne. The duke acknowledges his action was wrong from a moral standpoint but insists it was right for "reasons of state." He raises Agnes posthumously to the nobility, then abdicates, leaving Albrecht next in line for royal succession. Hebbel based the play on an actual event in Bavarian history, which took place in the second decade of the 15th century. It benefits from strong characters, especially that of Agnes for a well-accomplished and beautiful actress. It has remained one of Hebbel's most frequently performed plays.