Von Jelineks experimenteller Adaption der "Maria Stuart" zu den früheren Bearbeitungen des historischen Stoffes im 20. Jahrhunderts

This overview of the adaptations of Mary Stuart’s life in the 20th and 21st century mainly provides a commentary on Elfriede Jelinek’s, Ulrike Maria Stuart (published in 2015), offering a brief survey of one of Brecht’s popular plays dating to 1957 as well as of Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s Mary Stuart (1970), a somewhat „grotesque“ play. It finally considers the historical biography written by Stefan Zweig in 1935. As will be shown, Jelinek refrains from conjuring up the sixteenth- century historical frame which witnessed the confrontation, both personal and ideological, of Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I of England. Nonetheless, she evokes some passages of Schiller’s famous drama on the Queen of Scotland (1800). Jelinek stages the rivalry between two tough protagonists of the twentieth century, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin, known as dangerous terrorists of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) in the Germany of the ‘70s. Just like the two famous queens of the past, Meinhof and Ensslin are presented as two torn contemporary characters dealing with bad advisers and traitors, but above all with their double role as women and fighters. By giving voice to the „Chorus of the Elderly“ and the „Princes in the Tower“, Jelinek reconstructs the generational conflict that has led some young people to embrace an armed guerrilla war against the state. The search for the right cause and the desire to take control of the system, as incarnated in Mary/ Ulrike and Elizabeth/ Gudrun, are precisely the two extremes of a problem that are bound to collide with each other. The conflict cannot be settled through mediation, not even by the Angel that acts as the Court of reason. Catastrophe is inevitable. Ulrike Maria Stuart raises the most urgent issues about women and their struggle for selfdetermination within family, state, and society.