[In the following review, Mahlendorf outlines scenes from In Goethes Hand, pronouncing the play's portrayal of the psychological and social dynamics of oppression successful.]

Martin Walser's recent play In Goethes Hand is a fascinating study of a great man and his human, all too human relationships. The title is a pun on “In Gottes Hand.” Walser's Goethe is indeed God, and Eckermann, in this drama's three parts, is his most devoted servant and priest. The play shows the continual and ambivalent fascination which the national literary idol has exercised over German writers. Like Peter Hacks in his Frau von Stein monologue (see WLT 57:1, p. 97), Walser does not focus on the great man himself but rather on his subordinates and dependents, on Eckermann, on Goethe's son and daughter-in-law and on the servants and retinue of his household. From their perspective the great man appears as gratuitously egocentric, obsessed with his role as national treasure, wholly out of touch with contemporary reality. Manipulated by his family, duped by his servants, Goethe abuses the only real devotee he has, Eckermann. To be sure, Eckermann came to Weimar as a young law student to seek Goethe's help. But the price he pays for doing so is phenomenal.

The first part of the play, entitled “Faith” (part headings are taken from 1 Corinthians 13) shows Goethe at the age of seventy-four and Eckermann at thirty; Eckermann appears as the true believer, ready and willing to sacrifice career, family, his own life's ambition as a writer and, most important, his integrity as a man to the interests of the great poet. In the second part, entitled “Hope,” Eckermann is at the high point of his priesthood. The services he renders to the great man include a paean in which he explains Goethe to himself and to his retinue. In this monologue Walser admirably summarizes Goethe's thought, parodies Eckermann's style and simultaneously produces a malicious portrait of a sycophant whose self-effacement grows ever more suspect in view of his abject submission to Goethe's exploitation of him.

The last part, “Love,” takes place in 1848, long after Goethe's death, and shows Eckermann's service and priesthood continuing. Cheated by Goethe's family of even the monetary reward for his Conversations, Eckermann nevertheless persists in his servitude. His is a love against all self-interest, against the interests of the class of his origin and against those who should be his true concern (his son and his wife). Only in the penultimate scene does Walser let us see why this “unselfish” love persists: Eckermann, asleep, dreams that Goethe is still berating him. The Goethe dream crowds out a counterdream in which his dead wife calls for his attention but is unable to get it. Waking up, Eckermann rejects an idea which his Goethe dream suggested—that his love for Goethe is really hatred—and he grieves because he cannot dream of his wife. His service to the great man therefore turns out to be the product of a servant's mentality. He is unable to take responsibility for his own life, to admit to his hatred for his idol, to liberate himself from the idol and live a life of his own.

The last scene of the play, in which Goethe's daughter-in-law visits Eckermann and abuses him as the family has always done, confirms this interpretation. As usual, Eckermann refuses to stand up for himself (this is shown as a refusal to stand up for his social class). In fact he ends up kissing Ottilie's hand and thanking her for the abuse with “Gern geschehen, gnädige Frau”—“Glad to do it, madam.”

Walser's portrait of Goethe is a cruel one. His analysis of Eckermann's motives and relationships is no less cruel. Some readers may not want to accept these portraits as accurate. Nevertheless, the psychology of oppression by idols and the victim's desire to be oppressed which Walser projects into the Goethe-Eckermann relationship is sound, and the play admirably succeeds in portraying the social and psychological dynamics of such oppression.