Ketten

Ketten ("Chains") is a German play in four acts by Hermann Reichenbach (1869-??)[]

The original text

Ketten ("Chains") is a play in four acts written by the German playwright Hermann Reichenbach (1869- - ). First produced at the Deutschen Theater, Berlin, in 1909, and published in Berlin-Charlottenburg by Verlags-Abteilung der Afa, 1908 and in Hamburg by Deutsch-Nordischer Verlag, 1909.

Translations and adaptations

Best known in its Dutch version called De Familie Lehmann, though the Dutch title Ketenen ("Chains") is also found with reference to a Dutch production in 1913[1].

Louis de Vries made his name playing "Abraham Sender" in De Familie Lehmann, doing it more than 1200 times, also touring the colonies. He billed the play as a Jewish family drama.

Performance history in South Africa

1916: A production featuring Louis de Vries toured to the Dutch Indies in 1916 and was also performed to acclaim in the Theatre Royal, Durban, as well as in Pretoria, Cape Town and elsewhere in the country during stops on their way back to the Netherlands. (They had been re-routed via the Cape because of the closure of the Suez Canal during the war.)

Sources

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100108227

Joseph Walk, Leo Baeck Institute. 1988. Kurzbiographien zur Geschichte der Juden: 1918–1945. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co [2]: p. 307.

Advert, Schager Courant, 24 June 1913: p. 1[3]

Hetty Berg. 2001. Jews on Stage and Stage Jews 1890-1940. In Chaya Brasz and Yosef Kaplan. 2001. Dutch Jews As Perceived by Themselves and by Others: Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Brill.[4]

Spiele für den Unterricht on the website Pangloss[5], Ein Seitenweg zu Kulturgeschichte, Germanistik, Deutsch und Englisch. (Accessed 13 February, 2017)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1928. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel I: 1652-1855. Pretoria: J.H. de Bussy. [6]: pp. 9

Bosman, F.C.L., Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1916. 1980. p 482.

Ludwig Wilhelm Berthold Binge. 1969. Ontwikkeling van die Afrikaanse toneel (1832-1950). Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: pp. 79.

Go to ESAT Bibliography