Siegfried is a play written in 1928 by French dramatist Jean Giraudoux

Jean Giraudoux

Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...

, adapted from his own 1922 novel Siegfried et le Limousin. The novel had launched Giraudoux's literary career, and now the play based upon it established his reputation as a playwright. "It [Siegfried] marked the beginning of a productive, lifelong collaboration with actor-director Louis Jouvet

Louis Jouvet

Louis Jouvet was a renowned French actor, director, and theatre director.- Life :Overcoming speech impediments and sometimes paralyzing stage fright as a young man, Jouvet's first important association was with Jacques Copeau's Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, beginning in 1913...

, whom Giraudoux credits with transforming his literary plays into theater pieces."

Original productions

Siegfried was translated into English in 1930 by Philip Carr and again in 1964 by Phyllis La Farge and Peter H. Judd.

Siegfried was first performed on 3 May 1928 in Paris at the Comedie des Champs-Elysees

Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées is a theatre at 15 avenue Montaigne. Despite its name, the theatre is not on the Champs-Élysées but nearby in another part of the 8th arrondissement of Paris....

 in a production by Louis Jouvet

Louis Jouvet

Louis Jouvet was a renowned French actor, director, and theatre director.- Life :Overcoming speech impediments and sometimes paralyzing stage fright as a young man, Jouvet's first important association was with Jacques Copeau's Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, beginning in 1913...

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Plot

We are introduced to Siegfried as the new national hero of Germany, an amnesiac survivor of WWI who sprang from unknown origins to lead the country into a new period of modernization and prosperity. Baron von Zelten opposes Siegfried's project, loving the old German folk traditions. He also is one of the only Germans to know the truth about the new leader: he is actually a French soldier and writer, Jacques Forestier. A field nurse, Eva, had nursed back to health knowing his real nationality but taking advantage of his amnesia to reeducate him as a German. In hopes of preserving the cultural heritage of his people, Zelten brings Siegfried's lover, Genevieve, to the German town of Gotha, ostensibly to give lessons in French, but really in hopes that she may restore his memory. Ironically, Zelten and Genevieve dash Siegfried's self-conception as the symbol of a new Germany precisely by revealing the soldier's true identity. A struggle ensues between the notion of identity as defined by one's birth and blood ties, and the idea that identity is something one can create in a vacuum; Eva and Genevieve take these opposing points of view, attempting to help the national hero of Germany. In the course of the political turmoil that results, Zelten is banished, but Siegfried leaves to resume his old life in France with Genevieve.