The Captain of Köpenick (play)
Encyclopedia
The Captain of Köpenick is a satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 play
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

 by the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 dramatist Carl Zuckmayer
Carl Zuckmayer
Carl Zuckmayer was a German writer and playwright.-Biography:Born in Nackenheim in Rheinhessen, he was four years old when his family moved to Mainz. With the outbreak of World War I, he finished school with a facilitated "emergency"-Abitur and volunteered for military service...

. First produced in 1931, the play tells the story, based on a true event that happened in 1906, of a down-on-his-luck ex-convict shoemaker (Wilhelm Voigt
Wilhelm Voigt
Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt was a German impostor who masqueraded as a Prussian military officer in 1906 and became famous as The Captain of Köpenick ....

) who impersonates a Prussian Guards officer, holds the mayor of a small town to ransom, and successfully "confiscates" the town's treasury, claiming that he has done so in the name of the Kaiser
Kaiser
Kaiser is the German title meaning "Emperor", with Kaiserin being the female equivalent, "Empress". Like the Russian Czar it is directly derived from the Latin Emperors' title of Caesar, which in turn is derived from the personal name of a branch of the gens Julia, to which Gaius Julius Caesar,...

. The Prussian
Kingdom of Prussia
The Kingdom of Prussia was a German kingdom from 1701 to 1918. Until the defeat of Germany in World War I, it comprised almost two-thirds of the area of the German Empire...

 cult of the uniform
Military uniform
Military uniforms comprises standardised dress worn by members of the armed forces and paramilitaries of various nations. Military dress and military styles have gone through great changes over the centuries from colourful and elaborate to extremely utilitarian...

 ensures that the townspeople are all-too willing to obey his orders, in stark contrast to the treatment the hero was given before he donned the uniform. Zuckmayer described the story as a "German fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

".

Plot

The first part of the play deals with the two parallel (and at some points intertwined) stories of Wilhelm Voigt himself and the uniform which plays a central role in the story, which is set in Potsdam
Potsdam
Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....

, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and Köpenick
Köpenick
Köpenick is a historic town and locality that is situated at the confluence of the rivers Dahme and Spree in the south-east of the German capital city of Berlin. It was formerly known as Copanic and then Cöpenick, only officially adopting the current spelling in 1931...

 at around 1900. The uniform is originally made by the Jewish tailor Wormser for the Gardehauptmann (lit. "Captain of the Guard") von Schlettow. But after a scandal in which von Schlettow is arrested by the police in civilian attire as he attempts to peacefully settle a bar brawl, initiated by a drunk grenadier, von Schlettow is forced to retire and the uniform is returned to Wormser. Eventually, the uniform is refitted for Dr. Obermüller, the mayor of Köpenick, for his promotion to Captain, but during a party afterwards the uniform is indelibly stained in an accidental spilling and ends up in a rag shop.

Wilhelm Voigt, a trained shoemaker who has spent most of his life in prison, is released after yet another stint and tries to make an honest living in his advanced age. However, this is doomed to failure even from the outset as the militarized, inflexible society of the late German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

 offers practically nothing to citizens who have not served in the military (a fact which applies to Voigt). This catches him in a vicious circle
Virtuous circle and vicious circle
A virtuous circle and a vicious circle are economic terms. They refer to a complex of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop. A virtuous circle has favorable results, while a vicious circle has detrimental results...

: Without legal registration (just a simple passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....

 would suffice) he can't get any work, and without any work he can't get a legal registration. In the end, a desperate Voigt resorts into breaking into a post office in order to get the passport, while his friend Kalle goes after the money, but both are caught in the process and Voigt once more goes to jail. During his ten-year stint in Sonneberg Prison, however, he gets formal military training, as the warden is a military enthusiast who enlists his convicts into re-enacting famous battles dating back to the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...

.

After his discharge from prison, Voigt moves in with his sister Marie and his brother-in-law, Friedrich Hoprecht, and takes care of their lodger, a sick young girl named Liese. One evening, while reading a fairy tale
Town Musicians of Bremen
The Town Musicians of Bremen is a folktale recorded by the Brothers Grimm. Despite the title of the fairy tale, the characters never actually arrive in Bremen...

 to the girl, Voigt receives the official denial of his permit of residence application; this and Liese's death finally move him into resisting the cruel system he is caught in. He procures the uniform, whose authority by appearance and his trained military bearing enable him to recruit a group of grenadiers right off the street without any questions asked. Voigt and his team proceed to the Köpenick city hall where he has Obermüller and the whole city council arrested, but fails to procure a passport as he had intended (because the passport office is located elsewhere).

The publicity which ensues from this feat label the Hauptmann von Köpenick, as he is nicknamed, a folk hero and prankster, but Voigt himself does not draw any joy from this. At length he surrenders to the authorities in exchange for the promise of a legal registration, providing the uniform to prove his identity as the Hauptmann. The police officers take his confession and surrender with surprisingly good humor, and in the end Voigt asks to see himself in a mirror dressed in the uniform, as he had not had the opportunity to do so yet. The policemen comply, and as he sees himself in the mirror, Voigt begins to laugh in amusement at his own reflection, guffawing the last line in the play: "Impossible!"

Reception

The play was first produced in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1953 and subsequently at the Old Vic
Old Vic
The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...

 by the National Theatre Company
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...

 in 1971, starring Paul Scofield
Paul Scofield
David Paul Scofield, CH, CBE , better known as Paul Scofield, was an English actor of stage and screen...

 as Wilhelm Voigt
Wilhelm Voigt
Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt was a German impostor who masqueraded as a Prussian military officer in 1906 and became famous as The Captain of Köpenick ....

. It has been adapted for film and television
Der Hauptmann von Köpenick
Der Hauptmann von Köpenick is the title of several films, plays, and television shows, all about the Hauptmann von Köpenick affair in 1906.-Plays:*The Captain of Köpenick , 1931, by Carl Zuckmayer-Films:...

 many times.

The plot heavily emphasizes (and satirically criticizes) the proverb "Kleider machen Leute" (English: "Clothes Make the Man") in context with the German Empire's militarized society, in which the high military gets all the social privileges while the little man is left with nothing.

In exploring the situation of a town duped by a character impersonating an authoritative figure, the plays bears some resemblance to Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

's Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 classic, The Government Inspector (1836). Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theatre whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire...

 used a similar dramaturgical structure
Dramaturgy
Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Dramaturgy is a distinct practice separate from play writing and directing, although a single individual may perform any combination of the three. Some dramatists combine writing and...

—the visitor from outside to a provincial town—to satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 ends in The Visit
The Visit
The Visit is a 1956 tragicomic play by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt.-Plot summary:...

(1956).
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