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Utopian Theatre Experiment of Duke George II of Meiningen
Blatný, Tomáš ; Sarkissian, Alena (advisor) ; Jiřík, Jan (referee)
The thesis deals with the theatrical experiment of Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, who together with his spouse Ellen Franz and his manager Ludwig Chronegk built up a utopian community around Meiningen Court Theatre. The thesis does not address the theatrical reform from an aesthetic point of view, it conceptualizes the reform as a realization of a model of utopian community. Prusso-Austrian currents, which shaped the Duke's ideological worldview, are surfacing on the background of the political and cultural context of the Saxe-Meiningen Duchy. The Duke's own attempt at social engineering emerges from the intercestion of these opinion currents, declining enlightenment absolutism and thoughts of French socialist utopians. After foreshadowing these contexts as well as the history of emancipation of the revolutionary working class which the Duke rejected, the thesis reconstructs the Meningen utopia, according to established utopian features: regulation, space-time, isolation and self-sufficiency, authority and community. Sources of the thesis are not only secondary literature on the Meiningen theatre but also period sources and memoires of actors and actresses of the Meningen ensemble.
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