About the work
Agnes Bernauer is a tragedy in five acts by Friedrich Hebbel. Completed in just three months in December 1851, it premiered on 25 March 1852 at the Munich Hof- und Nationaltheater; the printed edition followed in 1855 after the play's resounding stage success.
Plot
Duke Albrecht of Bavaria falls in love with Agnes Bernauer, the commoner daughter of a barber-surgeon, and secretly marries her. His father, Duke Ernst, sees the succession endangered and has Agnes drowned in the Danube in 1435. Only Albrecht's armed revolt brings about a reconciliation between father and son.
Cultural significance
Drawing on a 15th-century Bavarian story, Hebbel stages the conflict between reasons of state and individual right without taking a clear side. Under National Socialism the play saw a boom in productions, read as celebrating the "precedence of state and people over the individual"; avoided after 1945, it is today maintained as Bavarian cultural heritage.