About the work
Der Hofmeister (The Tutor, or The Advantages of Private Education) is a five-act tragicomedy by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, published anonymously in 1774 and initially attributed to Goethe. It was the only one of Lenz's plays to be staged in his lifetime: on 22 April 1778, Friedrich Ludwig Schröder's company premiered it at the Theater am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg.
Plot
The penniless theologian Läuffer becomes tutor to the Prussian Major von Berg and falls in love with his daughter Gustchen; the affair leaves her pregnant, and Läuffer flees in fear of discovery. In his despair he castrates himself, while Gustchen, after losing the child and a long ordeal, is eventually reunited with and married by her cousin Fritz. Läuffer, meanwhile, settles for marriage to a simple farmer's daughter.
Cultural significance
The play is considered one of the major dramas of Sturm und Drang, sharply criticising class-based education and the aristocracy's arbitrary power over private tutors. Bertolt Brecht dedicated a sonnet to Lenz in 1940 and adapted Der Hofmeister for the Berliner Ensemble in 1950, giving the play a second life on twentieth-century stages.