About the work
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's allegorical festival play was composed in 1815 on the occasion of the return of Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III to Berlin after the victory over Napoleon. The premiere took place on 30 March 1815 at the Prussian Royal Playhouse Berlin in a setting by Bernhard Anselm Weber. The work is Goethe's conscious engagement with the Napoleonic Wars and his only explicitly political commissioned composition.
Plot
The aged sage Epimenides awakens after a decades-long sleep and finds the world transformed. During his sleep evil in the form of the Demon of the Oppressor has seized power and plunged humanity into fear and oppression. With the awakening of Epimenides resistance begins: the gods of Hope, Unity, and Love appear and unite against the demon, who is finally overthrown. The play closes with a triumph chorus on regained freedom.
Cultural significance
Des Epimenides Erwachen is Goethe's most political work and simultaneously his most strongly criticised — the patriotic functionalisation was attacked by contemporaries like Heinrich Heine as opportunistic. The allegorical language is hermetic and scarcely stageable today. The work remains historically important as testimony of the Restoration era and as a rare example of a political Goethe. Performances are rare.