About the work
Iphigenie in Delphi is a three-act verse drama by Gerhart Hauptmann, written in the summer of 1940 and first published by S. Fischer Verlag in 1941. It forms the conclusion of his Atriden-Tetralogie (Tetralogy of the House of Atreus), yet was the first of the four plays to reach the stage: it premiered on 15 November 1941, Hauptmann's 79th birthday, at the Schauspielhaus Berlin, directed by Jürgen Fehling.
Plot
Over two days at the temple of Apollo in Delphi, the siblings Iphigenia, Electra and Orestes meet without at first recognising one another, each seeking atonement for their family's bloody history. In the end Iphigenia willingly leaps to her death from the Phaedriades cliffs, bound by an oath to the gods that forbids her, as a mortal, from returning home.
Cultural significance
Unlike Goethe, Hauptmann casts the ancient material in Christian terms: his Iphigenia is not a humane rescuer but a wholly sacrificed figure who finds redemption in death. Written during the Second World War, the play reached the stage before the chronologically earlier parts of the tetralogy.