About the work
Gerhart Hauptmann wrote this blank-verse tragedy in seven scenes in the first half of 1916, drawing on a story by Selma Lagerlöf. Max Reinhardt directed the premiere on 17 October 1917 at Berlin's Deutsches Theater, with Helene Thimig as Elsalil and Paul Wegener as Archie.
Plot
In sixteenth-century Sweden, the Scottish mercenary Archie and two companions raid the Solberga rectory and kill the family to steal their treasure. Later, in a delusional state, Archie mistakes the surviving Elsalil for his dead victim and is drawn into an increasingly destructive relationship with her; once she recognizes him as the murderer, he kills her and is himself destroyed in a duel with the murdered pastor's son.
Cultural significance
Contemporary critics were unimpressed — Siegfried Jacobsohn called the play "feeble." Winterballade remains one of Hauptmann's less frequently staged works, though, as a revival in Zittau underlined, its portrait of a traumatized, violent returning soldier has not lost its relevance.