Minna Von Barnhelm
A German Enlightenment Comedy of Honor, Debt, Reconciliation, and Female Wit After the Seven Years' WarBy Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Length2h 37m
About this audiobook
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's *Minna von Barnhelm* (1767) is a five-act comedy set in the unsettled aftermath of the Seven Years' War. Its plot follows Major von Tellheim, an honorable Prussian officer impoverished and disgraced by a false accusation, and Minna, the Saxon noblewoman who loves him and ingeniously counters his wounded pride. Beneath its lively misunderstandings, reversals, and theatrical disguises, the play examines military honor, social prejudice, gendered expectations, and the conflict between personal feeling and rigid moral codes. Written in lucid prose and shaped by humane irony, it belongs to the German Enlightenment's effort to create a national drama distinct from imported French models, while combining the conventions of sentimental comedy with a serious ethical critique. Lessing (1729–1781) was a central figure of the German Enlightenment: dramatist, critic, theorist, and advocate of intellectual and religious tolerance. His engagement with contemporary theater, most fully expressed in the *Hamburgische Dramaturgie*, led him to challenge mechanical neoclassicism and to defend drama as a form of moral and emotional education. The war's political divisions and its disruption of civilian life provided the historical atmosphere in which he explored how inherited institutions shape individual conduct. Readers interested in Enlightenment thought, German theater, or the literary representation of war will find *Minna von Barnhelm* both intellectually substantial and theatrically engaging. Its wit, psychological precision, and balanced treatment of honor and compassion make it an exemplary comedy whose social questions remain remarkably recognizable.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 3.7 (2.4K)
Includes Goodreads, LibraryThing, StoryGraph, Amazon
GenreLiterary Classics
Length2 hrs 37 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateNov 26, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Colleen Bawn; or, the Brides of Garryowen (Annotated)
6ACT II.
2INTRODUCTORY NOTE
7ACT III.
3or, THE SOLDIER'S FORTUNE
8ACT IV.
4DRAMATIS PERSONAE
9ACT V.
5ACT I.
Die berühmtesten Liebesbriefe bekannter KünstlerGotthold Ephraim Lessing, Michelangelo, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Friedrich von Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Prinz Louis Ferdinand, Clemens Brentano, Ludwig van Beethoven, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Eduard Mörike, Richard Wagner, Otto von Bismarck, Martin Luther, Napoleon Bonaparte, Franz Kafka3h 12m4.1 (155)$1 · $0.00
Philosophische BeiträgeGotthold Ephraim Lessing44h 46m$1 · $0.00
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