Slaying of the Dragon: Traditional Summer Festival in the City of Furth im Wald in Upper Palatinate

• Authors: Ulrychová Marta

Title variants

CS

Skolení draka – tradiční letní slavnosti v hornofalckém městě Furth im Wald

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The article deals with the development of a city festival in the Bavarian city of Furth im Wald, whose part also the Drachenstich (Slaying of the Dragon) play is. The play has evolved based on tableaus depicting the fight between Saint George and the Dragon, which used to be part of liturgical Corpus Christi procession. The first mentions come from the 16th century. In the 19th century, it was the German writers Alexander Schöppner and Maximilian Schmidt, and the Czech writer Božena Němcová who paid attention to the Slaying of the Dragon play. After repeated restrictions by the Church, which accumulated more and more from the 18th century, the scene got profane in 1887 – local amateur actors performed a new and longer text written by the teacher Heinrich Schmidt. He extended dialogs significantly and brought new characters to the play. His version survived until 1953 when Josef Martin Bauer replaced it by a new one, the story of which was set in the period of Hussite wars. The latest version, which was put on the stage in 2007 for the first time, was written by the professional theatre person Alexander Etzel-Ragusa, who also directs the play. The article observes the play’s development from a simple dramatic start to the present 80-minute-long performance, which is the principal axis of the two-week-long city festival. It pays attention to accompanying events, and – by means of a common characteristic of the location – it tries to find out the social conditions that have allowed this traditional phenomenon to be maintained for many years.

Keywords

EN

City festival; Feast of Corpus Christi; folk theatre; Furth im Wald; Josef Martin Bauer; Alexander Etzel-Ragusa

Discipline

• ETHNOLOGY: ETHNOLOGY

• Publisher: The National Institute of Folk Culture
• Journal: Národopisná revue (Journal of Ethnology)
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 28
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 28 - 40

Contributors

author

Ulrychová Marta