Niklas Mitteregger

Ephraim Cabot has built his farm in New England up out of nothing, through hard work and the sweat of his brow and he keeps his three sons in line with Puritan discipline. However, instead of handing on the fruits of their collective toil to the next generation, he introduces the young Abbie to them as his bride, thereby unleashing a tragedy of ancient dimensions. While the elder brothers entirely abandon any hope of inheriting from their father and follow the call of gold to California, a fateful triangle develops between his youngest son   Eben, his father and his step-mother – and Abbie too raises a claim to the farm that Eben is willing to defend by any means.

Hamsun’s trilogy tells the story of a man who feels he has been overlooked by the elites that set the tone and cheated of social recognition. The philosopher Ivar Kareno evolves from a 30-year-old radical and anti-liberal writer on the fringes of poverty into a 40-year-old private tutor to the two sons of a businessman in a distant coastal region. Here Kareno sits brooding in his writing tower, while an infectious fever descends on people, arriving from the North, the businessman Otermann is driven mad by his wealth and a strange man wanders between the houses, rumoured to be justice. Ten years later, the 50-year-old Kareno is still hoping for a major turning point in his life. And he will indeed reach a milestone where he must decide whether he will remain true to the radical ideas of his youth or to pursue a career that is more measured politically.   

When Goethe set «Götz von Berlichingen» down on paper in 1771 in a true writing frenzy, the 22-year-old writer was still a complete unknown. This came to an abrupt end with the publication of «Götz», as suddenly the young poet was being talked about everywhere. Goethe’s early work is a powerful stage epic with over fifty locations, several plots running in parallel and a huge cast of characters. What is more: Goethe dispensed with all the customary conventions that 18^th century drama had been using up to that point.