Une martyre germanique : Mariamne de Johann Christian Hallmann (1670)

Abstract

The story of Mariamne, who is the victim of a conspiracy and ends up being murdered by her husband Herod, has been treated in several dramatic versions in the Germanic space, from Hans Sachs (Nuremberg, 1552) to Friedrich Hebbel (Vienna,1850). This paper specifically presents the tragedy of the Silesian playwright Johann Christian Hallmann (1670), directly inspired (apart from Josephus) by French writers of the early 17th century, Alexandre Hardy, Gautier Coste de la Calprenède, and probably also Tristan L’Hermite, and of course the heroic harangue of Scudéry, Caussin’s La Cour Sainte and R.P. Le Moyne’s Gallery of strong women. A close reading of the work shows that beyond the single motive of jealousy and the destructive madness of the sovereign, Hallmann moves the subject towards a reflection on the mechanisms of tyranny of which many virtuous women fall victim in history, as well as on the fatal role of deceitful schemers who corrupt the law – a transparent analogy of the political situation prevailing in Protestant Silesia, which appears as a martyr submitted to the absolute power of the Catholic Habsburg ruler/ sovereign.

Keywords

• politics
• Silesia
• tyranny
• strong women
• martyrdom
• deceitful persons