P r i n c e
H a g e n

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«Sinclair's satire on the nexus of protestantism, capitalism and Teutonic mythology is the more remarkable as it was written at a time when Hitler who was to concoct his peculiar ideology out of these elements, had not appeared on the political scene yet and Max Weber's essay on the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism was known to a few specialists only... The central character is an imaginary figure using his inherited Nibelungen gold to control the stock market.» (Gerhard Probst, Erwin Piscator and Upton Sinclair, in: Upton Sinclair: Literature and Social Reform, Frankfurt Bern New York Paris 1990, ed. Dieter Herms)


Characters

Act I
Scene 1. Gerald Isman's tent in Quebec.
Scene 2. The Hall of State in Nibelheim.

Act II
Library in the Isman home on
Fifth Avenue: two years later.

Act III
Conservatory of Prince Hagen's
palace on Fifth Avenue.
The wind-up of the opening ball:
four months later.

Act IV
Living room in the Isman camp
in Quebec: three months later.



The play premiered under the author's direction at the Valencia Theatre, San Francisco, in January, 1909.

On December 5, 1920 Erwin Piscator produced a German version of «Prince Hagen» at his Proletarian Theatre («Proletarisches Theater» Berlin). The stage design was by Lazlo Moholy-Nagy.

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This etext was produced
by Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed
Proofreading team for
the Project Gutenberg