A media-analytic view on Claus Peymann's film about Heinrich von Kleist's "Hermannsschlacht"

Abstract

This paper describes interpretations of Heinrich von Kleist's Hermannsschlacht (title in English: The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest). Historically there have been four different types of interpretation: those that praise both content and form, those that express dislike of both con-tent and form, those that praise the content but dislike the form, and those that inversely express dislike for the content but admiration for the form. It is argued here that Claus Peymann's inter-pretation, as seen in his film, goes contrary to these traditional ways of dealing with Hermannsschlacht, since Peymann's interpretation obviously respects Kleist's text but inter-prets Hermansschlacht as a text in favor of peace, not war.