Jens Bjørneboe was once said to have been the Scandinavian dramatist most influenced by Brecht, the dramatist of distance, of "alienation." Bjørneboe's outright rejection of the style and moralism he saw in Ibsen, his own countryman, led him naturally in Brecht's direction. Brecht's view of Tragedy was that it was the result of a flawed premise—that humanity cannot improve. He suggested that the flaws could be set straight by getting rid of a flawed society. Bjørneboe's view of the world is closer to the tragic premise. Brecht's attitude was not simply the perspective of a Marxist, but that of a comedian. Bjørneboe did adopt a similar approach in his plays in terms of style and form. The ironic form and bold stylization was close to that of Brecht, though his conclusions and message were not. It was the form based upon alienation and the breaking of illusion which he inherited from Brecht.

Bjørneboe, already a novelist of European stature, undertook a prolonged sojourn at the Berliner Ensemble in 1960 as a sort of theatre apprenticeship. His series of essays on Brecht's plays and approach to the theatre arose from extended contact with the "Brechtians," many of whom became friends and artistic collaborators. The essays on Brecht were published posthumously as a book Om Brecht. (1) When Bjørneboe turned to writing plays in the mid-sixties he would adopt an essentially comic, episodic, stylized form—in some ways mirroring Brecht's—while shunning the type of resolution, however ironic, that Brecht was wont to use in his best-known plays.

The cool hard form belies, however, the concern with the nature of compassion which lies behind almost all of his literary output. While Bjørneboe does hold a particular form of society to blame for the faults he finds, he offers no clear formula for how the situation might be fixed: no utopia, no program for a better world. This is not to say that fate rules all, but simply that man is fated to an ongoing struggle with himself. If he has the courage much good can be done. So far, this has not been the case.

He was already searching, however, for a way to begin what he called a "History of Freedom." In his History of Bestiality he cited the ancient Jewish belief that the world needed at all times thirty seven "just souls" to ensure that justice might live and that the world would go round. His idea was to chronicle in plays and novels the uncompromising thirst for justice of remarkable individuals against the horror of history. He attempted to commence this project with Semmelweis as well as his unfinished play on Emma Goldman, Red Emma [Rød Emma], and with his final novel, The Sharks [Haiene, 1976].

And so, as the fateful year of 1968 approached in Europe, Bjørneboe set out to stage his literary assault on hierarchical society with an aggressive, extroverted form of theatre. A theme that was of supreme interest to him in the story of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, directly relating to the problem of freedom, was that of the guardian-type or "formyndermennesket." This is a term which he helped to make a household word in Norwegian, expounding upon the concept in various essays and newspaper articles. These "guardian-people" according to Bjørneboe are authoritarian by nature, and need not be "official" authorities themselves—though it helps. They look upon themselves as good folks, and take it upon themselves to ensure that others are cajoled, propagandized or forced to live up to their (the guardian-types ) morality. Thus everyone will be made to fit into the scheme of things. The guardian-people are only secure if they have the sense that they are being kicked from above, while they have someone to kick below. In the end it is for everybody's best. It is a game of prestige or machismo or social success—but above all it is about fear and ego.

To get his point across, the dramatist Bjørneboe would employ a style which seems to be poles apart from his literary method in the "History of Bestiality"—which is narrated by an isolative and alienated persona identified in the first book, Moment of Freedom, as the Servant of Justice, the keeper of the protocols in Kafka-like Court of "Injustice." The novels evolve in a world of introspection, myth and dream. Still, there is a stylistic similarity between his works of drama and fiction: a consistent and very deceptive directness of language. Additionally, Bjørneboe had come a long way from the metaphysics, Anthroposophy and Rilkean esthetics which had so influenced him as a young painter and poet in the forties and fifties.

The extroverted style of his plays in the sixties and seventies was developed every step of the way with an eye toward the performance-as-event. His first music-theatre piece, Many Happy Returns [Til Lykke med Dagen], was a dark satire on the criminal justice system. When the avant-garde director Eugenio Barba arrived in Scandinavia to form his now famous Odinteater, he quickly connected with Bjørneboe, and the result was Odinteater s first production: a forceful and raw Grotowskian version of Bjørneboe's next major play about compromise with evil. It concerned the meeting of some former partisans in an Italian village with their former Nazi torturers: The Bird Lovers [Fugleelskerne, 1966]. (A later version with the songs added in a Brechtian manner would be premiered at the National Theatre in Oslo, and this version is also published in the Sun & Moon Classics series).

Circus, mime, burlesque, clown shows, even acrobatics inspired his idea of theatre. His play Amputation [Amputasjon] used medical technology as a metaphor for mind-control. It called for an acrobatic surrealism, and had to sit on the shelf for five years (from 1966 to 1970) until it was first produced by Martha Vestin at Stockholm s Friteatern. Bjørneboe himself wrote that Amputation had to wait until it could find a theatre that could create a performance that was "acrobatic/physical enough."(2)

Semmelweis was written during the tumultuous year of 1968, but it was premiered at the Åbo Svenska Teater in Turku, Finland in 1969. The Norwegian premiere took place at the National Theatre in Oslo later that year. In short order the play made the grand circuit around the Baltic, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. The avowedly anti-authoritarian play was acclaimed by authorities (in theatre, that is) almost unanimously. The response of critics in Denmark and Norway to Joachim Calmeyer in the gargantuan lead role, a role perhaps second only to Peer Gynt in the Norwegian repertoire, rang enthusiastically.

The story of the Hungarian-Austrian physician, Ignaz Semmelweis, is one of the most tragic and revealing episodes from the annals of modern science and medicine. Bjørneboe's Semmelweis, much like Brecht's Galileo, is a story that shows the pitfalls and even horrors that await the man or woman of science who is naively in search of truth and improvement in the human condition, in a society that reveres prestige and power and its own received belief systems to the exclusion of any new "truths."

The story has recently taken on a new relevance due to its somewhat chilling parallels with the various scandals surrounding the initial research into AIDS: an epidemic of similar proportions to that of the so-called "child-bed fever," which took the lives of many tens of thousands of women in Europe in the second half of the 19th century. In the reckless actions of the political and medical authorities in the play, one discerns the same mentality as that of some present day medical authorities who refused to mandate testing of the blood supply in the United States even though they knew some portion of that supply was contaminated with the virus. Anyone who thinks that ours is a "new and unusually complex" medical issue, without precedent, and that such political maneuvering can legitimately be excused, need only acquaint themselves with the career of this "hero in retrospect," Ignaz Semmelweis.

Today hailed as the founder of modern antiseptic techniques, Semmelweis was fired from his position at the Vienna General Hospital, ridiculed by his colleagues, hounded by the authorities and the police, his works and experimental results banned. He was driven into exile back to his native Hungary. He took part in the 1848 revolt against Hapsburg absolutism, which did nothing to ingratiate him with many of his colleagues, and even less so the political authorities. The facts point to a collaboration between important authorities in medicine, science and the Austro-Hungarian cabinet.

The conspiracy to silence Semmelweis was due to his discovery and stubborn insistence that tens of thousands of pregnant women were being killed throughout Europe by the dreaded child-bed fever—today known as puerperal fever—because doctors and students were not washing their hands. The worst outbreaks appeared where medical students went directly from the autopsies in the morgue to the obstetrics wards where they examined pregnant women. Although Semmelweis had demonstrated that the mortality rate could only be eliminated entirely by washing with chloride-of-lime between procedures, the fact that he had gotten the chloride method from the Vienna toilet cleaners only increased the ridicule by his enemies.

Due to the suppression of his statistics and method, his exile to Hungary, and the silence imposed on him by the growing repression of the Austro-Hungarian authorities, his attempts to get the truth out made him appear to be increasingly mad. Semmelweis, who began as a promising prodigy and a young idealist, in the play evolves into a gray doddering old man before our eyes though he barely reaches middle-age. After twenty years pass and he has struggled without result while perhaps hundreds of thousands of women have died unnecessarily, his madness becomes a fact. Then he himself, reckless about his own well-being, dies of the disease which he fought, supposedly a "disease specific to females," after cutting his finger in an autopsy.

As often is the case in Bjørneboe s work, disease is also a metaphor for the prevailing consciousness of an age. The "doctors are the disease" here—and so is the hierarchical form of society upon which they sit near the top rungs. Meanwhile anyone who pursues an inconvenient truth in such a society is paradoxically seen as "sick." That is, he is not normal because he is not part of the prevailing disease. After Semmelweis reads his "Open Letter to the Physicians of Europe" (Scene 28) to his wife and his friend Markusovszky, he suddenly reveals how the invisible enemy, the disease of hierarchy and class solidarity, is indeed taking its toll on a man who once seemed resistant and resilient:

And to this the doctors of Europe reply that they loyally adhere to the great Virchow—the mass murderer! They collectively dissociate themselves from the chloride prophet Semmelweis, from the mad prophet of septic virus. And they go on murdering. They blindly follow at the coattails of their feeble-minded Pope Virchow the Mighty! They murder blindly and loyally—faithful as bloodhounds—faithful as the Russian police—one woman after the other—hundreds of thousands—it's all nothing but blood and pus and sewage and toxins and murder. They kill and kill ... (He takes hold of Marko's arm.) ... I see nothing but dead women, Marko ... why don t they listen to me? I dream of dead women every night ... and of the secret police....

One of the alienation effects the script calls for is reminiscent of some of Strindberg's witty theatrical devices in his dream plays. In the second prologue, titled "Prologue in the Auditorium", a rector is reading a tribute to Semmelweis, and the spectators are supposedly witnessing the unveiling of a memorial statue of medicine's great hero. The statue Semmelweis will follow the character Semmelweis from scene to scene, in various periods of his life. In the bordello scene, as a young man, he hangs up his clothes on his own monument. In Venice, he encounters it on the piazza and embraces it in an ecstatic stupor. It should also be said of the play that it is highly sensuous, overflowing with eating and drinking and pleasure—as well as pus, blood-spattered smocks and buckets of excrement.

Some of the peculiar features of the play have to do with the period in which it came into being. It was written in 1968, during a time when political upheavals were taking place across Europe, east and west. From Paris to Prague, from Lisbon to Belgrade, from Poznan to Berlin, students and often workers had taken to the streets. In the long and short run, for better or for worse, some of these revolts led to changes in a number of governments. In many cases the immediate response was an open show of force by the police apparatus of the state, even in those countries practicing various degrees of democracy. But at the same time the upheaval took the form of a revolution in culture, aimed at debunking inherited cultural norms. Theatres in Paris, for example, had been occupied in the name of the "martyr" of the new theatre, Antonin Artaud. It is against this backdrop that Bjørneboe completed his first important work written from the perspective of his own brand of anarchism (though it is evident in varying degrees in earlier works).

All of this also provides an explanation for the "Prologue in the Theatre", which was not used for the Norwegian premiere, but which was used in most other productions—most notably in the Norwegian Television Theatre production as late as 1983. Bjørneboe had sent the script to his old collaborator Eugenio Barba at the Odinteater. It may have been Barba who suggested that a frame device be created in which students or malcontents of some sort would occupy the theatre in order to put on their production of Semmelweis. In any case, Bjørneboe did some revisions incorporating advice from Barba, which can be seen from the letter he wrote to him upon completing the play:

Grandissimo escataloge ed Apocalypticus!
         Thank you for your last documents. You will laugh when you see the final version of Semmelweis: It makes use of almost all of your suggestions.... I have done my utmost now—and hopefully I have succeeded in making the play almost unplayable in every normal bourgeois theatre. In any case, the play shouldn t be produced. It was bad enough to have to write it, without having to go through all the sorrow, vexation and garbage that a premiere brings with it.... [Om Teater 14]

It would not be true to the spirit of Bjørneboe, however, for directors of a different epoch to be slavishly loyal to the letter of his directions, and this goes for the Prologue in the Theatre. As often happens with Brecht's prologue/opening scene to The Caucasian Chalk Circle, a new prologue or introduction can be contrived for specific productions. Or, the "Prologue in the Theatre" might be dropped completely: which still leaves the "Prologue in the Auditorium." (5) Whatever the approach, it should make this "historical drama" resonate for the present. The play portrays an eternal problem, not a past problem. Bjørneboe did believe in loyalty to the text, but was completely open to the idea of cuts and innovation in design to give each production and each director leeway to produce his plays with a different "concept" in mind.

Semmelweis is explicitly non-psychological in style. But it would be considered by many to be "non-realistic" theatre for other reasons as well. The conflict in the play is only rarely between individuals. More often it is a conflict between one man and class of men, or perhaps it would be more to the point to say forces that are invisible. Even Semmelweis's individual battles with that quintessential proto-totalitarian from Austro-Hungarian times, Professor Doktor Klein, are colored by the fact that Klein is just the tip of an iceberg in terms of the social forces which stand behind him. These forces, Semmelweis's nemeses, are "non-realistic" as they are somewhat Kafka-esque bureaucrats whose influence is so widespread that his efforts begin to seem as pointless and endless as those of that other Austro-Hungarian subject, Josef K.

As was the case with Brecht's Galileo, Semmelweis's scientific efforts will win out in the end, but not the man himself in his own lifetime (the man who is ruled by a dangerous drive to bring the truth to light). The opposing forces are too great for an individual, and the historical moment is not yet ripe. In the speech to Markusovzsky above, it is apparent just how absurd such a conflict is—this conflict with nameless and faceless enemies. This is the secret of the dramatic conflict we label "Kafka-esque": one of the partners in the conflict is nowhere and everywhere at once. It is impossible to find the point where the buck stops—as in K's fruitless search for Klam in The Castle. During the more than twenty year span of Semmelweis's story, he has not only to prove he is right: he must tag a face or name on his enemy.

Semmelweis does not have the savvy nor the wiles of Brecht's protagonist of Science, Galileo. In Galileo we have a figure with the wily self-preservation instinct that so many of Brecht's most convincing characters have. Semmelweis lacks it entirely. He is uncompromising, even from the perspective of enlightened self-interest. Whereas Galileo will relent after being shown the Inquisition s implements of torture, an already mentally and physically broken Semmelweis goes out and plasters the street with posters to publicize the results of his suppressed research. These two "scientific protagonists" probably reflect the very different attitudes of their authors as much as they do the historical figures.

Céline's narrative treatment of Semmelweis s story, in part, backs up Bjørneboe's version. Céline s work—which is not specifically acknowledged in Bjørneboe's notes or correspondence concerning his play— portrayed him as a romantic, a man without "diplomacy," or the ability to accommodate himself sufficiently to contrived norms and manners to be able to negotiate. Céline's Semmelweis is a man whose downfall was his faith in the potential goodness of his fellow men, in a world that is essentially treacherous. Bjørneboe's Semmelweis is no romantic innocent, however. He is obsessed with truth so much that, paradoxically, it blinkers him.

It might be helpful to conclude with a few words on Bjørneboe's philosophy of Freedom, which is intimately tied up with his notion of Truth. Although he lines up with most twentieth century existentialist thinkers in holding suspect all received values and morality, he does not see anything necessarily positive in the state of "freedom" in which modern human beings find themselves. In the "History of Bestiality" he discerns grave danger in the fact that human beings have discovered their freedom—they have reached their "moment of freedom"—without having confronted their "moment of truth."

The moment of truth is a phrase drawn from the bullfight. It stands for the confrontation with death. Without death-awareness, we fool ourselves, and our freedom simply means that anything is possible. The awareness of death tempers our actions and is the source of vision and awareness. When the experience of Truth does not come before the experience of Freedom the logical conclusion is Auschwitz: for this is the freedom to dominate other people or nations, the freedom to make profit without knowing responsibility, the freedom to take pleasure even in cruelty, the freedom to hide the truth because we think it hinders the expansion of our own egos in the world. This is the key to both the metaphysics and the social critique in all of Bjørneboe's works. Semmelweis is, after all, a play that has much to do with death. Semmelweis confronts death itself throughout the action of the play. It may be seen as one long moment of truth, of which he will not let go.

As for the problem of uncovering the nature of freedom, Bjørneboe thought this could be approached through the lives of the "just souls" who are its manifestation in the world. This particular play took him several steps in the direction he hoped to go once he had completed his History of Bestiality trilogy in 1973. Much of his planned "History of Freedom" was to have been written in dramatic form. Semmelweis brought him to the threshold.

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Related pages:

Semmelweis (Publisher's information)

Conference of Professors at the Vienna General Hospital (Scene 2 of play)

Knowledge and Society by Fredrik Engelstad

The Authoritarian and the "Traitors" by Oddbjørn Johannessen

The Theater Tomorrow essay by Bjørneboe

1.   Om Brecht. Oslo: Pax, 1979. Another volume on theatre performance, theory and practice, Om Teater, was published by Pax in 1978.   Back

2.   Samlede Skuespill. Oslo: Pax, 1974. Vol. 2. p. 239.  Back

3.   Oeuvres de Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Paris: André Balland, 1966.  Back

4.   The much acclaimed television production by Norwegian State Broadcasting in 1983, directed by Terje Mærli, cut much of the scene. A feature was added, however: in the midst of demonstrating their theatrical joie-de-vivre, the players removed their Commedia masks to reveal faces covered by sores and peeling skin, making the vacation in Venice turn to a nightmare premonition of the death of Kolletschka in Vienna in Scene 7, which follows hard upon.   Back