Die Ersten Menschen

Die ersten Menschen is set in a vast primitive landscape, where the first family on Earth cannot avoid mutual confrontation. Eve feels distant from Adam and thinks back nostalgically to their younger days. Their children, Cain and Abel have widely differing points of view on life. Cain feels closer to nature and is consumed by sexual desire, while Abel lives according to his religious beliefs and plays the role of the perfect son. Cain sees his mother as the archetypal woman he has been looking for and he is jealous of his mother’s love for Abel. Envy leads him to kill his own brother. Left alone, Adam and Eve understand what fate has in store for humanity.

The first two humans on Earth were in love. The third man killed the fourth. Die ersten Menschen tells the story of the first family in the Biblical history of humanity. Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. In Die ersten Menschen, the well-known bible story is interpreted from a completely different angle. The German author Otto Borngräber (1874-1916) gave his script, based on his own work, the subheading of ‘Erotisches Mysterium’ (An Erotic Mystery). His symbolic interpretation of the bible story is clearly inspired by the highly revered psychoanalysis at the time: Freud is listening in the background. Borngräber shows how the primitive family is torn apart by the tension between sexual impulse and a covetous life, on the one hand and a spiritual existence on the other. In the close family circle, these two brothers represent two completely different outlooks. The erotic and incestuous nature of the story caused a huge controversy when the play was performed, and it was subsequently censored.