Oldal 182 [182]
OCR
BIRTE GIESLER surrogate motherhood as well as egg and embryo donation even became key topics at the German Legal Association’s Annual Meeting in 1986.? However, it was not until 1991 — after an altercation that went somewhat under the radar amidst the public turbulences involving German reunification — that German authorities passed the Act on Embryo Protection comprising legislation (which in this case means prohibition) of surrogacy." Also, as a reaction to the hype around the first case of non-genetic surrogacy, the long-established Berlin Schiller Theater asked the primary representative of contemporary German playwrights, Rolf Hochhuth, to write a play on the topic. Hochhuth’s play Unbefleckte Empfängnis. Ein Kreidekreis [Immaculate Conception. A Chalk Circle] premiered on April 8, 1989 as the outcome of that assignment." As the title and subtitle indicate, Hochhuth’s play is infused with references to the Bible and focuses on the ethical, religio-ethical, and legal questions regarding an IVF baby’s parentage. The title “Immaculate Conception,” of course, refers to the story of Mary of Nazareth, to whom the angel Gabriel announces her impending pregnancy by the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:5-25).'? The “chalk circle” in the play’s subtitle refers to the Old Testament and the judgment of Solomon on the dispute of two women arguing over a child (1Kings 3:16-28). Hochhuth’s Unbefleckte Empfängnis lends itself to situating the new subgenre in literary historiography, as the Solomonic judgment and the motif of the chalk circle are prominent motifs in the history of German-language drama, e.g., in Bertolt Brecht’s Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis (The Caucasian Chalk Circle). Hochhuth’s surrogacy play can be considered the earliest example and pathfinder piece of “bioscience drama.” Since this innovative work, playwrights have produced a range of bioscience dramas — for example, Iréne Bourquin: Klone, erhebt euch! [Raise a protest, clones!], first produced in 1999, was the first German-language drama to make reproductive cloning a subject matter, using drama as a ritualized communications system reflecting the interrelation between ritual, theatricality, and concepts of individual and collective 2 Staatliche Schauspielbühnen Berlin (ed.): Unbefleckte Empfängnis. Von Rolf Hochhuth. Uraufführung. Schiller Theater, Vol. 82, season 1988/89, unpaginated. On the German legal situation concerning surrogacy see Sandra Hotz: Selbstbestimmung im Vertragsrecht, Bern, Stämpfli, 2017, 346-360. 4 Staatliche Schauspielbühnen Berlin (ed.): Unbefleckte Empfängnis. See also Rolf Hochhuth: Unbefleckte Empfängnis. Ein Kreidekreis, Reinbek bei Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1988. Hochhuth’s play on surrogacy is one of the rare cases where a drama is published as a book prior to its release on stage, which also strongly hints at the topicality of the play. For a critical discussion of Pope Pius 1X’s dogma of the immaculate conception from a protestant theological perspective, see Gerd Liidemann: Jungfrauengeburt? Die wirkliche Geschichte von Maria und ihrem Sohn Jesus, Stuttgart, Radius, 1997. 16 Bertolt Brecht: Der kaukasische Kreidekreis [1949, 1954], in W. Hecht - J. Knopf — W. Mittenzwei - K.-D. Müller (eds.): Bertolt Brecht, Werke. Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1992, 7-191; Bertolt Brecht: The Caucasian Chalk Circle, trans. Eric Bentley, Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 1999. «180 +
