Chapter 4 Roxolana in German Baroque and Enlightenment Dramas

Beate Allert

Introduction

From 1600 to 1800, the Ottoman Empire was perceived as anything but the “sick man of Europe,” as it came to be known in the nineteenth century.^[301] Ottoman forces were checked at the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, and in 1699, they were further weakened after the Treaty of Karlowitz, which established the dominance of the Habsburg Monarchy.

In general, it is not surprising—given the long rivalry between the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe during these two centuries—that a considerable literature on the Empire developed, much of it historical and anecdotal, and that this material further inspired playwrights and novelists up until Romanticism and modern times.^[303] This essay will investigate the depiction in the German drama of the Baroque and Enlightenment of one of the most striking figures from Ottoman history: Hurrem Sultan (ca. 1510-1558), known in the West mainly as Roxolana,'^[304] the wife of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (1494-1566).^[305] I shall investigate her role in the context of four German plays: Daniel Casper von Lohenstein’s Ibrahim Bassa (1653), August von Haugwitz’s Obsiegende Tugend: Oder der Bethorte doch wieder Bekehrte Soliman [Victorious Virtue: or the Beguiled yet Later Recovered Soliman] (1684), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Giangir oder der Verschmähte Thron [Giangir or the Rejected Throne] (1748), and Christian Felix Weisse, Mustapha und Zeangir (1776).^[306] As Galina Yermolenko has shown, Roxolana crossed national boundaries (from Ukraine to Turkey), as well as class and gender lines (from slave to Empress, having assumed a role that until then had been exclusively restricted to male advisors to the Sultan), thus becoming a curiosity for many, often celebrated and even more often criticized.^[307]

In 1641 Madeleine de Scudery published her popular and influential romance, Ibrahim ou L 'illustre bassa.

In Madeleine de Scudery’s narrative, Ibrahim Bassa is Suleyman’s Grand Vizier, a Genoese nobleman, initially named Justinian, who was captured and enslaved by the Ottomans and who then worked his way into the Sultan’s innermost circle. He is in love with Isabelle Grimaldi, countess of Monaco, and the romance details the twists and turns of their romantic fortunes until they return to Europe and marry. At one point, Isabelle is in Constantinople and being wooed by the Sultan. Roxolana, the Sultan’s wife, according to Scudeiy, is Turkish, having been given into “voluntary” slavery as a concubine to the Sultan by her father Bajazet, in place of a beautiful captive intended for the royal harem whom Bajazet took for himself.^[310] [311]

Daniel Casper von Lohenstein, Ibrahim Bassa (1653)^[312]

The earliest German writer to draw upon the German translation of Ibrahim ou L'illustre bassa was Daniel Casper von Lohenstein (1635-1683). Ibrahim Bassa was Lohenstein’s first play written when he was 15. Although he later wrote such plays as Cleopatra, Agrippina, and Sophonisbe, for the second volume of his anthology of representative German plays, Deutsches Theater [German Theater] (covering the period of 1600-1680), the German Romantic writer and critic Ludwig Tieck chose, surprisingly, Ibrahim Bassa from among all of Lohenstein’s works.^[313] Even though Lohenstein was to return to an Ottoman theme for his last play, Ibrahim Sultan, which concerns Sultan Ibrahim I (1615-1648), Tieck was particularly struck by the style of the first “Ibrahim” play, claiming that it reached the heights that Lohenstein was never able to replicate.

Lohenstein offers what in my estimation is perhaps the most colorful and grotesque descriptions of the events surrounding the Roxolana figure in German, a stunning account of her stark influence on Süleyman. Although Isabelle has the last words in the play, and although Ibrahim is its title-figure, the major protagonist of the play is in fact Roxolana, who instigates the murder of Ibrahim. It was due to her clever rhetorical skills that she swayed the Sultan, the Mufti, and Rüstam to do exactly what she wanted. Her words cause several murders, yet all the anger of those left behind is directed towards her husband, while she remains in the clear, ironically uncontested and unharmed. Roxolana is a master of rhetoric, who knows how to use words in order to convince others to do what she wants. She stands in contrast to Isabelle, who has gained the erotic attraction of the Sultan in the beginning of the play, but not for long. Isabelle shows no interest in the Sultan, and even while he seems to deny Roxolana’s importance, as the action unfolds it becomes clear that in fact it is Roxolana who remains his right hand and the protagonist in the entire drama. She is already prefigured in the opening scene by the allegorical female character of “Asia,” who is tied up as a spectacle in an arena “in gestalt einer Frauen” [‘in the figure of a woman’] (16), lamenting that she, Asia, “nurtured” the Sultan “with her own milk” like a dragon that would then devour her.^[315] As the play unfolds, Süleyman is made responsible for murdering Ibrahim, but Roxolana is the one who actually manipulates him to act against his better judgment.

Where? Why so upset? My Emperor, what does

This sad face reveal? What new commotion inflames

The heart with restlessness? Does Soliman wish anything more Than that he would finally teach him [Ibrahim] the Ottoman ways? Whoever adds more displeasure to the Emperor’s heart Swims on a high wave, until it finally drowns him

And in the ocean-bottom swallows him up, as soon as Osman [the Sultan] unleashes

The last storm of anger and blows him out onto the death-ocean.^[316]

The Sultan’s emotions are inflamed by his strong desire for Isabelle, but he allows them to be interpreted by Roxolana as anger against Ibrahim. She tries to confuse him by shifting his feelings and by telling him to not get drowned in an ocean, but rather to gain safe ground again. By that she means doing away with the aggressor. Her eloquence channels the Sultan’s private feelings, and she articulates them as if they were matters of the “Ossmanns Stul” [‘the Ottoman throne’] (2.229), of political dimensions. Ibrahim becomes in her words an “Un-their,” or a violent creature that is about to challenge the order, and he must therefore be killed by a strong emperor in order to rescue the castle (“Schloß”) from the flames and to protect the country. Thus she challenges the Sultan as a statesman by invoking the usual cliches of heroism. He is swayed by her and thinks he must take control in a time of political unrest, giving in to her manipulation: “Be it then soon done whatever she wants, / the Princess, to whom we have no power to say no” (“Es sei denn, was sie wil straks bald in eil verricht / Prinzessin, der wir Macht was abzuschlagen nicht,” 2.239-40).

Roxolana wins power at the expense of Isabelle, who is little more than a pawn in the intrigues at court.

How much darker appears to the reasonable human heart,

When desire fogs up its enlightening-candle of reason.

Whoever follows desire, burns in its glow, melts in its flame, And drowns in its flood.^[318]

The rescue from desire that Roxolana offers to the Sultan is convincing to him, but it is also tainted with the very desire from which she claims to free him.

The figures in Lohenstein’s play are more nuanced than one might expect. Although earlier critics had argued that his characters are flat, John Alexander points out correctly that Lohenstein, unlike his predecessor and fellow Silesian, Andreas Gryphius, had a “fascination for the subtle interrelationships of human passions and rational action in politics.”^[319] Literature is never innocent of politics, and Alexander is also perceptive in drawing attention to the author’s own politically motivated intentions in writing his play, namely, his “desire” for reconciliation between Protestant Silesia and the Catholic Vienna court.”^[320] Without paying any attention to Roxolana (“Roxelane”),^[321] Alexander interprets this Ibrahim Bassa as an exemplary parody of the Viennese imperial court, while focusing exclusively on the tyrant Süleyman.^[322] But as I show here, it is rather Roxolana who instigates the plot and, although wronged by the Sultan, she should be judged for her own action, for having instigated the murder of Ibrahim and for getting whatever she wants through her sophisticated use of words. The Sultan is shown to be at the mercy of his advisors among whom the most important is his wife. Although a modern audience would perhaps tend to view this as empowering for her, the contemporary audience was probably more likely to interpret it as his weakness. In any case, the crime is horrible considering that Ibrahim was not only once the Sultan’s best and most loyal friend, but also, if certain historical sources are accurate, a person who brought Roxolana to the imperial harem.

Approaching the play from an interesting but quite a different perspective, Gerald Gillespie does not link the allegorical figure of Asia with Roxolana, a connection that is key to my reading, and I find it surprising that Roxolana is mentioned at only one point in his entire book and then dismissed as a sketchy character that, as he claims, “does not appear to suffer.”^[323] But the Roxolana does indeed suffer emotional pain and is not a sketchy figure. She may exemplify “the bad,” “the criminal,” and “the Other” (that is, the Muslim world), but she also stands for the female, the eccentric, and “the witch,” for having transgressed into the realm of politics.^[324] She is indirectly acknowledged as a real protagonist in this history whose power in fact supersedes that of her male counterparts due to her ability to shift levels of language as she likes.^[325] I think that in Lohenstein’s notion of Roxolana there are signs of a fascination that may reveal more than just a value judgment. The reader can even trace a sense of sympathy and admiration for her.

She knows the Sultan well, is empathetic with his emotional struggle to decide what to do, and is able to turn the argument in the dialogue with him, so that he thinks that getting rid of Ibrahim represents, ultimately, reason and peace of mind. He searches measure and balance and wants to let go of his anxiety and fear to become consumed by his passions. He worries about the loss of Ibrahim, who is charged with becoming a personal and political traitor, and about a potential future loss of Roxolana. He wants to please her and maintain his image as the one in power at all costs. Roxolana knows how to predict the feelings of others, especially those of the Sultan, and thus to turn them into words that will then change the order of things around her. Because of her astute intuition and persuasion, she really controls the Sultan.

August Adolph von Haugwitz, Obsiegende Tugend: Oder der Bethorte doch wieder Bekehrte Soliman (1684)^[326]

Like Lohenstein, August Adolph von Haugwitz bases his drama, Obsiegende Tugend: Oder der Bethorte doch wieder Bekehrte Soliman, on the German translation of Madeleine de Scudery’s Ibrahim ou L ’illustre bassa.^[327] However, Haugwitz’s play is in many ways a response to Lohenstein’s play, for which reason Pierre Behar called it an “Anti-Ibrahim.”^[328] Whereas Lohenstein depicts the Sultan as a weak person who cannot control his own emotions and his own life, Haugwitz shows his conflict and emotional struggle, but virtues rescue him from his deception and present him as a reasonable person free from crime. In his preface, Haugwitz explains that the play shows that “finally reason wins after a successful mental battle over his desires / and virtue having awakened him from his sleep which was falsely taken for death, / he allows her [that is, Isabelle] the long requested freedom to return again to her fatherland / and therefore via his first actions makes visible the beguilement / in his later actions the recovered Soliman.”^[329] Obsiegende Tugend is also a work of Haugwitz’s youth. In the introduction to the “Anmerckungen” [‘Notes’] appended to the play, Haugwitz notes that it had been prepared, as a “Sprach-Übung” [‘Language-exercise’] for a comedy troupe, many years before, while he was still a law student at the University in Wittenberg, which would place it before 1668.

In this play, agency is shifted away gradually from individual persons towards abstract forces of the “Reihen” (the ranks of the choruses), among which are the emotions and the virtues representing a metaphysical world, or the Divine, that actually control humans and deal with them as “subjects.” In fact, these forces are in charge when others think that Süleyman and Roxolana rule:

Whoever knows us will have to say

That Süleyman as well as Roxolana

Lay at our feet,

Because he gets excited, angry, and loves,

Is saddened by fear and jealousy and

Completely conquered by us.

Süleyman’s business is

Governed by our forces.^[330]

The play is mostly concerned with the Ibrahim-Isabelle-Süleyman triangle, and Roxolana does not make her first appearance until the beginning of Act III, although she was mentioned several times prior to that. She and Rüstam (Rustan) plot to get rid of Ibrahim, and when she makes the suggestion to Süleyman, he defends Ibrahim and still believes in his many positive contributions to the Ottoman Empire. At first he is not ridden by fear but is rather trusting, and he gives Ibrahim credit for his positive actions and military support before the mistrust sets in. Nevertheless, he finally allows himself against his own reasoning to be persuaded by Roxolana so that he consents that Ibrahim should be executed. At the beginning of Act V, Roxolana is seen once more plotting the death of Ibrahim, this time with the Mufti (the Turkish “High-Priest”). But all this intrigue will be in vain, as in the end the Sultan becomes “reformed” (“bekehrt”) in such a way that his reason is restored. Nobody must die. Ibrahim and his family are free.

Behar argues that in contrast to Lohenstein, Haugwitz does not demonize the Turks.^[331] He attributes this perceived difference in attitude regarding the Ottoman Empire to the specific local situations on the conflicted map of Europe at the time. Because Haugwitz was not living close to the Ottoman Empire, he had, according to Behar, a more tolerant view than writers geographically closer to the scenes of action, such as Lohenstein, who spent a good deal of time in Vienna. Behar thinks that Lohenstein made the ending of his play so violent (the decapitated head put on the doorpost, etc.) and that he charged Süleyman and Roxolana with the most heinous of crimes in the murdering of Ibrahim, because Lohenstein actually “hated the Turks,” whereas Haugwitz was able to maintain “a more balanced view” and keep the happy ending of de Scudery’s Ibrahim. He overlooks that even in Lohenstein there is regret and a move towards virtue represented by the female Asia who requests, “machet von den umbfäßelnden Lastern mich loß” [make me free from the entangling vices].^[332] Behar’s reductionist thesis has already been challenged by Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly^[333] and Sarah Colvin.^[334] Certainly, the situation is more complex than Behar allows. Even in the context of Lohenstein, not all Turks are portrayed negatively Lohenstein, and I think it would be wrong to draw conclusions on German attitudes about Ottomans at that time in general. Haugwitz in particular would have had the opportunity to see Turkish knights perform at tournaments sponsored by the Electors of Saxony in their Dresden court, where he served as the semi-official poet and “polyhistor” since 1690. Colvin challenges Behar’s claim that Lohenstein concluded his play violently because he hated the Turks; instead, Colvin attributes the tragic ending of the play more to the rhetorical conventions of the theater than to any convictions on the part of the author.^[335] I agree with Watanabe-O’Kelly and Colvin that any simplistic equation of a fictional statement with a personal political opinion of the author, as Behar had claimed, does not hold. Again, I would like to shift attention to the importance of Roxolana, the female in this context, and take a critical perspective long ignored. One should also mention that the Sultan’s fear, indecision, and final consent to his Sultana make the Turkish protagonist appear human and vulnerable. Attention is given also to a world beyond the visible, to the reappearance of spirits, meetings after death, and powerful dreams that can intensely impact one’s life.

Süleyman and the Murder of Mustafa

Roxolana may be one among a long list of individuals who were selected as dramatic types because of their perceived infamy. This reputation resulted from the role she played in promoting the fortunes of her own sons at the expense of Prince Mustafa, Süleyman’s eldest son. The most influential account, supposedly based on the testimony of an eyewitness, is found in the first Turkish Letter, by Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Imperial Ambassador to the Sublime Porte.^[336] The account reveals that Mustafa, the oldest son and legitimate heir of the Sultan, was killed by him under the influence of his powerful second wife Roxolana, who wanted to have the throne for her own son. In the German tradition, another particularly influential version of the story can be found in Book 12 of the Historia sui temporis, by Jacques-Auguste de Thou.^[337]

Mustafa was identified by European observers as the most amenable of Süleyman’s sons to European interests. The outrage of the Turks expressed in response to his death was enormous and not only a sign of political instability, but also a call for internal justice.^[338] European accounts suggest that Roxolana conspired with Rüstam Pasha to bring about Mustafa’s downfall by convincing Süleyman that Mustafa was preparing a rebellion against him. Mustafa was strangled in his father’s presence in 1553. Cihangir, Mustafa’s stepbrother, was so distressed at his brother’s murder that he died shortly afterwards, and the bloodbath continued, as Roxolana was believed to have also engineered the murder of Mustafa’s infant son. Lohenstein alluded to these horrible events in the ghost sequence of Act 5 of Ibrahim Bassa, and they were to be the source material for two eighteenth­century German plays that featured Roxolana: the dramatic fragment Giangir oder der verschmähte Thron [Giangir or the Rejected Throne], by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, written around 1748,^[339] and the tragedy Mustapha und Zeangir (1761), by Christian Felix Weisse, published in 1768.^[340]

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Giangir oder der verschmähte Thron (1748)^[341]

Lessing’s dramatic fragment opens with a monologue by Roxolana (“Roxalana”) that anticipates the action and allows the spectator to get a sense of who she really is: “My daring stroke succeeds. Then I shall / govern — / A throne — for a throne — yes — everything I shall dare. / Once Mustapha is dead, then my son will be fortunate. / He reigns only first through me and soon I shall reign through him. / The Sultan arrives — How easily he lets himself be led.”^[342] It is obvious that Roxolana is planning the murder of Mustafa in order to promote her son to the throne.^[343] She boldly says that she will use him for her own ends. She has confidence in her plan because she knows how easily the Sultan obeys her requests and how much he loves her. She says: “Me, and in me also himself, his fortune, and his fame” (“Mich, und in mir auch sich, sein Glück und seinen Ruhm,” 244). This is the logic she wants the Sultan to believe, and when he enters, his first words are: “And finally I forced myself. My son is / not my son. The tender bond of blood connects him to me in vain, / as long as in his wild breast he suffocates nature and duty.” ^[344] He is repressing his initial feelings for Mustafa, his love and respect, apparently already convinced by fear that his son has betrayed him. We learn indirectly that Roxolana has made Süleyman mistrust his son, even to the point that he denies his fatherly feelings for him: “Whoever hurts his father does not hurt him as a child. / Therefore, if a father punishes, he does not punish as a father either.”^[345] For a moment, he seems to have been inclined to forgive Mustafa anything, but then he turns to his wife who has, as he states, the final word on the matter: “Mustapha, even if you had strangled me a thousand times — / Mustapha, even while dying I would have forgiven you still. / Yet my spouse —.”^[346] Roxolana makes a vague comment about an unspeakable crime that Mustapha “offered” to do for her, never explaining what that might be. In response, Süleyman promises Roxolana to have Mustafa beheaded that very day. Having reached her goal without much difficulty, Roxolana prefers to hide her true feelings of triumph by cleverly asking whether he intends to proceed so harshly, and she adds: “This I would not have believed” (“Das hätt ich nicht geglaubt,” 245). When her husband defends his harsh decision, Roxolana responds: “Who is this rare hero, in whom nature becomes silenced, in whom blood does not speak” (“Wer ist der rare Held, in dem Natur verstummet, / In dem das Blut nicht redt?” 245). Süleyman must now prove himself to his wife against her calculating expressions of doubt. She reminds him of a language of nature, beyond all human language, which should tell him what to do, thus reminding him of his conscience. By telling him to ignore what Mustafa did and to simply forgive him for the sake of his so-called bloodline, she in fact provokes her husband to do just the opposite, to proceed with punishment. Süleyman feels that generosity regarding Mustafa’s crime might bring fame to his wife, but only blame and shame to him, which is why he assumes he must proceed with his son’s execution against the doubts he first had, which were then articulated by Roxolana as if to silence his conscience. Lessing presents suggestive words and gestures rather than complete actions onstage. The audience learns that Mustafa will be killed and that Roxolana’s intrigue will apparently succeed. Yet the ending is missing, and we are left with a large number of unanswered questions.

The fragment of Act 3 opens with a dialogue between Süleyman and Mustafa’s former teacher Temir. Süleyman asks Temir: “Do you recognize my son in this sinner? / And do you recognize me in him? Does he manifest his blood? O this damned son to him nothing at all is sacred!”^[347] He is obviously troubled by his son, but in reality wants to talk primarily about his own bad feelings. Temir also feels uncomfortable with his relationship to the accused, because Mustafa had been his student and he accepts a certain amount of responsibility for his influence on him, although he cannot understand what went wrong. He is afraid of what people may believe: “From his teachings he has drawn this poison — / This one should be punished instead of him — he who intends the Emperor’s death — Mustapha had to be only his suffering tool.”^[348] There seems to be an implication here that Temir feels responsible for teaching Mustafa the crime of incest. He reflects: “All of this I imprinted while he was young on his impressionable heart” (“Dies alles drückt ich ihm jung in sein wächsern Herze,” 247). He questions whether Mustafa’s readings as a child had made such a deep impression on him that they falsely led to such behavior. Attention is shifted to the importance of education and critical reflection; thus, Lessing emphasizes the need for everyone to think for him or herself. Temir remains a consciously aware teacher, one who takes the actions of his student seriously, even if they resulted from a false application of his teachings. He tells the Emperor (“Kayser”) a parable of a young tree that once promised to be productive and fruitful, but then did not live up to its promise with the result that the gardener was punished. He adds: “Yet God shall be the witness” (“Doch Gott soll Zeuge sein,” 247), thus indicating his own innocence. Solimann answers with fairness and responds: “No — I shall testify. / How much devotion and diligence you have applied to this tree. / If a well taken care of tree withers because of a worm inside / One absolves the gardener just as I absolve you / And one lets the blazing fire devour the useless wood.”^[349]

What makes Lessing’s Süleyman much different from the same figure in earlier versions of this narrative is that he is a forgiving, generous person who liberates before he condemns. The question of whether or not he will actually light that fire, or whether such fire is only a matter of the rhetoric, remains open, since the play is unfinished. Lessing seems to imply here that whatever message is written in literature to be interpreted and applied, this is always a task to be solved by each person in an ethical manner. If one of the mottos of the Enlightenment was “sapere aude” [‘dare to think’],^[350] Lessing’s text shifts focus to the recipient of a message, to the audience and the readers, who must then be critical and careful with its interpretation and application and who bear the weight of their own actions.

The Sultan in Lessing’s play is manipulated by Roxolana who has power over him, at least to a certain point, due to her remarkable rhetorical and psychological skills, especially through her empathy — her ability to anticipate his doubts, ambivalences, and fears, before they are expressed by him or anyone else, and thus to silence them indirectly. Attention is shifted to the power of intuition and of language that can articulate even the most subtle emotions.

Although Lessing’s early Giangir fragment has not been considered as an important work within his oeuvre, it anticipates the main ideas for his later works. The relationship between Cihangir and his teacher Temir is a new element added to the story of Mustafa, and it raises, as pointed out above, the question of agency. Are teachers responsible for their students’ actions and how must they account for their influence? How mature are the students? To what extent do people act individually, and to what extent do they reflect the influence of others and therefore a lack of control over their own actions?

Lessing does not refer to any external power or influence the way Haugwitz did; they are neither threat nor excuse. We find humor in Haugwitz and irony in Lessing’s play. Neither Süleyman nor Roxolana, nor anyone else, is in complete control; shifting responsibility or blaming others for one‘s own actions does not work in any case. If the Sultan appears harsh to Mustafa, he absolves Temir. Whatever the young person wants or does counts equally to the ideas and actions of the older generation.

Christian Felix Weisse, Mustapha und Zeangir (1768)

Christian Felix Weisse and Lessing were well acquainted. Yet though Lessing became one of the pivotal figures of the Enlightenment, Weisse’s considerable dramatic oeuvre has almost passed into obscurity. In the preface to the second volume of his collected plays, in which Mustapha und Zeangir appears, Weisse criticizes the situation of the German theater at the time. He comments that after some promising attempts, by Johann Friedrich von Cronegk and Joachim Wilhelm von Brawe, to revive the theater, there was some hope for an improvement of the German stage. But then he bemoans the fact that his friend Lessing, who had instilled in him the love for all dramatic art in the first place, had been silent for several years and seemed to have almost forgotten his muse for the sake of other occupations, finally waking up again to produce the immortal Minna von Barnhelm and the noble Emilia Galotti.^[351] In response, Weisse remained quiet for some time thinking the German stage did not need him any longer, although he was not happy that the heroic drama seemed to have been replaced by the “Bürgerliche[s] Trauerspiel” [‘bourgeois drama’]. He comments that he knows of no other nation in all of Europe that would, as the Germans do, be dominated by only one single “Modegeschmack” [‘style of fashion’] that would cancel out all other approaches. He offers his drama, Mustapha und Zeangir, as an alternative to the reigning fashion.

The play opens with a dialog between Roxolana and her servant Rüstam, from which it becomes clear that she wants Mustafa dead and that his popularity threatens her plans to have her own son Cihangir (“Zeangif’) succeed his father as next sultan.^[352] She offers Rüstam her daughter in return for his support and states in no uncertain terms: “The law of inheritance determines Mustapha as the future heir of the crown. / But I am determined to give it to Zeangir, my son. / In order to achieve this, I am still, like you, too small. / So the corpse of the former must be the stairway for the latter.”^[353] The chance to have Roxolana’s daughter as wife is too great a temptation for Rüstam, and he suppresses his misgivings and agrees to help. He identifies Mustafa’s weakness as “his feminine heart” (“sein weibisch Herz,” 134), expressed in his devotion to his wife and child. When Cihangir enters, full of praise for Mustafa, Roxolana tries to turn him against Mustafa and to kindle in him the desire to succeed his father. She even hints that Mustafa might be got rid of to this end. But Cihangir refuses to hear any such talk and tells his mother to take the words back. When the Sultan enters, Rüstam and Roxolana speak against Mustafa so that that the Sultan is convinced of his son’s treachery. The plans for Mustafa’s execution are already being put into place, but in Act 2, scene 3, the Sultan begins to have doubts: “I feel it, my heart consistently tells me: He is your son! / From the first moment he spoke openly — / (reflecting for a while). / And should he be deserving of punishment?—No, he has done nothing wrong!”^[354] At this point Roxolana enters saying that she loves Mustafa, but that she loves the Sultan more, and she overpowers the Sultan’s instinct for justice. He takes the flight of Ahmed as a sign of Mustafa’s guilt. In a soliloquy, Roxolana gloats over what she has achieved: “Mustapha, Fatimah and also Zopyr will die, / so Zeangir will rule from this throne under me!” (“Es sterbe Mustapha, Fatim’ und auch Zopyr, / So herrscht auf diesem Thron Zeangir neben mir!” 172). In Act 4, Roxolana plots that if Mustafa were to be spared, they will take revenge on Fatimah. Süleyman is still in doubt over ordering Mustafa’s death, but he lets himself be persuaded by Roxolana that Fatimah should bear the brunt of his wrath. The plotters also arrange for the Sultan to come into possession of a letter in which Mustafa officially asks the Persian King for the hand of his daughter. All comes to pass as planned. Fatimah is killed, as is Mustafa. The Sultan, however, realizes he has made a mistake, and when Ahmed arrives, too late to save his friend, Süleyman blames Rüstam, whom Ahmed must now kill in order to become Grand Vizier in his place. Süleyman now begins to suspect the complicity of Roxolana. Roxolana then enters and acts surprised when she sees the corpse of Mustafa. But Süleyman is distraught at what has happened and claims to have been betrayed by Rüstam. Roxolana agrees that it must have indeed been Rüstam’s scheme and begins extravagantly to lament Mustafa’s death. Süleyman vows revenge on all those who ever spoke against his son. In a soliloquy Roxolana congratulates herself for putting the blame on Rüstam. She wonders momentarily if he might betray her, but consoles herself with the assertion that anyone who would betray her would deserve death. Cihangir enters and is beside himself with grief at his brother’s death. Roxolana is enraged at what she perceives to be his weakness. He should be thankful that the way to the throne is now open to him. And he owes her, as she made everything possible by persuading Rüstam to act the way he did. How will Cihangir reward her? He responds by stabbing himself and sinking down by Mustafa’s corpse. Roxolana cries out for help and asks where she could flee. Cihangir responds: “To remorse, if it is possible—” (“Zur Reu, wenn’s moglich ist—” 244). At this point the curtain comes down.

Conclusion

Roxolana became a figure of much interest in the German theater of the Baroque, as has been shown specifically in the plays of Lohenstein and Haugwitz. This character continued to play an important role in Enlightenment plays by Lessing and Weisse, and her depiction moves between a fascination with the unknown and exotic to a consideration of philosophical and ethical issues. Lohenstein vividly expresses Roxolana’s power. His play is cruel and bloody and does not shun away from the voyeuristic. Roxolana reigns over the Sultan and persuades him to murder Ibrahim with the help of Rüstam and the Mufti. She exemplifies the Muslim world and at the same time stands for the strong female figure, thus placing herself outside the bounds of civil society. She has her own logical place in a Baroque universe, in which everything seems to be regulated by abstract interconnected forces and in which nothing turns out to be really predictable. Lohenstein has been called the “Sebastian Bach” of German literature, as he loves the style of polyphony in his poetic writing and the harmony of extremes in character description. He depicts Roxolana as a paradoxical figure, awful and attractive at the same time. She stands for reason and calculation, and while she is trying to calm down the Sultan, who is being consumed by his own anger and passion, she takes exactly those elements of desire to the highest extreme as her own attributes. She acts on multiple levels of language and is a master of metaphor-making alliances not only with Reason but also with Passion, and not only with the Sultan but also the Mufti. She is an exacting politician, but she demonstrates her own sense of religious faith by asking the Mufti how to proceed on the basis of Muslim law. The accomplices with whom she plots the action belong to various incompatible segments of society. She is never caught in the game because all her actions are executed via others whom she manipulates or wins over by words. Roxolana may not fare well with Lohenstein, if we look at the end of the play, but she also has her human and forgivable side. There are no contradictions or ambivalences in Lohenstein’s depiction of Roxolana since they do not exist in the distinct polyphonic Baroque universe of his plays.

Haugwitz, in his tragicomedy, challenges Lohenstein’s depiction of Süleyman and shows Roxolana as a less effective negative agent, for all her plotting comes to naught thanks to the Sultan’s gaining control over his passions and returning to ethical rule. Haugwitz brings humor to the action and breaks the sad and cruel spell of the play. Haugwitz seems to have some distance from his subject matter, allowing a happy ending to the story of Isabelle and Ibrahim. He takes his inspiration from the French novel, from Italian political theoreticians of the Renaissance, such as Machiavelli, and from the dramas of Lohenstein and of Gryphius.^[355] By returning to Gryphius, Haugwitz gives more say not only to the human figures, but also to the otherworldly figures, the allegorized voices in the Chorus after each Act. His “Misch-Spiel” [‘Tragi-Comedy’] shows the Muslim Süleyman next to his Christian friend Ibrahim. Both are obviously not in control even when they think they are. Roxolana has reasons to be jealous, but in the end she cannot manipulate the Sultan into killing Ibrahim, and, of course, she does not have to. Things that first appear to be distorted tend to get settled and take care of themselves in time. There also is humor in the fact that when Süleyman demands the love of Isabelle, he tells her that she will be as respected as his Sultana Roxolana. In other words, it is his highest compliment to Isabelle that she would gain a position equal to his favorite Sultana. The play gains momentum from its love triangle more than from any political tensions. In the end, both Isabelle and Roxolana win back whom they love, and their positions are restored. Nobody gets killed in the process. Haugwitz prefers us to see reason and friendship prevail over any uncontrolled passion, thus using laughter via art and performance as an antidote to complicated history and as a medium directed towards humanistic education. Despite his innovations, he claims to have remained scrupulously concerned with the accurate portrayal of the real figures according to authentic historical sources in his esteem. The character of Roxolana is presented, he writes, “after the true facts and faithful to history” (“a rei veritate & fide historica”).^[356]

In Lessing’s dramatic fragment, Roxolana is again one who has the say, but what happens is not what she intended. Lessing uses irony and rather dark humor to gets his message of peace across. Roxolana’s arguments make sense to Süleyman, who is apparently blinded by his own fears and passions. No otherworldly figures can be referred to as correctives. Humans are fully responsible, and death can indeed happen prematurely. If the title of the play is anything to go by, Cihangir presumably stands up in protest against Roxolana and questions her actions. He is apparently not interested in the throne and rejects being controlled by his mother. As mentioned above, Lessing does not elaborate on detailed descriptions but leaves things sketchy and open to imagination and interpretation. Roxolana is shown via her words and gestures as a multifaceted and interesting character. Her conflicting roles as a mother, a wife, and a political agent, the Empress of the Ottoman Empire, put her in the spotlight, while challenging the old-standing tradition surrounding the question of who should become the legitimate heir. She wants to set the stage differently but miscalculates everything. She fails because she underestimates the real love and loyalty between the stepbrothers. Lessing is less interested in hierarchy than he is in family relations and mixed characters.

Weisse turns to writing an anti-heroic drama in distinction from the more fashionable “bourgeois play,” and he elaborates more on the complexity of the characters involved, including Roxolana. She does not accept the traditional ruling on who should be the next heir.^[357] Whether she wants power for her son or eventually only for herself, she has no right to impose it on Cihangir. However, questioning the tradition may also speak in her favor. Unfortunately, by asking too much, she alienates Cihangir and fails to gain any control. Roxolana shows no scruples during the entire action of plotting the murder, and towards the end of the play, we see her rapidly sizing up the changed situation and betraying her co-conspirator Rustam without a moment’s hesitation. But all her scheming comes to naught. Roxolana is angry at her son Cihangir for mourning Mustafa’s death instead of celebrating it as an event that cleared the way for him to succeed his father, the Sultan. She argues that it does not matter if he is not strong enough to rule, because she will still support him. He should thank her and reward her for bringing this opportunity about. His response is rather to commit suicide in front of her.

Roxolana was indeed presented in a largely negative light on German stage during the Baroque and Enlightenment periods, as these dramas have demonstrated. However, such representation allows us to gain insights into the power structures of the time. Even in the seventeenth-century drama, we find not only a Sultan who plots the death of his innocent son due to his foolish attention to Roxolana words, but also, as Haugwitz shows, a Sultan who recovers from his weakness and gains reason again. Thus corrected the negative image of the Turkish ruler, which dominated the works of the earlier (and to some extent also subsequent) authors. As the plays by Lessing and Weisse demonstrate in distinct ways, the bond between Mustafa and Cihangir transcends the striving for power and exemplifies brotherly love beyond the immediate circle. These stepbrothers of Islamic faith illustrate that love and loyalty are not only Christian but also universal human qualities. Literature fulfills its purpose when it challenges old stereotypes and makes us realize the human side of characters of all cultures.

The Baroque authors often wrote about the importance of discipline and considered the power of emotion and passion as something dangerous, while venturing nonetheless into the discovery of Eros. They often expressed a concern, if not an obsession, with issues of morality and ethics. Their dramas presented intense and sometimes reactionary attempts to confirm Christianity in the face of many new and fascinating influences from all over the world, including the Ottoman Empire. They often mobilized fear of moral decline in their audiences in plays that served religious purposes as well as confirming the superiority of their own Western cultural heritage. They condemned extreme sensation that they linked with violence, and they privileged measure, reason, and tradition. Although they tended to project their anxieties on those whom they considered the “other,” they did not deny a sense of uncertainty and a lack of control facing not only humans but also spirits and otherworldly powers that may have their own right and may even be expressions of Divine power. They presented the world as a play of a higher order, writing dramas that illustrated human error and punishment, which should then motivate the audiences to return home with a strengthened resolve to embrace virtue and reason and to let go of their own unruly desires. Whereas German authors of the Baroque dealt often with extremes of rhetorical and artistic expression and went to the uttermost degree of extravagance in words and actions in dealing with their own anxieties and worst fears, Enlightenment authors tried to achieve their goals via a different aesthetics, through a minimum of words and action onstage.^[358] The Enlightenment was interested in achieving its goals through more subtle persuasion without the grandiose effort that had characterized the previous century. Lessing called such an approach the use of “pregnant images,” which were effective not by presenting exuberant scenes or telling people directly what they should do, but instead by letting them choose freely and responsibly on their own based on effective images and scenes. In order to mobilize the imagination of the audience, drama and prose in their own ways emphasized modes of visuality rather than verbal rhetoric. Lessing proposed, in his famous Laokoon essay, the idea that “the more we see the more we should be able to imagine” (“Je mehr wir sehen, desto mehr müssen wir uns dazu denken konnen”),^[359] and in his plays he tried to achieve empathy (“Mitleid”) not only for the positive characters, but also for the negative ones. One Turkish character may be a villain, another may be a hero, but most likely they are, as Lessing seems to indicate, a mixture of positive and negative traits. Lessing’s work ends with a plea for tolerance and diversity, and he states in his final play, Nathan the Wise, that Moslems, Jews, and Christians are all interrelated. The writers discussed in this essay often project their own ideas and concerns on to the historical material they used, yet increasingly, as Ludwig Tieck demonstrated, they express a genuine interest in the Ottoman history.

Roxolana continues to fascinate the German imagination as a woman who represents passion and love and who—despite all her extraordinary and even ordinary vices—has an amazing ability to capture our attention through her outstanding use of language and effective rhetorical skills. The figure of Roxolana survives throughout the centuries in a series of complex cultural images, but even the most negative portrayals cannot deny her political skill and her astute use of language.^[360] Whatever it was she was fighting for—her sons, a kingdom, or equal rights—she questioned the patriarchal tradition and cultural norms.