SOURCE: Mahlendorf, Ursula. Review of In Goethes Hand: Szenen aus dem 19. Jahrhundert, by Martin Walser. World Literature Today 57, no. 2 (spring 1983): 279.

In the following review, Mahlendorf outlines scenes from In Goethes Hand, pronouncing the play's portrayal of the psychological and social dynamics of oppression successful.

Martin Walser's recent play In Goethes Hand is a fascinating study of a great man and his human, all too human relationships. The title is a pun on “In Gottes Hand.” Walser's Goethe is indeed God, and Eckermann, in this drama's three parts, is his most devoted servant and priest. The play shows the continual and ambivalent fascination which the national literary idol has exercised over German writers. Like Peter Hacks in his Frau von Stein monologue (see WLT 57:1, p. 97), Walser does not focus on the great man himself but rather on his subordinates and dependents, on Eckermann, on Goethe's son and daughter-in-law and...