In the end, all is well in the novel "From the Life of a Good-for-Nothing". And in the adaptation of the text for the stage of the Frankfurt theater "Katakombe", the main character is ultimately allowed to marry the beautiful young lady he has been pining for since the beginning of his wondrous journey from his father's mill, via Vienna to Rome and back.

Josef von Eichendorff's novel is an exemplary text for the Romantic era on the Hessian curriculum for year 1 and is subject matter for the German Abitur. What could be more obvious than to give the Q1 students the opportunity to watch the stage version and compare it with the novel in class. And there are also numerous points of contact for the "Performing Arts" course at our grammar school. For this reason, Phorms students, accompanied by teachers Bernd Winter and Andreas Funke, met at the small, traditional theater in downtown Frankfurt to see a fast-paced version of the story of the romantic, airy-fairy dreamers, condensed into just under two hours.

Played and sung by just three actors in numerous alternating roles, in front of a stage set imitating silhouettes, the production not only offered a fresh, sometimes witty new look at the old text, but also an additional interpretation: the light, airy, in itself harmless romantic melange is juxtaposed at the beginning of the evening - more sombrely and somewhat threateningly - with historical-nationalist themes: Eichendorff clashes unexpectedly with "Lützow's wild, daring hunt" and Ernst Moritz Arndt's wish for a greater fatherland. But - as I said - the disturbance is not lasting: in the end, all is well again.