Actors: Housekeeper, Merck, his wife Louise, Narrator and the Postman
Housekeeper brings the wine in to the room where Merck and his wife Louise are sitting.
Louise: “What’s up with you darling? You are looking so sad.”
Merck: “I don’t know. Nothing I did or invented I have finished. All my friends of the Darmstadt - Circle are more successful than me!”
Louise: “Oh darling, your criticisms are very popular and I’m your biggest fan.”
Louise stands up and hugs her husband.
Merck: ”You don’t know anything, stupid wife!”
Louise: “Oh, you are drunken again! Just go away!”
Merck (goes away): “I will go to the meeting with the Darmstadt – Circle, they understand me better!”
(Someone is knocking on the door. Merck opens it. It is the postman, who gives him a letter. Merck leaves the house, while reading the letter loudly.)
Merck: ” Dear Mr. and Mrs. Merck, we are sorry to tell you that your son died last night because of. Tuberculosis.”
(Merck set down on a bench and thinks for a while)
Merck: ”Oh my God, my poor child was much too young to die. How could I explain that to Louise? Everything in my life has gone wrong, I even wasn’t able to keep my son alive. I can’t stand it anymore. I just want to leave this cruel world! I can’t resist this pressure and pain anymore.
(Merck gets up from the bench being intent to escape this situation.
He walks home, when he arrives there he flounces into his workroom.
After drinking a bottle of wine he decides to write a letter to the “Darmstadt Circle”. After ending his last sentence the doorbell rings.
It is Goethe who is ringing.)
Merck: “Goethe, my friend. I am very sorry that I didn’t appear. But this letter will explain everything.
Please read it out in front of my loyal friends from the “Darmstadt Circle”.
He goes into the wine cellar and thinks. At the same time, Goethe is reading the letter to the Darmstadt Circle.
Goethe: ”My precious friends. It is my painful duty to inform you that I could no longer bare the pressure of this world. You have known my problems, which have brought me in this difficult position, for a long time. I have been fighting this midlife crisis too long.
(Goethe recognises the message in the letter and runs to Merck’s house but he is too late. Merck is dead.)
