help us understand hanschen to the extent that you do
EEEEEEEEHEH THANK U FOR THIS… i absolutely love hanschen and he’s been my favorite character in any media since i was like 13 and now i’m about to turn 21 😅
when i was about 13-15 i was on spring awakening tumblr and that was very crucial to my understanding of him at that time… despite having a lot of wrong and weird opinions while i was younger, i’ve continued on interacting with spring awakening media and continued to watch the musical and read the play as i got older. as i got older i understood him more and more. (i do want to note that every actors interpretation of hanschen is different, but this is my general opinion on his character all together.)
so, hanschen at the time of the musical was about 14. that’s a confusing time to be a kid, especially a queer one! a lot of people don’t seem to like hanschen, calling him creepy or manipulative. i feel like, again, a big part of understanding these characters is understanding that they’re children in an incredibly oppressive society. in contrast to the other spring awakening kids, hanschen has seemed to mature a lot more quickly, along with his peer melchior.
hanschen and melchior are the only characters in the show who know about sex at the beginning. melchior is more sex-positive, open to talking about it with moritz and teaching him about it. hanschen, on the other hand, is more neutral about it. in frank wedekind’s play, during his desdemona scene, there’s a line that says: “Thuman’s Psyche — another legacy of the hatchet-faced Mademoiselle Angélique, that rattlesnake in the paradise of my childhood;”. there’s another scene earlier in the play, in act one scene two, where melchior says: “-George Zirschnitz wanted to tell Hansy Rilow, but Hansy Rilow had already learned it all from his governess when he was little.”
these lines tell us that when hanschen was just a child, his governess had told him all about sex, as well as showing/teaching him about Thuman’s Psyche. hanschen uses the term “rattlesnake” to describe his governess, a term that tell us she was someone who shook up and made his mostly peaceful childhood chaotic.
in the classroom scene early on in the musical, different actors and productions usually work with how hanschen acts while moritz messes up his recitation and while melchior is having his speech interpreting Virgil’s Aeneid on moritz’s behalf before “all that’s known”. this is regarding the teacher criticizing moritz and hitting melchior with the teaching stick. for example: jonathan b. wright in the original cast is a little bit more naïve while actively trying not to let his confident façade slip, laughing at what the teacher says to please him but getting scolded and scared afterwards; though you can still see he has a childlike nervousness and tenseness to him. when melchior is hit, he jumps with the rest of the boys from being startled.
in contrast, andy mientus in deaf west spring awakening, is slightly less naïve and keeps up the fake cockiness slightly better. using clips from the june 13, 2015 performance, his hanschen seems more focused on making sure he truly pleases the teacher and doesn’t let the façade slip. he laughs along with the teacher, and while the teachers back is turned and melchior starts signing, he tries to seem unbothered. though while melchior is hit with the stick, we do see him flinch, letting the act that he seems unbothered slip. after “all that’s known” and moritz and melchior start signing to each other, hanschen chooses to blatantly ignore them as to not get in trouble. (which, if i remember correctly, was changed in some performances to have him seem bothered by them signing and making it known he doesn’t agree with them rebelling against the teacher, which still fits to his character.)
i think both of these interpretations are very true to hanschen. he’s still a kid, but he doesn’t want to test his luck with authority. he wants to please them and he doesn’t want to get in trouble. despite all that, he’s 14 and he still gets nervous and scared and both their interpretations show that. at the core of hanschens character, he was never meant to seem truly cocky or rude. his demeanor on the outside is practically just a survival instinct, as he knows he’s queer and he’s matured and knows how the world and reality can be. some additional context for this argument in the musical lies in the vineyard scene, where not only is he more softer and comfortable around ernst, he says these particular lines: “Trust me, there are only three ways a man can go. He can let the status quo defeat him - like Moritz. He can rock the boat like Melchior and be expelled. Or, he can bide his time, and let the system work for him - like me.”
the overall analysis of these lines is saying that you can either let your present situations suffocate you, stir things up and try and combat them to change things, or you can wait things out and work with what you have, like hanschen does. this tells us that yes, he is giving into pleasing authority despite not agreeing with them so things work out for him and he leads a steady life. this doesn’t make him cocky or stuck-up, he’s just more matured and knows what’s best for him at that time.
another misconception of hanschen’s character is calling him manipulative and creepy towards ernst. i’ve always thought that, in both the play and musical, their relationship has always been transparent with no hidden, creepy undertones. my personal favorite version of hanschen and ernst’s relationship is in deaf west spring awakening. andy mientus here plays hanschen very confidently, but he’s also afraid of getting his feelings hurt. he’s too afraid to get too emotionally invested to protect his feelings. in deaf west’s vineyard scene, when hanschen kisses ernst at first and then says: “When we look back, thirty years from now, tonight will seem unbelievably beautiful”, he moves to leave. he’s scared and doesn’t think ernst will reciprocate his feelings. then, when ernst grabs him and says, “In the meantime?”, hanschen takes that as a green light to kiss him again. that possibly, those feelings were reciprocated. after that second kiss ernst says: “On my way here this afternoon I’d thought perhaps we’d only talk”, and hanschen took it as a rejection. that he felt ernst was suddenly regretting what had happened. hanschen then says “So are you sorry we-?”, making this more obvious. he turned and started pulling away to leave. ernst then grabs hanschen saying that he loves him, which hanschen obviously softens up to him and realizes that his feelings are reciprocated. so, he was going to run away due to, what he thought was, a rejection.
hanschen, even if he did come off very confident, just had a wall he had put up to seem basically, nonchalant. he told us, and ernst, that he wants to lead a steady life and he will adapt to the world around him in order to do that. at the end of the day, regardless of this, he’s still a 14 year old boy with a messed up childhood that led to him maturing far faster than his peers. he was scared, nervous, and afraid of his feelings and getting hurt in any way.
those are the reason why he’s always been my favorite character, not just in spring awakening, but generally. he’s a blatant reminder that these kids are just about 14 and that, both back then and now, we all have had different ways of growing up and going about our insecurities. he’s a complex character and largely misunderstood, but at the end of the day his character is a representation of being emotionally mature at a young age due to trauma. he is another reminder of the overall story of spring awakening it’s message: what happens to kids when authoritarian figures around them are negligent.