The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Play in three acts by Björn Björnson
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

Björn Björnson is, as can be seen from his play "Johanna", a complicated personality. Firstly, he is a clever man who lacks the power with which real poets create. That is why he has a good understanding of an interesting problem that is in the air, but he cannot develop this problem so dramatically that one likes to follow him. Secondly, he is a man who understands stage routine and who could therefore write a good "play" if he wanted to exercise this ability, but at the same time he wants to be a distinguished artist. That's why his play hovers in the middle between "theater product" and work of art. Thirdly, he is a man who wants to be a free spirit, but who is only capable of replacing old prejudices with new ones. That is why he paints the bearers of outdated opinions as black as possible. And finally, fourthly, he is the bearer of a famous name. That's why his play is performed on stages that would hardly have bothered with it if it had been written by a common miller.

I'm sorry about the problem. Johanna Sylow is a talented girl who will probably go far in the musical arts if she can develop freely according to her talents. Her father is dead. Although he was a simple master carpenter, he had a rare love of art and a musical sense. He passed both on to his daughter. But she also received another heirloom from him, namely a groom. At the hour of his death, she had to promise him that she would seek her happiness in marriage to the theologian Otar Bergheim, for the caring father was of the opinion that he could die in peace, knowing that his beloved child would be under the protection of this faithful soul. Johanna now lives in a house with her mother, the widow Sylow, with her two siblings Hans and Johann, with her bridegroom and an old uncle. A bright future as an artist seems to be her "inner destiny". But how is she to reach her goal? Her mother is naturally stupid and understands nothing of her daughter's talents. The brothers are naughty wranglers who are always bickering and fighting and making such an unholy racket that Johanna can't work. The bridegroom is a good theologian who is determined to keep the promise he made to Johanna's father on his deathbed. He wants to be a firm support for Johanna in life, but he also wants to feel a little of that without which a love affair is not really possible: a kiss or something similar here and there. But Johanna lives too much in her artistic dreams to have time for such things. Moreover, the good theologian cannot bear his bride's artistry. He is constantly tormented by the thought that she will roam the world as an artist, while he, as a priest, must be pining for her somewhere. These two natures do not belong together; yet they seem to be chained together by the will of the deceased. What is to become of Johanna? A fine task for a true poet would be to show the terrible struggles the girl goes through until she is strong enough on her own to break the vow she has made to her father, or until she perishes because she is unable to do so. Björnson does things differently. Hans Sylow, the good uncle, fully understands his talented niece and does everything he can to pave the way for her to become a free artist. At the right time, Peter Birch, the impresario, is also there to take care of business matters, and Sigurd Strom, the poet with the free outlook on life, who raves to the girl about what lies dormant in her and what she is called to do - finally, to ensure that everything goes smoothly, a good friend who provides temporary accommodation when the good uncle, the rapturous poet and the clever impresario have brought the budding artist to the point where she runs away from her bridegroom.

The audience is shamefully deceived. He is promised an interesting conflict of the soul: he has to make do with an uninteresting plot and with people who are too insignificant to captivate us with the psychological conflicts that the poet wants to portray with them.

In addition to all this, the performance in the Deutsches Theater did not meet the expectations with which one goes to this house. Only Emanuel Reicher played Uncle Hans with the humor in which the role is intended. Lotti Sarrow seems to have none of the things that actors have to bring to their profession. The girl the poet had in mind is interesting - the girl he drew is less interesting - the girl Lotti Sarrow portrays is the least interesting.

Play by William Shakespeare
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

On September 1st, the Lessing Theater brought us the first performance of Otto Neumann-Hofer's new management. "King Henry V" by Shakespeare was performed. The performance was a theatrical event of the first order. And I will come back to it in the next issue. Today I would just like to say that it was a merit of the new director to present Shakespeare's interesting work, which has not been performed in Berlin for a long time, and that the performance was an exemplary directorial achievement. A remarkable contribution to solving the question: how should Shakespeare be brought to the stage today?

In his book "William Shakespeare", Georg Brandes says that "Henry V" is not one of the poet's best, but one of his most endearing plays. One need only look at the way Shakespeare has drawn the main character of the drama, and one will agree with this judgment. After the second sentence that this king speaks, he already begins to become sympathetic to us; and we have the feeling that we will follow him in sorrow and joy. May he develop before us as a great man: we will rejoice that a charming personality is great; may he perish from his own incapacity: he will earn our pity, but not lose our love. He was not an ascetic as long as he was crown prince; but he immediately bids farewell to frivolous activity and makes strict regal duty his goddess when the crown adorns his head. The poet compels us to love this man. Because he loved him himself. And unmistakably he shows us that he wanted to say: a true king speaks like this: that he is a man like all others, that the firmament appears to him like all others, and that his senses are under the general human conditions.

"Putting aside his ceremonies, he appears in his nakedness only as a man, and though his inclinations take a higher impetus than those of other men, yet when they sink they sink with the same fittich." (Act IV, 1)

This is how this king appears when we look at his heart; if we look at his mind, he is no less important. The Archbishop of Canterbury says of him:

"Only hear him speak of godliness,
And, full of admiration, you will wish
Inwardly do wish the king were prelate;
Hear him negotiate matters of state,
You will believe that he studies only that;
Listen to his war talk, and horror
Battles you hear recited in music.
Bring him to a case of politics,
He will untie the same Gordian knot,
Confidential as his knee-band; when he speaks,
The air, the uncommitted libertine, is silent." (Act I, 1)

I believe that in this Henry, Shakespeare wanted to portray a king of whom he could say: such shall be the head of state under whom I am glad to be an English subject.

The events of the drama are pure history. Without dramatic tension and without an inner driving force that sweeps from scene to scene. Dialogue is used to tell how Heintich sets out to conquer the throne of France, how he achieves his goal after many adventures of war and how he brings the Frankish king's daughter home. All this is richly interspersed with scenes in which Shakespeare's gift for drawing people and portraying the character of entire classes of people is revealed in the most beautiful way. When characters, such as the Valaisan Fluellen, tell us about things that have nothing to do with the progress of the plot, we are happy to listen. For a moment we realize that we are only watching scenes strung together; but we abandon all preconceptions about the drama when we are so captivated against all the rules.

And in another sense Shakespeare shows himself to be an amiable poet in this play. The modesty with which he lets his "Chorus" speak about the relationship between life, action and poetry is a remarkable trait in the most influential poet who ever lived. The Chorus speaks to the audience:

"But forgive me, dear ones,
To the weak, shallow spirit that dared,
To bring upon this unworthy scaffolding
Such great reproach." (Prologue)
and
"Therefore, high and low,
See how unworthiness may mark him, The light demolition of Henry in the night.
Thus to the meeting our scene must fly,
Where we (O shame!) shall disfigure very much With four or five ragged, dirty blades,
Ill-arranged to ridiculous bellows,
The name of Agincourt. But sit and see,
Thinking the true, where its simulacrum stands." (Act IV, 1)

There is great wisdom in such sentences. Great art shows itself the right place in relation to life. Small art all too often wants to elevate itself at the expense of life and assign itself a position that it does not deserve.

"Henry V" is a drama from which we get to know Shakespeare, the man, in all his amiable greatness. In it, he has said what he, as an Englishman, wants a king to be, and he has also told us how he thought about the relationship of his art to life.

Of course, the drama cannot be performed today as it has been handed down as Shakespearean. On September 1, the Lessing Theater delivered a performance that meets all the requirements of modern theatrical art. Of course, art pedants also have a lot to criticize about this performance. And you don't even have to be an art pedant to agree that today we can tolerate more Shakespeare than Dingelstedt left out. I would like to say to the director of the theater: via Dingelstedt back to Shakespeare. And above all: why such monologues as those delivered by the inconsiderable fellow who serves Nym, Bardolph and Pistol?

No matter how bad the criticism is! Some praise it; others write that they can't tell Shakespeare's Henry from Wildenbruch's because they closed their eyes and put their hands over their ears in the Lessing Theater on September 1st. When I read one of the reviews by one of these ragers who covered his ears, I laughed; for I have every respect for the gentlemen who put on the performance on September 1st; but the good Shakespeare is not easy to botch up so badly that one needs to cover one's ears.

Drama in three acts by Georg von Ompteda
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

This play is one of those plays that can only be enjoyed if one has a point of view in the field of social life that corresponds to that of the parochial politician in public affairs. A certain degree of philistinism is required if the conflicts involved are not to be perceived as too insignificant for a play lasting over two hours. Viktor Schröter is one of those better philistines who "enjoy their youth" and, when they have enjoyed it enough, sail into the harbor of a marriage that would please even the strictest pastor. But as the little ship approaches safe land, a somewhat unpleasant rumor spreads around it. The debt-ridden Viktor needs a dirty fellow to pay his taxes, the matchmaker Suberseaux, who introduces him to the orphaned millionaire Hedwig, who is limping on one leg. The brave matchmaker receives a commission in return, which Schröter hands over from his captured wife's money. The marriage is a happy one. Schröter gradually falls in love with his Hedwig, as if he had not bought her and as if she had not brought millions into his house. She is the "ideal" of a woman. She has fallen in love at first sight, for that is how true love must express itself. She has no idea how Viktor has fallen in love with her and believes that she would be eternally unhappy if a man had taken her for her money. This distresses Viktor, who has become so well-behaved, and he always wants to confess his "secret". In order for there to be a dramatic conflict, this must not go easily. The long-gone matchmaker has to reappear. He comes back to the house because he needs money again. Some kind of sleazy story forces him to quickly flee to America. Viktor is supposed to give him the money if he wants to prevent the wretched fellow from disturbing the happy marriage and bringing to light how to become a happy husband. But Viktor, as I said, has become a good boy, and he shows the fortune-bringer the door. He wants to confess anyway. But such fortune-makers are not so easily fobbed off. He comes back and meets the woman alone. As she is, as already mentioned, an "ideal", she awakens a human stirring even in this filthy mediator's heart, and the brave man tells her that the noble Viktor had also once gambled and that he is now there to collect the gambling debts. Hedwig shows solidarity with Viktor and makes him pay the "debt". But the good guy confesses, and Mrs. Hedwig is quite sad for a while. But of course she forgives him and everything turns out well.

These are conflicts that not everyone can understand. You always have the feeling: why go to all this trouble? But if you are predisposed to take these things seriously, then you have to enjoy the finely constructed, albeit somewhat sluggish pace of the plot. If you are not inclined to do so, then you simply have to realize that you are not one of those for whom such plays are written.

For me, the performance at the Lessing Theater was more interesting than the play. As far as I know the circumstances, I have to say: I don't think that any other stage in Berlin currently offers such good performances. The director's art is quite extraordinary here. And as far as the individual performances are concerned, Ferdinand Bonn's Viktor Schröter, Hedwig Elise Sauer and Adolf Klein's matchmaker were worked out in such a way that it was a pleasure to follow them in every nuance. The performance suggests the very best for the time when the Lessing Theater will be able to offer a drama that can count on a deeper interest. Of course, directors can't just pull good plays out of the ground. But those who want to have their plays performed in a worthy manner now know that it is now possible at the Lessing Theater.

Play in three acts by Arthur Schnitzler
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

So far I have always had to compare Schnitzler's dramatic achievements with women who, because of the gracefulness of their outward appearance and the tastefulness of their toilette, do not allow us to wonder whether their soul is also important or not. "The Legacy", however, challenges this question. Schnitzler's talent and his style do not seem to be sufficient for a problem as important as the one dealt with here. His brisk dramatic power of representation is obviously only in its element when it concerns the small circles drawn by life. "The Legacy", which Hugo Losatti leaves to his family after being mortally wounded by a fall from a horse, revolutionizes the souls of a number of people. Schnitzler is not enough of a psychologist to portray this revolution of the soul convincingly and profoundly. We don't see inside the characters, so we don't really want to understand what they say and do. The legacy is Hugo Losatti's lover and his child. He expresses his last wish that his family should take the two beings, whom he loved more than anything else, into their home. The father, a half-mad professor of economics, knows nothing about such a wish. But as he is a good fellow and an incredible weakling, it is not difficult for him to accept the "legacy" after all. The mother is immediately inclined to do so when the son tells her his secret. However, we gain no idea of her character traits. We are therefore indifferent as to how she behaves. We do get to know the sister Franziska better, and it therefore makes some impression that she wholeheartedly says "yes" to her brother's wish and that she even loves her beloved deeply. But it seems to me that here we have before us a character of the staid Birch-Pfeiffer in a modern dress. Such characters can also be found in the realm of the "Gartenlaube". - Of course, the theatrical counterpart of this girl must not be missing. His name is Dr. Ferdinand Schmidt, he came from a poor background, was Hugo's tutor and, after becoming a doctor, is on friendly terms with Losattis. The contrast would not be expressed strongly enough if the unprejudiced, tender-hearted Franziska and the prejudiced, cheerful Schmidt did not fall in love with each other. So they do. Schmidt finds it unappealing from the outset to see how the Losattis "sully" their reputation by taking the "mistress" and the son's offspring into their home.

The plot is clear soon after the curtain rises. People like the Losattis have consciences, so they fulfill a child's wish. The illegitimately conceived boy is immediately introduced to us as a sick child. So he will soon die. So there will soon be an opportunity to chase the unwelcome mother out of the house. So the play will end with her committing suicide. The Losattis are faint-hearted people, so they need someone to talk them out of keeping the "legacy". That's what Dr. Schmidt is there for. His behavior opens Franziska's eyes and she rejects the crude man. While all this is going on according to plan, Emma Winter, the widow of Mrs. Losatti's brother, walks through the door every now and then and talks "beyond good and evil", like a real female trance. She even wants to take the unhappy lover of the deceased into the house, but is finally dissuaded by her daughter - so that the suicide is possible.

These are weighty concessions that Schnitzler makes today to the external art of scenery. The same Schnitzler in whom we have never noticed a lack of depth, as long as he only abandoned himself to his amiable nature.

This time the Deutsches Theater has shown what it can do, after making it clear to us in "Cyrano" what it cannot do. With the exception of Louise Dumont, who was not really up to the thankless female role of the star, the other actors gave perfect performances. Reicher, Rittner, Sauer and Winterstein deserve special mention.

Tragedy in five acts by Max Halbe
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

I have always thought differently about Max Halbe than many others. What was almost universally admired about his "Youth" and his "Mother Earth", I consider to be an - albeit highly valuable - addition to his great poetic talent. But Halbe is, in my opinion, not merely the dramatist of the mood that flows towards us in "Jugend", of the feeling sprouting from the native soil that flows towards us in "Mutter Erde": Halbe is the poet to whom the deepest reasons of the human soul are accessible, which is at home in every time and place. A year ago, after the performance of "Mother Earth", I wrote: "I believe in Halbe's deep vision. I think that if he developed it, this deep vision, it would reach the remotest depths of the human soul." At the time, I thought I had an inkling of the nature of Halbe's artistic individuality. In my opinion, he belongs to the family of great poets who create individual figures, but in such a way that they point us at every moment to that which is eternal in human nature, which lives unchangingly through all times and spaces and which only finds a stronger expression within certain circumstances than in others. A great human conflict seizes the poet. He starts out from the innermost experience of the soul. Then he finds a place and time in which this inner experience can take on the best outer form.

This path of the true poet must also be half the path. Until now, he had only ever followed his very own path ruthlessly. In his "Conqueror" he has gone it. Max Halbe has only just found himself. When I got to know the drama, a great problem of the soul stood before my eyes. The woman's love problem. You can say what you like: a woman has an urge within her for a man of greatness, whom she can love because of his greatness. And if she thinks she has found this man, she is boundlessly selfish and would love to press this greatness with her arms against her rutting bosom and press it again and again and never let go, smothering the greatness in voluptuous kisses. And it must be a woman's real tragedy that when she is truly great, her arms are too weak to hold the greatness. The man escapes from the woman for the sake of the same quality for which she so ardently desires him. He wants to have the great, wide soul for himself because she is great and wide. But because she is big and wide, this soul, there is still room in her for ... other things. The Philistines will forgive me for writing it like this. The Philistines like to close their eyes to this eternal tragedy that intervenes between the great man and the great woman.

Max Halbe wrote this tragedy. Agnes, Lorenzo's wife, is the great woman who seeks the great man because she can only love him. And Lorenzo is the great man whom Agnes adores, but in whose soul there is still the seed for little Ninon, who also seeks the great man. And the great Agnes kills the little Ninon because the man's greatness becomes fatal to the woman for whose sake she loves him.

This is Halbe's problem. In order to portray people going through such conflicts, he needed the background of a time of which we have the idea that people in it had the courage to abandon themselves to their natural selfishness. The Renaissance is such a time. That is why Halbe wrote a Renaissance drama. If he had set his tragedy in the present day, we would have the feeling that people today would find the lies necessary to prevent the true feelings that lie dormant in the background from coming to the surface.

And Halbe has succeeded in breathing the souls of Renaissance men into the characters of his drama. They only need to step in front of us and speak a few words for us to know that we are dealing with people of unreserved egoism and with those who have the courage to display this egoism without cloaking it in an idealistic mantle.

In simple, artfully stylized lines, Halbe has drawn a plot in which the characters appear before our eyes as eternal experiences of the human soul. He has thus found his way to the original sources of dramatic poetry.

Half of the audience on October 29 was unable to follow the path that the poet had taken. This audience would have loved to have seen another moody idyll of his in the style of "Jugend". It no longer understands the poet who has found himself. And because the Berlin theater audience hardly has the worst manners an audience can have, it laughed at, mocked and ridiculed the "Conqueror". On October 29, there was a walkout at the Lessing Theater. But it wasn't Max Halbe's play that failed. No, the audience failed. Their understanding does not come close to the greatness of Halbe's ideas. The poet may console himself. When he was still undeveloped and threw "youth" at people, they understood him. Now that he has something more to say to them, they mock him. What did Goethe say when he was at the height of his art?

"There they praise my Faust,
And what still sunsten
In my writings roars,
In their favor;
The old Mick and Mack,
That makes them very happy;
It means the rag pack,
They wouldn't be any more!"

The reviews on Sunday morning were even worse than the audience on Saturday. In the city of intelligence, there wasn't a single critic who had any idea what Max Halbe wanted. From the impotent fascism of "Tante Voß" through the lukewarm bath of the Berliner Tageblatt to the crude invective of the Lokalanzeiger and the Kleine Journal, one could study all the nuances of critical incompetence. On October 30, one had to experience that there is not a single daily critic in Berlin who is up to the task of important poetry.

Halbe's poetry could not fail in the eyes of those who understand it; the public and critics were embarrassed. On Saturday, a crowd's lack of understanding and bad taste manifested itself in the worst manners, and on the following Sunday a ridiculous criticism put itself in the pillory.

A Viennese play in three acts by Hermann Bahr
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

Hermann Bahr once went out to seek the kingdom of the great new art. And now he brings home plays that have Blumenthal's spirit in them. Saul, Ki's son, has done things differently. Yes, the man who, not so long ago, spoke his mind and said: "Only on one point there is no dispute, on one point everyone agrees, the old and the groups of young people. On one point there is no doubt: that naturalism is already over again and that the toil, the agony of youth is seeking something new, strange, unknown, which no one has yet found. They waver as to whether it will be a new idealism, a synthesis of idealism and realism, whether it will be symbolic or sensitive. But they know that it cannot be naturalistic." (Bahr, Studies in the Critique of Modernism. 1894.)

In the field of dramatic art today, Hermann Bahr is clear about how it must be. Not naturalistic, not symbolistic; it simply has to be floral.

On November 12, Hermann Bahr therefore spoke to us in this new way. The "star" Lona Ladinser played the main role in the play of the postal clerk Leopold Wisinger. The play failed miserably. The actors are naturally annoyed when the plays they are in fail. That's why there is a terrible scolding at Lona Ladinser's house the day after the premiere. Lona's maid, Lona herself, a Miss Zipser - a discarded actress and Lona's companion - all berate the audience, the poet and the critics. They all rant in witty, pointed sentences, as if the feature writer Bahr had first carefully drilled each sentence of their rant into them. All this is neither naturalism nor symbolism, but Blumenthalism. At least a good one at first. But then it gets bad. For how the failed poet and Lona fall in love, how the poet gets nervous and rants and rails because his lover can't let go of the life she led before, how this life itself is developed in front of the audience and how the two part again because the postman prefers his "Grete" to the theater star, and finally how this star devotes himself with all his soul to the boards that mean the world: all this takes place in three acts that are bad Blumenthalism. Originally, the play was even supposed to have had four acts. The fourth was deleted because it was said to be even more evil than the previous two.

A few years ago, Hermann Bahr gave the following verdict on Einsamen Menschen: “And finally the Einsamen Menschem, in which he (Gerhart Hauptmann) accomplished his work, which awaited and needed him, and redeemed the long longing of his people by theatricalizing Holz's technique with brilliant bravura: stripped of everything somehow offensive to the crowd that might trouble their minds, cleaned out neatly and cleanly, adjusted to the dear habits of Teutonic parterres, Europe reduced to the Müggelsee, as if Maurice Maeterlinck were handed over to Mr. Kadelburg. Now Hermann Bahr writes a play in which he shows that no work expected and needed him, a play in which he shamefully disappoints the long yearning of his friends - assuming that they are not blind - in which he imitates Blumenthal's technique with pompous bravura, speculates on everything pleasing to the crowd, reduces Europe to the jokes behind the scenes, as if Mr. Kadelburg had been handed over to Mr. Hermann Bahr.

This "Star", this collection of experiences within the less good theater world dressed up in Bahrian feuilleton jokes, was written by the same man who once said of himself: "But I can console myself, because it is at least a pretty thought and flattering that between the Volga and the Loire, from the Thames to the Guadalquivir, nothing is felt today that I could not understand, share and shape, and that the European soul has no secrets from me."

In order to justify his dramatic banalities, Hermann Bahr has now invented his own theory. On October 22, he wrote in the weekly magazine "Die Zeit" about "Weiße Rößl" that he was "excellently entertained" at the performance. And then continued: "Of course, our young people say that they despise the theater. I don't think they're right; in all great times it has been the greatest thing, culture has always spoken its last words in the theater. But all right. But let them leave it alone. I may say: I want to be a quiet scholar, I am enough for myself, I don't need the others, I don't demand to be heard. But then I must not want to talk. If I want to speak, I must first be an orator ... Once our young people can do what Blumenthal and Kadelburg can do, the audience will forgive them for being "poets"."

"The poet is to the playwright as a scholar is to an orator. A scholar can have the greatest thoughts, but that does not necessarily make him an orator. An orator is one who has the power to control the listeners through words so that they agree with him. So is a dramatist who commands the means of the theater in such a way that the audience feels what he makes them feel."

Hermann Bahr lives in Vienna. There is a speaker there who is able to control people through words so that they agree with him. Those who do have therefore made the speaker mayor. His name is Lueger. He has those in his power against whose main characteristic the oldest gods themselves fight in vain. Scholars, go and learn to speak from him, just as Hermann Bahr learned to make dramas from Blumenthal and Kadelburg!

The performance in the Lessing Theater and the audience were well-behaved. The actors performed quite well; the audience applauded and called out the author several times. He then always bowed by moving his right hand gracefully towards his heart. I didn't notice any other disturbances that evening.

We Germans are currently suffering from a serious cultural malady. We are the bearers of a high education; but this cannot bring itself to become the leader of public life. Instead of giving character to all our idealistic endeavors, shallowness and dilettantism are the leading forces everywhere. We have attained a view of art that no other nation has, but in the public cultivation of our art, in the management of our art institutes, in criticism, little of this view is noticeable. Our entire intellectual life today is therefore on a much lower level than it could be according to the dispositions of our people, according to its innate depth. Wherever we look, we find sad proof of these propositions. We could just as well apply them to every other branch of our present cultural endeavors, as we want to do this time to the cultivation of the drama in our Viennese theaters.

We have two theaters in Vienna that could serve a purely cultural and artistic purpose if they were to grasp their task properly: the Hofburgtheater and the new Deutsches Volkstheater. The other theaters can hardly be thought of in this way. For they have a difficult standing with their audiences. After all, the latter does not seek true artistic enjoyment, and if this is not there, the standard for the good also ceases. That's when the endeavor begins to produce plays with which one can earn as much as possible. The art institute ceases to be such an institution and becomes a company intent on making as much money as possible.

Our Burgtheater never needed to be such a theater; it should never have become the Deutsches Volkstheater. For there are still enough people in Vienna who have a sense of higher aims in art to fill two theaters every evening; it is only necessary not to make it impossible for them to enter these theaters. The Burgtheater and the Volkstheater, however, have managed to exclude the very audience for whom they are intended.

By charging prohibitively high prices and, in particular, by introducing the "Stammsitz" subscription, the Burgtheater has created an audience that usually has money, but not always an understanding of art. The most frivolous need for entertainment has taken the place of a sense of art. Don't misunderstand us! For we do not misjudge the very significant achievements of the Burgtheater in recent times. The artistic leadership has been entrusted to a man whose dramatic skill demands the respect of every discerning person. Every new performance is proof of this. Nor are we blind to the merits that this man has earned through new productions of classical plays such as "Gyges and his Ring", "The Jewess of Toledo" and "Lear". These were theater events of the first rank. The promised "Antigone" will be another one. Nor are we blind to the gain that the Burgtheater has made by the addition of a first-rate force to its artistic staff in Miss Reinhold. But the Burgtheater in Vienna has a completely different task than reviving old plays in masterly staged productions. The life of our Burgtheater should be intimately connected with the development of contemporary dramatic literature. But it has had little luck in promoting the latter. In recent years it has produced new plays that are almost completely worthless. "Cornelius Voss", "Wild Thieves", "The Fugitive", "The Wild Hunt" do not belong in this art institute. We say it with a heavy heart, but we must say it: they are a disgrace to it. Don't tell us that the present has nothing better. That is simply not true. A nation like Germany has something better the moment its first stages set a higher standard. If the Burgtheater understands how to create an art-loving audience, then the German writers will deliver good plays to this theater. However, as long as the educated mob spreads in the main seats and rejects every serious artistic direction, the management of the Burgtheater will be faced with a power that prevents it from solving true artistic tasks. This is what is important. Why is it almost impossible to stage a new tragedy today? Not because there is no audience for it, but because the audience that would enjoy it has been displaced by another audience that lacks any sense for it. Apart from the most superficial need for entertainment, this audience has at most a need for theatrical virtuosity. And so it happens that quite worthless plays are given if there are only rewarding roles in them, that is, roles in which the actor can shine with some special trick. We have had to go through this in "Wilddieben" and "Flüchtling" ad nauseam. But what is even worse, we recently had to witness the literary advisory board of our Burgtheater director proclaiming from the pulpit the most reprehensible of all artistic doctrines: that the value of a drama is determined solely by stage technique. This is a proposition that virtually means the death of all dramatic art. The dramatist is subject to quite different laws of art than the consideration of the accidental facilities of the stage. The dramatist must never subordinate himself to the stage, the poet to the actor, but always the latter to the former. Whatever is dramatically valuable, stagecraft has to create the means and means to bring it to performance. It is a sad sign of the times that doctrines such as Baron Berger's, which make a mockery of all healthy aesthetics, could meet with so much approval and cause such a stir.

Much less than the Burgtheater, however, does the Deutsches Volkstheater fulfill its task. After what has been promised, one could rightly expect from it the cultivation of that dramatic field which can provide the broader masses of the public, those masses who have no higher than ordinary school education, with a higher intellectual enjoyment. This audience would have been found gradually if it had been sought. In the beginning, of course, one would have had to refrain from "extracting" as much as possible from the theater. An artistic director with a permanent salary should have been placed at the helm and a capable director at his side. Instead, the theater was leased out and the director is dependent on putting on "profitable" plays. What did they start with? With "Ein Fleck auf die Ehr", the house was certainly worthily opened. But it would simply have been a scandal if Anzengruber had not been given the first word. What immediately followed was bad enough. We see "Maria and Magdalene" by Lindau, then "The Famous Woman" by Schönthan and Kadelburg. Performing these plays at the Volkstheater was unheard of. From the outset, they had created an audience that did not belong in this theater. "Die berühmte Frau" has the most frivolous and hurtful tendency imaginable. It simply ridicules all of a woman's spiritual life, even if it arises from a deep inner need. According to this play, a woman's task is only to cook, knit and bear children. The most reprehensible thing about it, however, is that the frivolity here lies in skillful, effective theatrical machinations that captivate the audience. It is no different with "Maria and Magdalene", even if we cannot accuse this work of being as harmful as the "Famous Woman".

Much, if not everything, was spoiled with this beginning. What we still experienced of some significance was the performance of "William Tell". But it was precisely this performance that showed how the artistic personnel were not at all up to the demands that had to be made. We are not foolish enough to want to compare this performance with the magnificent Tell performance at the Burgtheater, which is an artistic event of the first rank, especially due to Krastel's interpretation of the Tell role; but the Volkstheater did not do enough. Neither the scenic design nor the artistic presentation rose to the level of mediocrity. All that the Volkstheater did worth mentioning was a performance of the “Pfarrer von Kirchfeld". The rest: "Die Rantzau", "Der Hypochonder", "Der Strohmann", "Die Hochzeit von Valeni" were plays calculated precisely for the audience created by the performance of "Die Berühmten Frau".

Our theaters should only once have the courage to count on a certain audience, and one would see that it comes.

Whenever there is an important vacancy to be filled in Austria, both the relevant circles and the otherwise all-wise gentlemen of Viennese journalism are at a loss. They always claim that there is no suitable person with the knowledge and skills to fill the position in question. We are currently experiencing this again in the management crisis at the Burgtheater. We would have to fear for the decline of German science and art if we were really as poor in outstanding personalities as a local critic recently wants us to believe when he says: "And there is probably no one who unites the necessary qualities, because if there were one, all eyes would have long since rested on him. There is no way we will get the ideal of a Burgtheater director. We will have to lower our standards and make do with a halfway suitable personality instead of a completely suitable one (Edm. Wengraf in the "Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung" of January 12 of this year [1890]." These words are simply ridiculous; they are only surpassed in senselessness by what Ludwig Speidel wrote in the last Sunday feature of the "Neue Freie Presse", which culminated in the following: "We have no man in the whole of Austria and Germany, apart from Baron Berger, who can now run the Burgtheater. Even if this omission by Speidel borders on the comical and should therefore cause only laughter in anyone with insight, we cannot consider it to be entirely harmless. For Speidel's influence on the leading circles of the Burgtheater is great, and his word is listened to. We do not know how this critic gained such influence. It sounds downright heretical to local ears, but it has to be said: Speidel's reputation is largely made. He writes in a way that appeals to a certain section of the Viennese public, witty, witty, but he is without any thoroughness; he has neither artistic principles nor a purified, consolidated taste. Ludwig Speidel's style is admired. Basically, however, it is only a somewhat better newspaper style, which often twists and turns the truth in order to conclude a paragraph with a witty turn of phrase; this is then pleasing, and one does not ask whether what is claimed is true... We now fear that, as so often, this man's voice will be heard this time too. But this time it would be the most dangerous. For our Burgtheater is indeed facing a great danger. Above all, it is in danger of falling completely flat with the comedy. What we have seen in this direction recently, what tastes have been expressed in it, has only recently been hinted at in these papers. It was mostly quite worthless 'theatricality', but it was excellently acted. The art of acting in our Burgtheater does indeed seem to want to emancipate itself completely from dramatic art. The fact that the late Förster was much more important as a director than as a dramaturge contributed to this. This is a pointer to what should be considered above all else when choosing a future director. It will now be a question of a director who has enough insight and understanding to find the truly valuable, the lasting from the dramatic literature of the present, and who has what is called an "aesthetic conscience", which forbids him to allow mere play manufacturers such as Schönthan, Herzl, Fulda, Blumenthal to enter the Burgtheater. We can never expect the same from men like v. Werther and Savits. They would certainly be excellent directors, but they are least likely to be free from the mistake of performing bad dramas for the sake of grateful roles.

We have seen how the above error took deepest root precisely at the time when a stage veteran like Sonnenthal was in charge of the Burgtheater. For all his importance as an actor and director, Sonnenthal lacked any understanding of dramatic art. We fear the same from v. Werther and Savits. The names Spielhagen, Paul Heyse and Hans Hopfen were also mentioned. The first two would hardly accept an appointment; Hans Hopfen, however, is far too superficial in his literary work for the Burgtheater to expect anything from him. It has also been rightly remarked that these latter three personalities have looked around far too little in the dramatic arts to be able to cope with the second task that falls to the future Burgtheater director: creating order in the staff. Our really good people have grown old and will soon need to be replaced. With the exception of Miss Reinhold, our younger ones are almost completely insignificant. They simply have to be tidied up. The future director will have to have the energy to say to some young actors: "I can't use you; we have to make room for something better."

So what is the point if Speidel can only recommend his protégé, Baron Berger, to these urgent needs of the Viennese court theater: he knows the conditions at the Burgtheater, he was able to acquire a sense for the specifics of "Viennese" acting during his time as secretary. That is petty. But we need a man with an eye for the big picture, with full aesthetic and dramaturgical insight. Baron Berger is not that. In his university lectures here he has shown that he has the wrong idea of the position of dramatic art in relation to drama; he has shown that he is capable of giving lectures in a feuilleton style and in dazzling speech, but not that he has appropriated the German view of art.

But what Ludwig Speidel does not seem to know, because he only passes over his name in passing, is that we actually have a good dramaturgical writer who has shown in recent years with every new publication that he has grown, and that is now Heinrich Bulthaupt. Equipped with a fine understanding of the inner technique and aesthetics of drama, few can compete with him when it comes to a penetrating understanding of the art of acting. When Ludwig Speidel accuses him of showing little understanding of the peculiarities of the Burgtheater's acting art, we have a number of things to say about this. Firstly, this art has certain great merits to which a man like Bulthaupt in particular cannot close his mind; secondly, however, it has faults, faults which Bulthaupt can see, but not Ludwig Speidel, because he helped to bring them up. And finally, there is the fact that Bulthaupt's dramatic insight has grown so much since that publication on the Munich Gesamtgastspiel, on which Speidel bases his opinion, that his present ability must no longer be judged by that work, but by his last, quite extraordinary publications on the "Dramaturgy of Opera" and the dramaturgy of our classics.

"Yes, but do we really have to go abroad; can't we find a suitable man in Vienna?" we hear the supporters of a certain literary mutual insurance company exclaim. Without going any further into the distastefulness of this speech, we would like to remark that we should be shown the man in Vienna who fulfills the above conditions. Various names are mentioned: Friedrich Uhl at first, then more recently even Ganghofer, Schwarzkopf, Hevesi and Müller-Guttenbrunn. We don't need to talk any further about Ganghofer, Schwarzkopf and Hevesi. As far as Uhl is concerned, we must say that his reviews in the "Wiener Zeitung" do indeed appear to us at the moment to be the best Viennese theater criticism; but the others are all on such a level that they cannot be seriously reckoned with at all. However, this does not mean that someone is predestined to be the director of the Burgtheater. that he possesses a refined and purified judgment in the face of boundless ignorance and tastelessness. As for Müller-Guttenbrunn, we would have been pleased to see him at the head of the Deutsches Volkstheater at the time: now that he is praising the bad play "Die Hochzeit von Valeni" with morality and indignation at the mediocrity of that theater's performances in his mouth, we have come back from it. For the Burgtheater, however, its power seems to us altogether too small.

We do not indulge in the hope that the crisis in the Burgtheater will be solved in the sense indicated above; but then we also know that the choice will not be a bad one for lack of a suitable personality for the direction of the Burgtheater, but for lack of those personalities who would be suitable for seeking it.

We already referred to the sad state of our newspaper criticism in the previous issue, when we discussed the question of management at the Burgtheater. We must come back to this again, because the weakness of this criticism is one of the main reasons why our theaters cannot develop in a healthy way. It is responsible for the decline of the Burgtheater, just as it makes it impossible for the Volkstheater to rise to a certain artistic height. Criticism has a twofold task. One towards the art institutions, the other towards the audience. Towards the theater it is incumbent on it to have a stimulating influence on the presentation. Artists will gladly learn from serious criticism based on principles; they will never learn the slightest thing from nagging, arbitrary criticism. But the audience, too, will gladly form its judgment in comparison with that of the critic, purify its taste, if it knows that it is confronted with a criticism that is based on artistic insight. Our theater criticism completely lacks this necessary foundation. That is why it is of no value to the actor or the audience. We can always observe how miserable this criticism is when it is confronted with a task that requires true knowledge and a genuine formation of taste, where the empty phrases of the ignorant newspaper writer are of no use. Quite apart from older examples, let us recall only some of the most recent, the performances of "Galeotto", "Gyges and his Ring" and the "Jewess of Toledo". "Galeotto" is one of the greatest dramatic creations. The play is of subtle psychological truth and allows us to see conflicts that provide a deep insight into the human heart. The Viennese critics were simply blunt in the face of this greatness. They had no idea that the Spanish poet had grasped a problem and dramatized it with tremendous power, one of the most subtle that only any artist can pose. With an unbelievable superficiality of judgment, even for the less educated, reference was made to the horrible, exciting things that shake the nerves! Only those who have no idea of the terrible power of the emotional forces at work in the characters of the play can speak in this way. Only those who can fully comprehend this shattering tragedy know the truth of the exciting external events. Our critics were equally perplexed by "Gyges and his Ring". In this drama, Hebbel raised himself to a height of contemplation that can only be reached by those who have an awareness of how the forces of nature intersect and fight in the human soul, how a repetition of life in the universe takes place in every human breast.

It is a deeply mystical idea that we encounter in this drama. It is true that Hebbel himself once hinted in the drama that his creation is to be understood in this sense, to be judged from this point of view; but such hints are too tenuous for our critics. One would have to be thoroughly educated to understand them. And so we had to listen to the most petty questions being asked about Hebbel's cosmic poetry, such as: whether the figures are possible, whether the ending is satisfying and so on. If it is a matter of the critic's insight and understanding being ahead of the audience, then he must put his foot down. No one needs a critic to know that the "onlooker" is an "animal in a figurative sense", that you don't know which faculty a Blumenthal doctor belongs to.

The "Jewess of Toledo" recently suffered a bad fate from the critics' lack of judgment. It was to the great credit of the late Förster that this play was revived. For even if it is not Grillparzer's most artistically rounded, most classically accomplished drama, it is undoubtedly the most interesting. What is interesting above all is how the hero fulfills his destiny. The king does not perish like an ordinary tragic hero, but undergoes a process of purification. Through the inner experience he has had with the passionate Jewish girl, a new man emerges in him. He sheds everything that has bound him to his previous life, his self undergoes a metamorphosis. Death is a much lesser atonement than this continued existence with the voluntary abandonment of everything that has so far made up the sum of his existence. He also divests himself of his sovereignty, his royal dignity. Grillparzer has thus dramatized a great idea of primitive Christianity. He has shown how a deeply penetrating inner experience can destroy a person's entire superficial self without him having to perish physically. The deeper self is able to assert itself in the face of such a complete reversal of moral views, to regard the rest of life in a new form as a duty and thus to accomplish the highest dramatic atonement for itself. Next to this figure of the king stands Rachel, the Jewish girl, as a no less interesting phenomenon. Drawing a figure like this is the height of artistic perfection. For Rachel unites in herself the most incredible psychological contrasts, and the poet has succeeded in uniting the opposites in one person in such a way that it works with convincing truth. This girl is frivolous and naïve at the same time, coquettish and graceful, she is rotten at heart and yet innocent again, she is demonic and at the same time superficial. But all these contradictions are woven into a picture full of the truth of life. But you have to let this picture work on you in life in order to see all its charms; Rachel could only trick the king for so long as he saw her before him with every fiber of her body fully alert. He had to come to his senses immediately when this magic of childlike agility was no longer there. And therein lies the psychological reason why he is healed by the evil "pull around the mouth" in the face of the corpse. The train around the mouth is only the symbol of how those contradictions could only become credible and appealing through such a life. Our critics have probably paid little attention to proper aesthetic studies, which is why they have no idea of the significance of the symbolic in this art. To systematically work through subtle books, such as Volkelt's "On the Concept of Symbol in Modern Aesthetics", certainly requires a certain amount of education. Today, people prefer to criticize on the fly, as the mood and other circumstances dictate.

But with poets such as Hebbel, Grillparzer and so on, only the tools of full aesthetic insight are sufficient. We have only recently gained a new understanding of the depth of Grillparzer's mind when we read the excellent book by Emil Reich: "Grillparzer's Philosophy of Art" (Vienna 1890), in which we find a picture of this poet's entire view of art.

We have used concrete examples to show how inadequate our criticism is. In one of the next issues, we want to talk about the pernicious influence of this criticism on the public's taste and need for art.

Nowadays, you either have to join the unconditional praisers of everything that comes out of the press, or you are regarded by certain people as a darkling and a backward step. This time, even at the risk of being labeled with these unflattering predicates, we must discuss a profound, harmful influence of our newspaper system on our education.

The party, whose political creed is expressed in these newspapers, has repeatedly castigated the reprehensible corruption of the contemporary press and has always been concerned about how it could initiate a worthy and beneficial development of the newspaper industry for the German people. When one speaks of "corruption", however, one usually has in mind only that external corruption which consists in the fact that the journalist represents everything for money, that he is open to every kind of bribery. But there is also an inner corruption of the press, the consequences of which are already noticeable everywhere. We mean the corruption of the German style and the German treatment of language. One should not underestimate this fact. A national party in particular must attach importance to the fact that its views and ideas are expressed in a manner appropriate to the nation and in keeping with its nature. A developed, secure feeling for language, which feels with certainty towards every word, every phrase: "this is German or this is not German", is a necessary requirement of every educated German. But no one should demand this more than those who want to set themselves up as representatives of public opinion. In our Viennese newspapers, including the "leading" "Neue Freie Presse", we now find the grossest violations of the feeling for language. Anyone who has a sense and feeling for the German way of speaking, if he reads newspapers at all, can only be indignant at the offense against his mother tongue. He will find that almost every editorial in the "Neue Freie Presse" is teeming with stylistic aberrations, with un-German phrases. Sentences in which the subject is in the wrong place, sentences in which the active instead of the passive form is used, incorrectly placed participles and subordinate clauses can be found in every column of the aforementioned "Weltblatt". Jewish dialectal expressions and other expressions that make a mockery of the German language can be found in every third sentence.

The German language, like Latin, is a strict expression of logic; it permits a precision of speech that few others can match. Our journalism knows how to distort every thing in this language to the point of obscurity and ambiguity. Our language is plain and simple, our newspaper German is screwed and ornate. Our German writers are characterized by a high degree of nobility in the construction of their language; journalism is expressed in an almost scurrilous manner: slovenly, shaky, hurling. The whole of Europe admires our prose writers for the strict organization of their intellectual products; our newspaper prose is confused, without any structure, disjointed. The Germans, when they speak in their way, look for the most characteristic expression for a thought that hits the nail on the head; journalism only looks for the most ingratiating word, regardless of whether it is appropriate to the subject.

Anyone who has the opportunity to listen to public speeches will soon be able to observe the fruits of this activity. The audience involuntarily forms itself according to this newspaper German, and to its greatest astonishment one will often enough find oneself in the position of hearing thoroughly un-German expressions from the mouths of people one would never have expected. You wouldn't believe the influence the press has on our entire intellectual life. There are countless people whose reading is almost exclusively their favorite newspaper. We can see how some people have a completely different view from that of the liberal newspapers, but how formally their spirit, their way of speaking and thinking is completely oriented towards them. And this influence is even more pernicious than that exerted by the reprehensible views of the papers themselves, for it causes an unconscious turning away from our national character.

At present, the corruption of style to which we have alluded is even on the increase. It is gradually spreading to our brochures and specialist journals, and even more so to a large part of our book literature.

We were recently horrified when we went through several issues of a young journal for national and state economics published in Vienna by a Mr. Theodor Hertzka. You can open it wherever you like and your eyes will fall on a stylistic monstrosity. However, these are not things that are only noticeable to the stylistic connoisseur, but things that every halfway talented boy in the fourth year of grammar school avoids. The same can be found in other specialist journals, especially in medical and scientific journals, if you want to see for yourself. Anyone who doubts our assertion with regard to brochure literature should buy half a dozen political or economic publications, as they appear here or elsewhere, and they will recognize their beloved newspaper German.

The point is quite right, I hear various people object, but it should be borne in mind that such a newspaper article is written for the day and therefore the demands in terms of correctness cannot be too high. The paper lies open for a day and then disappears forever. How should a writer apply the same degree of polish to such an ephemeral product that one applies to something permanent? But this objection is completely unjustified. For whoever has a certain style at all, expresses it whether he writes for the day or for eternity. For style is something so interwoven with the spiritual being that every thought is necessarily expressed in the way the writer is accustomed to. Every truly stylistically gifted person has only one style, and he writes in this style because he cannot do otherwise. The reason why our journalists write in a sloppy and un-German way is not that they don't want to write better, but that they can't write better. We know quite well that good German writers do not become un-German once they publish articles in a newspaper. Or is the aesthete Vischer not always the same man of pithy, truly German style, whether he is writing about scientific subjects or about "foot care on the railroad"? How finely and elegantly Josef Bayer, for example, writes, even if he is only writing a newspaper article; how plain and simple is the writing of many a man whose words disappear with the day just like those of the reporter. But good stylists would have to deny themselves if they wanted to write differently than is their nature.

We will only mention in passing that the evil we are discussing has already found its way into our school and academic reference books.

Although we have to admit that corruption of style is currently on the increase, we are not without hope for the future. With the strengthening of the national party, which is built on the basis of genuine folklore, a more prosperous development must also occur here. In many cases, the un-folkish spelling is merely a side effect of the old liberal, equally un-folkish attitude and will probably disappear with it.