The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Comedy by Arno Holz
Performance at the Central Theater, Berlin

How short-sighted they all were who thought they saw the masters of dramatic art in Shakespeare, Schiller and Ibsen! They lacked the insight of Mr. Arno Holz, who finally discovered that there is a difference between the diction of Ibsen, the rhetoric of Schiller and the language of a Berlin laundress. Now we know: Shakespeare's and Schiller's language is the "obviously crude" language, the language of the theater; the language of the Berlin washerwoman is the language of life, the "secretly artistic" language. Arno Holz taught us this in the preface to his drama "Social Aristocrats". A few days ago, this work was performed at the Zentral-Theater. Through his discovery, Arno Holz became the reformer of dramatic style. He proclaimed himself one. The "Social Aristocrats" is the new work of art, which is to be "composed" in the "language of life", not in the clumsy theatrical language of Shakespeare and Schiller. Life should speak to us from the stage. This is why Holz draws a twenty-one-year-old imbecile whom no one could really meet in the milieu in which the poet places him, because precautionary relatives would have placed the mentally retarded man in an appropriate institution at a tender age. No, the distorted images brought to the stage have nothing to do with real life. Holz wants to portray contemporaries like portraits. But he removes everything from their personalities that constitutes their true purpose in life. Without becoming suspicious of these contemporaries, the following can be said:

There is a serious man who writes inspiring books, gives subtle lectures and works to educate the people in his way. The man has a pathetic exterior and gives childish mockery cause to laugh because he appears too prophetic. Holz only portrays what the Philistine sees of this personality, who cannot perceive the deep core. Another personality is presented in the drama, of whose main work a witty critic said a few years ago that it was the most thought-provoking book written in Germany in recent decades. This man knows the social trends of our time like few others; he embodies a striving for human liberation that gives each of his works a tone that sounds as if it comes from a world removed from all present-day reality. However, he hides his inner life behind stiff, often quite conventional manners. The pedant, who can only imagine that a man who loves freedom must also appear unrestrained, finds a contradiction between this man's external "behavior" and his views. In this case, too, Holz seems to see nothing but the stiff exterior, which is somewhat ridiculous to the small mind. One can be hostile to the opinions and aims of such a man; one can oppose them in the strongest terms; but one only needs to know them to find Mr. Holz's jokes dull and tasteless. Anyone who knows the personalities caricatured in the play can easily guess who is meant. If I have an acquaintance who I know wears a blue suit and habitually waves his cane in the air, I will recognize him by these outward appearances even if he approaches me from a distance and I am not aware of his facial features. If you want to portray people from their comic side in drama, then you have to do it with the art of Aristophanes, not with the small means of a clumsy caricaturist.

Arno Holz wants to bring the truth of life to the stage. But compared to his distorted images, the figures of Lindau, Schönthan and Blessed Benedix are true models of naturalistic representation. "Between the creation of a work of art in a style that is already given and the creation of such a style itself, there is not a difference of degree, but a difference of kind," philosophizes Arno Holz in the preface to "Social Aristocrats". However, there is no difference of kind, but really only a difference of degree between Holz's and Schönthan's drama. They both proceed according to the same recipe; only Holz has not yet reached Schönthan's stage dexterity. The sad image of an incompetent who wants to discover a new "secretly artistic" thing, but does not feel the essence of true art, stood before my soul as I watched Mr. Holz's drama. For this reason, however, I do not wish to deny that Arno Holz is one of those who have contributed much to the emergence of the truly new dramatic style of the present day. But works in this style have been given to us by others. In his dramatic work he has lagged behind those who, unlike him, were not guided by theoretical demands but by the individuality of their genius. The present day forms the organs of the artist differently from the time of Shakespeare or Schiller. That is why we have a "modernity", the justification for which can only be argued about by the decrepit aestheticians or the art critics who swear by "eternal rules". Among those who understand the meaning of the present, there can be no dispute about such things. But I must deny that something of this sense can be discovered in the "social aristocrats". One is not modern by calling Schiller's and Shakespeare's language "obviously crude". I do not believe that anyone can properly appreciate the essence of our modern style who is able to talk about Shakespeare like Holz.

A tragedy by J.W. Goethe
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

Several years ago, a famous scholar, the physiologist Du Bois-Reymond, said things about Goethe's Faust poem in a speech he gave when he took over the rectorate of Berlin University that revealed how well a perfect scientific education is compatible with a philistine attitude and aesthetic lack of judgment in one person. The pedantic speaker went so far as to claim that it would be better for Faust if, instead of surrendering to magic and doing all the great magic with the devil, he remained a good professor, invented the electrifying machine and the air pump, married Gretchen and made his child honest.

Whoever sat in the Deutsches Theater on Goethe's birthday with such an attitude must have experienced a very special pleasure in Josef Kainz's portrayal of Faust. For nothing was to be discovered in this portrayal of Faust's deep longing for knowledge of the world's secrets; nothing of the fact that the audacious explorer's heart almost wants to burn at the thought that we can know nothing. This Faust of the German Theater has not studied "philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine" and "unfortunately also theology with great effort", he has only read Du Bois-Reymond's elegant speech "On the Limits of Natural Knowledge" and Fr. A. Lange's "History of Materialism" together with other modern books written in a similar spirit and seen from them that there are certain "mysteries of the world" which man cannot solve. Such reading is indeed somewhat disturbing; it makes one "nervous", but it is not capable of causing the unspeakable agony in the human soul from which Faust suffers. Only if one feels the full force of the storms that assail Faust can one understand the deep psychological truth of Goethe's poetry. Whoever is capable of such a feeling knows that a soul like Faust's can only endure experiences that are not only far above those of the philistine life, but also above the satisfaction that man can derive from the invention of the air pump, for example. These experiences will in reality take place within the human soul; the dramatist, who cannot depict the inner processes, the psychological development as such, resorts to unreal regions of life. The imagination likes to go to the unreal regions when the feeling says that no real processes are in harmony with the feelings stirred up in the depths of the soul. The sensations we perceive in the soul of the Faust portrayed here are not such as to require the high regions to which Goethe leads us. This Faust could quite well marry Gretchen. And if he could even invent the electrifying machine, he could be completely reconciled with life. The art with which Josef Kainz speaks the great monologues is admirable. The technique of language shows itself here in a rare perfection. Anyone who has an appreciation of such technical formalities must find every sentence in Kainz's rendition interesting. The way in which the performer spoke the words was almost a feat of linguistic tightrope walking:

"Now come down, crystalline pure shell!
Out of your old sheath,
That I have not thought of for many years!
You shone at the fathers' feasts of joy,
Cheered up the serious guests,
When one brought you to the other."

Kainz completely destroyed the feeling that we are dealing with a man who is driven to "tear open the gates that everyone likes to sneak past" by not satisfying an impetuous thirst for knowledge and life. The tones with which Josef Kainz delights our senses do not give the impression that they come from a Faustian interior. The performance alone made the artist happy that evening.

And as if he wanted to show us how little he is interested in the hot storms and passions of Faust, the man of knowledge, Kainz immediately transforms himself, after taking the witch's potion, into an amiable, philandering philanderer, to whom Mephistopheles can never say: "The doctor is still in your body". The consequence of Kainz playing a downright dallying lover in the Gretchen tragedy is that the scenes in which the seriousness of Faust's mind breaks through again seem completely untrue, indeed are portrayed by the artist with an unforgivable indifference.

The art that confronted us on Goethe's birthday in the Deutsches Theater was not up to the tragedy of Faust. The portrayal of the main character was at least interesting in its details. The same cannot be said of the other performances. A Mephistopheles, who looked more like the jolly counselor of a prince than the devilish seducer of Faust (Müller), bored the audience with his horrible grimacing and his complete inability to mix anything of the demonic spirit of hell, which always wants evil, into the joker. The artist (Elise Steinert) removed all naivety from Gretchen and gave her a little seductive coquetry instead. The art of nuance, which she developed to such a rich degree, seemed intrusive.

After the performance on August 28, it cannot be said that the acting in the Deutsches Theater is ready for Goethe, no matter how much indulgence is exercised.

Comedy in four acts by Ernst von Wolzogen
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

Every time Ernst von Wolzogen appears in public with a new dramatic performance, I have the feeling that this artist has become a good deal more mature, more accomplished. It is often said that Wolzogen will provide us with the genuine German comedy that we all long for. For his noble talent, his fine sensibility and knowledge of social life and the people within it, enable him to do so. In addition, he knows the needs of the stage like few others and does not seem at all inclined to forget the requirements of the theater for the sake of any aesthetic tendencies of the time. Wolzogen's comedies are depictions of life in the best sense of the word, but his naturalism goes no further than the conditions of the stage, which is not the real world after all.

The comedy, which has just been performed for the first time at the Lessing Theater, seems to me to be the work of a witty artist who manages to amuse and show deeper emotional conflicts at the same time. The characterization of the characters shows the thorough connoisseur of human nature, the psychologist in the good sense of the word. Nowhere is there even a trace of the mistake into which the comic playwright so easily falls: the drawing of distorted images. We are dealing with quite possible characters. Anyone who lets the German and foreign comedy literature pass before his mind will admit that it is precisely this drawing of genuine comedy characters that deserves the highest praise.

In the middle of the plot is the African traveler Dr. Franz Ewert. He has conquered Unjamwewe and returned to Europe to interest people in exploiting the territory he has won. The social circles he addresses are described by the poet in the best possible way. The effect of the catchword, the influence of the purse, the arrogance of certain classes are portrayed in a way that can only be described as masterly. Above all, however, the personality of Dr. Ewert himself is worked out in a way that reveals that Wolzogen also understands people who are to be regarded as exceptional natures. The light mind, which pursues its task in a straight line and regards things and circumstances that are sacred to other people as an end in themselves, only as a means to its ends, comes to the fore, as does the deeper nature that must be characteristic of such exceptional people if they are not to offend - at least in comedy. Dr. Ewert is an adventurer, but he is serious about his cause. His adventurous nature is just great enough to make him forget dangers and considerations, but it is not great enough to tempt him to pursue ventures as mere sport. This adventurer is not a heavy, but a tenacious, not a very deep, but a purposeful nature, which attaches great importance to what it does. He is light-hearted enough to coolly reject the wife of his rich benefactor, who throws herself at him because she loves the man of strength; but he is not frivolous enough to refuse the poor actress, who loves him dearly and has become the mother of his child, her heart's desire to make her his wife. He despises the wretched fellows who form a cooperative to exploit his African conquests, but he uses them to carry out his plans. He establishes a cozy home with his beloved Kathi, the mother of his child, but he rejoices when the news comes that the empire has accepted his enterprise and he can go back to the Kaffirs. The peculiarity of such a powerful nature, which inspires us with respect at every moment, both through its healthy sense of purpose and the ruthlessness of its actions, has perhaps never been portrayed as perfectly as in this comedy. Wolzogen has shown himself equal to the task of creating the psychology of the serious adventurer, the higher gypsy. This higher gypsy is the gypsy of action. It is to him that we owe the achievements of culture, which require strength and intelligence, but no moral scruples. Many have tried to bring him to the stage. None has succeeded to such a high degree as Ernst von Wolzogen. I believe the reason lies in the fact that Wolzogen is an artist whose rarely fine powers of observation are translated into characters in a playful way. Wolzogen sees a lot and can do a lot. That is easy to say, but there are few of whom it can be said.

"Unjamwewe" captivates not through situation comedy, not through farcical jokes, but through the witty development of real conflicts and the portrayal of real people. I was not bored for a moment, and I am convinced that amusement is never bought at the price of art. That is why I call Ernst von Wolzogen a distinguished artist. I do not believe that we now have the longed-for "German comedy"; but I am sure of this: Wolzogen's latest creation has brought us a good deal closer to it. We will soon be so far along that we won't have to keep coming up with "journalists" in German comedies either, if we want to call them something of some value.

Funny play in three acts by A. Sylvane and J. Gascogne
Performance at the Residenz-Theater, Berlin

The French know how to mix a droll story with impossible but cheerful situations and create a mixture that makes an audience laugh after a boring, prosaic day's work, after a long dinner and a pleasant afternoon nap, without in any way stimulating the mind or getting excited by anything other than a mild sensory thrill. And the management of the Residenz Theater understands this method of success with the audience, translated into Berlinese. With "Einberufung", it has given a sample of this. In the first act, you laugh at some good jokes; in the following two acts, you laugh at the audacity of the authors to serve up such trivialities. But one laughs. The "Convocation" will probably see a hundred or more performances.

A morality play in four acts by Maurice Donnay. German by Anne St. Cerè
Performance at the Neues Theater, Berlin

The new drama by Maurice Donnay "La Douloureuse", with which director Lautenburg opened the season of the Neues Theater, brought together the dizzying hustle and bustle of disgusting moneymaking with the tenderest stirrings of the loving heart in a rather unharmonious way. Donnay is a witty playwright with a fine artistic touch. Unfortunately, he only lacks the ability to devise an exciting plot. People who are only satisfied when as much as possible happens on stage do not get their money's worth with him. The development of the events is slow, the plot flows sluggishly forward.

The sculptor Philippe loves Helene, the wife of the swindler Ardan. Ardan shoots himself at the end of the first act, and Helene's hand is free for her lover. The two could enjoy their fiery love in the most beautiful way if Helene's friend did not stand in the way. She loves the sculptor no less ardently than Helene. He is a weakling and cannot resist the courtship of the rutting woman. She betrays her friend. She reveals to the ardent suitor that Helene's child is illegitimate. Philippe is furious and devastated by this news; Helene is furious and devastated by the fact that Philippe loves his girlfriend. An exciting scene between the two shows the bitterness that two passionate and loving souls can cause each other. A "reckoning" takes place between the two, just as a reckoning took place earlier between the swindler Ardan and "earthly justice". In the end, Philippe and Helena's hearts find each other again. He has forgotten and forgiven her in his loneliness, she in her lively social life. Basically, it is not people but puppets who are involved in this plot. But characterization and action are replaced by the spirit that prevails in the speeches of these people. One listens intently to the intimate things being said and forgets that there is no action because of all the talking. A soft, mature, sweet beauty flows from these speeches. One was always annoyed that an audience with little understanding received this fine, unspeakably beautiful speech with yawns, laughter and hissing. However, the performance was little suited to bring out the wonderful subtleties of the drama. Mr. Jarno played a rotten sweetie instead of the nervous, decadent weakling Philippe; Mrs. Reisenhofer's passion, for all its liveliness, was too coarse to reflect the sensitive love of Helene, which is of such intimate truth that a warm breath must go over one's whole body when it is well portrayed.

Drama in five acts by Max Halbe
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

Max Halbe has researched how lovers speak down to the ground. He knows them all, the eternally young feelings: the exultation of the blissful, drunken heart and the bitter pain of the unhappy heart. And he has tender, soft tones to sing of sweet soul secrets and lovely raptures. Nor does he lack the strength for the outcry of the tormented inner being, which yearns in vain for refreshment for its thirst for love, or which is deprived of the temporary pleasure granted by heartless fate.

When Max Halbe speaks this language of love's passion to us from the stage, he ingratiates himself into our hearts. His relationship with the audience is then itself a love affair. Unfortunately, this love affair is disturbed when he presents us with the great problems of humanity and the psychology of the rarer people who want to help solve these problems. There are people whose nature is easily revealed to the subtle observer, who pose no riddles to the inquiring eye. Halbe's artistry achieves such figures to perfection. Halbe is less fortunate with other natures, where the unsparing dissection of the soul's anatomy must give direction to the shaping power of the artist. I believe in Halbe's deep vision. I think that if he were to develop it, this deep vision, he would have to reach the remotest depths of the human soul. But that doesn't seem to appeal to him at all. I have always had this feeling towards Halbe's creations. His new drama "Mother Earth" has recently reinforced it in me. The work of art has made a strong impression on me, but more through the forces contained in the motifs, which the poet has not extracted, than through what he actually allows to play out before our eyes.

A talented young man is cast out of his father's house because the ideals of a young woman who wants to work for the freedom of her sex appeal to him more than the prospect of one day presiding over his ancestral estate with the woman his father has chosen for him and leading the kind of life that his father, grandfather and so on have led. He leaves his father and the girl he really loves to live in a cold marriage of convenience with the sober women's rights activist and to found a newspaper with her that fights against the enslavement of women. This friendship between Paul Warkentin and Hella Bernhardy, disguised as a marriage, lasted ten years before the former's father died. On this occasion, the "married couple" and a friend of the house, the Pole Dr. von Glyszinski, travel to the estate. This Pole plays a strange role. He fancies Hella like a pining lover; she uses him for secretarial duties and pushes him back like a rubber balloon when he tries to get too close to her. Paul is indifferent to him. He tolerates the rival because he considers him completely harmless given Hella's sexlessness. Hella and Paul are different natures. She lives in loud abstractions, her head is full of disembodied ideals. She talks like a book. She has inspired Paul with her ideas, but this enthusiasm does not go deep. He feels unhappy. Because the blood of full-blooded country people lives in him, his inner being remains hungry for the abstractions that his "wife" serves up to him. He lives his life like this for ten years. But when he returns home after his father's death, sees the splendors of his estate again and learns to appreciate them anew, and even finds the woman he once loved: that is when what he wanted to banish from himself, blinded by Hella, comes back to life. Paul wrests himself away from his temptress; Antoinette leaves her flat, stupidly good-natured, disgusting husband, whom she only followed because Paul spurned her. From now on, they both want to belong only to each other. They drink in the love they have been deprived of for years in lustful draughts.

A bold poet who knows how to bring together characters whose mutual relationship is of the greatest interest to every modern man has devised this material. It's just a pity that the characters are too little deepened to really arouse this interest. Hella is not the woman of whom we understand that by her nature she must stand up for the freedom of her sex. She is only a walking and talking program. Paul Warkentin has just as little body and soul. He acts not from strength, not from weakness, not from emotion, not from intellectual impulses: he first stands up for women's rights and then sinks into Antoinette's arms to return with her to Mother Earth, because the poet wants to show the two sides of human nature - the spiritualization that leads to weakness and the healthy originality - and bring them into conflict with each other. We would not be surprised for a moment if Paul were to return to the city with Hella after all. His actions flow so little from his character. It remains completely incomprehensible why Hella does not release her husband when she sees that he will not let go of Antoinette. Was she just fibbing about the idea of freedom? And what I find even more incomprehensible is that the two people, Paul and Antoinette, who find each other again after ten years, have to go to their deaths because Antoinette could not bear it if people said that the runaway wife lives with the runaway husband. The heroine of liberty, who peels her husband by the tail that the law hands her, and the loving woman who bows to brutal social prejudice, do not warm us.

Despite all this, Halbe's drama made a big impact on me. Even if it doesn't quite come to life, it still has a significant dramatic force. And even if the characters don't quite stand on their feet, there are conflicts playing out before our eyes that are deeply rooted in our time. We believe the poet, even if we don't believe his characters.

The portrayal could easily have filled in some of the gaps left by the poet. Only Else Lehmann gave a completely satisfactory performance as Antoinette. Rudolf Rittner did nothing to reconcile the two hostile souls living in Paul's chest, and Alwine Wiecke showed that she is a clever actress who knows how to use her resources as well with modern characters as she does with classical ones; but she is not ravishing here and there because she has too little temperament.

Max Halbe has followed up his love idyll "Jugend" with three dramatic creations: the joke play "Der Amerikafahrer", the comedy "Lebenswende" and now "Mutter Erde". Something highly peculiar becomes apparent when one follows the development of Halbe's work. There is no doubt that each of his achievements is more mature, better than the one before. And yet none of them is as unclouded, pure and highly enjoyable as "Jugend". The scenes between the good Hans Hartwich and the graceful Ännchen do not warm us as devotedly as Halbe's other dramas. And even if the poet repeatedly succeeds in drawing human types who, like the two priests in "Jugend", make us wonder: where have we seen these people before; the effect he had with his "Liebesdrama" is not renewed.

One wonders when one sits down and thinks about the impression that "Youth" makes. It cannot be understood at all. You have to be satisfied even without concepts. For a dramatic action of such unreasonableness cannot easily be found a second time. An imbecile ensures the continuation of the constantly stagnating plot; the same imbecile brings about the conflicts and the catastrophe. This imbecile plays the role of fate in the drama. You have to switch off your mind if you want to enjoy the wonderful love scenes, if you want to take in the meaningful moods. And Halbe is the magician who forces us to switch off our minds. He puts our thinking power into a healthy sleep and we become all heart, all feeling. We feel nothing of the dramatic flaws of Idylis.

You have to be a great poet if you can allow yourself the kind of mistakes that "Youth" has, because you have to make hair-raising nonsense invisible through incomparable merits. Halbe has succeeded in this. And why did he succeed? Because he allowed the uniqueness of his talent to run free and unfettered in the field in which it is at home and did not overstep the boundaries of this field. In "Jugend", Halbe refrained from basing the progress of the plot on any inner necessity. And in doing so, he has made his fortune. The spectator says to himself, when his mind awakens against his will during the enjoyment: nonsense prevails in the progress of the plot; but he is sincere: he is not pretending to make sense.

You can only play such a magic game with the audience once. Halbe told himself that. He no longer wanted to do without the inner necessity in the progress of the dramatic action. He wanted to portray conflicts arising from human characters, from the cultural currents of the time and from the circumstances in which people live. I now believe that Halbe's powers of observation have failed him in this field. I have every confidence in his ability, but not in his powers of perception. He would depict the deepest social conflicts with the same ease with which he paints moods if it were only a matter of skill. But he does not see through these conflicts when they play out in reality; he does not know the moving forces. Therefore he constructs them arbitrarily and presents us with impossibilities every moment. The true dramatist lets one fact follow the other because he has recognized the natural connection between the two. Halbe does not recognize this connection. That is why he constructs one for himself. And how he constructs it is decided by his sympathies and antipathies. Paul Warkentin (in "Mother Earth") transforms himself from an enthusiast for women's rights into a worshipper of natural beauty and immediate female charms not because he is driven by an inner necessity, but because the poet's sympathies for unadulterated nature have led him to give the matter this twist.

And as little as the dramatic conflicts are, so little are the dramatic characters Halbe's element. He masterfully portrays what passive natures and average people feel. He sees them down to the marrow of their bones. What drives the active, the exceptional natures escapes him. He does not see what lies at the bottom of these people's souls. He is interested in individual characteristics of these natures. In the technician Weyland ("Lebenswende"), he has depicted the ruthless rigidity which, without looking to the right or left, sets off towards a goal. Halbe does not seek to explore further how the whole person must be constituted so that such a hankerdz can play an outstanding role in him. To cite another example, it is downright puzzling why the noble-minded, self-sacrificing, devoted Olga appears in "Lebenswende" with such tomboyish manners. Of course, it does not occur to me to claim that such character traits are incompatible. But we must understand why they are united in one person. In Halbe's case I understand nothing more than that he likes the one as well as the other, and that it is agreeable to him when he encounters both together. The effect of a drama depends on whether the spectator feels that the poet is superior to him at every moment, or whether he believes himself superior to the poet. The poet is always superior to us if we say to ourselves at every step the plot takes forward: it was bound to happen this way, we just weren't clever enough to know it beforehand. We are superior to the poet when we say to ourselves: no, it can't happen like this, it's against the possible. In this case, we feel that we know better than the poet. And that is bad for him.

The great playwright is like the discoverer of natural laws. We didn't know what either of them was telling us beforehand, but it makes sense to us as soon as we hear it. What the bad playwright presents to us seems to us like the speeches of a man who tells us about miracles. We go back to business as usual about him.

In "Jugend", Halbe renounced being a playwright. Today he wants to be. Four years ago he only let his merits work; now he disturbs their effect by also wanting to achieve what he cannot. The nonsense that drives the development forward does not distract us from the atmospheric images in the parsonage; but the progress of the plot in "Mother Earth" does, which we do not understand because it is arbitrarily constructed. We can tolerate the obvious nonsense; the lack of regularity spoils everything.

Emerson says: "The poet is devoted to the thoughts and laws that know their own way, and guided by them, he rises from interest in their meaning and significance, and from the role of an observer to the role of a creator." Halbe plays the role of creator too early. He should enjoy the role of observer for longer. He seems to lack the patience for this. The magic that the poet exerts on us is based on the fact that his creations have an effect on us like the products of nature, that we say to them: there is necessity, there is divine power. What must happen because nature wills it, the poet should show us; but not what he clings to with his inclinations. What must triumph by its natural power, he should let triumph; but not that which he 'would like to see triumph. Emerson's comparison of the poet with the dreamer is delightful: "This reminds me that we all possess a key to the wonder of the poet, that the stupidest fool has experiences of his own which can explain Shakespeare to him - namely dreams. In dreams we are perfect poets, we create the characters of the drama, we give them appropriate figures, faces and clothes. They are perfect in their organs, postures and gestures; moreover, they speak according to their own character, not ours - they speak to us, and we listen with astonishment to what they tell us." Halbe does not allow those of his characters who have a trait that particularly interests him to speak according to their character. Then he turns them all so that we can see whether he admires or detests this trait. We constantly see the poet on stage alongside the characters.

Play in four acts by T. Szafranski
Performance at the Berliner Theater, Berlin

What Mr. Szafranski has brought into the world under the name of "drama" is a real feast for the parties of order of all shades. What he has the people who appear in the work of art say, no one in the circumstances he had in mind would say. Only journalists of various persuasions write it. There is a fool, Emil Treder, who reads the "Vorwärts" every day and in the evenings at the people's meetings, he blurts out the wisdom he has read to his "comrades". One of his "speeches" cost him his bread. He and his family were brought to the depths of misery by the "social democratic delusion". His seducer is a certain Lembke, who, under the pretext of serving the great cause of the party, pursues the most selfish and sordid paths. This Lembke is a figure who is quite impossible in life. Only the worst provincial papers of the "parties of order" paint such personalities on the wall. And Treder's wife? Well, she speaks in the tone of a newspaper for housewives. Not one straight word, not one naive, original sentiment can be discovered in the "play". From beginning to end, one is disgusted by the dullest newspaper writing style. The viewer is assailed by brutalities that are unheard of. Mrs. Treder is dying. The doctor wants to quickly fetch something necessary from the pharmacy. Treder's daughter, with whom he once had a crush, runs into him. She rejected his proposal at the time because she had already gone the way of all prostitutes. Now, however, a lengthy argument develops between the two. It is disgusting to have to watch this doctor rehashing old love stories instead of getting the prescription. And the ending is quite unbearable. A philistine government official happily gives his daughter in marriage to the socialist's son, even though both father and son have been in prison. They were suspected of having stolen a secret decree and handed it over to the "Vorwärts". Yes, he does even more, this brave government official. He converts the socialist, softened by misery, to the conviction that the "highest law" is not to be found in making plans for a blue future, but in "working". The conversion is brought about by the most hollow phrases ever spoken by someone content with life.

The performance in the Berlin theater was no higher than the "art" of the author. Only Maria Pospischil was captivating in her portrayal of Mrs. Treder. This woman has jumped out of the window because her husband's seducer, the evil Lembke, has behaved inappropriately towards her. She dies as a result of the injuries she has sustained. The long, all-too-long death takes place before our eyes. And Maria Pospischil dies with an art that gets to you. You sit there and want to stiffen with horror. I am convinced that many women who were in the theater didn't sleep a wink the whole night after. Maria Pospischil has an admirable command of great tragic tones. This death scene was full of the "truth of life" and at the same time of the finest artistic stylization.

Play by Carlot Gottfried Reuling
Performance at the Schiller Theater, Berlin

If I met the pastor Johannes Küster, whose fate Carlot Gottfried Reuling dramatized, in life, I would not seek his company. I would be indifferent to him. He is a weakling, a man who wants to, but cannot want to. He puts up with everything. He became engaged to Sophie Walz when he was young. The girl gave him the means to study. Her influential, pious relatives got him a pastorate. He has an interest in science. He dabbles with natural objects. Reuling would have us believe that he feels unhappy as a pastor. But we don't believe it. His interest in knowledge is not intense enough. If he had studied science, he would want something else. He has no iron in his blood. He would like to part with his bride, whom he no longer likes after being engaged to her for many years. Because he loves his cousin, the clever Frieda Bügler, who understands him. She talks so cleverly and is so well-behaved that she is almost disgusting. Sophie forcefully reminds him of the duty he has to her. She has given him the money for his education because she wanted to marry him. She makes it clear to him how unmanly it is to turn his back on her because his love belongs to someone else. He obeys dutifully. Duty is the stronger thing. She wins. He renounces the good, clever Frieda and enters into a forced marriage with Sophie. But he takes revenge. He takes revenge, as schoolboys are wont to do. He accompanies the corpse of a suicidal woman to her grave, even though this contradicts the feelings of his bride and her relatives. Just wait, I want to show you some nice things. I'll do what annoys you. Why did you just want to marry me?

It is well known that a woman sacrifices much to help her beloved, that her love does not shy away from any sacrifice. That this woman forces him to marry her the moment she sees her lover's affection for her extinguished, I think is nonsense. Such facts awaken pride in the woman. She says to herself: no, I will not possess you without your affection. If a woman acts in a different way, this way is none of our business. It arouses disgust in reality; and we reject it when it confronts us in poetry.

I know what the learned and unlearned aesthetes of the present day will say. Pure art, they say, is not concerned with whether we like a personality or a process or not. It has to depict what happens, not what we would like to happen. Such a view of art alone is soft, feminine. Pure art is a woman. And if it does not allow itself to be fertilized by a world view, by the emotional life that hates and loves, then it becomes an old maid. Carlot Gottfried Reuling's art is an old maid. There is no masculine trait in this poet's work. It would have been manly if he had allowed Johannes Küster to make the decision to give up Sophie. All prejudices should not concern him. His renunciation is feminine; a strong assertion of his will, a devotion to his passion, to his goals, would have been masculine. This has nothing to do with pure art, but pure art does not make it so. The work of art must not remain untouched by our sympathies and antipathies. Why should we allow ourselves to be offered in the theater what is uninteresting to us in life?

But basically they are good Christians and philistines, these poets of Reuling's ilk. The ruthless will, the strong ability is not to their liking. Obeying their duty is more important to them than asserting their personality. Renunciation is their watchword. They see piety in obedience. And they want piety. Piety is good to them; they call the indulgence of their own personality evil, reprehensible. And they cross themselves before the word egoism. What good is it that Reuling is a real poet? That he has serious, artistic intentions, if his view of life is repugnant to us? If we always have the feeling that everything in his drama should have turned out differently? The drama "Das Stärkere" reflects a weak, mathearted view of life. The poet lacks the courage to act, to strive for his own goals. That is why his hero also lacks it. And where Reuling draws energy, as in Sophie, he draws it wrongly. He makes her want the opposite of what she should want according to a healthy psychological view. This drama is a play by a philistine and for philistines. Anyone who is not a philistine will feel bored by it.

Play in five acts by Georg Hirschfeld
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

The artist depicts things and events as they appear to him through his temperament. I had to think of this idea of Zola's when I went home after the performance of Georg Hirschfeld's new drama, "Agnes Jordan". Hirschfeld wants to portray the fate of several people in five pictures. The delicately sensitive, education-loving Agnes Sommer has been well fed with the writings of the classics and carefully nurtured with wise teachings by her uncle, the idealistic Adolf Krebs. This uncle was born for higher things. He wanted to be a musician. Circumstances have made him a merchant. He suffers from a misguided life. Every step he takes takes him backwards instead of forwards. The poet sensibly gives him the name Cancer. He has no luck with his educational experiments either. Despite her education, she falls for the crude Gustav Jordan, who reads nothing but bawdy novels and the "Vossische Zeitung". Georg Hirschfeld describes how these two people lived together in 1865, the year of their marriage, in 1873, 1882 and finally in 1896. However, he did not pick these four widely separated years out of a period of 31 years at random. For in the first, we learn how a ruthless egotist is tender in his way with the woman he has won. The year 1873 gives him the opportunity to let all his brutality shine. Good Uncle Krebs is on the verge of bankruptcy and wants the money back that he lent his clean-cut nephew to start a bourgeois existence. He is therefore showered with the most exquisite cruelties. In 1882, the marital relationship between Agnes and Gustav Jordan had grown to such an extent that the tender-hearted wife ran away from her husband and could only be persuaded to return to his house because their eldest son was seriously ill and needed his mother. In 1896, the woman, brutalized for three decades, experiences the good fortune that her son unites with her friend's daughter. In my opinion, however, Hirschfeld could have chosen any other year from the period mentioned and depicted the fate of his couple in that year. For the events mentioned are of far too little interest to us after the conflict in the first act. We become increasingly tired and finally no longer want to follow along. My feeling does not demand a plot rich in details; but it wants a need to be satisfied which the poet himself has aroused. If I ask someone a question that he has aroused in me through his speech, I want a clear answer that deals only with the subject of my question. If he then answers me all sorts of things that have hardly anything to do with my question, I become unwilling. And Hirschfeld arouses a question in me. After the first act, I want to know how the relationship between the two people whose character he has indicated must develop. All I learn is that Gustav Jordan treats his wife roughly and makes love to every maid who comes into the house. I expect a decision in the fifth act. Something should happen that could be a sufficient answer to the question. Instead, people talk about the new age, the new people and the new art. I know of few dramas whose fifth act is as superfluous as that of "Agnes Jordan". Agnes has had to put up with her husband's brutal instincts for 31 years; she will continue to do so. Everything that Uncle Adolf has planted in her soul has gradually withered; her death will mean little. For she has been dying for 31 years. The difference between complete annihilation and the life she leads in 1897 is the smallest imaginable. The way she is slowly dying is as uncomfortable as when a flame slowly diminishes because there is no more oil. We would rather extinguish such a flame before we see it die so slowly.

Such a slow dying away may often occur in life. And for a subtle observer, the details of such dying will certainly be attractive objects of observation. Hirschfeld is such a fine observer. But he is merely an observer. He has no desire to do violence to things. When he sees an event, he accepts it and presents it as it is. And it seems to him a sin to leave out any indifferent detail that confronts him. That is why he is not a dramatist. Such a man takes up a conflict in life and develops it as his temperament, his personal inclination demands. He switches gears with the event in an autocratic manner. He shows how he conceives the context of events. He has little respect for common reality. A playwright would have placed Gustav and Agnes in situations in which their opposing characters clash wildly. His temperament would have led him to do so. Because this is my view, that is why I remembered Zola's aforementioned performance after the performance of "Agnes Jordan". Hirschfeld does not depict things as they appear when they are seen through a temperament, but as they appear when they are seen through a complete lack of temperament. This poet is a smooth mirror that reproduces everything that is placed in front of its surface unchanged. The images he creates are clean and clear, but they lack any magic of personality. The events in the Jordan family are depicted as if through an artificial apparatus. Hirschfeld provides documents for the cultural historian, but not a work of art. What matters to him is fidelity in the reproduction of what he has observed, but not artistic design. I can imagine that under certain circumstances such a faithful depiction can also attract me. But in the first act of Hirschfeld's work all the preparations are made for a drama of which we then see nothing. The poet owes us this drama. Water is certainly a good drink, but if someone invites us to a bottle of good wine and then serves us water, let him see how he gets on with us. We will not put up with such treatment.

In these lines, I don't want to contribute to the old and eternally young school bickering about idealism and naturalism. But I must say that I find it an indelicacy against me as a spectator when someone expects me to observe the pure, unadulterated truth of nature in all its details between the three artificial walls of the stage. In the stage space I have artificial conditions before me. Life in all its fullness does not enter there. If the illusion of life is nevertheless to be created before me, the missing element must be added by a personality, the poet, of his own accord. Marionettes are lifeless. Nevertheless, I like to watch their play when the director of a puppet show has good ideas. I want to hear what the playwright's spirit creates from the stage. A personality should speak to me, not an observer of life without temperament, to whom things say nothing special that he could reveal to me in his work.

Much more interesting to me than Hirschfeld's drama were the actors who performed it. The performance is an artistic achievement of a high order. Emanuel Reicher once wrote to Hermann Bahr: "We no longer want to play effective scenes, but whole characters, with the whole conglomerate of upper, lower and secondary characteristics that are attached to them ... We want to be nothing other than people who, through the simple natural sound of human language, convey from within themselves the feelings of the characters to be portrayed, regardless of whether the organ is beautiful and melodious, whether the gesture is graceful, whether this or that fits into this or that subject, but whether it is compatible with the simplicity of nature and whether it shows the audience the image of a whole person." What he demands of himself with these words: in his portrayal of Gustav Jordan, he has fulfilled it with every word, with every look, with every expression, with every movement. All the upper, lower and secondary characteristics of the crude, selfish, philistine journeyman were expressed. Everything is convincing. One has the feeling in every detail that of all the possible ways of expressing Jordan's character traits, the one that Emanuel Reicher has found is the very best. And the basic trait of this personality is grasped and realized by the actor in such a way that there is never the slightest suggestion that it could be anything else. Agnes Sorma, who portrays all the characteristics of Agnes Jordan, from the loving devotion to the higher goods of the spiritual life and the inner, fine feeling of gratitude towards Uncle Adolf, ennobled by the most tender naivety, to the noble, proud attitude towards the man and the touching surrender to her fate, stands by her side with stylish, poetic truth and great artistry. Hermann Müller's performance is not on a par with these two actors, as he portrays Uncle Krebs too one-sidedly as a snivelling man depressed by his fate. If this character is to be convincing, a touch of active idealism must be added - at least quietly - to his nature. You have to see that he has a sympathetic goal in mind as he moves forward: then you can mourn with him over his involuntary backward step.