The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Play on jokes and rants with five interruptions by Gerhart Hauptmann
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

"Schluck und Jau." This much-disputed "Spiel zu Scherz und Schimpf" by Gerhart Hauptmann, which has just been published by S.Fischers Verlag (Berlin) and performed at the Deutsches Theater, will be discussed in the next issue of this magazine. Our judgment differs so much from what has been heard so far, pro and con, that we can only hope to be heard when the agitated tempers have calmed down somewhat.

"And do not take this coarse little piece for more than an unconcerned whim child," says the prologue speaker, who is "a hunter with the hip horn, through a divided curtain of green cloth, as it were, in front of the hunting party, to whom, as is assumed, the following piece is played in the banqueting hall of a hunting lodge." I believe that such a clear expression of his intentions must be respected in a poet. One would be wrong to expect a profound philosophy of life from a play written for the above purpose. What poet would waste such a philosophy if he thought of a "hunting party" as spectators and, moreover, had his prologue speaker address them thus: "Let it please you, dear hunters, that sometimes this curtain opens and reveals something to you - and then closes. Let your eyes glide over it, if you do not prefer to look into the cup." As a spectator, I am therefore entitled to put my own brain aside for once and to insert that of a member of a princely hunting party into my cranial cavity. I have the interests, thoughts and opinions of Prince Jon Rand, and it is very well calculated for my understanding when Karl, my "thinking" comrade, shares his philosophy of life with me. Jau, the drunkard, has been awakened from his intoxication in a princely bed; he has been dressed in princely clothes and then told that he is a prince and not a walking rascal. Charles undertakes this maneuver to amuse his prince. He then instructs him:

"Take this dress off him, this colorful embroidered one,
So he slips into the rags again,
Which now tied into a small bundle
The castellan keeps. Dress remains dress after all! His is a little more flimsy,
But just and fitted to his body.
And since it is from the same witness
Like dreams - his as good as ours, Jon!
And we are no closer to the things that surround us here
Are no closer than dreams, and
No closer than the stranger Jau -
So he rescues from our junk heaven
Much less than we into his realm
Of lowliness. How? What, are we more
? More than naked sparrows? More than this Jau? I do not think so! What we really are,
Is little more than what it really is -:
And our best happiness is soap bubbles.
We form them with our heart's breath
And swarm after them in the blue air,
Until they burst: and so does he.
He will be free in the future as before,
To pursue such eternal arts."

The ancient wisdom that the differences between people are based only on appearances, that something completely new is revealed to us as the essence of man when we awaken from the dream of life for a while, something that is in every man, be he prince or beggar - this not exactly profound but nevertheless true wisdom is presented here as it fits into the brain of a man like Karl. And the type of person who takes such things, which others have long since relegated to the category of the most banal matters of course, seriously and expresses them with importance, is wonderfully met. We know him, the count, who recites a few trivialities from a catechism on Indian philosophy with an expression as if he had gone to school with Buddha himself. This philosophizing salon hero of Gerhart Hauptmann's is excellently designed. Nietzscheanism has also found such philosophizing counts today. I knew one myself who always carried around the small edition of "Zarathustra" in a cute little booklet in his trouser pockets. In the other pocket, the count's thinker carried an equally well-equipped small edition of the Bible. He seemed to be of the opinion that the teachings of the "Book of Books" could be perfectly confirmed by the sayings of Zarathustra and that Nietzsche was only mistaken if he thought he was an anti-Christian philosopher. Why should it not give Karl, who is the child of such a mind, a terrible pleasure to make it clear to his comrade that it is only the veil of Maja that lets us find a difference between beggar and king, and that a beggar, if he is only put in the position of being king for a day, will play his part just as well as the born prince?

Hauptmann, however, seems to lack the humor that would be necessary to pull off the whole farce. He is a contemplative nature. He lays souls bare in a wonderful way. The two ragamuffins Schluck and Jau, with their riff-raff philosophy and servile lifestyle, are wonderfully drawn. Hauptmann's psychological subtlety is evident in every stroke with which he characterizes these two types. As a result, the beginning and end of the play are excellently done: the scene that shows us the two drunken rags on the green plan in front of the castle, and the other, at the end, that shows them after they have passed their adventures in the castle and have been thrown back onto the street.

The situation is different with what lies in between. This is where a dramatic cartoonist should have developed his art. Hauptmann's talent fails in this area. The irresistible comedy, which alone would be appropriate here, is probably not his thing. The actual farce therefore appears dull and colorless. Shakespearean style was the aim. But it is only half achieved everywhere. This also indicates what seems to be questionable about this play. It does not reveal any of its character. One is reminded of so much without feeling fully compensated by what is new in invention and treatment. We would have preferred less Shakespeare and more Hauptmann.

I apologize that I did not quite succeed in engaging a princely hunting party brain, but that my own asserted itself so obtrusively.

A German comedy by Otto Ernst
Performance at the Königliches Schauspielhaus, Berlin

A significant success of this comedy was reported from several places. Here at the Königliches Schauspielhaus it has also achieved such a success. Otto Ernst has met the mood of the vast majority of the theater audience in the most alarming way. What could be more plausible for this audience than that his thinking, feelings and intentions are excellent, uniquely and solely socially acceptable, and that only ridiculous, silly intellectuals can find fault with the solid attitude of the true bourgeoisie. The young doctor Hermann Kröger belongs to such a solid bourgeois family. His father is a philistine of the type often found in official positions. These people are so "normal" in spirit that they need little, and they have crossed the line where imbecility begins. Once they have crossed this line, they are retired. The mother is accordingly. She loves her children like "good" women love their children, and she provides the meals. Hermann Kröger has become a capable doctor; he has even already discovered his "bacillus". His younger brother is still at grammar school. He wants to be an "individuality". We learn of the way in which he strives to become one, that he consists of strolling and carousing, because those who "oxen" are for him the "far too many", the average people. During his student days, Hermann Kröger got to know a real Nietzsche giger, Erich, who was just living it up. This kind of silly person doesn't just exist among the "youth of today". They are people who have nothing to do, know nothing and don't want to learn anything - in fact, they are quite inferior. They pick up some philosophical phrases that are in themselves quite indifferent to them, but which are supposed to make their hollow skulls appear to be filled with deep knowledge. Among the people they meet in life are also those who fall for them. Hermann Kröger is taken in by Erich. He is in danger of being converted to superhumanity by a raghead. However, he is cured at the right time and enters the harbor of a proper, good marriage. In recent years, the word "comedy" has taken on a new meaning. In Otto Ernst's play, its good old meaning has been restored. What else is going on in the play serves the main tendency: the "solid" philistinism is a splendid world view in comparison to the folly of a part of modern youth draped in Nietzschean and Stirnerian phrases. There is not much to this tendency. It is banal. But there is no reason to criticize comedy for the sake of this tendency. However, the dramatic realization should lift the trivial content into a better sphere. The style here is no better than that of "War in Peace", "Rape of the Sabines" and so on. The characterization is of that hurtful kind which paints the colors by which we are to understand the peculiarities of the characters in thick complexes; the events follow each other as if there were no such thing as a logic of facts. It is true that we can do without this in comedy, but then there is only one means of transforming the impossible into something instantly enjoyable for our imagination: wit. It was not at the poet's side when he wrote the comedy.

Play in four acts by Georg Reicke
Performance at the Berliner Theater, Berlin

One of the most appealing phenomena of contemporary dramatic art is undoubtedly Georg Reicke's play "Freilicht", which was recently performed at the Berliner Theater. We are dealing here with a poetic personality whose merits can easily be overlooked. However, the more one lovingly immerses oneself in this creation, the more these merits appear before one's soul. The woman who is seized by the modern quest for personal liberation, who is therefore alienated from the circles in which she was born and brought up, and who has to carve out her own path in life through pain and privation: she has often been the subject of dramatic poetry. She is also the subject of Reicke's drama. But this poet has something over those who have dealt with the same subject matter. He is a more intimate observer. That is why he does not, like so many others, jump from observation to the tendentious intensification of the problem, the thesis. There is still much in women's souls today that resists the intellectual grasp of the idea of freedom. A long-standing cultural inheritance has laid sentiments on the foundation of this soul that cling like a lead weight to the bold idea of women's liberation. It is precisely those women who want to know nothing of such sentiments, who believe that they carry an absolute consciousness of freedom within them, who appear to the more discerning observer today like dishonest female poseurs. The deeply honest, true female characters have to struggle with a strong skepticism of feeling. A shattering tragedy of the heart is their perception of the full need for freedom. One must have very fine organs of observation in order to perceive the mental imponderables at work within such a woman, who strives towards freedom not out of program but out of her nature, out of the shackles forged by traditional social views. Georg Reicke has such organs of observation. Every trait in the characterization of his Cornelie Linde is psychological truth, and none is tendency.

It is very easy to observe that poets who want to be modern may represent new ideas, but that at the core of their being, in their actual attitude, they are no different from the philistines they mock. They are philistines of the new, just as the others are philistines of the traditional. Reicke is fundamentally different from such poets. There is not a trace of philistinism in him either. That is precisely why he faces things objectively, as a true artist. This is the reason why the man he contrasts with Cornelie, the painter Ragnar Andresen, has become such a splendid figure. A true confessor of freedom, a man for whom this confession is as natural as a physical driving force. You will have to look a long time before you find such a pose-less personality among modern dramatic types.

And just as true as these modern figures are those of a culture that has grown old. The privy councillor family from which Cornelie has grown out of, the lieutenant Botho Thaden, to whom she is engaged and from whom she breaks away in order to flee to her congenial Ragnar: everything is clearly true. Nowhere is there any other tendency than to make the characters of life appear comprehensible. Nowhere the false juxtaposition of the excellent new and the evil old. But everywhere the awareness that the new has naturally developed from the old, that this new must still bear the traits inherited from the old. Not just justification of the future, but also an understanding of the past.

Such characters are set in a plot that has nothing of the dramatic developments that are often made in this way and also nothing of the surprising scenic twists. This plot unfolds in the same way that life unfolds in a series of twists and turns. Almost every moment we have the feeling that everything could turn out differently. It is the same in life. Necessity certainly prevails everywhere, but it is precisely this necessity that is the faithful sister of chance. Afterwards we say to ourselves: everything had to turn out this way; beforehand we only have the perspective of countless future possibilities. This is present in Reicke's work in the form of a fine poetic artistry. There are no grotesque surprises in his drama, but there is also no embarrassing foresight of the outcome, which so often appears to us in poetry as an untruth of life.

Reicke's atmospheric painting is particularly appealing. With simple, discreet means, he presents us with the Munich painter's studio in which Cornelie breathes the air of freedom; and with equally simple means, he embodies the milieu of Berlin's secretive domesticity.

A free view of reality, unclouded by prejudice, confronts me in this poet. A gaze that grasps the exterior of life's processes just as vividly as the phenomena taking place within the human soul. We are dealing with a man who does not need bright colors, strong lights and shadows to say what he has to say. We are dealing with a connoisseur of the transitions in appearances. Georg Reicke is a realistic poet, at the same time with that trait of idealism that life itself has.

A masked play in four acts by Rudolf Lothar
Performance by the Viennese Deutsches Volkstheater at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

Examining a "mask play" for its dramatic necessities like a serious drama seems to me to be on the same level as an anatomist examining a caricature for its anatomical correctness. I wouldn't say this if it weren't for the fact that critics who come to mind have behaved in this way towards Rudolf Lothar's "King Harlequin". Above all, one thing has become clear to me. We have here a drama in which humor lives in the very best sense of the word. Prince Bohemund returns to his parents' house after an absence of ten years. His arrival coincides with the hour of his father's death. His father was a terrible king to the kingdom. His brother Tancred was an even worse chancellor. The queen wept herself blind over the misfortune of her poor country. Nor can she expect anything good from Bohemund as her successor. He lacks any seriousness. He has only traveled the world to amuse himself. Instead of allies, he brings a troupe of actors with him. Harlequin copies the prince himself with great skill. When something goes wrong in the prince's gallant adventures, so that a beating is imminent, Harlequin has to put on the royal mask and take the beating instead of his master. Columbine, another member of the troupe, is supposed to pass the prince's time with her feminine charms. But Harlequin loves Columbine and is terribly jealous of his master. Just at the moment when the old king gives up the ghost, this jealousy leads Harlequin so far that he murders the prince. Now his skill in copying his master comes to his aid. He puts on the prince's mask, declares himself to be the prince and claims that he has killed Harlequin. So Harlequin becomes king. He, who is used to playing only on boards that mean the world, is supposed to play a role in the real world. And he can't manage that. He wants to be a real king. He comes up against Tancred's resistance, who sees the king as nothing more than the will-less fulfillment of the idea of kingship. It is not the king who should rule, no, this abstract idea should rule, and the person is indifferent. The actor can play people: His play rests on the belief that the people who serve as models for his characters are real people. Because he thinks he can maintain this belief when he enters reality, he is impossible in this reality. Tancred decides to have him assassinated in order to place a less-than-perfect royal scion on the throne. Harlequin returns to his life as an actor after he has shown the court the experiences he had during his days as king in a light-hearted play, once again disguised as Harlequin. The idea of kingship is filled out with the not fully sensual sprout.

This is not a bitter satire, but a humorous poem. The poet understands the necessities of life and describes them without pessimism; but he finds the humorous mood that alone makes it possible to get over the pessimism. Rudolf Lothar has happily avoided a pitfall. The obvious thing to say was: "A comedian can teach a king." Fritz Mauthner thinks this is better. Harlequin could have grown with his higher purposes; he, as a comedian, could have surpassed a Tancred in true wisdom and humanity. It seems to me that Lothar's basic dramatic idea is deeper. For Harlequin is not an impossible king because he is incapable of being king, but because he is capable. He does not fail because he could not teach a king, but because teaching is impossible.

The only possible mood that this thought can bear is the humorous one. A tragic outcome would be unbearable. Just think: Harlequin goes down because he wants to play king and can't! That would not be tragic, but ridiculous. But an actor who realizes that he can't be king because, as the representative of an abstract idea, he would have to give up the content of his personality, and who runs away when he realizes this: that seems humorous.

Whoever wants a tragedy instead of Lothar's drama wants a different drama. But such a person does not consider that Lothar's Harlequin is not taking on a mission, but a role. He believes that only on the stage is meaning the main thing. He must experience that this should also be the case in life. In the play he can tolerate meaning, but not in life. So away to the scene where meaning is in its place. Harlequin wants to mean something, if he only has to appear with the pretension of meaning something; but if he has to mean something with the pretension of being it, then meaning becomes unbearable for him.

Lothar's characters are as full of life as humorous figures can be. You can't do without exaggeration in such characters. But the exaggerations have to embody the idea in a meaningful way. We are happy to tolerate an enlarged nose in the drawing of a personality as soon as we are aware that this enlargement of the nose is a characteristic that we arrive at when we allow the characteristic that the enlargement of the nose serves as a sign of to come to the fore in our perception.

I have to say about the performance that I found Mr. Kramer splendid in the leading role (Harlequin), considering the difficulty of making the transition from a real Harlequin to an acted King comprehensible. Although I have seen Ms. Albach-Retty in roles that she plays better, I would like to give her full credit this time as well for her execution of the task, which gave the impression of being finely toned. I would also like to pass the best judgment on the direction; there was impeccable interplay and successful stage sets.

A tragedy by Otto Borngräber with a foreword by Ernst Haeckel
Review and subsequent critique of the performance at the Altes Theater, Leipzig

It is a risk that Otto Borngräber has taken with his Giordano Bruno tragedy. He will - I fear - experience many disappointments. I wish I were wrong. But I doubt that our time will have the impartiality to follow the intentions of this playwright. We live in an era of small perspectives. And Otto Borngräber has dramatized a man with the greatest possible perspective. Despite the celebrations that were held in February of this year in honor of Giordano Bruno, despite the dithyrambic articles that have been written about him, I do not believe that the audience for this "superman of a different kind", as Ernst Haeckel calls him in his preface to the drama, is a particularly large one. For I cannot believe in the inner truth of this Giordano Bruno cult. One experiences symptoms that are too characteristic of the petty way of thinking of our time. I confess that it is downright depressing for me to observe one of these symptoms now in the fight against Ernst Haeckel's recently published book "Die Welträtsel". How often does one have the opportunity to perceive the joy creeping out of the most hidden corners of the souls of our contemporaries at the attacks that could be heard from the theological side against Haeckel's struggle for the new world view. A church historian in Halle, Loofs, no doubt believes that he has taken the cake among the opponents of Haeckel with his brochure "Anti-Haeckel", which has now appeared in several editions. He has found that some chapters in Haeckel's book violate ideas that church history has currently formed about the connection between certain facts. In the chapters in question, Haeckel based himself on the book by an English agnostic, Stewart Ross, which was published in German under the title "Jehovas gesammelte Werke". This book is little known in Germany. Most readers of Haeckel will only have learned of his existence from the "Welträtseln". This was also the case for Loofs. In his "AntiHaeckel", he has now subjected it to a critique from the point of view of today's "enlightened" Protestant church historian. This criticism is devastating. What today's biblical criticism, historical research into the Gospels and other church-historical sources have established as "facts", Ross has gravely sinned against. Loofs cannot do enough in his condemnation of the book. He calls it a book of shame, inspired by ignorance of church history and a blasphemous way of thinking. Unfortunately, one can now see that he has made an impression on a large circle of educated people with his judgment. One can hear it repeated ad nauseam that Haeckel was "fooled" by the writing of the English ignoramus.

All these judgments from the mouths of "educated people" prove only one thing to me. There is something uncomfortable about Haeckel's world view. Out of vague feelings, they prefer the old Christian dogma to the modern view of nature. But this view has too good a reason for it to be easy to fight against it. The facts on which Haeckel relies speak too clearly. One forgives oneself too much if one openly closes oneself off against this world view. This does not prevent one from feeling a deep sense of satisfaction when a theologian comes along and proves Haeckel's dilettantism in church history. One is in a position to pass a negative judgment on the new world view, as it were from behind. One does not openly confront the monism of the great natural scientist. That would require courage. You don't have that. But you can make up your own mind: a man like Ernst Haeckel, who falls so naively for the ignorance of Stewart Ross, cannot shake us deeply in our ideas. Loofs himself does not hold back with a similar judgment. He even removes Haeckel from the list of serious scientific researchers because he relies on a book that is supposedly as "unscientific" as Ross's.

But take a look at this book. Anyone who reads it without bias will - I dare say - not be astonished enough at the deep inner untruthfulness of Loofs' criticism. For, according to this, he must absolutely believe that he is looking at the writing of a frivolous man who is not interested in truth, but in mocking convictions that are sacred to millions of people. Instead, he is presented with the book of a profound man, whose every sentence makes you feel a tremendous struggle for the truth, who has obviously been through crises of the soul of which people like Loofs have no idea in the comfortable cushion of their church history. A holy zeal for human welfare and human happiness has inspired a personality here to speak out in anger against traditional prejudices, which he considers to be a human misfortune. We are not dealing with a reckless denier, but with an indignant man who wields the scourge because he believes the truth to be distorted by Pharisees.

I need the background of this fact to justify, by a remarkable symptom, the doubts I have expressed above as to the receptivity of the public to Borngräber's tragedy. I can only say once again: I hope that I am thoroughly mistaken and that what Haeckel says at the end of his preface will come true: "We can only express the heartfelt wish that this great tragedy, which is completely in tune with our times, may not only find a wide readership as an ennobling and exciting book, but may also find the appreciation and effect it surely deserves by being performed soon on a larger German stage."

I do not believe that the drama will find mercy before the judgment seat of those aesthetes who have become entrenched in their views over the last two decades. Those who consider the dramatic technique of the "moderns" to be the only possible one will not pass a particularly favorable judgment on "The New Century". Borngräber's technique, with its tendency towards decorative beauty and stylization, will not stand up to either the naturalistic or the symbolist-romantic forum of recent years. Anyone who goes deeper, however, will enjoy this stylization, which dramatizes a Renaissance hero with undisguised pleasure in Renaissance-like forms. I believe I recognize in Borngräber a poet who has kept his taste away from the sympathies and antipathies of the day. For his artistic form he presupposes an audience whose delight in the beauty of form has not been entirely lost in the inclinations of contemporary taste. I do not mean to say that I am an unreserved lover of drama in an aesthetic sense. I do not think that Borngräber is already a master of the style he has chosen. But all this seems to me to take a back seat to the great worldview perspective that is expressed in the work. It will not be a question of whether Borngräber has delivered an impeccable tragedy to the aesthetic judges of this or that direction, but whether there is a tendency for the great world view, of which the martyr burned in Rome three centuries ago is the first representative, to be transferred from an elite of spiritual fighters to a larger crowd.

Whoever is capable of feeling with Bruno's world perspective can alone have a feeling for the tragic violence that expresses itself in this personality. This tragedy lies in the relationship that Bruno's personality has to the upheaval of the world view brought about by men like Copernicus and Galileo. Copernicus and Galileo provided the building blocks for the world view that has been developed over the last few centuries. Bruno was one of those who, with a far-sighted vision of the future, outlined the effects that Copernicus' and Galileo's ideas would have on the view of human nature. He spoke truths for which only the first actual germs were present. He did so at a time when these germs did not yet have the capacity to grow into a world view. Borngräber subtly contrasts Galileo's figure with Bruno's. Galileo is not a tragic personality, although he is indisputably the one to whom we owe more than Bruno when we look at the building blocks that make up our world view. I can completely imagine Bruno out of the development of the spirit in the last centuries. Even without his having anticipated at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the thoughts that fill me today, they could still be exactly the same as they are. The same is not the case with Galileo. Without Galileo there would be no Newton, without Newton there would be no Lyell and Darwin, and without Lyell and Darwin there would be no modern scientific world view. Without Giordano Bruno there would be none of this. Galileo did not go beyond what his physical foundation absolutely compelled him to do; Bruno proclaimed things that a personality with Galileo's mindset can only claim for himself today. Therein lies Bruno's profound tragedy.

While reading Borngräber's book, I couldn't help but think of a lone fighter of our time, the brave Eugen Reichel. He has placed a personality from the sixteenth century before our eyes, in whom we find the tragedy realized in a completely different sense, for which Borngräber presents Giordano Bruno as a representative. According to Reichel's conviction, a man died in 1586 who viewed the world as we do today and whose memory has so far been completely erased from the memory of mankind.

Reichel is of the opinion that Shakespeare's plays and Baco of Verulam's "Novum organon" reveal a powerful, brilliant personality to those who look deeper, who is equally great as a poet and thinker, but who has died in oblivion without being understood by the rest of the world. Just as Shakespeare's dramas lie before us, they are not the work of their original genius creator, but rather the result of mutilation, amateurish additions and reworking of his legacy. Likewise, the "Novum organon" in the form in which it has come down to us is a work in which two spirits can be sensed: an original, Copernican view of nature, who at the end of the sixteenth century was already living in the world view whose construction was completed by the three that followed, and a bungling scholastic. Baco of Verulam was this bungling personality. He appropriated the legacy of the forgotten genius, "reworked" it in the manner indicated, handed over the philosophical under his name, the dramatic under the name of the Stratford actor Shakespeare to his fellow and posterity. Today I am still unable to form a judgment on this great question to which Reichel has given his energies. Suppose one could agree with Reichel: then, in the sixteenth-century genius he sees behind the works of Bacon and Shakespeare, a figure of the deepest tragedy is revealed to us. From a Bruno tragedy translated into the immeasurable. Bruno killed a hostile power. His work could not destroy it. Aware that his enemies were more afraid of this work than he was of their judgment, he departed from life. The lack of judgment of his contemporaries destroyed the work of the English genius; it not only killed him physically, it killed him spiritually. Eugen Reichel dramatized this tragedy in broad strokes in his "Meisterkrone". Unlike Borngräber, he did not poetically depict a real, historical event, but based it on a symbolic plot. This undoubtedly broadens the perspective for those who are able to feel the tragedy of the personality in question. Borngräber's work does bring the tragic problem in question closer to a wider audience.

Borngräber's drama is soon to be performed in Leipzig by a circle of friends of the work. May it be followed by others, and may our theaters (in Berlin) soon make the effort to open their doors to the Bruno tragedy. They can then fulfill a beautiful task in the great struggle for the "new faith". "The tremendous struggle between 'the old and the new faith', between church religion and spiritual religion, between spiritual bondage and spiritual freedom, which is just now ushering in 'the new century', confronts us grippingly in Borngräber's poetry" (E. Haeckel in the foreword). Worthy performances of this drama could make a significant contribution to the understanding of this struggle. If the stage is to give a picture of the world, it must not exclude itself from the highest thing there is for people in this world, from spiritual needs.

We experienced a beautiful festive evening in Leipzig on July 7, 1900 with the performance of Otto Borngräber's Giordano tragedy "The New Century". I will return in the next issue to the successful performance, which brought us an outstanding performance by the Dresden court actor Paul Wiecke (as Giordano Bruno).

It was a wonderful celebration of the monistic world view that we attended on July 7 at the Altes Theater in Leipzig. What I have to say about Otto Borngräber's drama can be found in this weekly magazine. It was no easy task that the Dresden court actors Paul Wiecke and Alice Politz undertook with the artists of the Weimar Theater. But it was all the more rewarding. The solution can be described as a successful one for the time being. The great figure of Giordano Bruno, who appears as a symbol of a world view confident of victory, which has taken up the fight against darkness and the blind belief in revelation, was given a worthy portrayal by Paul Wiecke. Otto Borngräber and all those who represent his cause can welcome with gratitude the fact that their hero has found this portrayer. Paul Wiecke appears all the more significant the more important the tasks he is given. He found the right tone for the middle ground that had to be maintained here, between realism, which as an artistic companion necessarily belongs to the monistic world view, and that monumental art which is aware that through it a world view is expressed on which the stamp of the eternally effective is imprinted. The weight of this world view was exquisitely expressed in Paul Wiecke's noble and measured playing. The tones that the artist was able to strike were both heart-warming and majestic. Alice Politz's portrayal of the noble Venetian lady, who embraces the new teaching with a devoted soul, was excellent. The drama and the circumstances under which the performance took place probably posed no small challenges for the director. The director Grube from the Weimar Court Theater masterfully mastered these difficulties. He deserves special thanks from those who enjoyed the festive performance without reservation. Space does not permit us to mention more than a few names of others who have rendered outstanding services to the good cause. - We single out Mr. Krähe (Thomaso Campanella), Mr. Berger (Jesuit Lorini), Mr. Franke (bookseller Ciotto), Mr. Niemeyer (Protestant jailer and Perrucci). The Leipzig student body has rendered outstanding services to the presentation of the folk scenes. We left the theater with full satisfaction and only realized something of the merits that some had earned "behind the scenes" at the after-party. Of course, the fleeting evening did not give us a full insight. But we would still like to remember one man: Burgs, whose satisfied expression at the post-performance celebration did not completely erase the worry lines that the previous days' preparatory work had caused him. The proceeds of the performance are intended for the benefit of the writers' home in Jena.

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.

We have repeatedly pointed out the decline of theater life in our imperial city in these pages. We have shown that stage managers and critics are losing their understanding and audiences are losing their receptiveness to artistic value, and that there is now only a need for light merchandise, sensational plays and frivolous entertainment. Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn's book "Das Wiener Theaterleben", recently published by Otto Spamer in Leipzig, deals with this subject in detail. The book wants to protest against the development that our theater life has taken in recent years; it wants to gain clues for a cure by objectively examining the mistakes that have been made. The book must be described as a manly deed, which shows on every page that its author, who has been dealing with the relevant circumstances for years, is deeply serious about artistic life. We find the current situation characterized with sharp words: "The Burgtheater is facing the bureaucratic adventure of a Burckhard management, the Deutsches Volkstheater has become a source of income without artistic character, the Theater an der Wien and the Carl-Theater have yet to regain their lost balance. The lack of historical sense, the disregard for tradition, weighs like a curse on our theater life, and it is one of the noblest tasks of this writing to bring out the historical sense in Viennese artistic life, to demonstrate the value of tradition." What Müller-Guttenbrunn means by this "historical sense" needs to be explained. As a rule, a theater was created with a very specific task, it served a limited field of art. Only in this way could it employ truly remarkable artists and achieve good things. The wider the circle it draws for its artistic achievements, the more artists it needs; it will then have to let them go idle a lot, which is only conceivable with mediocre forces. Only if an art institute remains true to its original purpose, if it does not go beyond the circle it has drawn for itself in order to compete with other theaters, only then will it continue to be a need for the public. But if tradition is put on the back burner and all theaters begin to compete with each other in the same tasks, then they are all working towards their ruin. The Carl Theater, for example, was unable to thrive because it did not stick to its original task, the Parisian Schwank, but wanted to compete with the Stadttheater and the Wiedener Theater; the Wiedener Theater, which had grown up as an operetta theater, was competing with the others, and recently even with the Volkstheater. It is also wrong of our court theaters to engage in the performance of plays that they should leave to the private theaters. The Burgtheater performs French sensational dramas that only belong in the Carl Theater, and Müller-Guttenbrunn aptly remarks of the Court Opera: "Today the Court Opera has the same absorbing power as the Burgtheater, and just as here the cultivation of great poetry often has to give way to the cultivation of Parisian box-office magnets, so in the Court Opera everything often takes a back seat to the modern ballet. "Excelsior, "Wiener Walzer", "Die Puppenfee", "Sonne und Erder" dominate entire seasons, and recently, the opera has also taken up a larger part of the annual schedule, and even an old operetta by Suppe (the opera "Das Pensionav") has been attempted."

What Müller-Guttenbrunn demands is a strict division of the theaters' performances, whereby the two court theatres should take advantage of their more favorable financial situation by focusing exclusively on artistic tasks. The author sharply criticizes the fact that the awareness of this duty has almost completely disappeared from the management of these court theatres. He says: "In the Vienna Court Opera House there is room for Bachrich, Pfeffer, Hager and Robert Fuchs and none - but no, we don't want to mention the relegated ones." And he is equally eloquent about the performances themselves: "The emphasis is on external splendor, on pomp, and the audience has been so spoiled by this that the Court Opera is today the absolute and sole ruler of the Imperial City's stage productions. One of the most insubstantial and crass masterpieces of contemporary opera, the "Vasall von Szigeth", dominates the 1889/90 season as a novelty; the magnificent set bears the vain, almost incomprehensible libretto.... " "And it must be described as a barbaric phenomenon that the one-act ballets, equipped with all their splendor, have exerted such a devastating influence on our opera audiences that entire operas, even "Fidelio", are performed in front of half-empty houses, because one only comes into the house for the "appendix", for the "train piece" of the evening!" Müller-Guttenbrunn's words about the personnel of the Court Opera are also worth taking to heart: "In general, the artists of the Vienna Court Opera stand high. Its orchestra is unique in the world, and its vocal forces are constantly renewed from the best voices in Europe... Despite all this, the shortcomings in the personnel of the Vienna Court Opera cannot be concealed. We currently lack a poetic first baritone, we completely lack a master of colorful singing. They let Miss Bianca Bianchi go, made the miserable experiment with Broch and now committed themselves to Miss Abendroth. But this singer is to the Court Opera exactly what Miss Swoboda is to the Burgtheater - she is completely immature, she belongs in the conservatory. There is also a lack of a successor for Ms. Materna, and this is almost more necessary than the one for Ms. Wolter at the Burgtheater... Our busiest tenor, Mr. Georg Müller, is also singing at the end of his career; our Buffo Mayerhofer has passed this end; he has been singing without a voice for ten years. If you want to see our opera at its peak, just listen to a performance of "Lohengrin"; if you want to get to know it at its lowest point, listen to "Lucia", sung by Mr. Müller and Mr. Horwitz and Miss Abendroth. Mr. van Dyk joined us with high hopes; but in a year and a half he has only managed three roles." We have quoted these judgments of Müller-Guttenbrunn about the Court Opera in greater detail because they prove to us that the general decline of the arts has not spared this institution either, and because it is precisely this chapter of the book in question that seems to us to have been most carefully worked out. Here the author delves much deeper into the subject than in the other sections. I am reluctant to censure, but least of all do I like having to criticize a book that undoubtedly has great merits. But there is a fundamental flaw that will make the effect that the book should otherwise have impossible. This is very regrettable.

This shortcoming is particularly evident in the chapter on the Burgtheater. The treatment remains an external one. The author's point of view is more commercial than purely aesthetic. We do not wish to dispute the justification of the former, but the latter should also be given due consideration. In a book about Viennese theater life, we would also have expected an assessment of Viennese dramatic art. For the general decline of theater life is largely due to the development of acting itself. Our Viennese dramatic art has two living role models: Sonnenthal and the Wolters. Both are important in their own way and can be enchanting, but both are dangerous to their imitators. Both Sonnenthal and the Wolters have major flaws, but these are completely drowned out by their natural artificiality. In their imitators they are magnified and can even produce the absurdity of all theatrical art. Sonnenthal is a great actor, but he plays in a mannered way, he does not play the man, but the actor. That is why Sonnenthal is at his greatest when he has to portray people who are already playing comedy in life. Sonnenthal's mannerism, however, is borne by the artist, which is why, with him, the rationally contrived gesture ceases to be such a gesture. One forgets that so much about this artist is "made". But where Sonnenthal's counter-art, the mannerism with all its faults, comes to light, that is with Robert. This actor lacks artistic soul, every note, every move is "studied", he is an acting technician without actually being an artist. And we notice this flaw in almost all the younger artists at our Burgtheater. They do not know how to free themselves from Sonnenthal's school. We therefore wish the theater a director who would have the courage to form his own opinion of Sonnenthal and be to the younger artists what Sonnenthal can never become to them. At the same time, we have drawn attention to one of the most significant downsides of Sonnenthal's possible directorship. As far as the female forces at the Burgtheater are concerned, we notice far too much of Wolter's influence in them. Wolter is certainly an incomparable artist. But what is great about her cannot be imitated, and what can be imitated is contrary to art. Wolter speaks magnificently; the sound of her voice alone elevates the role to an ideal realm. But she speaks in a manner contrary to the language, incorrectly. Wolter plays with idealistic verve, but she achieves this through means which, considered in themselves, make a mockery of any aesthetic judgment. We would like to say this especially with regard to Miss Barsescu, who should not spoil her great talent by imitating Wolter. In this direction, we definitely missed Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn's critical eye.

We were particularly interested in the part of the book that deals with the Deutsches Volkstheater. After all, this institution must have been particularly close to the heart of the author, who had a great deal to do with its creation. He remarks very aptly: "The faulty, completely inadequate management of the Deutsches Volkstheater, which has enjoyed the warmest participation of the Viennese public for six months and has become a 'goldmine' for Mr. Geiringer, can be proven in all directions. The staffing level is still unworthy of a Viennese theater. It lacks a first lover, a heroic father, a heroine, a naïf, a soubrette. The salon lady is an unknown entity on this stage, the role of a Second Lover is in the hands of a chargen player. There is no director or dramaturge." Müiller-Guttenbrunn also finds the repertoire completely inadequate. "More than thirty performances of "The Marriage of Valeni", twenty-three performances of "The Famous Wife" and just as many of "Schönthan's Last Word" describe the situation here. Eighty days for Schönthan and Ganghofer-Brociner, one hundred for the rest of the literature - who's laughing?" We are in complete agreement with all of this, but we cannot suppress one thing. We would have expected Adam Müiller-Guttenbrunn, after the performance of the "Marriage of Valeni", a disgraceful play whose performance was a downright sacrilege on account of its crude power and its crude views, to have simply said: This play must disappear from the repertoire. Perhaps it would have been possible to considerably reduce the "more than thirty performances" that he now criticized. Instead, he pampered the play in an entire feature article in the way we have already discussed in these pages. So what we actually wanted from the book was only partially fulfilled, albeit to an extraordinary degree for this part. But what could have given it the impressive position that we would have wished it to have: to force the leading circles to reflect, that is what it lacks. It would have been an emphasis on the artistic-aesthetic point of view, which would have revealed that the author is at the height of the contemporary view of art and therefore has the full right to judge the relevant questions. As it now stands, it may not even be able to prevent the most pernicious thing that threatens Vienna and its art: the Burckhard directorate.