Germany in travail

Foreword

IN THE summer of 1920 Amherst College granted me a leave of absence until January, 192 1, to go to Germany and attempt to analyse the state of mind in which the Germans were facing the conditions and problems resulting from defeat and the revolution.

As chance would have it, the summer and fall of 1920 were unusually opportune for such a study. The logic of events culminating in the conference at Spa had finally made the Germans begin to realize the extent of their defeat and of their obligations. An ever greater number were beginning to see the futility of wilful blindness or resentment, and coming to the conclusion that it was better to face conditions and seek a way of meeting them. Also the mere economic situation did not seem as hopeless to the Germans as it does today. Work was beginning to be generally resumed. The mark had depreciated until its value was about two cents, but compensation for most grades of work and returns on most varieties of investments had risen in proportion to the mark's fall. The purchasing value of the mark within Germany was then only a shade above its actual value on the world market. The entire social fabric seemed to be organizing itself upon a basis approximating the actual economic condition of the country.

Everything below the surface, to be sure, politics and the whole spiritual life of the country, was as chaotic as it is today. But the momentary physical and economic relief gave some real impetus toward an attempt at broad reconstruction, and made it possible for an observer to get an idea of the direction the reconstruction will ultimately take, the principles that have a chance to survive through the process, and the vi FOREWORD

spiritual resources which, released by the revolution, will give those principles the necessary force.

My chief concern was the study of these spiritual forces. These may indeed manifest themselves in any of the larger fields of activity: in economics and politics, religion, education, or in art. I am not a student of economics or of politics. My investigations in this field were merely to test the state of mind with which the people were meeting the political situation, and the spiritual attitude they assumed to the supreme economic problem of their daily bread. I found a situation so confused and so threatened by distress and passion, that positive spiritual forces were exerting no influence over it as yet. I have not dared to venture upon a description of the religious life of new Germany. There were evidences of changes that may in time have large importance, but they do not lend themselves to either fair or adequate treatment. The institutional church of Germany had allowed itself to become so entirely a part of the state that, when the latter fell, a full share of the discredit rested upon the church. The laws of the new government, intended to guarantee a greater freedom to religious expression, could do little to produce a new spirit. Whatever attempts at organized expression of a renewed religious spirit I could find were quite apart from the church and so vague that any description would lead to false impressions. In liberal education a new spirit is calmly exerting itself and is squarely and bravely meeting the new conditions. My main interest, however,, is centered upon the mind and spirit of men and peoples as expressed in literature, and upon the spiritual forces that men and peoples evidence in their attitude to the great expressions of literature.

In teaching German literature the question of the relation of the drama to the ruling principles and forces of life is constantly brought into the foreground. The drama is considered by most German authors and critics to be the highest form of literary expression. Even the ordinary theater-goer has a peculiar reverence for what the German calls a drama as distinguished from a play, and he considers sacrilegious any attempt

FOREWORD vii

to make the drama a mere form of entertainment or a source of profit. The object of the dramatist is to create in his characters living men, who embody, or come into conflict with, the fundamental forces of life. The German dramatist must have not only the ability to see and express such forces, but also a sufficiently strong faith in the possession of them by man to make the drama convincing. Where such faith is lacking, the dramatist is expected to show at least a strong longing for it. The German audience, by national habit, is constantly looking for evidence of this faith in the great characters before it, in order that each hearer may acquire an insight into the fundamentals of his own life.

The question often arose in my classes, whether this was really a guiding principle of the German drama. Therefore, when the opportunity came to test this thesis, by observing dramatist and stage and audience in a serious crisis, I was glad to seize upon it. My leave of absence gave me the opportunity which rarely comes to a student of literature: to test in the reality of actual events the statements concerning the German drama which I had taught in my classes. If, in the emergency, dramatists could be found attempting to express faith, or at least a strong longing for faith, in a new German character, if audiences could be found eagerly searching the dramas for a faith to serve as a basis for individual and national reconstruction, then an important question in the study of the German drama would be answered, and it would be possible to determine the state of mind which has the greatest chance of outlasting the present crisis and ultimately controlling reconstruction.

I devoted the largest part of my investigation to the situation in Berlin and Munich, because these cities are the most active and dominating centers of Germany, and because they are most opposed to one another in purpose and method. I went to Weimar to observe the interesting attempt to reestablish its traditional spiritual leadership. Such other German cities as I visited, among them Hamburg, Hannover and Leipzig, were in the main following the lead of Berlin and Weimar. They viii FOREWORD

were important simply in their special interpretation of the forces emanating from these centers. In Salzburg, I witnessed a strong concerted effort by the leaders of Austria to devise a program of spiritual reconstruction by enlisting the power of art in saving what remains of the country.

The first result that I must record is purely negative: not one of the poets, old or new, has enough faith or enough insight in redeeming forces to be able to express such faith clearly, or to present it to the people with strong conviction. It is encouraging, however, to note that the foremost poets of the nation are not giving themselves over to despondency, but are trying to rise above the confusion and to calm the disturbed spirits of the people, hoping that serenity will give them light and insight. A similar longing to prepare the way for faith in a new spirit governs the ventures of Weimar and Salzburg. The most important discovery, however, is that there has arisen throughout Germany a new audience which has developed a strong consciousness of the relation of the drama to personal and national character. In it are the people who are facing the vast responsibilities arising out of the revolution and are seeking for standards with which to judge them. They are convinced, moreover, that they cannot find such standards unless they know themselves and the fundamental national forces of which they are a part. They believe that they can gain this knowledge by studying the characters of the great dramas of their past and by encouraging the better dramatists of their own time to help them search. For this purpose they have organized powerful drama leagues.

It pt-oved impossible to treat this audience merely in its relation to the drama and the theatre. The same people constitute that calm progressive element among the Democrats and Majority Socialists which is comparatively free from the general political confusion. The organizations for popular liberal education are composed almost entirely of these same people, and are able to maintain their strongly liberal, nonvocational character because of the high standards these men attain tlirough their relation to art.

FOREWORD ix

Because this new audience is still in the making, and its position within German life is far from being fully established or recognized, the description of its activity is constantly interrupted by personal interpretations. The results derive a considerable degree of certainty, however, from the fact that the activity of this group, especially in its relation to the drama, is not altogether new. The revolution has given it the first real opportunity and has enormously increased its size; but the history of its growth goes far enough back into German Hfe to establish its permanency with some degree of assurance.

That which most impresses the observer with the power of this group, and gives him reason to believe that its standards will be those that ultimately will prevail in the process of reconstruction, is the extreme patience it shows in the search for standards and its serenity in the presence of the country's chaos.

Otto Manthey-Zorn

Amherst College

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword v

I. The Struggle with Confusion 3

II

The theatre, therefore, assumes a role of first importance in the struggle of the people for a new direction to their existence, and all the forces of this struggle come together and clash furiously on the stages of Berlin. The fury of this struggle results from the impact of four principal forces: the old theatres of the crown that have been turned over to the state and are expected to be the great popular forum for the expressions of the new democracy; the great Berlin Drama League that has sprung spontaneously from the so-called lower classes as an expression of themselves; the theatres of Reinhardt, who claims to be able to unite a commercial venture with the ideal of preserving for the people the best of their dramatic expressions ; and finally the more or less frankly commercial ventures that measure the desires of the people merely by box-office receipts.

The last class naturally comprises the largest number of theatres, especially as the picture plays must be included. The latter are drawing tremendous crowds in Berlin today as they are everywhere. Because of the large salaries it can afford to pay, the moving picture industry is drawing upon some of the very best and most convincingly artistic actors of the country and on the foremost scenic artists. But the very best efforts of the artist are turned into sensational effects by money-mad managers, who, by the promise of a new refinement in excitement, lure the crowds to stupefying entertainment.

The other entertainment theatres are an equally sorry sight, Here all the degrading influences of war and defeat, of profiteering and senseless passions, are exploited. The reviews are crude, splashy, and poorly played imitations of London music halls, mixed with awkward attempts at French suggestiveness; the comedies are disgustingly sensuous and extravagant, and the more serious shows play to the cheapest war-time passions and prejudices of the audience. Excepting for the motion picture houses, however, all theatres of this class are exceedingly expensive, so that they attract only the very rich, or rather that large class of people who, by war-time speculations, have temporarily come into a large amount of spending money. That this is a passing crowd is as plain as it is fortunate, and, its money gone, its theatres will go with it. Today the number of these theatres is rather greater than before the war. Then Berlin could boast of several private theatres whose managers had the highest standards and, not being interfered with by suggestions from the court, often supported venturesome dramatists who were opening up important new paths for the drama. But the refined audience that supported such theatres has been financially ruined by the war, and the managers, in order to live, are forced to draw the crowds of profiteers and to pamper their dull nerves with large doses of strong stimulants. It is interesting to note that in the judgment of almost every reputable critic of Berlin the famous Sudermann is rated as belonging to this category. He maintains a theatre of his own, where every season a new play or two of his is produced before an audience that likes the carefully respectable way in which he excites its nerves, and which remains loyal to him, as an addict is loyal to his stimulant, in spite of the warnings, anger and ridicule of critics. The composition of the Sudermann audience seemed very different from that at any other theatre of the city. It appeared to be composed of that remnant of the upper middle class and of officialdom that has known how to escape the financial ruin that the war brought to most of them. It has retained Sudermann to entertain it with drawing-room indecencies and comforting satires on the new order, which it hopes will soon pass over.

However numerous the class frequenting the theatres of this general type, it is an inactive class and one of stupid spirit: not at all expressive of what the public ultimately will demand. It is simply a symptom of the post-war disease. The attempts to stamp it out are indicative of what may ultimately be expected of Germany. All the remaining theatres, those of Reinhardt, of the state, and of the People's Drama League, are working with varying degrees of honesty and success at the process of self-expression.

Ill

As far as I could judge from a personal interview with Reinhardt, he is absolutely convinced that his theatres are serving only the interests of the best drama and are devoted to enriching the literary tastes of the people. He is, clearly enough, a masterly genius of the stage, rather than of the drama; but in his ideals he is deeply sincere. By almost all dramatic critics of Berlin, however, and by a large proportion of the public seriously interested in the drama, Reinhardt is passionately hated as a man professing an ideal, but in practice seeking merely to please in order to enrich himself. In a large mass meeting of Berlin workers, for example, called to discuss the relation of the drama to the people, I heard every mention of Reinhardt, even when casually made, answered by an angry sneer from the crowd. Neither Reinhardt nor his critics are altogether right. As I will try to show, Reinhardt has got on a curiously wrong track and is reluctant to leave it. The passion of his critics is largely due to the extreme jealousy and pride with which they guard their ideals of the importance of the theatre in the scheme of national life.

Aside from a few commercial ventures such as the Theater des Westens, where reviews of comic operas are staged in the new extravagant Berlin style, but in connection with which Reinhardt's name never appears, he controls three theatres: an experimental stage, called the Kammerspiele; the old, historic Deutsches Theater, which for forty years has been the pathfinder of the German drama; and his new immense circus theatre, the Grosses Schauspielhaus. The Kammerspiele is a small experimental stage of the highest order, where modern plays of all nations are tried out, or modernized studies of older plays are staged, by the best actors in Reinhardt's employ. It deserves much credit because of its broadening influences, but it is an exclusive club for connoisseurs, so to speak, small and very expensive. Because its influence upon the public is indirect only, it is not appreciated as it deserves. Moreover, much of the time of the very best of Reinhardt players, men like Moissi and Krauss, two of the most talented actors of the German stage, is occupied by the Kammerspiele so that they can appear only occasionally before the larger audiences, which strongly resent such treatment.

In Reinhardt's two remaining theatres the prices are popular, and a repertory is selected with the avowed intention of giving the people the best drama in the best possible setting. It is intensely interesting to observe that popular opposition to Reinhardt sets in at this very point. When democratic Germany shook off the influence of the princes from the many court theatres, it wanted no substitute for their authority. Because Reinhardt presumes to educate them from above, they resent his attitude and mistrust his acts. If he had strongly persisted in his attitude, he might have convinced the people, but, instead of that, he made apparent concessions in organization and tried to flatter their whims in the production of his plays. In both respects he is tragically in the wrong. Through the attempts to please the audience the artistic quality of the Deutsches Theater, even, has seriously suffered. With each new play produced the effects become more striking and sensational. Thereby his intentions become more obvious to the audience, and its anger turns into mockery and scoffing.

The Grosses Schauspielhaus is an old circus, skillfully transformed into an immense theatre seating over three thousand people in a semicircle about a gigantic stage. This consists first of a large but somewhat shallow picture-frame stage of the ordinary sort, in front of which a spacious oblong platform extends out into the auditorium. Below this second stage runs a wide, deep pit beneath the level of the front seats. It is not at all a stage as we know it, but a tremendous forum. With the Greek drama Reinhardt has achieved remarkable effects upon this stage, but it is an impossible arrangement for a modern drama that does not depend upon spectacular crowds for its effect. When the crowds are not in the pit of the stage, the actors must so strain their voices to carry across the expanse between themselves and the audience that that struggle occupies the attention of the audience to the exclusion of the drama. When the crowds fill the pit their effect becomes so spectacular that again the real dramatic effect is lost. I saw an excellent performance there of Romain Rolland's Danton; excellent, in that each separate part was admirably interpreted by very able actors; but Danton's roars would not let you forget that you were sitting in a former circus, and in the last act the trial of Danton before the revolutionary tribunal and in the presence of the turbulent crowds of Paris was so magnificently exciting that Rolland's part in the creation was entirely lost. One feels that Reinhardt has grown jealous of the popularity of the startling effects of the screen and has determined to compete by offering large cinematograph effects upon this stage. The theatre very clearly is a failure, however honest Reinhardt's intention may be. But it is a costly undertaking and one he is therefore reluctant to abandon. To maintain it, however, his plays are becoming more and more spectacular and less and less artistic. Reinhardt's unusual genius may find a way out. He claims that the problem is complicated and fascinating and that he has not yet been able to discover the real possibilities of this stage. Meanwhile the opposition is growing from day to day. The distrust of him may soon be so deeply rooted that no solution will be able to convince. In order to attract an audience he will then be wholly dependent upon sensational effects.

In the summer of 1920 Reinhardt startled the theatre world of Germany by announcing that he had retired from all of his Berlin theatres in favor of his friend Max Hollaender. After the first shock the Berlin critics simply discounted this statement. Hollaender, who is a shrewd manager, they considered simply a dummy; and they believed that Reinhardt was trying to escape the increasing storm of criticism to be free, the better to carry on a difficult fight he was waging with the state authorities over the heavy amusement tax. As a matter of fact, Reinhardt's activity at his Berlin theatres has decreased but little. He is devoting much time to an important venture in Austria, and in the late fall of 1920 he made an elaborate tour with a picked ensemble through the theatres of Scandinavia; but he is also putting in a good deal of hard work at his old theatres, much as before.

Just before he publicly announced his retirement, but when the rumor of it was already widespread, I had an opportunity to question him in his summer castle in Salzburg, Austria. There he outlined his attitude toward his Berlin activities in idealistic terms, but clearly showed the strain he was laboring under because of the criticisms resulting from the direction in which his circus theatre was forcing him. " The Berlin theatres, once the leading field for the development of the stage and the best drama," he said, " are seriously in danger of decay. The Prussian passion for work and efficiency, powerful enough before the war, is only heightened by the necessities imposed upon the country by defeat. People of Berlin no longer have leisure to enjoy art as it must be enjoyed. They go to the theatre as tired business men do, with ragged nerves, and demanding excitement and sensation. Meanwhile the moving picture industry is drawing the actors away from the best theatres. The star system is again forcing out the repertory program. To produce the best plays you must have a company of first-rate actors, so that every part is taken by an artist, and you must keep them fresh by a repertory program which demands much devotion and understanding of the drama, as well as much time. The high salaries in the motion picture industry, especially attractive now that living is so high, have seriously impaired the devotion to art. When first-rate actors are asked to play secondary parts, they prefer the large salaries of the motion picture manager and thus spoil the chances for an artistic ensemble. Then, too, the state finds it necessary to levy a tax as high as thirty per cent on all box-office receipts instead of coming to the help of the theatre as it did once. This makes for very high admission fees and consequently a greater dependence of the director upon the whims of the audience. As a result the Berlin theatre is rapidly undergoing a change. The repertory program has already disappeared from a number of the best theatres and some annual hit is being featured in Broadway style."

Reinhardt believes that good plays simply cannot be given in artistic fashion on the star plan. It certainly is a fact that the high standard of the German stage was achieved only after the star system had made way in favor of the repertory theatre. It is equally true that wherever the star system is introduced today, crude and sensational entertainment takes the place of the old artistic repertory. Reinhardt professes that he has retired to avoid devoting himself to that sort of thing, though the change makes it possible for the theatres to continue, and to hold their good actors because they are not required to attend rehearsals after the season's play is once well started, and consequently have considerable spare time to sell to the motion pictures. In Berlin, Reinhardt thinks only the large people's playhouses like the circus theatre will be able to maintain the old artistic program. The tremendous size of such a house makes it possible to sell admission at a low price, to get an unsophisticated audience receptive to ideal effects, and thus give the actor and director a proper atmosphere in which to work. The large receipts also enable the payment of good salaries to the actors.

However, as already indicated, Reinhardt is not acting boldly in accordance with his expressed conviction, but is allowing himself to be drawn into an endless system of compromises. Even the " People's Theatre/' as he delights to call his Grosses Schauspielhaus, is becoming more and more a spectacle, rather than a stage upon which the nation's best dramas are interpreted for the people. So Reinhardt has lost caste today. But this is simply because in the national misery the ideals to which he was perhaps honestly aspiring have been neglected in favor of his practical activity as a producer. Reinhardt is an actor and an unusually ingenius manipulator of stage effects. Of the stern ideals of the German drama, and of its intimate relation to the inner life of the people, he has been an ardent student, but is not a naturally endowed interpreter. A growing consciousness of this accounts, no doubt, for the popular spirit of mistrust in which he is being shunned by those who are searching the visions of their poets to help clear away their own confusion.

rv

When, with the revolution, the state assumed control of the old court theatres of Berlin, it concentrated all its efforts at reform upon the theatre devoted to the spoken drama. In those early days of the revolution the state officials were not only extremely radical, but were amusing themselves and frantically seeking popular favor by proposing immediate realization of Utopian theories for popularizing the institutions of art. The theatre employees, both high and low, organized a sort of soviet of their own. Yet the changes actually effected were unusually sober and rational. There seems to be no doubt that the almost reverent attitude of Germans toward the drama acted as a powerful check upon over-hasty opertions, although it must be admitted that some of the Utopian proposals would have cost the state far too much. The most important change effected was to oust from the Kaiser's own large theatre in the heart of Berlin the old officials who had been subservient to his whims, and to appoint as general manager Dr. Leopold Jessner, who is genuinely liberal in his views and has also won an enviable reputation as a thorough scholar and as an able interpreter of the drama. In talking to managers of other large city theatres I found only the highest respect for Dr. Jessner's ability, and never once heard mention of his politics. Dr. Jessner was given complete control of the theatre and of its work. He enjoys the confidence of the public, and the state is wise enough to see that in matters of artistic standards constant interference by an always changing popular taste is detrimental to the people's good.

The theatre was made accessible to the people by issuing very reasonable subscriptions to its repertory, and by turning over a large part of the house for several evenings of each week to the People's Drama League. Because of the financial embarrassment of the state this policy has not yet been fully realized. On first nights and at other gala performances substantial prices are still being charged so as to flatter the profiteer into involuntary contributions to a popular institution. Nevertheless the state pays to Dr. Jessner's work a subsidy of many millions marks a year.

Dr. Jessner is the very antithesis of Reinhardt. Already he has swept the tinsel of the Prussian trappings off the former emperor's favorite stage. He believes that instead of working by means of mass effects in decoration, chorus, ballet and other such stimulants for tired nerves, the stage should seek its effects by presenting spiritual conflict as directly as possible, in a simple, convincing way. He believes that audiences must be educated to this kind of performance and that simplicity will most surely awaken in them a healthy reaction to art. His genius lies in his ability to impart to his actors a thorough knowledge of the peculiar character of the individual plays, to train them in a rich and clear diction, and by simple effects to reduce background and costumes to a symbolic picture of the action. Through the extreme simplicity of the decorations and costumes, he forces the whole attention of the audience upon the spoken word. Because of the excellent training in clear diction which he gives his actors, he produces remarkable effects and succeeds in winning close attention from his audience. It would never occur to a Jessner audience during one of his successful performances to interrupt the play with applause before the final curtain drops. At times, to be sure, his expressionistic theory leads him too far and his symbolism appears a mere caricature; but with a reverent audience even an experiment that dares too much will succeed. Jessner's simplicity so well expresses the transition from court to people's theatre, that when he becomes too subtle the audience tends to blame itself rather than the director. The attitude of the old court audience that still persists in visiting the theatre also enhances Jessner's popularity. At the end of a new interpretation of an old favorite a part of the audience often will applaud wildly, while the smaller, older group will hiss and raise the cry: "We want our old stage! " That, too, gives the people a new sense of their freedom.

Examination of the repertory under Jessner's direction does not disclose a very radical change from the days of the court theatre. The difference lies rather in the truer, freer spirit of their interpretation. The old system was wise enough to play the nation's classics. It was more through the distribution of emphasis that it undertook to carry on its " clever " education. Only in patronage of modern authors did it openly show favoritism. Like most German directors when they have arrived at the head of their profession, Jessner delights in winning startling effects from new interpretations of Shakespeare. He plays Schiller as the old court theatre never saw him, opening up before the people the whole fervor of Schiller's revolutionary ardor and letting the pathos of his exhortation to national restraint make its irresistible appeal. He has not yet had time to introduce his own ideas of Faust, but of the nineteenth century classics, particularly those of Hebbel and Kleist, he has given excellent productions. In accordance with the common German taste, his favorite modern dramatists are Hauptmann, Wedekind, Strindberg and Ibsen. But he disregards the early work of Strindberg and concentrates upon the quiet, thoughtful, far more spiritual later dramas; he drops entirely the later problem plays of Ibsen and tries to make hia audience intimate with the soul of Brand and of Peer Gynt and the inner conflict of Hakon and of Skule, Among the youngest dramatists he favors those who approach nearest his own interest in inner spiritual action. He expended much effort, while I had the opportunity of watching him, in attempts to rescue Hans Franck's Godiva, a work excellent in parts but uneqiial. But Germany's present confusion is not producing very clear dramatic expressions, and Jessner is at least alert enough not to be caught by the immature productions of the new expressionists, who turn out so-called " spiritual " dramas according to the latest demands of expressionistic theory, but do not create a deeper vision of their life or of the life of the nation,