The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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

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 That is why he paints the bearers of outdated opinions as black as possible.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

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

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

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

Play by William Shakespeare
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A cycle of one-act plays by Otto Erich Hartleben
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

Otto Erich Hartleben travels to Rome every year. I now understand that certain philistines have to visit a North Sea resort every year, but why Otto Erich has to go to Italy at the same time of year every year: that seemed to me to be worth asking the bearer of this peculiar habit before the last trip to Rome. I found a suitable hour for this question - and in this way I received an answer. Otto Erich told me that he had to go to Rome every year to escape the misery of life in Berlin. In this beautiful city one is a resident and therefore plagued by a thousand little things, day and night. I won't even conceal the fact that on this occasion he spoke of the trouble that his co-editorship of the "Magazin für Literatur" caused him. In short: in Berlin, one is forced to see the "small lines" that life draws. Otto Erich Hartleben wants to escape these small lines for a few weeks every year to see life in "big lines".

This is Otto Erich Hartleben. There is no pinnacle of observation that he could not stand on to look at life. But he looks for the most comfortable way to reach this pinnacle. There is an old saying that there is no royal road to mathematics. I suspect that Otto Erich will never bother with mathematics. I don't know of any depths of worldview that are not accessible to him. But he gets quite disgusting when it takes work to get to the depths. He knows the seriousness of life like no other, but he has the gift of taking this seriousness as lightly as possible. I have never met a person in whom I have found a noble Epicureanism as realized as in him. He is a man of pleasure, but the pleasures he seeks must have exquisite qualities. He is incapable of doing anything remotely reminiscent of the common.

Everything he does has greatness. And his greatness never gives the appearance of importance. He prefers to make a suitable joke when the others start to get pathetic and attach lead balls to their speeches so that they are taken seriously.

You have to know these characteristics of Otto Erich Hartleben to understand the first play in his cycle of one-act plays, "The Stranger". When I read it, I immediately remembered the "great lines" for the sake of which he goes to Rome every year. It's the eternal problem: a woman has loved one man, married another for some reason, can't bear it, and finds delayed happiness with the first one she loved. How this plays out in life is basically irrelevant. The depth lies in the relationships between people. And Hartleben has depicted these relationships in "broad strokes". Whether the people who want to "see" everything get their money's worth is also irrelevant. For these people, who ask what is "going on", the poet would of course have had to invent a "dramatic fable" with all kinds of interesting details and work them into three acts. But he didn't bother with these people. That's why he "disregarded all the details" and presented the main features of the story. Goethe, who wrote "Tasso", would have enjoyed the "Stranger".

From the performance I expected above all greatness and style. I found none of that. Theater was everything. But this little drama requires art. It would have been an honorary task for the Lessing Theatre to show what can be achieved through theater. A good performance of this one-act play could have silenced all the speeches of the opponents of modern theater for a while. I'm sorry, but I have to say it: when I read the drama, I felt greatness, the Hartleben greatness I described earlier. When I saw it, I felt no trace of this greatness. Everything was reduced to the smallest detail. I would have loved to run away.

The second one-act play, "Farewell to the Regiment", seems much less valuable to me than "The Stranger". I can take no particular interest in either the officer's wife, who has been married by the man so that he can pay his debts, or this man, whom she is cheating on with a regimental comrade. interest. The fact that in the end the affair is revealed, the officer is transferred to another garrison and killed by the seducer after the farewell dinner: all this is all the same to me. But I have nothing to say about that. What I do want to talk about is Hartleben's mastery of dramatic technique. Everything fits together perfectly here: you are swept along by the "how", even if the "what" is all the same to you.

I don't want to dwell on this weakest of the four one-act plays. It was followed by "Die sittliche Forderung". Rita Revera has escaped from Rudolstadt, which is under moral pressure, and has become a celebrated singer. She finds "Friedrich Stierwald, merchant, owner of the company C. W. Stierwald & Söhne in Rudolstadt". He wants to lead her back into the moral life of Rudolstadt. In his opinion, it had to: because one had to be moral in order for morality to exist. Incidentally, Alfred, my Kerr, says: "Weiland Paul Lindau made the same joke. He shouted: What would morality be for if you didn't have it?" But good Kerr: do you understand neither Lindau nor Hartleben? I really don't have time to tell you anything about the difference now. I'm just asking you: don't you know that Nietzsche would have been delighted by the "moral demand" and that he would have liked Paul Lindau ... - no further. Yes, I read your Berlin letters from Breslau and should actually know that you do not like Nietzsche.

I'm coming to the last one-act play, "The Lore". I have always found the story of the "torn button" so delightful that I think the publisher S. Fischer has made the most brilliant business with it and everyone knows it. So I won't tell you about it. I will only say this much: to see it dramatized on the stage is a rare pleasure. Here, what Otto Erich has in his power, the light, the everyday, has become art.

I should not praise my co-editor. That is why I have only highlighted the weaknesses of his four one-act plays.

Fairy tale play by Hermann Sudermann
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

"I raise my head boldly to the threatening rocky mountains and to the raging torrent of water and to the crashing clouds swimming in a sea of fire and say: I am eternal and defy your power! Break all down upon me, and you earth and you heaven, mingle in wild tumult, and all you elements, - froth and rage and in wild battle tear apart the last little sun-dust of the body which I call mine: - my will alone with its firm plan shall hover boldly and coldly over the ruins of the universe; for I have seized my destiny, and it is more permanent than you; it is eternal, and I am eternal like it." Fichte uttered these sentences in a speech that dealt with the highest goals of the human spirit. Anyone who knows them can recall them when they get to know Sudermann's latest dramatic poem "The Three Heron Feathers". For the tragedy of man, who is driven as far away as possible from the proud consciousness expressed in these sentences by an unfortunate fate, affects us in this thoughtful drama in the shattering way that we always feel when the greatest problems of life are unrolled before us with the playwright's gripping means.

A Hamlet's nature, faced not only with the problem of avenging his criminally murdered father, but with the greater problem of coming to terms with life itself, in all its mysteriousness: that is Sudermann's main character, Prince Witte. Widwolf's nefarious deed has robbed him of his fathers' ancestral heritage, the Duchy of Gorhland. He seems equipped with all his gifts to acquire what he has inherited from his fathers. But like Hamlet's will, his is paralyzed. Fate itself prevents him from earning his freedom and life by having to conquer them every day. The reason for his tragedy is that this fate throws happiness at him without struggle, without striving. But such happiness can never be pious to man.

Prince Witte has gone to a people on a northern island, where a heron is worshipped as a divine being. He has captured three feathers from it. They can bring him the three stages of development of the happiness that can only be bestowed on man. But such happiness could only belong to transient life. The life with which death is inseparably linked. The life that becomes bitter when we think of death. Yes, whose only, futile meaning is death. Sudermann has given symbolic expression to death, which alone can shed light on such transient happiness in life, in "Begräbnisfrau". She interprets the prince's fate in terms of the three heron feathers. If he lets the first one burn in the fire, the woman who makes him happy appears to him as a misty figure in the clouds. If he burns the second, she will stand before him in a dream. He will hold her in his hands and yet strive in vain to possess her. And if the third finally becomes the nourishment of the flame, the woman who represents his happiness will die before his eyes.

Like the will that is paralyzed in the prince himself, his faithful servant Hans Lorbass stands beside him. He tries to lift him up again and again. He is the strength and the fire in Prince White's life. In the first scene of the drama, he reveals his entire life's destiny to us:

"For in every great work,
That is accomplished on earth,
Strength alone shall reign,
He alone shall reign who laughs,
Never shall sorrow reign,
Never he who foams at the mouth in anger,
Never he who needs women to slumber,
And least of all he who dreams,
Therefore how I sweat and steel him
To what he can become,
I sit firmly in his soul -
I, the fighter - I, the man."

Prince Witte embarks on the path of life marked out for him by fate with his servant Lorbass, whom he has found again after capturing the heron feathers. He goes to the court of the Amber Queen of Samland, who is a widow and has a six-year-old son. She wants to give her hand to whoever wins the tournament. Widwolf, who has usurped Witte's throne, meets the robbed man here. Although Witte does not win, the loyal Lorbass stands by his side and drives Widwolf and his men away. Nevertheless, the queen gives Witte her love. She is a woman full of kindness and devotion, but she must give her love away. She can only consider the one who has conquered her heart to be the victor, and that is Prince Witte. He becomes king, even though the Samland Queen's people have grave qualms of conscience because Witte has not won an honest victory - and even though he does not feel happy because he is not keeping and defending the throne for himself, but for the young king from his wife's first marriage. But fate, which decides on the happiness of transient life, has assigned this wife to the prince as his happiness. He cannot understand this fate. The wife he has been given remains a stranger to him, and his longing yearns for the supposed stranger who is to appear to him walking in the night when he burns the second heron feather. Lorbass sees his master gradually withering away at the queen's side. He therefore gives him the idea of burning the second heron feather. And when this becomes a flame, the Amber Queen, his wife, appears "walking in the night". Even now, he cannot recognize her as the wife destined for him. Instead, he sees her as a troublemaker. He thinks that by appearing, she has driven away the unknown woman out of jealousy, who should have appeared when the heron's feather was burned. At this moment, the deeply moving spirit of this drama takes effect from the stage: we do not understand a happiness that we receive effortlessly, as if by magic, as a gift; we can only recognize the happiness we have acquired as the happiness that is due to us. Sudermann conveys this general truth to us through a purely human motif. Witte cannot find the way to his wife's heart because his son, who does not bear the mark of his blood, stands between them. He even gives Lorbass a hint to get this son out of the way. The robber Widwolf appears for the second time to covet the queen. Witte is to fight for himself and his own. He believes he cannot do this as long as he is defending not his own throne, but that of his stepchild. When Lorbass gets to know the boy king in all his excellence, he cannot kill him. And Witte is also glad that this time the faithful servant has broken faith. With all the strength in him, he rushes against the enemy Widwolf and - now really conquers the kingdom, but - to renounce it and move on to seek the woman who is supposed to be destined for him by the firepower of the heron's feathers. He does not find her, of course, but returns fifteen years later to burn the third of the feathers in the presence of the Amber Queen. At this moment, the woman destined for him falls to her death. Only now, as his happiness escapes him, does he realize that it was meant for him. He dies after his wife. Death, in the form of the funeral wife, has had no trouble in capturing the two of them for himself, for it was easy for him to give them a fleeting happiness that neither of them can recognize as their own. He receives happiness as a gift and cannot recognize it because he does not conquer it; and she gives happiness away and cannot be happy about it because she gives it away indiscriminately.

There is no dead end in this Sudermann drama. One sits there and waits for each coming moment with rapt attention. Always the background to a great thought and always a captivating image on the stage. One has the feeling that a serious person wants to communicate with serious people about an important matter in life. Full of gratitude to have seen a piece of life in a poem, we leave the theater, which today is mostly devoid of ideology.

The performance in Berlin's Deutsches Theater was such that it can be described as a dramatic phenomenon of the first rank. Kainz as Prince Witte: one may give the highest praise; Teresina Geßner was an Amber Queen who made the soul tremble, and Nissen's Lorbass should be incorporated into German stage history as soon as possible. The Deutsches Theater has much to make up for after the utterly unsuccessful Cyrano performance; but it knows how to make up for it. And only where there are strong advantages does one make such mistakes as the one severely criticized here.

Performance of the "Verein für historisch-moderne Festspiele" at the Neues Theater, Berlin

Two Aristophanic comedies have been staged by the association of artists and writers, which is now organizing a "historical-modern festival" in Berlin. The "Birds" and the "Women's State". The "Birds" are considered to be the Greek mocker's most witty work, but also the most difficult to interpret. The poet speaks here more boldly than anywhere else about the relationship between humans and the gods. And this always creates very strange intellectual bubbles in the minds of interpreters and commentators. Especially when it comes to a poet whose greatness cannot be dismissed because of the famous asylum for those without judgment, called "consensus gentium" - consensus of all. Everyone wants to recognize that. And that is why he puts into such recognized greatness everything that, in his opinion, deserves recognition. A bad story happened to the writer of the "official playbill" of the "historical-modernists". This writer is one of the many Nietzsche followers. So he wrote about the content of "The Birds": "Two people have fled from Athens and the confusing hustle and bustle of life, end up in a lonely place among the bird world and establish an intermediate state with it, the so-called "Cloud Cuckoo Land", which has the purpose of thwarting the traffic between humans and gods through a kind of trade barrier. In a humorous way, the entire old world of gods and all superstitious religious systems within it are mocked by replacing them with a bird mythology. The gods are starved to death; and in the end, the human race, represented by the gods, takes over the world. The "thunderbolts of Zeus" are now in the hands of man himself, in the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche's sentence: "All the gods are dead, now we want the superman to live." The comic gentleman who wrote these lines does not seem to have the slightest sense of humor, for he takes the man who appears at the end of the Aristophanic poem with the "thunderbolts of Zeus" seriously. In the spirit of Aristophanes, however, this "superman" cannot be understood in any other way than as the frog that wants to inflate itself until it is as big as an ox. This man is supposed to be an image of irresistible comedy, incredibly ridiculous in that he, the dwarf, stands before us with the attributes of the great god. A dwarf who strives with all his might to become a giant can be a tragic hero; a dwarf who stands up and says: "Behold, I am a giant" is simply ridiculous. And Aristophanes probably only wanted to portray the little man who stands up and thinks he is a god.

Let's take a look at the comedy. Two dissatisfied Athenians, Ratefreund and Hoffegut, emigrate from their city. It has gradually become a bit uncomfortable for them. If you think back to the time in which "The Birds" is set, this seems understandable. It was a time when the citizens of this city were constantly harassed by people who had a fine nose for anything "dangerous to the state". Alcibiades was active at the time. A capable but ambitious man. He wanted to increase Athens' power through major conquests in Sicily. There were opponents of this enterprise. The inhabitants of the city were divided into two camps. Mutual hostility between the parties led to a really uncomfortable situation. There may have been enough people who thought they could lead a more comfortable life abroad, in the manner of Ratefreund and Hoffegut. There must have been people in Athens who imagined salvation abroad in the most rosy colors. They were the right food for Aristophanes; natures like his see through people. He is not inclined to believe that people are better in one place than in another. The folly of his fellow citizens casts an irresistible spell over him. He feels too weak to improve the fools; but he feels all the stronger to ridicule them. And so he may have said to himself: You are fools in your hometown because you make your lives miserable. But once you are fools, you will do no better abroad. And so he wanted two emigrants to do something really stupid. It is the worldly wisdom of fools to grumble about everything that exists; why shouldn't Ratefreund and Hoffegut think of accusing the gods because they have arranged the world so badly that it is unpleasant for Ratefreund and Hoffegut in it. Modern discontent is somewhat tamer. It merely demands a different form of government. Ancient discontents want different gods. Ratefreund and Hoffegut enter the realm of the birds and want to turn them into gods. And now Aristophanes spins this idea out. As a real prankster, he describes the conditions in the newly emerging realm of birds and gods, called "Cloud Cuckoo Land". He unloads everything he has on his mind against human folly. And finally, he also depicts the unequal struggle in all its comedy that arises between the bird-human realm and the gods. Man even takes the basileia (dominion) from the realm of the gods and holds the lightning bolts of Zeus in his hand.

But this man has only pushed the gods from their thrones in his imagination.

The secret of comedy lies in the fact that a complete contradiction appears before us as real. For Aristophanes, it is such a contradiction that the small, weak man rebels against the gods. That is why he makes him appear with the attributes of the gods' power. One should laugh at the little man who appears to be a god.

The "women's state" follows the same recipe. The women disguise themselves as men and decide in the people's assembly that the rule of the state should fall into their hands. They want to realize all the ideals of human coexistence, from the community of goods to free love. By presenting this ideal to us as real, it is intended to make itself ridiculous.

Of all people, the humorist is perhaps the most difficult to understand. We know that there is a deep seriousness in the soul of the truly great humorist. But he cannot give proper expression to this seriousness. The humorist cannot shape what his longing senses. But everything he sees appears as a mockery of this seriousness. And he gives us the mockery. He keeps the seriousness to himself. So it is with Aristophanes. We sense that behind all his mockery lies a serious view of the world. We believe him that this world view gave him the right to mock Socrates. But what this world-view is, we do not know. We wonder in vain what Aristophanes thought about the old gods. Did he want to restore them or was he dreaming of a new worldview?

We must not forget that the Sophists were almost contemporaries of Aristophanes. And we don't really know much about the Sophists either. Did they want to ridicule their contemporaries because they had fallen away from the old good culture, or was a new culture dawning in the souls of these mockers?

But because we ourselves like to keep our seriousness to ourselves, we enjoy the mockers so much. If we only suspect that they are as serious about the world as we are, then we laugh heartily with them and are quite happy that they present us with something to laugh about.

There are few proofs of human power as powerful as laughter. We always feel a certain exaltation at what we can laugh at. Anyone who gets excited about the weaknesses of his fellow human beings is an unliberated person, because he suffers from these weaknesses. But he to whom these weaknesses appear as foolishness laughs and is therefore a free man. He no longer suffers. And Aristophanes appears to us as someone who laughs. He did more than anyone else to overcome the old world view. He showed us what it had become - and we could laugh at it.

The fact that they have reminded us of this great laughter should not be forgotten by the entrepreneurs of the "historical-modern festival".

Drama by Maurice Maeterlinck
Performance of the "Akademisch-literarischen Verein" at the Neues Theater, Berlin

It is Maeterlinck's belief that we know the least conceivable thing about a person if we only have ears for what he says and eyes for what he does, and not also the living sense of what is going on at the bottom of his soul and which can never find expression in words or deeds. In the soul of the beggar to whom I give alms in the street there may rest a wisdom greater than that which Plato or Fichte have expressed in eloquent words; and in the most commonplace action that takes place between two people, the great gigantic fate may conceal from the outward sense a tragedy more tremendous than that which takes place in Shakespeare's "Othello". To see a great, perhaps world-shattering event in the smallest, seemingly insignificant thing is a prominent characteristic of Maeterlinck's intellectual disposition. He is not a lover of clarity in words and deeds. Everything that is painted in strong colors is repugnant to him. For him, the indistinct, every faint allusion, every sound of everyday life already speaks a clear language. And because he hears a worldly wisdom in the sounds of a babbling child, he shies away from the clear speeches of philosophers. There is no need to touch with the whole hand when a gentle touch with the fingertips is enough. Maeterlinck, the playwright, touches things with his fingertips, just as Maeterlinck, the observer of the world, touches them. He gives us a few glimpses of people's lives that other playwrights would tell us about in the slightest detail.

In the drama "Pelleas and Melisande", events flit past us whose historical context remains completely obscure. We would ask in vain about the time and place of these events. Melisande is found by Golaud in a lonely place and brought to the castle of his grandfather, King Arkel, as his wife. Who is Melisande? Where does she come from? Where is the castle where Arkel rules? These are the questions that those for whom it seems important to satisfy the external senses might ask. For Maeterlinck, this does not seem important. It is enough for him to single out a few events from the otherwise indifferent mass of external events that reveal to us the relationships between the souls of the people we are dealing with. The entire court of King Arkel of Allemonde, with everything that belongs to a king and a court, is indifferent to what fate has in store for a few human souls. And fate walks quietly, very quietly, but all the more meaningfully through the halls of the lonely castle and through the mystically magical landscape in which this castle lies.

Fate walks through these rooms as a burden of misfortune. And in resignation, the people accept what it gives them. They do not act; they let the unknown forces rule. King Arkel is old. He has become a renunciate through life. He does not know happiness. The years are the only thing that has matured for him. We hear of a sick man, the father of Golaud and his brother Pelleas; we feel nothing more than the spiritual sick-room air that weighs on their souls. The sick man remains in the background. Golaud was married once before. There is a child from this marriage. We also hear nothing about Golaud's first marriage. Was it happy, was it unhappy? What effect did it have on Golaud's disposition? We only recognize that in the dullness of this castle alone a winter mood of the soul can flourish. And Golaud's soul is also filled with this mood. At his side, Melisande's soul must wither like a flower that needs the sun and is placed in a damp cellar. Golaud's brother Pelleas has all the more to say to this child of the sun. There is a deep communion of souls between them that does not express itself in ordinary words of love, and even less in the everyday actions of loving people. Anyone who only pays attention to the rough events of love can see nothing but childish play in Pelleas' and Melisande's love. But it is precisely a child, Golaud's son, who sees the mysterious seriousness behind the play and who becomes a traitor to Golaud. Golaud kills Pelleas and wounds Melisande because it is "customary" to kill out of jealousy. And Melisande withers and dies, the summer flower in the winter landscape. Maeterlinck is far removed from crude psychology, which is only concerned with processes of the soul with powerful external effects. What the inner sense feels is infinitely more valuable to him than the perceptions of the outer senses. And because, as a dramatist, he can only speak to the outer senses, he gives them as little as possible to perceive. Events of the greatest simplicity and indeterminacy should offer the inner sense the opportunity to see through them to the invisible, but therefore no less perceptible, tragedies of the soul. Our acting is not particularly suited to bringing Maeterlinck's spirit to the stage. Our artists translate the inner passion into an outer one. And today's performance has achieved something incomparable in the art of this translation. Vilma von Mayburg as Melisande and Adalbert Matkowsky as Golaud have characteristically portrayed everything that is external to Maeterlinck; they have been less successful in unlocking the inner meaning. But the character of the poetry is too sharply defined to be completely destroyed in the form of the acting.

Maximilian Harden wanted to introduce the performance with a conference. External circumstances made it necessary that he could only say what he had to say after the performance. He spoke many a good word. At many moments today he reminded me of the time when I expected the very best from his great abilities for his future as a writer. His talents seemed to make him an author who, out of a strong temperament, could hold up a mirror to contemporary phenomena and exert the magic of personal greatness. He was brought down by journalism, which for him was associated with a cult of Bismarck that disturbed his individual sensibilities and the strange cult of mass instincts that followed from it. Today, under these influences, his forms of judgment have become too coarse to characterize such fine spirits as Maeterlinck. But one still notices something of his better dispositions in him. Basically, he has no inner relationship to the coarse web of concepts that his journalistic activity has imposed on him. And in order to assert himself within it, he has to resort to posturing. He would not need it. He is strong enough to give himself away. A university professor accuses Harden of infamy, and the latter dismisses the attacker - at least to any unbiased person - in such a way that the youthful figure, who at first appeared so brave, appears in a comical and even different light. Many a publicist, who has succeeded better in hiding somewhat bitter things behind the scenes, has today been able to convince himself from the upright man that intellectual abilities are not a worthless commodity after all.