1. Viennese Theater Conditions

Nationale Blätter 1889, Volume I, 22

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.