111. “The Homeless”

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

It is a psychological puzzle that the bold "Conqueror" tragedy and this drama about the "homeless" can emerge from the same mind. On the one hand, a deep problem of the human soul, on the other, dull theatricality; on the one hand, entirely the language of the poet's own mind, on the other, a servant to the theater audience in every sentence. Should Halbe, after giving his best, have said to himself: they haven't digested it - well: here I am; I can do otherwise. God help me? - The matter is most easily explained from this point of view. A poet who tries it once, what luck he has when he gives the very worst he can give! As I let the play pass me by, the words of Merck came to mind, who said to Goethe after he had written "Clavigo": "You don't have to write such rubbish any more, others can do it too. I don't want to be so rude as to call Halbe the "others" just in case.

A Berlin boarding house is teeming with "homeless" people. We are all indifferent to them. Halbe makes not the slightest attempt to bring them closer to us. They are wandering human bellies without souls. Even with Regine Frank, who is characterized somewhat more precisely, we don't know how to find our way around. She is a pianist, a female self-made woman. She is proud of her independence. But there are twelve of her kind to a dozen. - Lotte Burwig is a provincial goose, Reginen's cousin. She can't like it in her parents' house in Gdansk. It is also too uncomfortable for poor Lotte in this house. Her father has committed suicide. The poor thing has been miserably beaten by her mother. She is also supposed to marry a bourgeois tax assessor. The good girl thinks eloping is best. She also has a role model in her cousin. So she stands on her own two feet. She wants to become a singer. First she goes to the boarding house where Regine is also staying. Her mother wants to take her home, but Lottchen has no desire to marry her tax assessor or to continue to submit to her mother's educational rules. So she stays. She falls in love with a manor owner who spends the winter in Berlin to recover from the stresses and strains of his job as an agrarian. Part of his relaxation involves turning the heads of young girls. On Christmas Eve, poor Lottchen throws herself at the seducer, kissing him fervently, kissing him endlessly. She wants to belong to the "only one". By carnival time, it's already over. Evil Eugene goes back to his estate; he shakes off his winter love affair. During a fantastic masquerade, Lottchen discovers how little the "only one" cares about her. She even threatens the unfaithful man with a dagger. She has really lost it. Even Regine finds out. She sends a telegram to her mother. Lottchen should go home after all. Better to die, she says. And the moment her mother enters, she has already said goodbye to life.

Halbe has not made any attempt to deepen the characters psychologically. The story of "evil Eugene and poor Lottchen" comes from the realms where the invention of psychology had not yet penetrated. The depiction of the milieu is also weaker than in Halbe's earlier dramas. Sometimes we are drawn in by one mood; immediately afterwards, however, another one intrudes; and we can't get out of the histrionic all-sorts.