# 154. Theater Chronicles 1897-1899

Dr. Raphael Löwenfeld, the meritorious director of the Berlin Schiller Theater, has just had the lecture "Volksbildung und Volksunterhaltung" (Popular Education and Popular Entertainment), which he gave on June 8, 1897 at the general assembly of the Gesellschaft für Verbreitung von Volksbildung in Halle a.S., published. He advocates working on the education of more classes of the people through popular theater with cheap admission prices and by organizing lecture evenings. The example of the Schiller Theater, whose activities Löwenfeld describes, illustrates how a popular theater should be conceived. The lecture evenings are intended to present individual artistic personalities to a larger audience. On such an evening, a characterization of a poet or sound artist should first be developed, and this should be followed by declamations or musical reproductions of individual creations by the artists concerned. It is to be hoped that the author's fine intentions will be well received. For one must agree with him when he considers art to be the best means for the further development of a mature person. Those who are no longer able to follow scientific debates after a hard day's work can very well refresh and enrich their minds with the creations of art. Löwenfeld rightly says: "Those who come from gainful employment, physically tired and mentally exhausted, need stimulation in the most appealing form... Not factual knowledge, not specialist training, but intellectual stimulation in the broadest sense is the task of popular education."

November 13, 1897 brings back an interesting memory. It was the centenary of the birth of the composer Gustav Reichardt, to whom we owe the song "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland". After the wars of liberation, the song was sung in a different melody. It was not suitable to become popular. Reichardt's succeeded to the highest degree. It is said that the composer wrote down the melody in the old little chapel on the Schneekoppe during a hike.

*

An essay by the Berlin court conductor F. Weingartner in the "Neue Deutsche Rundschau" is a true example of unclear thinking. After Weingartner has unreservedly vented his resentment towards the younger composers, their followers and praisers, he describes the "coming man" in music, the savior from the confusion caused by the young originalists. "At first I think of him as independent of all party politics and not concerned with it, because he stands above it; I think of him as neither narrow-mindedly Germanistic nor vapidly international, but as having an all-human feeling, because music is an all-human art; I think of him as being filled with an ardent, unbridled enthusiasm for what has been created by the great spirits of all times and nations, feeling an insurmountable aversion to mediocrity, with which he comes into contact through compulsion, at most once through his own good-naturedness. I imagine him without envy, because he is aware of his own high value and trusts in it, therefore far removed from any petty propaganda for his works, but, if necessary, thoroughly honest, even ruthless, and therefore not particularly popular in many places. I think of him as not fearfully closing himself off from life, but with a tendency towards loneliness - not hating people with exaggerated world-weariness, but despising their pettiness and narrow-mindedness, therefore choosing only exceptions for his closer contact. I imagine him to be not insensitive to success or failure, but not to be moved one step from his path by either, very indifferent to so-called public opinion, a republican in his political views in the sense of Beethoven. ... Feeling himself truly related only to the greatest geniuses, he nevertheless knows that he too is only a new link in the chain which they form together, and also knows that other great ones will follow him. So he too belongs to a direction, but one that hovers above the heads of mankind and flies over them." Does Mr. Weingartner really believe that nature will see fit to realize his fantasies? And if not, why is he writing down his ideal of the future musician? Incidentally, this ideal would be extremely useful for any creative work. If Badeni's successor had the qualities described by Weingartner, the confusion in Austria could give way to the most beautiful harmony. It is incomprehensible how a highly talented artist can please himself with such gimmicks of idle thinking.

*

During these days, the newspapers have been publishing statistical reports on the repertoire of the past season on German stages. They showed that the most popular plays were the Blumenthal-Kadelburg company's "Im weißen Rößl" and "Hans Huckebein", while interest in classical performances had declined considerably. I have long been extremely suspicious of such statements. They say nothing at all. For they do not reveal what our audience is really interested in. We can see that the views of theater directors today no longer correspond to the tastes of the audience. The line-up of our miserable repertoire does not arise from the fact that our audience does not want anything better, but from the fact that the theater directors believe that people only want to see spicy trash. They only try to present something better, as Burckhard, for example, did in his afternoon performances at the Burgtheater in Vienna: the audience really finds itself. There is some truth in the saying: every theater director has the audience he deserves. Our appalling repertoire does not prove a decline in general taste, but only that our theater directors prefer to perform bad plays rather than good ones, and that they therefore attract the lovers of bad plays to the theater, while keeping the audience with better taste away from the theater. Classical performances, presented in a dignified manner, will always have an audience. If the theater directors want to be "poets" at the same time and want to sell their own works of art, then the evil is the greatest imaginable. It should become a kind of rule of decency for theater directors never to perform their own plays at their own institutions. Perhaps such a rule of decency demands some qualities that are not given to everyone; but every code of honor demands such a thing.

I don't see why theater directors should determine taste. In recent years they have shown themselves to be so prejudiced that you don't have to agree with them when they say: we can't put on anything better because no one else will go to the theater. They should try something else. Perhaps they will then have different experiences. I would even seriously advise many of them to stop writing plays.

Stage adaptation

Heinrich Jantsch, the director of the "Wiener Jantsch-Theater", who used to be a member of the Meiningen ensemble, has published a stage adaptation of "Wilhelm Tell" (Halle 1898). He explains that he wants to open a debate with his work about how plays can best be rehearsed. He provides a director's book containing all the instructions necessary for the actors in a play. This director's book should contain everything about a role that takes place while the performer is in front of the audience. One will certainly not be able to refrain from expressing serious reservations about such far-reaching instruction books. Performers who insist on their independence will rebel against such "drill". But consider that the author can hardly have the will to suppress legitimate independence. He wants to make a suggestion - nothing more! "If the performer of the role is intellectually higher than the one who made the 'remark', yes, if he believes he is only allowed to express his own opinion, no one will stop him. He grows beyond the remark, perhaps precisely because of this first suggestion. In any case, it has taken the place of nothing - something!"

It should not be forgotten that in countless cases there will not be enough time to formulate such an opinion. A book like the one Jantsch has in mind must not, of course, be the result of random ideas. It must be the result of a long experience. And then it will serve even the most cradled and talented actor excellently. It must contain what has stood the test of time. "Such a director's book need not be the work of a single person, just as our most beautiful scenery is often created with the help of many actors. Don't complain about the drill that seems to grow out of such a scenario, it is a thousand times better than chaos; it declares war on thoughtlessness on stage." Some of Jantsch's introductory remarks will be reproduced here to characterize the tendency and nature of the proposal.

"The smaller the role, the more necessary the comment and explanation, not only with regard to the external but also the internal design. - Let's take the much-maligned servant roles, one of which is not even mentioned on Lessing's playbill for "Emilia Galotti". - We are at the pleasure palace Dosalo, the prince together with Emilia. Then the prince's mistress, Countess Orsina, intervenes, whom no one had suspected. - A servant delivers this terrifying news with the words:

"The countess is just arriving."

The prince: "The countess? What kind of countess?"

Servant: "Orsina."

The catastrophe of the play germinates in this servant's role! - This slick journeyman, who has grown up in the sins of his master, loses all sense and reason at the news that the Countess has just arrived. - For him, for the prince, for everyone in the castle, she was "the Countess! not Countess Orsina, not the Countess. - In the servant's imagination, there is only one count and one countess at this moment, and this count is the prince himself.

Does the director of the middle stages have time to make these - so necessary - comments? Will he - if he gives them - be thanked by the actor in the role of the servant, who - otherwise a highly esteemed member of the chorus - is reluctant to be "trained"? - In the choir rehearsal he is used to the dressing down, in the play it would be humiliation - so great is the misjudgment. - If the note is written in his role, then it's easier, otherwise the member is not a disavowed enemy of role-reading - which should also happen. >of the regiment" is spoken by Terzky. - Neumann, however, is the actual messenger; but he only enters, leads Count Terzky aside and says the message into his ear."

"That's how I recognize my Pappenheimer." The word owes its immortal ridicule to the poor devils who appear in audience with Wallenstein dressed in cardboard armor as the ten cuirassiers of Pappenheim. - As long as the play had been performed before, it was the Meininger who made the cuirassier scene what it is. - There was no laughter! Why should there be? A bit of drill and the audience takes us seriously.

The great value Schiller - the eminent stage practitioner - placed on the role of the servant is demonstrated by the fact that he repeatedly put announcements in the mouths of the heroes themselves. Thus in "Wallenstein" after the monologue "If it were possible". - The Swedish colonel is to be reported. The page enters.

Wallenstein to the page: "The Swedish colonel? Is it him? Well, here he comes!" In Wallenstein we have the example that the message:

"Ten cuirassiers

From Pappenheim demand you in the name

To speak in the name

*

Carl Heine, the director of the theater performances organized by the "Leipziger Literarische Gesellschaft", put together an ensemble with which he gave performances of Ibsen's works in various German cities. On the occasion of the Vienna guest performance of this ensemble, Dr. Heine has now developed the aims and character of his "Ibsen Theatre" in an interesting essay in the weekly magazine "Zeit", the main points of which I think are worth mentioning here.

Heine starts from the conviction that Ibsen is the best school for an ensemble striving for St]. He quite rightly emphasizes that Ibsen is a blessing for actors because they are forced to play not roles and theatrical templates but life types and individualities in his plays. If you want to cast one of Ibsen's later plays - this is not yet the case with the earlier plays - you cannot possibly stick to the old subjects: the bon vivant, the character player, the sedate lover, the chaperone and so on; in Heine's ensemble, the roles of Rank, Aslaksen, Wholesaler Werle, the Stranger, Rosmer and Jörgen Tesmann are all in one hand, as are those of Brendel, Dr. Stockmann, Brack, Hjørgen Tesmann. Stockmann, Brack, Hjalmar Ekdal, Oswald, Günther and Gabriel Borkmann. Such a lack of expertise forces the actor to stick to individual life, to observation, not to the custom and tradition of the theater.

Directing the dialog in Ibsen's dramas also requires a special art. Heine believes that facial expressions and gestures are less important than in older drama. He uses them only as an aid and as sparingly as possible. On the other hand, he attaches great importance to grouping. The position of the characters in relation to each other, their following each other, their fleeing, the elimination of a character and their closer or further distance from the main troupe form, in his opinion, a large part of what is called mood. Only by striking in this direction that which corresponds to the poet's intentions can the illusion be created which is necessary for the audience to properly absorb an Ibsen drama. The difficulty lies in the fact that in almost every work by this poet different means of this kind must be used, because each of these works has its own style. That style which is demanded by the content. Only those who know how to arrange all the details of the stage direction in such a way that they come together, as required by the individual character of an Ibsen play, can stage such a play in an artistic manner. "Ibsen forms a preliminary school for this ideal requirement. Not two of his dramas have the same style. Just compare "Nora", "Enemy of the People", "Rosmersholm>, "Hedda Gabler" and "John Gabriel Borkmann". But each of his dramas has its own, strictly defined form, which becomes more artistic, purer and clearer from drama to drama... Thus Ibsen is also a teacher for the actor in that he leads him from the simpler tasks to the most artistic; and just as in Ibsen's social dramas the men seek truth, the women freedom, so in Ibsen's drama is the school for the actor which can mature him to the ultimate goals of art, to the goals to which art of every age has aspired: to freedom and truth."

*

In numbers 11 and 14 of this magazine, we spoke of the plan to found an Alsatian theater and of the objectives pursued by this foundation. This plan is now approaching its realization. An association has been formed to found the Alsatian Theater. Its chairman is Dr. Julius Greber, the author of the dramatic morality play "Lucie" - which has been banned by the censors -, then the young painter and poet Gustav Stoskopf, as well as Mr. Hauß, editor and newly elected member of the Reichstag, Bastian, the author of Alsatian folk plays, and Horsch.

The author of the article "Theater und Kunst in den Reichslanden" (No. 14 of this journal) has already pointed out that political tendencies were not intended with the new foundation, but that only the desire to see Alsatian folk life on the stage was decisive. The association's statutes are also drafted with this in mind.

Eight novelties are to be performed next winter. Alexander Hessler, the former director of the Stadttheater (Strasbourg), has been appointed artistic director of the new theater company. He is said to have a keen, sure artistic sense and a good eye for judging artistic forces.

If one considers the tremendous success of the popular performances of the people of Schliersee everywhere, one can open up the best prospects for the future to undertakings such as the Alsatian folk theater. Such ventures are very much in line with a remarkable trend of our time. Our art is becoming more and more international in character. Language is almost the only element that still reminds us that art grows out of the soil of nationality. Folkloric and even regional ways of thinking, viewing and feeling are disappearing more and more from the materials of our artistic achievements. And the term "good Europeans" is by no means a mere phrase today. Today, we understand the Parisian mores shown to us from the stage almost as well as those of our home town. In addition to this one extreme direction, however, there is another. Just as we cherish our youthful experiences, we cherish the folkloric idiosyncrasies that are, so to speak, the nation's childhood memories. And the more cosmopolitan culture in general leads us away from them, the more we like to return to them "here and there". Indeed, watching the Schlierseer play today seems like a memory of our youth; a memory of our youth is the content of the plays they perform for us, and a memory of our youth is above all the level of art that we can observe in them.

I would like to see undertakings similar to the Alsatian Theater spring up in various parts of Germany. Perhaps they are the only means of saving the individualities of the countryside for a while longer, which are being mercilessly swept away by the cosmopolitan tide of the times. In the end, however, cosmopolitanism will remain the winner.

*

What actually is "theater"? Hermann Bahr raises this question in issue 200 of Die Zeit. "A poet's play fails, and it is then said that it is unfortunately not "theater" after all. Or we see a crude person dominating the stage with bad things of a mean kind, and the excuse is that he knows what "theater" is. So what is this "theater"? Nobody wants to answer that. Everyone senses that there are things that are not "theatrical" and others that are, but that's all they seem to know. It is claimed: you can't say it, you have to feel it. So we always go round and round in the same circle. When asked what it must be like to be effective in the theater, we are told that it must be theatrical, and when asked what is theatrical, we are told: what is effective in the theater. So we can't get out of the circle."

I am somewhat puzzled by these statements from a man who has always pretended in recent times that he has finally found the key that opens the door to the theatrical. Hermann Bahr was once a terrible striker and rager. He could not do enough in his condemnation of the "theatrical". The pure demands of art were paramount to him. I don't think he thought about it very long ago: what is effective in the theater? What is theatrical? He thought about: what does "modernity" demand of dramatic technique? Then he persecuted everything that violated this "modern" technique in the worst possible way. And if Mr. von Schönthan or Mr. Oskar Blumenthal had come to him back then and told him: your "modernism" is all very well, but it doesn't work in the theater, he would have scolded them for being miserable doers and driven them - albeit only critically - out of the temple of art.

In recent years, Hermann Bahr has become tamer. He has explained this himself.

Marco Brociner had a play performed in Vienna last autumn that was not "art" at all, but only "theater"; Hermann Bahr wrote: "When I was still a striker and a rager, I hated Mr. Marco Brociner's plays. They are what you call "unliterary", and that was terrible for me back then. I was a lonely person back then, such a solitary and independent person who didn't recognize anything and didn't want to submit, but let his mind and taste rule. Now I am more modest; it has become difficult for me, but I have gradually realized that there are other people in the world. They want to live too, but the young man can't understand that. Today I say to myself: I have my taste, other people have a different one; whoever writes what I like is my author, but the others want their authors too, that's just cheap..."

Not only in the essay he wrote about Marco Brociner, but also in quite a few other omissions, Hermann Bahr says that he thinks more modestly today than he once did when he was a "striker and a rager".

The fact that one has to make concessions, this principle of all true philistines, was happily discovered by Hermann Bahr as the last word of wisdom for the time being. He repeated it over and over again in the last issues of "Die Zeit". "The man has learned to obey, he renounces himself, he knows that he is not alone; - he has another passion; he wants to help, wants to work. He feels that the world is not there to be his means, but that he is there for it, to become its servant."

But why am I writing here about Hermann Bahr's latest transformation? Why am I trying to find out what the path is from "Stürmer und Wüterich" to half court councillor?

Only because today, the "half court councillor" raises questions that the "striker and poor rake" would once have described as highly superfluous.

Yes, probably superfluous. And the rest of us, who cannot make up our minds to take the leap into the semi-hierarchical, know how to distinguish between the "theatrical" that crude people bring to the theater with bad things, and the "theatrical" that is genuine and good poetry despite all its "theatricality". A real playwright creates in a theatrical way because his imagination works in a theatrical way.

And if the question is put to us today: "What is theatrical?", we simply laugh. Shakespeare already knew this, and Hermann Bahr would have known it too if he hadn't been on his way from "Stürmer und Wüterich" to tame court councillor.

But that's the way it is: you have to unlearn a lot when you have come so far that you realize what Hermann Bahr realized: "He who has measured his strength and recognizes where he should step with it is immune, nothing can happen to him anymore: because he has become necessary. Becoming necessary, finding your place, knowing your role, that's all."

*

The lawyer Paul Jonas spoke about the current state of theater censorship in Berlin in one of the latest issues of the "Nation" (October 1898). He emphasizes that this current state of affairs has grown into a calamity, and that conditions in this area are hardly better than in the neighbouring Tsarist empire.

As in so many other cases, the guardians of public order are also served by decades-old police regulations when handling the censorship pen. Playwrights writing in the present day are judged according to regulations from July 10, 1851. The High Administrative Court recognized that the censorship pen must pass over matters that "only indicate a remote possibility that the performance of a play could lead to a disturbance of public order", and that this pointed instrument may only be used if there is a "real imminent danger" in prospect. Nevertheless, the pen in question from Hauptmann's "Florian Geyer" found it necessary to destroy the following sentences:

"Eat the plague all clerical servants."

"The priests do nothing with love, but pull the wool over their eyes."

"The Pope barters away Christianity, the German princes barter away the German imperial crown, but the German peasants do not barter away Protestant freedom!"

"If you want to keep your house clean, keep priests and monks out of it."

"The Rhine is commonly called the Pfaffengasse. But where clerics step on a ship, the ship's crew curse and cross themselves, because it is said that clerics bring disaster and ruin to the ship."

What an idea the official wielding the questionable pen must have of the consciousness and feelings of a theatergoer today! A man who can believe that the views of an educated man of the present day could be devastated by hearing the above words from the stage knows nothing of the life we lead today. The behavior described is likely to open the eyes of the widest circles to the gulf that exists between the ideas of the bureaucratic soul, educated in the tradition of the state, and the feelings of those circles that share in the progress of life.

According to the police ordinance of July 10, 1851, kissing appears to be one of the acts that "give rise to moral, safety, regulatory or trade police concerns". This is because a red police line once deleted the passage from Max Halbe's "Jugend":

"Annchen, you are so beautiful! So beautiful when you sit like that. (Grabs her arm.) I could forget everything. (Out of her mind.) Kiss me, kiss me!"

The banning of Sudermann's "Johannes" sheds a particularly harsh light on the police situation. It is a pity that the Higher Administrative Court did not reach a decision on this ban. As is well known, the play was released by an imperial decision. The police authorities had banned the performance because public representations of the biblical history of the Old and New Testaments were "absolutely inadmissible" according to the regulations. And in response to the objections made to this, the Chief President replied that "the presentation on stage of events from biblical history, and in particular from the life story of Jesus Christ, appears likely to offend the religious sensibilities of the listeners and spectators as well as the audience not attending the performances, to cause alarm among large groups of people and to cause disturbances to public order, the preservation of which is the office of the police". The order clearly shows that the official who issued it felt no obligation to first examine the content of the drama and ask himself: is it such that it could offend anyone's religious sensibilities? But this official obviously thinks that the mere fact of seeing the biblical characters on stage is enough to cause such an offense. He has not yet arrived at the modern conception of the theater. He knows nothing of the fact that art comes right next to religion in our perception. He says: every thing is profaned by stage representation. Modern feeling, however, says: it is ennobled by it. The bureaucratic sensibility drags prejudices along with it that the rest of life has been shedding for centuries.

The practical consequence of all this is that the artists and directors of art institutions always have to make the disgusting choice between two evils: either to make concessions to the bureaucratic "spirit" and appear pretty well-behaved on the outside while things are rumbling on the inside, or to constantly tangle with the police powers. If it had been up to the tendencies of the characterized spirit, then in the Cyrano performance of the "Deutsches Theater" a foolish monk should not have been called a "God's sheep" and Madame d'Athis' little fox should not have been given an enema. It was also considered reprehensible that the king's stomach clenching had been presented by the doctors as an insult to his majesty and that his sublime pulse had been restored.

The dispute that broke out between the police authorities and the Deutsches Theater over these lines may be discussed at another time. For this time, it was only a matter of contrasting the "spirit" of police power and the spirit of life in the present. The essay "Censorship Pranks" by Dr. P. Jonas provided a desirable starting point for this.

*

Adam Müller Guttenbrunn, the director of Vienna's new Kaiserjubiläums-Stadttheater, has just published Kleist's "Hermannsschlacht". The introduction he has written to the drama deals less with its artistic qualities than with Kleist's love for Austria. This love can be explained by the circumstances in which Kleist lived. At the time when Napoleon was humiliating the Germans, the manly actions of Emperor Franz and his commander, Archduke Carl, were an inspiring act. The reason why Müller-Guttenbrunn, in a preface to Kleist's "Hermannsschlacht", emphasizes everything that the poet said in praise of Austria in order to be able to call the drama "A poem on Austria" is probably that the new theater director needed a hymn to his fatherland for his temple of art built for the 50th anniversary.

*

In the important treatise "On the Use of the Chorus in Tragedy", which preceded his "The Bride of Messina", Schiller showed how deeply connected the question of the chorus is with ideas about the nature of dramatic art. No one is qualified to speak about idealism and realism in drama who has not fully clarified this question. In realistic or even naturalistic drama, the chorus is of course an absurdity. In stylized drama it is not. Stylized drama must incorporate symbols into its body. It will want to express things that cannot be expressed with the means that everyday life has for its expression. In drama, things often have to be said that cannot be put into the mouth of a single person.

Any attempt to describe the significance of the chorus in tragedy must therefore be welcomed with joy. One such attempt is the booklet by Dr. Friedrich Klein "Der Chor in den wichtigsten Tragödien der französischen Renaissance" (Erlangen and Leipzig 1897). The author has carefully studied the large number of "Poetics and verse doctrines in metrical and prosaic form" as well as the extensive commentaries on Aristotle's "Poetics", which "have been published in Italy and France since the middle of the sixteenth century", and on the basis of this study has provided excellent information on "the state of theoretical knowledge of the tragic chorus in the sixteenth century". These pages will provide a detailed examination of the work. [Has not been published. .

*

Since there are still supposed to be people with a rabble-rousing attitude in some corner of the world, I would like to expressly note that the above essay ["Auch ein Kritiker" by L. Gutmann] was sent to me by a man whose name I have not yet known, and that I would consider it cowardice to reject it with regard to the rabble. I myself have no need to defend myself to Mr. Kerr. He calls me a critic to ball; I confess that I enjoy the idea of the "balling Kerr" as much as his observations, written in a learned Gigerl style, on the societies of western Berlin, his landlord and other important matters. I am only reprinting the above essay because it shows what dares to pose as a great man.

*

A highly significant work for German dramaturgy has just been published: "Deutsche Bühnenaussprache. Results of the consultations on the balancing regulation of the German stage pronunciation, which took place from April 14 to 16, 1898 in the Apollosaale of the Königliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin. Published by Theodor Siebs on behalf of the commission (Berlin, Cologne, Leipzig 1898). - The "Dramaturgische Blätter" will soon publish a detailed report on this important publication. [The report has not been published}

*

In the work "Unser Wissen", which is published in Vienna, Richard Specht has published a particularly successful dramaturgical study under the title "Zehn Jahre Burgtheater". The only possible approach to the theater is characterized here with excellent words: "The play that the poet has completed at his desk can be a work of art - it is only a dramatic work of art from the moment it appears, in other words, from the moment it is able to make a complete artistic impression on the stage through the help of creative personalities other than the poet. It is obvious that this assistance is only possible when the work itself remains imperfect per se, when it leaves room for the artistic creations of others - the actors, the director, the musician, the painter. Those masterpieces of dramatic form whose vessel is completely filled by the soul of the poet and which leave no room for the artistic drive of others have hardly ever been done justice to by a stage performance. This is not because there is "too little" performing art, but because in such works the performing art is simply - too much. A play in which the personality of the poet predominates so immensely that it completely prevents the expression of the personality of the actor is a play which makes an equal or greater impression on the reader than on the listener. Thus the stage is rendered superfluous for such a play, which here cannot supplement but merely interfere, and thus such a drama is perhaps a nobler work of art, but certainly a bad play. The ideal of "good plays" in this sense will probably always remain "Hamlet".

This will have to be emphasized again and again in the face of so many attempts to misjudge the nature of the theater and to portray its significance within artistic life in a distorted light."

A second passage of the essay should be mentioned here, which views Burckhard's departure from the Viennese court theater from the point of view characterized by the above fundamental dramaturgical truth. Specht says of Burckhard: "He has brought literary life into the theater, but he has weakened the acting life. The stage, however, can only live primarily from the actor, and despite the successful attempts to help modern acting styles achieve a breakthrough, the actual fame of the Burgtheater - as a whole a wonderful ensemble and individually splendid people who are able to express themselves as actors - has declined considerably under him, if not been lost altogether. Nevertheless, it must be said that he himself learned so much during his time as director that Max Burckhard's name could have been mentioned when looking for the next capable director. But the bitterness and spitefulness of the too often justifiably angry and irritated artists would have been too great to be able to think of fruitful joint work, and this consideration alone had to be enough to make Burckhard's departure an irrevocable one."

The sinner Max Halbe in front of the forum of the archiepiscopal ordinariate in Freiburg im Breisgau

The following letter from the Archbishop of Freiburg: "Disparagement of the Catholic clergy by the theater" looks like a document that has been dormant in the archives for a long time. However, it was written in our day and refers to a dramatic work of art of our time.

"We have the honor to inform the Grand Ducal Ministry of Justice, Worship and Education:

In the second half of April, the "Youth" by Max Halbe was performed at the Court and National Theater in Mannheim. The Catholic press ("Neues Mannheimer Volksblatt, No.91 and 99) rightly took cause from this to protest in the strongest terms against such an abuse of the stage. In view of this public accusation against the Mannheim theater management of having "prepared and more than conceivably narrated an act of indecency in a Catholic rectory in all its details", we could not avoid the task of reviewing the play in question. To our great regret, we have to conclude that the performance of such a play is nothing other than a refined is nothing other than a subtle and serious disparagement of the Catholic clergy, against which it is our duty to protest. We only want to emphasize that in the play a chaplain "comes to the coffee table in the Messornav, that neither of the two priests in the play has chosen his profession with the moral seriousness that the Church demands and his holiness prescribes, that the chaplain represents scandalous principles about the choice of profession, that on the one hand he behaves as an angry fanatic and yet on the other hand dances with a girl after obtaining the dispensation of the priest. At the end there is an "absolution", which is a degradation of the sacrament of penance. Considering the downright immoral character of the play, we believe that it is in the interests of public order and morality to take action against such abuse of a theater, and we urgently request that measures be taken to prevent it in the future. signed. Thomas. Keller." Should one regard such manifestations of the Catholic Church as a symptom of the growing self-confidence of the representatives of medieval views? Given the regressive nature of our "new course", such a view cannot be ruled out. Max Halbe will now, of course, "laudably submit" to Professor Schell's example and henceforth only represent the sentiments of the infallible Roman chair in his dramas. * Prof. Dr. Walter Simon, city councillor in Königsberg i. Pr., who is known in wide circles as a warm-hearted patron of the arts, announced a competition for ten thousand marks to win a new German folk opera for the German stage. This is probably one of the most gratifying manifestations of German interest in the arts for a long time. All German and German-Austrian composers may take part in the competition. Full-length operas which have not yet been performed and which deal with a German bourgeois subject, such as Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea", are eligible. Material from more recent German or Prussian history, since Frederick the Great (for example Eleonore Prochaska), as well as freely invented material are also welcome. The works are to be sent postage paid in score, piano reduction and book to the chief director of the Leipzig City Theatres, Mr. Albert Goldberg, entrusted by the prize donor with the implementation of the competition, by July 1, 1901 at the latest, observing the usual regulations, about which the printed regulations of Prof. Dr. Walter Simon's competition provide more detailed information. These regulations will be sent to interested parties free of charge and postage upon written request by Mr. Goldberg, Leipzig, Neues Theater. The following gentlemen, who enjoy a well-established reputation in the theatrical world, have taken on the role of judges: Senior director Anton Fuchs, Munich, senior director Math.Schön, Karlsruhe, Großh. Hoftheater, senior director Hofrat Harlacher, Stuttgart, Kgl. Hoftheater, Hofkapellmeister Aug. Klughardt, Dessau, Herzogl. Hoftheater, Königl. Kapellmeister Prof. Mannstädt, Wiesbaden, Kgl. Theater, Prof. Arno Kleffel, Cologne, Stadttheater, and senior director Albert Goldberg, Leipzig, Stadttheater. It should be of particular value to the composers that the prize-winning opera will also be performed immediately at the Leipzig Stadttheater. Mr. Dr. Erich Urban, our former music critic A lively protest has been raised from respectable quarters against the way Dr. Erich Urban spoke here two weeks ago about Mrs. Carrefio and Mrs. Haasters. It was said that neither the sentence about Mrs. Carrefio's arms nor the one about Mrs. Haaster's marital love had any place in an art review. It seems that the indignation was also directed at me, the editor responsible for the magazine, who allowed such things to be printed in the paper. I owe the public an explanation. Dr. Erich Urban came to me some time ago and asked me to start his critical career in the "Magazin". I was reasonably pleased with the work he submitted for my consideration and, despite his youthfulness, I gave him a try. It went quite well at first. His reviews were not bad and met with some applause. This acclaim was the young man's undoing. It went to his head. It didn't make his reviews any better. Recently, I was forced to let the red pencil work on Mr. Urban's manuscripts in an unusual way. What would the complaining Mr. Bos and Mr. Woldemar Sacks say if they had seen what my red pencil has been doing over the last few weeks! Now one receives current reviews at the last moment before the end of a paper. You have to check them in a short time. My red pencil, which I usually use against Mr. Urban, failed in the criticized passages. I overlooked them. They therefore remained. I had already made the decision not to present Mr. Urban's reviews to the readers of the "Magazin" before the complaint reached me. The conclusion of the last review he wrote for us appears today. Furthermore, I can only say that I regret having been mistaken about Mr. Erich Urban and that I am completely on the side of his accusers. Unfortunately, he has not been able to escape the influence of the critical nature that I have in mind in my editorial today, and which I strongly condemn. In his youthfulness, he has become an imitator of bad role models. There are enough of these role models. But these gentlemen are clever and know how to keep a sense of proportion. Mr. Urban did not understand such moderation. He did not merely imitate mistakes, but applied them in an enlarged form. He wanted to be quite amusing, and what he wrote with this intention became merely tactless. But to those gentlemen who cannot forgive the fact that my red pencil slipped once, I wish that nothing worse ever happens to them in their lives. For an announcement[1] We intend to discontinue publication of the "Dramaturgische Blätter", a supplement to the "Magazin für Literatur", as of January 1, 1900. In doing so, we are responding to a very often expressed wish from the readers of this weekly publication. They were not sympathetic to a supplement dealing with the special issues of the stage and dramaturgy. When the current management founded the "Dramaturgische Blätter", they hoped that there would be a lively interest among stage members and others close to the theater in dealing with questions of their own art and its connection with other cultural tasks. Experience has not confirmed this, and the above "announcement" recently proves that the hopes cherished in this direction cannot count on fulfillment. It was not possible to achieve more active participation by members of the stage. However, publications such as the "Schiedsgerichtsverhandlungen des deutschen Bühnenvereins" (Arbitration Negotiations of the German Stage Association) put the patience of other readers to the test in the belief that they were serving a special class. These readers will prefer to see the space previously occupied by such pedantic-legal, lengthy and, for non-stage members, completely uninteresting discussions filled with things that belong to the field of literature and art. 1 I hereby inform the general public that our contractual relationship with the "Dramaturgische Blätter" has been terminated by me as of January 1, 1900. The President of the German Stage Association: Count von Hochberg