38. "Vienna Theater 1892–1898"

In heaven there should be more joy over one convert than over ninety-nine righteous people. In the heaven of aesthetics, where the Viennese critic Ludwig Speidel is the main saint, there must therefore be great joy over the conversion of the former main heretic Hermann Bahr. "This collection of reviews that I wrote about Viennese theater from 1892 to 1898, first in the "Deutsche Zeitung" and then in "Die Zeit", is intended to show how I gradually came to a pure view of dramatic art from uncertain but all the more vehement demands of a rather vague beauty, and how I came to recognize the theater for what it is. I owe this to you alone. Through your words the meaning has opened up to me, from you I have learned what drama is supposed to be, through your great demands I have become free from whims. And you also taught me what our office is, that of criticism, that "sharp handmaiden of production", as you called it: to help the creators. That is why I have asked you to adorn my book with your name." This is how Hermann Bahr introduces his latest book "Wiener Theater (1892-1898)". Ludwig Speidel is the representative of a thoroughly outdated aesthetic view. He is completely alien to the demands placed on us by the modern world view. He is a veteran of the ideas that set the tone in Gustav Freytag's time. Critiques such as he writes today could also have been written around the middle of our century. His school of thought envisioned an art that pursued an abstract ideal of beauty. Friedrich Theodor Vischer professed this ideal in his Aesthetics, which he himself later disavowed. From his point of view, Speidel initially always condemned all newer art movements. He always retreated when the times took sides with these art movements. How did he first treat Gerhart Hauptmann? How does he treat him now? You only have to read the review he wrote about "Lonely People" when it was first performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Hermann Bahr took his youthful education entirely from the modern direction. There was a time when he was the critic of "modernism" par excellence. And now he has converted to the views of aesthetic conservatism. There is only one explanation for this: Bahr has never advocated "modernism" from the innermost depths of his soul. He appropriated its buzzwords and traded on them. He always had a strong inclination and also a talent for finding nice smooth formulas for what modern art wants. These formulas did not come from within him. He was playing a dialectical game. That is why conversion is easy for him. His course of development is not a natural one. When he was young, he did not understand the aesthetics of Vischer and Speidel. But he fought against them. Others took this aesthetic as their starting point. On the basis of these aesthetics, they dealt with the legitimate principles of art. Due to the one-sidedness of these principles, they initially did not understand the tasks of the new art. Today they understand its demands. They judge the new according to the standard provided by the good old aesthetics and which they have developed accordingly. As a result, they have arrived at a just judgment. They cannot convert to Speidel. For the work of their lives is to go beyond Speidel and arrive at a modern aesthetic. When they judge the "modern", their judgment contains the element of the old aesthetic, which was justified.

Hermann Bahr's aesthetic never had this element in it. And his new aesthetic will probably be no less superficial than his old one. It seems less like a further development than a bankruptcy. He will now put into nice smooth formulas what Speidel's opinion is, just as he used to put into nice smooth formulas what Ibsen's opinion is.