40. “Los von Hauptmann”

I find the work written by Hans Landsberg under the above title (Berlin 1900) less interesting as an individual achievement than as a symptom of the times. It is the expression of the mood of those members of the younger generation who have formed their artistic judgment from the aesthetic traditions that have come down to us from our classical art epoch and who approach our contemporary art with a somewhat abstract-academic sense. Insight into these aesthetic traditions protects them from the overestimation of this contemporary art, into which all those who owe their aesthetic education entirely to the last decade and a half must necessarily fall.

However, in order to justifiably make the judgments that Hans Landsberg makes, a broader perspective is required than he has. Anyone who has really familiarized themselves with the aesthetic views that the author of the brochure wants to claim will find these views too trivial. In what he says about true art, Landsberg does not go beyond what the bourgeois Carrière put forward in his "Aesthetics". I don't want to do him an injustice. That is why I emphasize from the outset that I also find some good things in this little booklet. At the top of this good is an excellent characterization of Hauptmann's "Biberpelz". But anyone who wants to be entitled to say about Hauptmann what Landsberg is guilty of would have to have immersed himself in the classical view of the world to such an extent that it is impossible for him to write sentences like this: "I know the shyness that all "sensible people" feel before "symbolism" and "mysticism". Only someone who has once grasped or even just sensed the full depth of a great work of art understands the reality of these concepts. A statue by Michelangelo, a symphony by Beethoven, a poem by Goethe, they are all symbols, individual embodiments of the universe, they are all mystical because they rise from unfathomable depths. Even if one searches for abstract formulas for such concrete entities - "Faust", for example, as the tragedy of titanic striving, "Macbeth" as the drama of ambition - one can still in no way exhaust the symbolic-mystical content of these works." Much worse than the shyness of "sensible people" towards "symbolism" and "mysticism" is the unclear playing with and sympathizing with these terms, as found in Hans Landsberg. I don't want to take the word of narrow-minded intellectuals who want to exhaust the content of a great work of art in a few banal phrases. But there are no "unfathomable depths" that cannot be illuminated by the light of reason. Thinking, if it only has the ability to descend deep enough into the essence of things, will always be able to draw out the true content of great works of art. However, it will not then be able to offer trivial abstract formulas along the lines of Landsberg's on "Faust" and "Macbeth", but it will shed clarity and ideal light on areas that "symbolism" and "mysticism" would so like to veil with dark concepts.

Because Hans Landsberg does not have the perspective that gives a truly rational view of the course of the world, because he confuses depth with mystical obscurity and rationality with the narrow-minded view that "understands and explains everything, especially the inexplicable", he can write sentences like this: "However, compared to the older Shakespearean treatment of the people as a compact mass, here (in the "Weavers) a tremendous advance towards the individualization of the crowd is evident. But actually only individuals are portrayed. They are in no way typical, they do not merge into the higher unity of the weaver in general." Landsberg confuses the type with the template. The perfect type can only be represented if one characterizes the perfect individual, not an abstract generic idea. The "weaver in general" is an impossible concept.

"The great basic intellectual current that we believe we can recognize in the chaos of opinions and trends that fill our time is characterized roughly as follows: The autocracy of the natural sciences is followed by the endeavor to understand the world artistically. We feel that here we have a means of solving riddles that science is at a loss to solve." This is Hans Landsberg's opinion. But he does not understand how a world view comes about. He only understands the small science, which, with its abstract concepts, with its idealistic shells that it wraps around things, has nothing to do with worldview. A modern world view can only arise out of natural science. Such a world-view must today stand in the same relation to the results of the knowledge of nature as all old world-views stood to religion and theology. Seemingly modern worldviews that are formed independently of natural science all fall back into the old religious and theological ideas.

We have few personalities with the inner strength to expand the scientific knowledge of the present into a world view. The power of old religious sentiments is still too strong in our people. They cannot shape scientific knowledge into a world view, which is why they would like to convince themselves that it cannot be shaped into one.

However, Gerhart Hauptmann should not be presented as the poetic representative of the scientific world view, but one should not ignore the fact that within German poetry he has made the strongest approaches to such a world view. One should not wish for these beginnings to be replaced by a "new-romantic art", as Hans Landsberg characterizes it, but one should want Hauptmann to continue in the direction he took up to "Florian Geyer". Hauptmann's alarming backward movement only begins with "The Sunken Bell". Only with it has he shown that it is not possible for him to continue on the path he has begun. He has thus become unfaithful to himself and to the times.

Some of the clever remarks in Landsberg's little book lead me to believe that its author will not long after have reached a point in his development where he will regret having attacked Hauptmann with a miniature perspective. He will perhaps still have many things to say against Hauptmann later, but he will then - having matured - realize how deeply this dramatist is rooted in the intellectual life of the end of the nineteenth century, and how, in contrast, the critical concoctions of his present assessor Hans Landsberg are preparations of a German studies seminar that have little root in life and are highly superfluous for it.

It is highly curious which three spirits Hans Landsberg chooses to characterize the intellectual signature of the present. "Nietzsche, Ibsen, Böcklin, that's the name of the triumvirate. In them the intellectual current of the present is most clearly reflected. According to a saying by Robert Schumann, there has always been a secret alliance of kindred spirits. Nietzsche, Ibsen and Böcklin seem to me to best embody the spirit of the age, which for most people is still the spirit of the future."

For now: Nietzsche has nothing to do with the zeitgeist. He is a very lonely, isolated man who has gone the most individual ways imaginable and whose intellectual physiognomy can only be understood from his isolation. The fact that a large following follows him today is merely due to his unfortunate fate and the fact that his views can be translated into dazzling catchwords for thought-hungry writers and journalists. - Böcklin, too, is basically such a lonely man, who has little connection with the spirit of the times. Of the three mentioned, only Ibsen can be used to characterize this "zeitgeist". From a broader perspective than Landsberg's, however, one would have to emphasize Hauptmann's kinship with Ibsen much more sharply.

To emphasize it once again, it seems to me that Hauptmann's drama is much more deeply related to the zeitgeist than Hans Landsberg's interpretation of this zeitgeist.