48. “Social Aristocrats”

Comedy by Arno Holz
Performance at the Central Theater, Berlin

How short-sighted they all were who thought they saw the masters of dramatic art in Shakespeare, Schiller and Ibsen! They lacked the insight of Mr. Arno Holz, who finally discovered that there is a difference between the diction of Ibsen, the rhetoric of Schiller and the language of a Berlin laundress. Now we know: Shakespeare's and Schiller's language is the "obviously crude" language, the language of the theater; the language of the Berlin washerwoman is the language of life, the "secretly artistic" language. Arno Holz taught us this in the preface to his drama "Social Aristocrats". A few days ago, this work was performed at the Zentral-Theater. Through his discovery, Arno Holz became the reformer of dramatic style. He proclaimed himself one. The "Social Aristocrats" is the new work of art, which is to be "composed" in the "language of life", not in the clumsy theatrical language of Shakespeare and Schiller. Life should speak to us from the stage. This is why Holz draws a twenty-one-year-old imbecile whom no one could really meet in the milieu in which the poet places him, because precautionary relatives would have placed the mentally retarded man in an appropriate institution at a tender age. No, the distorted images brought to the stage have nothing to do with real life. Holz wants to portray contemporaries like portraits. But he removes everything from their personalities that constitutes their true purpose in life. Without becoming suspicious of these contemporaries, the following can be said:

There is a serious man who writes inspiring books, gives subtle lectures and works to educate the people in his way. The man has a pathetic exterior and gives childish mockery cause to laugh because he appears too prophetic. Holz only portrays what the Philistine sees of this personality, who cannot perceive the deep core. Another personality is presented in the drama, of whose main work a witty critic said a few years ago that it was the most thought-provoking book written in Germany in recent decades. This man knows the social trends of our time like few others; he embodies a striving for human liberation that gives each of his works a tone that sounds as if it comes from a world removed from all present-day reality. However, he hides his inner life behind stiff, often quite conventional manners. The pedant, who can only imagine that a man who loves freedom must also appear unrestrained, finds a contradiction between this man's external "behavior" and his views. In this case, too, Holz seems to see nothing but the stiff exterior, which is somewhat ridiculous to the small mind. One can be hostile to the opinions and aims of such a man; one can oppose them in the strongest terms; but one only needs to know them to find Mr. Holz's jokes dull and tasteless. Anyone who knows the personalities caricatured in the play can easily guess who is meant. If I have an acquaintance who I know wears a blue suit and habitually waves his cane in the air, I will recognize him by these outward appearances even if he approaches me from a distance and I am not aware of his facial features. If you want to portray people from their comic side in drama, then you have to do it with the art of Aristophanes, not with the small means of a clumsy caricaturist.

Arno Holz wants to bring the truth of life to the stage. But compared to his distorted images, the figures of Lindau, Schönthan and Blessed Benedix are true models of naturalistic representation. "Between the creation of a work of art in a style that is already given and the creation of such a style itself, there is not a difference of degree, but a difference of kind," philosophizes Arno Holz in the preface to "Social Aristocrats". However, there is no difference of kind, but really only a difference of degree between Holz's and Schönthan's drama. They both proceed according to the same recipe; only Holz has not yet reached Schönthan's stage dexterity. The sad image of an incompetent who wants to discover a new "secretly artistic" thing, but does not feel the essence of true art, stood before my soul as I watched Mr. Holz's drama. For this reason, however, I do not wish to deny that Arno Holz is one of those who have contributed much to the emergence of the truly new dramatic style of the present day. But works in this style have been given to us by others. In his dramatic work he has lagged behind those who, unlike him, were not guided by theoretical demands but by the individuality of their genius. The present day forms the organs of the artist differently from the time of Shakespeare or Schiller. That is why we have a "modernity", the justification for which can only be argued about by the decrepit aestheticians or the art critics who swear by "eternal rules". Among those who understand the meaning of the present, there can be no dispute about such things. But I must deny that something of this sense can be discovered in the "social aristocrats". One is not modern by calling Schiller's and Shakespeare's language "obviously crude". I do not believe that anyone can properly appreciate the essence of our modern style who is able to talk about Shakespeare like Holz.