72. “Bartel Turaser”

Drama in three acts by Philipp Langmann
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

A few weeks ago, Philipp Langmann was criticized by none other than the officials of a Brno accident insurance company. They were checking whether he knew how to add horizontal and vertical number sequences correctly. Because Philipp Langmann served them for a monthly fee of seventy guilders. Today, Philipp Langmann is the darling of Berlin and Viennese theater audiences. His "Bartel Turaser" was performed at the same time in the Vienna Volkstheater and the Berlin Lessing-Theater; and in both cities the audience is aware that it has seen the work of a great poet. Here in Berlin, if a critic grumbles and utters a word of censure against the work, he may hear the worst things. He may have sinned up to now, however much opposition and grumbling he has to object to. You can forget that. But if he has something against the "Bartel Turaser", then he is simply labeled a brash guy.

This is a nice touch in the not always pleasant physiognomy of our theater audience. It's nice to be able to overlook major flaws alongside major merits. You have to if you want to praise Philipp Langmann's drama unreservedly. After all, the play is only a change to the future. But those who do not accept the change unconditionally have a poor understanding of the future. Philipp Langmann is a solvent playwright. He will strip away the tendentious morality he proclaims to us, the dramatic clumsiness that occurs in his work; and he will continue to develop the fine view he is able to cast into people's souls.

The Bartel Turaser, who swears perjury in order to be able to provide bread for his sick child, and who then presents himself to the court as a perjurer when the death of his beloved child gives rise to a feeling of remorse: he is a character that only a true poet could create; but the way Langmann presents him is an arbitrarily constructed figure. The poet is less interested in showing how a person's feelings can be transformed than in ensuring that good triumphs in the end.

Langmann has something that must necessarily result in success with the audience. This audience is not at all averse to being informed about the abuses of our social order. But the matter must not go too far. The excitement about existing misfortune must not spoil the good supper that one wants to eat after the theater. And the audience is right. The stage is not a moral institution after all.

Langmann, like the audience, is caught in the middle between the full truth and the consolation of the "practical Christian" that the good Lord and a clear conscience will take care of everything. Is it really necessary to spoil people's appetite by telling them that poor people eat dogs to banish hunger? Langmann does not say such things. He doesn't say them because he doesn't feel them vividly enough. He is honest as an artist. He is no more indignant himself than he is when he shows it to his audience. His feelings are not extreme. He is a temperate sensitive person. His temperament does not exceed that of the masses. He only has the gift of effectively shaping what the masses feel. He does not disturb the sound sleep of the Philistines. But he is a poet who commands their respect. And rightly so. He forces a respect from them that does them honor.