# 99. “The Star”

*A Viennese play in three acts by Hermann Bahr  
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin*

Hermann Bahr once went out to seek the kingdom of the great new art. And now he brings home plays that have Blumenthal's spirit in them. Saul, Ki's son, has done things differently. Yes, the man who, not so long ago, spoke his mind and said: "Only on one point there is no dispute, on one point everyone agrees, the old and the groups of young people. On one point there is no doubt: that naturalism is already over again and that the toil, the agony of youth is seeking something new, strange, unknown, which no one has yet found. They waver as to whether it will be a new idealism, a synthesis of idealism and realism, whether it will be symbolic or sensitive. But they know that it cannot be naturalistic." (Bahr, Studies in the Critique of Modernism. 1894.)

In the field of dramatic art today, Hermann Bahr is clear about how it must be. Not naturalistic, not symbolistic; it simply has to be floral.

On November 12, Hermann Bahr therefore spoke to us in this new way. The "star" Lona Ladinser played the main role in the play of the postal clerk Leopold Wisinger. The play failed miserably. The actors are naturally annoyed when the plays they are in fail. That's why there is a terrible scolding at Lona Ladinser's house the day after the premiere. Lona's maid, Lona herself, a Miss Zipser - a discarded actress and Lona's companion - all berate the audience, the poet and the critics. They all rant in witty, pointed sentences, as if the feature writer Bahr had first carefully drilled each sentence of their rant into them. All this is neither naturalism nor symbolism, but Blumenthalism. At least a good one at first. But then it gets bad. For how the failed poet and Lona fall in love, how the poet gets nervous and rants and rails because his lover can't let go of the life she led before, how this life itself is developed in front of the audience and how the two part again because the postman prefers his "Grete" to the theater star, and finally how this star devotes himself with all his soul to the boards that mean the world: all this takes place in three acts that are bad Blumenthalism. Originally, the play was even supposed to have had four acts. The fourth was deleted because it was said to be even more evil than the previous two.

A few years ago, Hermann Bahr gave the following verdict on *Einsamen Menschen*: “And finally the *Einsamen Menschem*, in which he (Gerhart Hauptmann) accomplished his work, which awaited and needed him, and redeemed the long longing of his people by theatricalizing Holz's technique with brilliant bravura: stripped of everything somehow offensive to the crowd that might trouble their minds, cleaned out neatly and cleanly, adjusted to the dear habits of Teutonic parterres, Europe reduced to the Müggelsee, as if Maurice Maeterlinck were handed over to Mr. Kadelburg. Now Hermann Bahr writes a play in which he shows that no work expected and needed him, a play in which he shamefully disappoints the long yearning of his friends - assuming that they are not blind - in which he imitates Blumenthal's technique with pompous bravura, speculates on everything pleasing to the crowd, reduces Europe to the jokes behind the scenes, as if Mr. Kadelburg had been handed over to Mr. Hermann Bahr.

This "Star", this collection of experiences within the less good theater world dressed up in Bahrian feuilleton jokes, was written by the same man who once said of himself: "But I can console myself, because it is at least a pretty thought and flattering that between the Volga and the Loire, from the Thames to the Guadalquivir, nothing is felt today that I could not understand, share and shape, and that the European soul has no secrets from me."

In order to justify his dramatic banalities, Hermann Bahr has now invented his own theory. On October 22, he wrote in the weekly magazine "Die Zeit" about "Weiße Rößl" that he was "excellently entertained" at the performance. And then continued: "Of course, our young people say that they despise the theater. I don't think they're right; in all great times it has been the greatest thing, culture has always spoken its last words in the theater. But all right. But let them leave it alone. I may say: I want to be a quiet scholar, I am enough for myself, I don't need the others, I don't demand to be heard. But then I must not want to talk. If I want to speak, I must first be an orator ... Once our young people can do what Blumenthal and Kadelburg can do, the audience will forgive them for being "poets"."

"The poet is to the playwright as a scholar is to an orator. A scholar can have the greatest thoughts, but that does not necessarily make him an orator. An orator is one who has the power to control the listeners through words so that they agree with him. So is a dramatist who commands the means of the theater in such a way that the audience feels what he makes them feel."

Hermann Bahr lives in Vienna. There is a speaker there who is able to control people through words so that they agree with him. Those who do have therefore made the speaker mayor. His name is Lueger. He has those in his power against whose main characteristic the oldest gods themselves fight in vain. Scholars, go and learn to speak from him, just as Hermann Bahr learned to make dramas from Blumenthal and Kadelburg!

The performance in the Lessing Theater and the audience were well-behaved. The actors performed quite well; the audience applauded and called out the author several times. He then always bowed by moving his right hand gracefully towards his heart. I didn't notice any other disturbances that evening.