Wedekind in Retrospect

WEDEICIND IN RETROSPECT I ONE OF THE STRANGEST and most controversial figures of modern German literature is Frank vVedekind whose influence did not reach its peak until his death in 1918 and whose name, after a decade of inflated fame, seems all but forgotten today. And yet, Wedekind's lonely conh'ibution to the history of modern drama at the hU'n of the century is incalculable in its effect upon generations of younger writers, especially the leading activists of the expressionistic movement, and some of their heirs like Bert Brecht and Friedrich Durrenmatt in our time. Violently attacked during most of his life, outrageously hampered by the imperial censorship of the last German Kaiser, torn to pieces by most literary historians until World War I, blindly worshipped by a determined group of world reformers after the revolution of 1918, \Vedekind is only now, forty years after his death, coming into proper focus. After most of his works had been banned during the Nazi regime, a few attempts to revive his plays on the German stage after 1945 met with failure, and no new Wedekind boom is likely to occur ever again. The task that remains is to appraise the dramatist's historical contribution to modern literature in the light of the last three decades of the century. Franklin Wedekind was born in the city of Hannover in northwestern Germany in 1864 and named after Benjamin Franklin by his father, who, after practicing medicine in San Francisco and marrying an actress of the German theater there, had returned to his native Germany. Dissatisfied with Bismarck's Prussian policy, Dr. Wedekind soon left Germany again and settled in Switzerland where young Frank spent most of his childhood and school years. After adventurous years as a free-lance journalist, advertising copy writer, secretary of a circus and, finally, of a painter in France and England, the aspiring author came to Munich, in 1890 where he wrote the play, Awakening of Spring, that made his name famous. With the exception of periodical guest appearances in his own plays in Berlin and elsewhere, \Veclekind remained in Munich where he became one of the editors of Germany's famous satirical magazine Simplicissimus. Frequently starring with his wife Tilly Wedekind, giving public readings of Ibsen and his own works, reciting and singing his own ballads in Munich's political cabaret "Die elf Scharfrichter," the playwright continued his writing career until his death in 1918. The Bohemian atmosphere of Wedekind's family history and life 82 1960 WEDEKIND IN RETROSPECT 83 is strongly reflected in his literary work. His background is less "German" in the traditional sense of the word than that of any other modern German writer. Born as an American citizen by virtue of the naturalization of his father, reared in Switzerland, widely travelled in France and England, endowed with a certain restlessness and love for adventure by his father, deeply influenced by his artistic mother, \Vedekind seemed less destined for a bourgeois and conventional outlook on life than most of his German contemporaries. Forever he fought the hypocrisy of middle class morality and the petty narrowness of the self-satisfied smug burghcr. Restless, never settled, forevel: entanglcd in bittcr feuds with censorship and the police, sometimes in jail and at other times on flight to Switzerland or France, misunderstood and scorncd by public and critics alike, 'Wedekind, though constantly labelled a pornographic enemy of society, was in reality one of the loneliest European moralists before the First vVorld\Var. Looking like a "wicked abbot," as somebody once described him, he celebrated a new morality of beauty and strength and went through life' like a pricst of a new religion. With the exception of several ballads, some lyrical poems and a few short stories, Wedekind's work is devoted to the stage. His eternal theme is a new philosophy of beauty and sex, freed from the taboos and prejudices of middle class society. Wedekind is the eroticist par excellence to whom aesthetics and ethics are but two sides of the same thing. The physical, if healthy and strong, is basically good. Immorality is caused by repressions and inhibitions. "The flesh has its own soul," he...