-
7. Arnold Zweig and the Critics: Reconsidering the Jewish “Contribution” to German Theatre
- University of Iowa Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1 1 6 In 1928 Arnold Zweig published a small book entitled Juden auf der deutschen Bühne (Jews on the German Stage), which offered a systematic consideration ofwhathecallstheJewishcontributiontomodernGermantheatre.Although well known, the book has been almost completely neglected by specialists in the field. Zweig’s study is arguably a dubious source for theatre history, given its sometimes pathetic, sometimes polemic, but always subjective style. Despite these reservations, I consider Zweig’s book here as an attempt at writing historiography, which, among other things, documents the role that theatre played in the discourse surrounding questions of Jewish identity in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. This discourse offered Jewish Germans the option of acculturation, on the one hand, and the concept of a national (or ethnic) separateness, on the other. Accordingly, we should see Zweig’s text as determined by the circulation of various social discourses of the time, or as a kind of “deep play” in ethnologist Clifford Geertz’s sense of the term.1 Geertz’s approach to interpreting culture advocates and fosters increased attention to the “small things”—even if they seem, at first glance, to be marginal phenomena. According to Geertz, societies constitute their self-consciousness by the ways in which they engage these small things, such as cultural performances or customs, in daily life. Geertz’s refusal to embrace an Olympian perspective, and his insistence instead on the importance of “microscopic analyses,” offers new perspectives not only for ethnology but also for cultural analysis. Considering Zweig’s book as an expression of “deep play” in the Geertzian sense means regard7 Arnold Zweig and the Critics Reconsidering the Jewish “Contribution” to German Theatre p et e r w. m a r x a r n o l d z w e ig a n d t h e c r i t ic s 117 ing it as having been influenced by the interplay of several social discourses that determine central features of cultural identity. Seen in this light, Zweig’s book takes on a new dimension which radically changes our perspective on its key theme: the emphasis is no longer on the question of veracity or plausibility but rather on the degree to which the book integrates several kinds of discourse and uses theatre to discuss aspects of Jewish identity. In what follows I elucidate the various components of this interplay and describe Zweig’s steps of argumentation. His text is organized around two central ideas: that theatre has a function for a national community and that Jews have a special talent for acting. With these as his starting points he discusses the Jewish role in German theatre at different levels of artistic production: acting, directing, and playwriting. Ultimately my analysis of Zweig’s book pinpoints the function that theatre—and writing about theatre—served in shaping the various options for Jewish identity being negotiated at the start of the twentieth century. The Dedication Zweig’s work is dedicated to German Jewish theatre critic and author Siegfried Jacobsohn (1881–1926), who had planned to edit a similar book.2 This is not merely of anecdotal interest. Zweig and Jacobsohn represent two very differentapproachestotheatre ,andtheirrespectivecriticalapproachesrepresent the two trends of Jewish discourse in their day. Legend has it that Jacobsohn knew already at the age of fifteen that he wanted to become a theatre critic; he never wanted to be actively involved in theatre creation. On the contrary, he insisted on the importance of theatre criticism as a means of protecting theatre from the danger of commercialism and the demands of entertainment . It is no coincidence that he named the journal he founded in 1905 Die Schaubühne (The Stage), in clear reference to Friedrich Schiller’s classic essay “Die Schaubühne als moralische Anstalt betrachtet” (The Stage as a Moral Institution, 1785). After citing this essay, Jacobsohn claimed that the journal ’s aim was to allow “a flow of new theatre ideas, both artistic and intellectual , since at present entrepreneurs are busy with exacting the greatest profit from the least investment of thought and spirit.”3 To gain further insight into Jacobsohn’s motivation and programmatic ideas, a short biographical note might be useful: he was born in Berlin, educated at the Friedrichs-Werdersche Gymnasium, and then studied for several years at the Friedrich-Wilhelms -Universität. It was there that he met his friend Julius Bab, a German Jew who was probably one of the most important theatre historians and dra- [3.234...