German Theater Between the Wars

GERMAN THEATER BETWEEN THE WARS "THE FIRST WORLD WAR ended by leaving France morally, artistically. and intellectually in a supreme position on the continent of Europe, and her prestige was at its highest," writes Enid Starkie in her discussion of the influence of France on English Literature.1 It is then easy for her to go on from here to show the impact of French culture on the great names of the age. Her observations are certainly true, but from our point of view the interesting aspect is how markedly the graph of her influences declines as she moves from poetry. through fiction, to drama. On the drama she has practically nothing to say. English drama, she reminds us, was going through a sterile phase between the wars when nothing interesting was produced (except by Shaw and O'Casey) until the arrival of Eliot, Auden, and Isherwood in the 30's, and "in the meantime, those who wished to enjoy the true and noble pleasures of the theatre made the journey to Paris, where the most advanced and stimulating theatre in Europe was flourishing and playing to full houses."1 Probably the English theater lover did go to Paris, but was this really the location of the most advanced and stimulating theatre in Europe? The names Auden and Isherwood might have reminded Miss Starkie that some English intellectuals had turned away from Paris for once and had directed their fascinated gaze to the. country of Theaterleidenschaft-Germany-and to what must have been the most theatrical city in the world between the wars-Berlin. The reasons for this fascination were many and varied and not all connected with the theater. Many intellectuals thought they saw in the new Germany a nation somehow purified by war, marching forward to pure democracy; others saw the very opposite-Berlin, for example, became notorious and attractive for the immorality and vice of its night life (rivalling Paris even here).8 Whatever the reasons, however, Berlin enjoyed a Golden Age-"a period of 1 Enid Starkie. From Gautier to Eliot: The Influence of France on English Literature I85I-I939 (London, 1960), p. 135. IIbid., p. 2og. a See Christopher Isherwood in The World in the Evening (Pt. II, Chap. II) on the difference between Paris and Berlin: ··Berlin was a complete contrast. Outwardly it was graver, stiffer and more formal; inwardly, it was far more lurid and depraved. For a runaway Briton it was a more congenial refuge than Paris because it recognised VICE, and cultivated it in all its foims with humourless Prussian thoroughness." 363 364 MODERN DRAMA February violence, a Renaissance age of gangsters and aesthetes, Savonarolas, Cellinis and Borgias."" Berlin had had its Revolution and was still living in a state of post-revolutionary excitement with machine guns heard in the streets almost as frequently as they were in Chicago, with the difference that the assassinations were more obviously political-Rathenau, the Jewish intellectual President of the Republic; Rosa Luxemburg, the Left Wing leader; and others. With this excitement an exhilarating awareness of new discoveries was in the air. Einstein and Max Planck were at work in Berlin formulating the Principles of Relativity; Gropius was founding the now legendary Bauhaus in Weimar where Mies van der Rohe, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and others on his staff were to make their influence felt on every sphere of life from architecture and abstract composition to domestic cutlery. The British intellectual was also fascinated by yet another new source of art in which for a spell Germany seemed pre-eminent, namely the cinema. This was the Golden Age of the avant-garde German film, particularly the artistic horror-film like Golem, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror. And this was the age which saw the spectacular triumph of Expressionism in literature, music, and painting. "The arts flourished on German soil in the Twenties as they had not since the age of Goethe."5 The extraordinary spectacle one could observe in Germany at that time was the spectacle of Modernism. The war seemed to have broken down all the traditional barriers, removed all the braking and modifying processes,and thrown the country open...