Recent Developments and Problems in the Study of German Expressionist Drama

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND PROBLEMS IN THE STUDY OF GERMAN EXPRESSIONIST DRAMA THOSE WHO ARE NOW ENGAGED in the study of German Expressionist drama are very fortunate. They possess an exCellent guide to both the primary sources and the critical writing in their field, Claude Hill and Ralph Ley's The Drama of German Expressionism: A GermanEnglish Bibliography (University of North Carolina Press, 1960). It is difficult to overestimate the practical value of this bibliography. It lists all the plays written by sixteen major Expressionists and all the books, articles, dissertations, and reviews in both German and English that bear in any way on the Expressionist drama. The bibliography includes general investigations of modem literature as well as works devoted to literary Expressionism as such and monographs on individual Expressionist playwrights. The Hill-Ley bibliography is especially helpful to the student of comparative literature since it lists all English translations of German Expressionist drama with publication data. The student is furnished with a time- and energy-saving device of great importance since he can now find at one glance what Expressionist plays were published in English at any given time. The only drawback of this bibliography is an inevitable one. It had to be completed at one point in time. The authors chose the year 1957 as their terminal year. Yet the current renascence of interest in literary Expressionism had only begun then and has come into full swing since 1957. Naturally Hill and Ley's guide omits recent developments . Any researcher in the field will have to remember that 1957 was not the last year of scholarship and criticism in this area. Interest in Expressionism has steadily increased since 1957 and will probably gain even greater momentum in the next few· years. It is to be hoped that Professors Hill and Ley will be able to add a supplement to their bibliography in 1962 or 1963. Professor Richard Brinkmann's summary of latest scholarship on Expressionism appeared in the Deutsche Vierteliahrsschrift fUr Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte of July, 1960, entitled "Neue Literatur zum Expressionismus." Brinkmann's report covers the territory left uncovered by the Hill-Ley bibliography. It offers the ad92 1961 GERMAN EXPRESSIONIST DRAMA 93 ditional advantage of summaries of content and critical evaluations of the scholarly contributions which appeared between 1958 and the early part of 1960. Brinkmann's earlier report (1959) in the same journal called ''Probleme des Expressionismus" covers most of the scholarly and critical work still included in the Hill-Ley bibliography, but in the extremely helpful form of summaries of contents plus critical evaluation. The two journals Modern Drama and The Tulane Drama Review offer splendid opportunities for the English-speaking person interested in the Expressionist drama. The Tulane Drama Review especially brings through translations of whole plays or individual scenes longforgotten authors like Sternheim, Kaiser, Toller to a new generation of readers who can be expected to accept the Expressionists with greater interest and sympathy than the preceding generation could afford. The current renascence of interest in the Expressionist drama is of course intimately linked to Professor Eric Bentley's attempt to bring the dramatic literature of the world to the English-speaking public through easily available translations. His own translations and those inspired by him are beginning to offer the American audience the first possible contact with German Expressionist drama in over thirty years. Anchor Books is now preparing the most ambitious venture in this direction-a paperback anthology of complete plays and individual scenes by Sternheim, Kaiser, Bronnen, Toller, Hasenclever, Sorge, Barlach , Lauckner, Kornfeld, and Goll in English translations. Until recently it was, and in many cases it still is, a vexing problem to get hold of Expressionist plays in the original German. The small editions in which many Expressionist plays were published originally and Hitler's subsequent ruthless persecution and destruction of things Expressionist created a scarcity of copies. A few of the famous plays such as Sorge's Der Bettler, Kaiser's Burger von Calais, and Toller's Hinkemann were reissued after the war in cheap editions but most Expressionist plays have remained unavailable outside of a few public and university libraries and private collections. This scarcity of available copies...