warn LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA T,OS ANGKT.KS THE GERMAN DRAMA OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BY Dn. GEORG WITKOWSKI Professor in the University of Leipzig AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION BY L. E. HORNING Professor of Teutonic Philology, University of Toronto (Victoria College) NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1909 BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY Published. June, 1809. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION Apart from some small formal changes, this edition differs from the first in that, in deference to many ex- pressed wishes, Romantic opera is treated in a special chapter and that the new works of the dramatists who had become known before 1900 are added as far as they come into consideration from the earlier view-point. On the other hand, the time has not yet come for a descrip- tion of the whole development after the year 1900. GEORG WITKOWSKI. Leipzig, July 4, 1906. PREFACE TO FIRST GERMAN EDITION This little book had its origin in University-extension lectures given in Leipzig and Altenburg and is first of all an attempt to pave the way for an understanding of the drama of the present day from an historical stand- point. Therefore the chief weight is laid upon those historical factors which settle the last stages of develop- ment, and the three factors of dramatic production, art- view, actor's art and public, are considered side by side in accordance with their importance. The musical drama and the lesser varieties had also to be sketched in their development if the picture was to correspond to reality. True, the outward form and the brief con- tents forced me just in these points to introduce merely the essential changes of each variety from one period to another and to illustrate them by some characteristic productions. In other respects the work imposed ren- dered it necessary to limit myself to the historically important persons and works. But those names at least should not be lacking for which the reader will look first of all because they are reckoned with those which are mentioned most often in histories of literature or of the stage. That I have also mentioned some dramas which appeared after the year 1900, in order to complete the picture of the dramatists who up to that time had al- ready become important, will not be felt as a violence done to the limit given in the title. Leipzig, January 3, 1904. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE Professor Witkowski's little book appealed to me from the first as a very sane and suggestive introduc- tion, and when my good fortune took me to Leipzig in 1906 we soon became good friends. The desire to see the work turned into English was mutual and the pub- lishers readily gave their consent. In only one instance have I made any departure from the text of the second German edition. In this case I have made use of an expression from Prof. Witkowski's last letter to me with the result that the passage seems to me more definite and the meaning clearer. The dates are those of the original and differ in a few instances from those of other works. I have not the means of settling these differences finally. The figures in the repertoire lists might have been ex- tended in the English edition to cover the years 1905-06 and 1906-07. But they would have made little differ- ence in the conclusions drawn. They would have shown : that Faust Part II is increasingly played, as one might easily conclude from the fact that at least three new stage-versions of Faust have appeared within the last two years; that Laube, Gutzkow and Freytag seem to be more popular; that Halm shows signs of revival; that Schneider's little work suffered a temporary eclipse vii viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE in 1904-05; that Benedix dies hard; that Hebbel and Anzengruber are rapidly gaining in favor with the pub- lic. To my wife I am under a heavy debt for her close criticisms, her helpful and suggestive advice. L. E. HORNING. University of Toronto (Victoria College), April, 1909. CONTENTS. PAGE. GERMAN DRAMA AT THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHT- EENTH CENTURY: Middle-class Drama; Iff land and Kotzebue; Schiller . 1 GERMAN DRAMA FROM 1800 TO 1830 8 ROMANTIC DRAMA 8 The Schlegels, Tieck, Brentano, C-hlenschlager, Platen, Immermann. FATE TRAGEDY 13 Werner, Milliner, Grillparzer, Heine. HEINRICH VON RLEIST 15 IMITATORS OF SCHILLER 22 KSrner, Uhland. FRANZ GBILLPARZEE 24 FERDINAND RAIMUND 34 PLAT AND COMEDY FROM 1800 TO 1830 36 Kotzebue's Followers; Birch-Pfeiffer; Dialect Plays. CHRISTIAN DIETRICH GRABBE 38 ROMANTIC OPERA 41 Gluck, Mozart, Spohr, Lortzing; Weber, Marschner; Meyerbeer and Grand Opera. GERMAN DRAMA FROM 1830 TO 1885 45 YOUNG GERMANY AND ITS FOLLOWERS 45 Wienbarg; French Influence; Laube, Gutzkow, Brach- vogel, Bauernfeld, Freytag. MIDDLE-CLASS COMEDY AND THE FARCE 52 Benedix, Moser; Folk-plays; Miiller, L'Arronge; The Farce, Kalisch; Dialect-plays, Niebergall. ix x CONTENTS PAGE. IDEALIZING DRAMA 56 Halm, Mosental, Mosen, Gottschall, von Weilen, Redwitz, Geibel, Heyse, Jordan. SUMMABT 62 FBIEDBICH HEBBEL 63 OTTO LUDWIG 94 THE SEVENTIES 102 Lindner, Wilbrandt, Fitger, Voss; Dumas; Lindau; Plays of 1875. LUDWIG ANZENGBUBER 108 THE MEININGEB 120 RICHARD WAGNEB 122 ERNST VON WILDENBRUCH 133 GERMAN DRAMA FROM 1885 TO 1900 137 THE OLD ART AND NATURALISM 137 French Influence, Zola; Isben, 140, Bjornson, Strind- berg; Tolstoi. THE " FREE THEATRES " 148 HERMANN SUDERMANN 152 PLAYWRIGHTS OF THE PRESENT DAY 161 Wichert, Fulda; Philippi, Otto Ernst, Blumenthal, Schonthan. LITERARY TENDENCIES IN PRESENT DAY DRAMA .... 168 Nietzsche, 169; Symbolism; New Romanticism. DRAMATIC WRITERS OF TO-DAY 175 Weigand, Hirschfeld, Halbe, Hartleben ; D'Annunzio, Dehmel, Dreyer, Bahr, Schnitzler, Wedekind; Maet- erlink, 182; Lothar, Hoffmannsthal. GERHART HAUPTMANN 187 PRODUCT OF THE CENTURY 203 Living Dramas, 206; Progress, Conditions, Outlook. INDEX . . .219 THE GERMAN DRAMA OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMAN DRAMA AT THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AT the beginning of the nineteenth century middle- class drama on the German stage far surpassed all other varieties in numbers and popularity. Lessing had laid the foundation for it and made it free from French in- fluence. Miss Sara Sampson (1755), Minna von Barn- helm (1767) and Emilia Galotti (1772) were the earl- iest prototypes of a realistic art which took its sub- jects from contemporaneous life and substituted deep feeling in unadorned prose for the unnatural sentiment of the Alexandrine tragedy. In his Hamburgische Dramaturgic (1768-69) Lessing showed that the French were wrong in asserting the conformity of their rules with the laws of Aristotle, and pointed to Shakespeare as the greatest tragic poet of modern times. Contempt for rules, enthusiasm for Shakespeare and a striving for a characteristic national art led to the production, in the "Storm and Stress" period, of a suc- cession of works which lent gifted expression to the feelings and longings of the German youth. At the head of this list was Goethe's first great work, Go'tz von Berlichingen (1773). For the first time the past of their own people lived before them in a genuine his- torical drama, but it was too disconnected in form and this prevented its becoming popular on the stage. The numerous imitations, none of which approached the Go'tz in poetic merit, succeeded in avoiding this fault 1 2 GERMAN DRAMA and the clang of armor resounded on the German stage far down into the nineteenth century. The contemporaries of Goethe's youth, Lenz, Klinger and Heinrich Leopold Wagner, did not satisfy the de- mands of the stage any better than he had done. Ac- cordingly a permanent influence was not exercised by their dramas which, by their treatment of contempora- neous social problems, enlarged the previously narrow horizon of the middle-class drama. In Schiller's early dramas, Die Rduber (1781) and Eabale und Liebe (1784), these new motives were, for the first time, united by the unerring judgment of a great and born dramat- ist with what was suited to the stage and with a complete mastery of realistic style. After completing Don Carlos (1787) he turned to that idealistic style, characterized by the external form of the verse, which Lessing had already made use of in his dramatic poem Nathan der Weise (1779). These two works exerted at first just as little influence on succeeding works as did Shakespeare's dramas, which the great actor, Fried- rich Ludwig Schroder, had been playing in Germany since 1776, or Goethe's new and lofty dramas, Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787), Egmont (1788), Torquato Tasso (1790). Like the fragment Faust, which appeared at the same time as Tasso, they remained entirely unno- ticed. The operetta, for the most part the harmless repre- sentation of slightly idealized rural situations, inter- woven with simple melodious songs, had taken tri- umphant possession of the German stage since 1766. It reached its highest development in the operas of MOZART, Belmont und Constanze (1782), and Die Zauber- flo'te (1791). At this time middle-class drama re- GERMAN DRAMA 3 ceived new life from the quickly passing "Storm and Stress" influence. The subjects treated by this class of writers were taken hold of but fashioned according to the temper of timid middle-class ethics: the collisions which led to the catastrophe in the former found a happy solution in the latter. The middle-class saw its own joys and sorrows mirrored in these plays and the great mass of spectators were delighted and moved to tears by the conscientious treatment of the conditions and events of their daily life. What did it matter if commonplace reality was presented without any claims to artistic excellence, if Teutomania, moralizing, ef- feminate sentimentality, one-sided glorification of the middle classes at the expense of all others, and theatri- cal convention robbed the portrait of truth and higher merit? BAEON OTTO VON GEMMINGEN produced the first example of this class in Der deutsche Hausvater (1780) and AUGUST WILHELM IFFLAND, actor and man- ager in Mannheim and Berlin, cultivated it with the greatest success. His best works, Die Jdger (1781), Die Hagestolzen (1791), Der Spieler (1796) held their place long after the middle of the nineteenth century. Iffland's plays were suited exactly to the taste of the middle-class public. He excluded all great historical events, all political questions and all references to public affairs. The home alone was his world and this he de- lineated with the care of a miniature painter. In all his plays he shows persecuted virtue finally overcoming vice and from need and poverty attaining to prosperity. An easy comfortable life and the middle-class "Repu- tation" are with him the most important matters; for their sake ethical blemishes are tolerated wherever they admit of being glossed over. With Iffland guilt is not 4 GERMAN DRAMA an offence against universal order, a conflict of the passions with divine and human laws, but merely the crime which falls within the province of the police and the reformatory. Iffland's plays offer actors many ac- ceptable roles and their after-effect may be traced right down to the present. In respect to duration and strength of influence only one writer can be compared to Iffiand, namely, his some- what younger contemporary, AUGUSTUS KOTZEBUE. But the same expedients w T hich Iffiand employed for an honorable purpose are in Kotzebue degraded to the serv- ice of speculation on lower impulses. In his works the frivolous noble is contrasted with the worthy citizen, the Germans are honorable, the foreigners rascals and deceivers. He does not, how r ever, use these contrasts from an honest patriotic conviction but merely to flatter his hearers ; they are with him, like everything else, only means to the sole end of external success. Thus his great talent, in spite of the enormous production of over two hundred dramatic works, brought no lasting good to the German stage. Owing to the fact that he every- where aimed at light superficial entertainment he be- came for a long time the real ruler of the stage and even in the Weimar theatre when conducted by Goethe no author was played so often as Kotzebue. He tried his hand at all varieties from lofty tragedy to vulgar farce, with the greater success the lower his view-point, and the more he aimed with coarse but sure art at the momentary effect of pealing laughter or of cheap emo- tion. His favorite characters are those which deviate from the path of virtue: fallen women and girls whose misfortune is deplored and represented as the conse- quence of excusable human weakness; frivolous sedu- GERMAN DRAMA 5 cers transfigured by the splendor of knightly charm ; im- mature, naively lascivious girls, the forerunners of the modern demi-vierges, and aging worldlings. Menschenhass und Reue (1787) brought Kotzebue his first and greatest success. It was for a long time the favorite play of the entire German public and was also received in London, Paris and Madrid with an ap- plause such as only Goethe's Werther met with among all German writings in foreign lands. A long succes- sion of other very influential works followed, among which possibly Die Unglticklichen (1798), Die beiden Klingsberg (1801), Die deutschen Kleinstddter (1803) and Pagenstreiche (1804) may be regarded as having relatively the greatest merit, because in them Kotze- bue 's talent for the comic of environment and his un- erring command of all the devices of technique is best shown. All those who took German art seriously rightly saw in him its most dangerous enemy. When Schiller, after a long interruption, turned again to dramatic poetry in Wallenstein (1800) he had to try and combat the moral weakness of the time which manifested itself in its favorite authors. He wished to unite proportion, harmony, grandeur, intrinsic truth and beautiful form; he substituted an inspired rhythmical, elevated language for prose and for the ethical code of the period of en- lightenment, an exalted idealism which was filled with pride in its independence, won by mighty will-power, of all the accidental conditions of existence. Schiller now strove for an effect similar to the overpowering force of Greek tragedy, and sought to unite the lofty dignity of the ancients with the technique of Shake- speare, the demand for moral freedom with the fatalism 6 GERMAN DRAMA of classical authors. Each of his dramas from Wallen- stcitn onwards represents an attempt to combine these opposing conceptions of life and art: none is entirely successful. The depths of the gulf which he wishes to bridge over is most clearly recognisable in Wallen- stein and in Die Braut von Messina (1803) but even the two intermediate works, Maria Stuart (1801) and Die Jung f ran von Orleans (1802), as well as his last completed drama, Wilhelm Tell (1804), and the pow- erful fragment Demetrius bear witness that the prob- lem is not capable of solution. The lofty sentiment, the tumultuous rhetorical movement, the accurate cal- culation of effect, and above all the incomparable dramatic instinct of the poet, do not easily allow the disinterested spectator to become conscious of the inherent faults in these great works. Schiller himself clearly recognized them and, when death suddenly car- ried him off, he was on the way to a realism which de- rives the fate of man solely from his will and desires. That it was no longer permitted him to give form to this conception in new works, is the greatest misfortune which has happened to German drama. As it was, his last works had to rank for the host of imitators as ab- solutely classical models and the conviction took root that only in this form was dramatic poetry of lofty style possible. This error was strengthened and kept alive by the fact that the following period did not produce a Ger- man dramatist who, like Schiller, was capable of com- bining the highest artistic purposes with noble conform- ity to national character and of gaining in this way a last- ing influence over the great masses. His greatest con- temporary, Goethe, wrote the stage a farewell letter when GERMAN DRAMA 7 he gave to his people the first part of Faust, which for all that could not remain a stranger to the stage because its wealth of original poetic power was too great. But when working at the second part, to which he gave form in extreme old age, Goethe had before his eyes a scene of action which was not yet in existence. With un- ceasing effort the German stage is grappling with this work which one day must become its greatest possession. GERMAN DRAMA FROM 1800-1830. ROMANTIC DRAMA THE predominant literary movement of the first three decades of the nineteenth century was not favorable to the creation of drama. The Romanticists did not give to the stage a single work of lasting importance. The great dramatic writers of this period, Kleist and Grill- parzer, went each his own way, the former scarcely heeded, the latter, after the great triumphs of his first works, soon frightened away from the theatre by animos- ity and lack of appreciation. The field of lofty tragedy belonged to the imitators of Schiller ; in play and comedy Iffland and Kotzebue remained the masters and models. Only the dialect play and the romantic opera developed new, independent growth. Goethe and Schiller have their heroes come into con- flict with the objective world-order and go under be- cause they will not renounce their claims, which are subjectively justifiable but objectively unjustifiable. On the other hand the theory of the Romanticists is un- limited subjectivity, their law of life and art is caprice which acknowledges no power above itself. From this follow definite consequences for the form and contents of the creations. There is no definite, clearly recognized goal, no strong clear-cut purpose out of which the action necessarily grows, but instead we have moods, depend- ence upon outward impressions, sensations, aimless wan- 8 derings in life and in the unbounded world of phantasy, delight in what is novel, curious, mysterious or mystical. There is a lack of clear modelling, a striving after pic- turesque and musical effects, a preference for lyric form, and especially for the prose romance, the loose technique of which seems to give the freest play to ca- price. In this art there is no place for drama. The dramatic works of the Romanticists contradict either their own principles or the nature of the class. We are indebted to them for only one great production, which has been of the greatest service to the German stage and the further evolution of our dramatic writings, viz: the translation of the works of Shakespeare. True, Wie- land had already turned most of them into German, with gaps here and there, with many mistakes and with- out penetrating into the spirit of the author and of his times. It was only when AUGUST WILLIAM SCHLEGEL, in 1797-1801, offered sixteen plays in a masterly version that the greatest dramatist of all time was really won for Germany. Schlegel himself translated afterwards but one additional drama (Richard HI), the rest were the work of Count Wolf Baudissin and Ludwig Tieck's daughter Dorothea. In 1825-1833 this so-called Schlegel- Tieck Shakespeare appeared and is, in spite of occasional faults, the greatest monument since Luther 's Bible to the skill of German translators. For a time Calderon's plays also exercised a strong influence upon the German drama. These were trans- lated by Aug. W. Schlegel under the title, Spanisches Theater. Through them the trochaic tetrameter became popular for plays of romantic character and this form of verse obtained long after the early enthusiasm for Cal- 10 GERMAN DRAMA deron had died out. In his lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (1808) Schlegel laid the foundation of an historical interpretation which placed modern art on an equality with the classical, Shakespeare and Calderon being the central figures. This widely known work has become very important as a basis of historical judgment : the main lines of its division are still authoritative to- day. And yet August William Schlegel did not draw them himself but took them over from his more original brother, Friedrich. For these reasons the Schlegel brothers really deserved well of the German stage in spite of the fact that as independent authors they each produced but one failure, the dramas Alarcos (1802) and Ion (1803). The single writer of the Elder Romantic school who wrote numerous works in dramatic form was LUDWIG TIECK, but he, too, was no dramatist. Schiller's judg- ment concerning him gives the explanation: "His is a very graceful, fanciful, gentle nature, he merely lacks strength and depth and always will. " In Der gestiefelte Kater (1797) the fairy-story serves only as an excuse for ridiculing his opponents, Iffland, Kotzebue and the age of Enlightenment. As he does not produce a drama, but merely gives the description of the staging of a drama, he disregards completely a compact dramatic form. The same thing happens in another way in the Leben und Tod der heiligen Genoveva (1799) and in Kaiser Octavianus (1804). Both are large pictures glorifying the Middle Ages and made up of lyric and epic parts. Tieck studied the stage closely from his youth up and as editor, translator and critic produced valuable works such as his Altenglisches Theater (1811), Deutsches Theater (1817) Shakespeares Vorschule ROMANTIC DRAMA 11 (1823-29) and Kritische Schriften (1848). However little he followed the laws of dramatic creation in his own writings, he was thoroughly acquainted with them. Germany has had few students of the drama with the same sound judgment. The gifted CLEMENS BEENTANO was directly inspired by Tieck. His Gustav Wasa (1800) imitates to excess Der gestiefelte Rater, his historical romantic drama, Die Grundung Prags (1815), is just as lacking in form and as insipid as the Genoveva. He appears more in- dependent in the clever comedy, Ponce de Leon (1804), though it, too, is unsuited to acting, and in the sprightly vaudeville Die lustigen Musikanten (1803). The other dramas in Romantic style by Wilhelm von Schiitz, Achim von Arnim, Friedrich de la Motte-Fou- que and Joseph von Eichendorff are equally unimpor- tant for the stage. Better success attended the Danish author, ADAM GOTTLIEB OEHLENSCHLAGER, who followed the German Romanticists most closely and spread their views in his own country. He wrote in German and Danish. In his fairy-drama, dedicated to Goethe, Aladdin oder die Wunderlampe (1808), he was still noticeably influenced by Tieck, in his highly successful Correggio (1816) he wrote the tragedy, often retold afterwards, of the artist who shipwrecks because a contemptible world does not understand him. The greatest master of form among his contemporar- ies, ERNST AUGUST, GRAF VON PLATEN-HALLERMUNDE, showed himself to be an artist in clash with existing real- ity. His comedy, Der gldserne Panto ff el (1823), util- izes the fairy-stories of Aschenbrodel and Dornroschen, in the same way as Tieck had before used Der gestiefelte 12 GERMAN DRAMA Kater, to sketch, by a mixture of forms in Romantic fashion, a picture of society colored by ironic contrasts. Then he turned his attention to comedy in the style of Aristophanes. In this however, he did not, like his classic model, treat the great questions of the time, but only ridiculed, from the view-point of superior intelli- gence and a high art-ideal, the phenomena of intellectual life which did not appeal to him. Thus in Schatz des Rhampsinit (1824) he scourged the Hegelian philos- ophy, in Die verhdngnissvolle Gabel (1826) the Fate- tragedy, in Der Romantische Odipus (1829) "the whole mad company of poetasters, which improvises feverish dreams upon the dulcimer and profanes our noble Ger- man language." Especially in the addresses to the au- dience, where the author interrupts the action and speaks to the public himself, he pours out his contempt upon everything which seems to him vulgar or contrary to art. The lofty pathos of tragedy is here united effec- tively with low, oftentimes very comical pictures and ex- pressions. The figures, however, are not clear, but are representatives of whole schools and only the brilliant cleverness of form could delude one into overlooking the lack of true poetry. Platen was as powerless to win success on the stage as his opponent, KARL LEBRECHT IMMERMANN, who in Gardenia und Celinde (1826), speculating on the delight in the horrible, gave new form to a repulsive subject from Andreas Gryphius which Achim von Arnim had already used. The Trauerspiel in Tirol (1828) aimed at pre- senting in a great historical picture, the fight for in- dependence of the mountain-folk against the French, but Immermann did not know how to portray convincingly either the Alpine world or the simple heart-life of its FATE TRAGEDY IS inhabitants. And even with the aid of fictitious charac- ters no dramatic action resulted. A revision by the author under the title Andreas Hofer did as little to re- move these faults as did later attempts by others down to the most recent times. Immermann portrayed the fate of the mightiest of the Hohenstaufens in his tragedy Kaiser Friedrich II (1828) from the view-point that the victory of a pure and mighty Catholicism over the liberal thinker, even the most powerful, represents the final outcome. He does not aim, like his contemporary Raupach, at recounting the historic course of events ; on the contrary, a fictitious family-tragedy stands in the foreground. The same applies also to his trilogy Alexis (1832) in which the contrast between Peter the Great and his unfortunate son is represented as a similar one in Don Carlos. As author Immermann produced his best work in the thoughtful dramatic myth Merlin (1832), though with complete disregard of what was suitable for the stage. FATE TRAGEDY Among the Eomanticists ZACHARIAS WERNER was the only one who understood how to unite the tendencies of the school with a form suitable for acting. His great importance in the history of the drama does not depend upon the effective but mystical and emotional play, Martin Luther oder die Weihe der Kraft (1806), or upon any other of his bulky dramas, but upon a trag- edy in one act entitled Der vierundzwanzigste Februar. "Under Goethe's auspices" it was written in 1809 and was the first of the Fate-tragedies which for some years dominated the stage. The contradiction between classi- 14 GERMAN DRAMA oal fatalism and the modern world-philosophy, which Schiller had not been able to overcome, is here adjusted by the introduction of a wilful, malicious chance plotting the destruction of men, in the place of a great and powerful fate. In superstition, in wanton joy in the horrible and the uncanny lies the cause of the vogue of the Fate-tragedy which, however, quickly passed. Even in the individual works of Tieck this trend appeared. Its origin was favored by Schiller's Braut von Messina, with this difference, that Schiller never degrades to low designs the fate which obstinately and at all costs carries through its predetermined purposes ; on the con- trary he succeeds in getting out of it an effect deeply thrilling and exalted. Of this there is no trace in the best of the real Fate- tragedies, Werner's plays. The spectator receives only the impression of horror. At the same time Der vier- undzwanzigste Februar is the work of a poet, while his imitators try to obtain the same success with ineffective mechanical construction. The calculating, unsympa- thetic ADOLPH MULLNER, who had before composed com- edies in Kotzebue's style, wrote in direct dependence on Werner, Der neunundzwanzigste Februar (1812), also a tragedy in one act. He heaps up the horrors ; bigamy, incest, childmurder, blizzards at night, solitude, thirst for blood are made use of to increase the terror as much as possible, and as an effective addition an effemi- nate sentimentality is introduced. His success was so great that Milliner in the very same year wrote a sec- ond play of four acts in the same style, Die Schuld. The same ingredients are here mingled just as unpleas- antly as before, with such accurate calculation that they deceived not only the mass of the spectators but also HEINRICH VON KLEIST 15 many penetrating critics. By many Werner and Milli- ner were at the time considered worthy successors of Schiller. No wonder that now a great flood of worthless Fate-tragedies swept over the land, each and all por- traying the operations of a secret inevitable power which by preference makes use of certain days and objects for its fateful interference in human destinies, avenges the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and finds rest only when the family, the source of the crime, is exter- minated. How strong the influence of the Fate-drama was at that time is clear from the fact that even GRILL- PARZER bases his first work, Die Ahnfrau, upon fatalistic ideas and that HEINRICH HEINE follows in the footsteps of Werner and Milliner in the only two tragedies he wrote, Ratcliffe and Almansor (1823), which, in other respects as well, were complete failures. HEINRICH VON KLEIST The great writer who, after the death of Schiller, might have been named to continue the evolution of German drama to modern and national form could find no hearing in the age of Romanticism and of Fate- drama. Thanks to the exertions of Ludwig Tieck, pub- lic attention began to turn to him in the second decade of the nineteenth century without, however, his being recognized in his true greatness and historical impor- tance. Only much later did it become clear that HEIN- RICH VON KLEIST, while he was aiming to unite the art of ^Eschylus and Shakespeare, was on the way to a new and national drama in harmony with the spirit of the age. Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist, born at Frank- 16 GERMAN DRAMA fort on the Oder, Oct. 18, 1777, became an author late in life. At the age of fifteen, as a member of an old Prussian family of soldiers, he joined the Guards in Potsdam, serving reluctantly. During the Rhine cam- paign of 1792 he felt the deep gulf between the duties of a man and those of a soldier. In 1799 he gave up his military position but again and again sought refuge under the wings of the Prussian eagle when life pressed him too hard. In his native city he collected with an insatiable thirst literary, historical and philosophical knowledge and thereby probably laid the foundation of that derangement which all too soon was to lame his power of will and purpose. His portrait shows a beard- less boyish face with melancholy eyes, lines of suffering about the mouth and a splendid forehead. His inter- course with the cultured circles of Berlin, to which city he returned in 1800, awakened in him the idea of win- ning bread and fame as an author. He soon found in Robert Guiskard's fate a subject of imposing grandeur. In fruitless wrestling with this task he dissipated his life's energies during the following years. Restlessly he wandered away from his native place. Paris could not give him peace nor was his hope fulfilled that in Switzerland, in the idyllic quiet of country life, he would recover from his unrest. A few months only of happy life were granted him while he led in Berne the modest life of a poet in company with the sons of Wie- land and Solomon Gessner and with Heinrich Zschokke. For a time he now allowed his Robert Guiskard to drop into the background, and his first work, Die Familie Schroffenstein, took form. In spite of the fact that Ludwig Uhland, who looked after its publication, sub- jected it to a thorough revision, even in this form it still HEINRICH VON KLEIST 17 bears testimony to the independent originality of Kleist, scarcely influenced by any predecessors. Not from the mighty primal impulses of mankind but from distrust, that black poison of the soul, does ruin proceed. It destroys both sexes; the blossoms of love, unfolding amid hate and murder with magical fra- grance, fade away under its pestilential breath. With compelling necessity the course of action follows from the given data and the characters are seen to be most sharply and realistically conceived. Most remarkable is the difference between his language and that of his predecessors. In place of the figurative, copious and sentimental diction of Schiller, gilded over with an even brilliancy, in Kleist exuberance and concise brevity appear in turn. His pictures do not disdain the re- pulsive and common, but every shade of thought and feeling is brought to clearest expression. Acute, in- deed subtle explanations are introduced while the action rushes on. Limpid flow is lacking in the verse, often- times the sentences burst forth and tumble over each other like rocks down the mountain. Men forge their own fates, there is no interference by a higher power standing apart from the world of reality. In the second work of these months at Berne, Kleist gave to German literature one of its best comedies, Der zerbrochene Krug. The same pleasure in acute argu- mentation, noticeable in Die Familie Schroffenstein, is found in this play. The effective forms of legal proceed- ings, which writers were very fond of using at the be- ginnings of German comedy and especially in the carnival-plays, are here taken up again for a higher purpose. For no longer is it a question of the repro- duction of an amusing scene; here a human figure of 18 GERMAN DRAMA the significance of a type appears in the village magis- trate, Adam, who with low, foxy shrewdness tries to turn the suspicion for the deed he himself has done upon another, and thereby becomes involved deeper and deeper in ruin. This court-scene is a really brilliant per- formance but fitted out with a wealth of striking fea- tures almost too great for the stage. It serves, however, the purpose of giving an impression of the most com- plete material reality. In this regard the play forms a striking contrast to the unpractical idealism of his predecessors and contemporaries. Lastly, in Switzerland, too, Robert Guiskard developed more and more towards completion. But we only pos- sess a few introductory scenes which Kleist restored with difficulty after he had destroyed the great play in a paroxysm of the blackest despair. The fragment takes its place among the greatest dramatic creations of all time. In it the difference between the ancient and the modern view-point is overcome by putting in the place of fate the plague, that inexorable power which rules in the world of reality and which cuts down men without any consideration for their plans and purposes. The style unites the dignified power of ^Eschylus with the passionate subjectivity of modern writers. The chief characters stand out at the very first glance in plastic beauty and are at the same time endowed with a rich soul-life full of splendor and color. The func- tion of the Greek chorus is represented by individuals taken from the whole body who give expression to the feelings of all. After he had come through a severe illness in Switzer- land, Kleist was justified in venturing with Robert Guiskard to try to gain admission into the circle of HEINRICH VON KLEIST 19 noble spirits who had come together in Weiinar. Wie- land especially gave him a kindly welcome, Schiller also made him advances in a friendly spirit and Goethe tried to constrain him to co-operation in his works, though they appealed but little to his nature. But the mor- bid ambition of Kleist could not submit to looking up to the great man of Weimar. "I will tear the wreath from his brow," he cried, and was consumed with pas- sionate, fruitless incitement of his own powers; "Hell gave me my half-talent, Heaven gives a whole or none at all. ' ' He could not endure the serene air of Weimar. Once more he was driven to restless wandering through the world and the end was that destruction of his great life-work, which meant renunciation of all his plans. Modestly he re-entered the Civil service and in Konigs- berg he found a couple of years of quiet, during which first of all he made his thoughtful recast of the Amphitryon legend. No longer, as with Plautus and Moliere who had treated it before him, is the subject ridicule of the deceived husband ; it is rather the almost tragic perplexity of feeling on the part of the con- stant and faithful wife Alkmene. When the god avows to her that he had come to her in the form of her hus- band, then holy tremors pass over her but she wishes this night blotted out of her memory. There is some- thing allied to the mysteries of the Christian religion in this new, soulful content given to the old heathen legend. Penthesilea, likewise begun in Konigsberg, also lays bare the innermost depths of a woman's heart. Again a new content is given to a Greek legend, which to our modern feeling is scarcely comprehensible. By endow- ing the heroine with a supreme need for love and at 20 GERMAN DRAMA the same time with an unconquerable desire to gain the mastery over her lover, the poet creates an extivmr type, a strange mixture of attractive and repulsive features, but after all grand and symmetrical. All the charm of his language, melodious and yet not cloying, of his images full of feeling and picturesque effects, Kleist poured out in the Penthesilea as in no other work; and yet it is just the very one which is most difficult to comprehend. He only finished it in Dresden, after the misfortunes of the Fatherland had startled him out of his brief period of quiet in Konigsberg and an unfortunate inci- dent had caused him to be thrust into prison in France. And now for the third time he tried again, from an- other point of view, to portray the essential character of the loving wife. As a companion picture to Pen- thesilea he wrote Kdthchen v*n Heilbronn, whose hero- ine voluntarily endures every ill treatment and every disgrace which the loved one heaps upon her. Clothed with all the charm of the fairy-story the gracious figure had an effect like a miraculous picture. But in con- tradistinction to the vague, fantastic manner with which the Romanticists of his day treated similar subjects, here everything is set forth clearly and definitely. Kleist chose the popular form of the drama of chivalry and by a revision met the requirements of the stage better than he had done before. For this reason Kdthchen at- tained a popularity beyond any of his other works and was proof even against the wretched stage-versions in which it had to appear. A burning hatred of Napoleon drove the author out of Dresden when Austria rose in 1809 to fight for free- dom. At that time he wrote Die Hermannsschlacht to HEINRICH VON KLEIST 21 inspire the Germans to a national war against the con- queror. But embittered passion could produce no work of art and the unsuitable material, which had always been intractable to dramatists, helped to bring about the failure of this powerful drama, though it was very impressive in individual passages. When Austria was vanquished, Kleist again and for the last time sought help in Berlin. He brought with him a new work, Der Prinz von Hamburg, a companion piece to Hermannsschlacht. It showed where the poet saw the hope for the salvation of his native country, namely, in the Prussian spirit of unconditional obedi- ence and in a readiness to sacrifice everything for the state. Kleist does not make his prince despise death like the ordinary heroes of tragedy; on the contrary, he trembles so violently in its presence that everything else in comparison with mere existence seems as nothing. But the conviction of the necessity of discipline conquers even this fear of death and the prince is ready to suffer the punishment he has deserved for his transgression. Thus the power of the sense of duty, through which Prussia has become great, is upheld in all its strength. In the Prinz von Hamburg Kleist produced his best and last work. All the brilliant characteristics, which make his figure stand out prominently from the great crowd of dramatists, he displayed in this work as never before and combined them with full mastery over all artistic devices. His power as a poet was still increasing when despair and an intolerable disgust of life drove him, on Nov. 21, 1811, into voluntary death. In his lifetime only Der zerbrochene Krug and Kdthchen von Heilbronn were put upon the stage. Kleist 's fame blossomed late and even then his attempt 22 GERMAN DRAMA to create a realistic drama met with but little real ap- preciation. The field belonged to the false idealism of the descendants of classicism. THE IMITATORS OF SCHILLER. With the works of his last period Schiller had won his greatest triumphs, because he combined in ideal excellence suitable stage-technique with great thought- content, unerring judgment with inspiring flights of poetry. It did not seem difficult to appropriate this style which offered so many advantages. The prepon- derance of incident over characterization anticipated the delight of the public in external agencies, in stage effects. The action is under the guidance of a higher power outside the play. This exercises an inexorable influence over great characters who think themselves free and fight against it with all their might. And yet the individual case appears as a type of human destiny. In the characterization of his personages he preferred great and easily comprehended outlines and avoided everything complicated, inexplicable and disordered. His language is full of grand and brilliant metaphors which sacrifice pithiness to beauty and is rich in inter- polations of generalized truths and aphorisms. The subjects are taken from the history of the Middle Ages or of modern times and offer plenty of occasion for varied and figure-filled canvases. The iambic pentameter seemed easy to master and gave dignity to the dialogue which, by help of the rhyme at the climaxes, attained increased melodious effect. All these superficial qualities of Schiller's later dramas have been copied faithfully for nearly a century THE IMITATORS OF SCHILLER 23 by his imitators and they have supposed that thereby they possessed a style in lofty drama which would hold good for all time. But they forgot in doing this that only Schiller's peculiar personality gave these forms their validity and disguised their lack of unity and modern consciousness. Schiller's great judgment in matters of history had comprehended in every case the true significance of the scenes he portrayed, his great genius had given form in brilliant language to an ideal, self-acquired world of thought. The power of his char- acterization had, in defiance of his own artificially con- structed principles, almost everywhere revealed the in- ner just as fully as the outward causes of the destinies and deeds of his heroes. The breath of inspiration ex- haled from his dramas carried all before it and corre- sponded to that ethical idealism which soon afterwards, disjoined from other ideas, became a mere phrase with later writers. It was a fateful error when it was gen- erally believed that one could not improve on Schiller and must strive for his effect and with his means. Even in young THEODOR KORNER these characteristics are conspicuous in his first dramas, Toni, Zriny, Hedwig, Rosamunde (all 1812). As a writer of comedies he fol- lows Kotzebue, whom he also resembles in his rapid and frivolous methods of work. He possessed a decided sense for theatrical effects and would doubtless have given to the German stage a number of successful, even though inherently unimportant works, had not a heroic death for the Fatherland fallen to his lot. Without the stage-skill of Korner, the noble LUDWIG UHLAND could not, with all his efforts, win any success as a dramatist, in spite of his higher poetic gifts. The only representatives of his numerous sketches which 24 GERMAN DRAMA appeared in print, Ernst, Herzog von Schwaben (1818) and Ludwig, der Bayer (1819) brought no gain to the stage. The same thing happened to a number of dilet- tanti who expressed noble ideas in their dramas without the necessary mastery of technique, such as FRIEDRICH VON UCHTRITZ, EDWARD VON SCHENK, and MlCHAEL BEER. Directors of theatres and actors, such as AUGUST KLINGE- MANN and FRANZ VON HOLBEIN, who with shrewd calcu- lation understood how to employ Schiller's style gained a great public. The greatest success in this way was won by ERNST RAUPACH, a prosaic, cool, calculating, common sense writer, who for a time dominated the stage with his worthless tragedies and comedies. FRANZ GRILLPARZER. The one great dramatist whom Germany possessed at Schiller's death, Heinrich von Kleist, died unheeded by his contemporaries. The whole energy of the nation was turned to the one thought of deliverance from the yoke of Napoleon and, when after a great and heroic struggle it was finally accomplished, when this mighty restless spirit was banished to St. Helena, every one hoped for a period of freedom. Never was a hope more shamefully deceived. What the sword had won, the pen destroyed. The princes forgot the promises which in time of need they had made to their subjects. Matters looked worst of all in Austria. For centuries the Hapsburgs had seen in Jesuitism, the means of hold- ing together and ruling their disunited peoples. In the short reign of Joseph II alone was a more liberal spirit displayed. "Good" Emperor Franz returned to the old paths, the Jesuits again received charge of FRANZ GRILLPARZER 25 public instruction; the cloisters and other institutions secularized by the state were again established and the police supervision of Metternich threatened all inde- pendent thought with the severest punishment. FRANZ GRILLPARZER, the ablest of those who followed in the footsteps of Goethe and Schiller, had to live and write in this Austria of Metternich 's. Where they had stood he would have preferred to stand, for he thought that the world would need several generations to rise to the height of their idealism. But, to-day we must say it was fortunate for him, his gentle nature was not strong enough to overcome the earthly, and therefore his creations could not disown the influence of the soil and of the time in which they had their origin. He first saw the light of day in Vienna on Jan. 15, 1791. The tenacious uprightness and clear judgment of his father, the passionate, musical and nervous nature of his mother were united in him. This mingling of the opposite natures of the parents made Grillparzer a peculiar, contradictory, perverse and yet weak-willed character. Only a small measure of freedom and favor- able circumstances would have been necessary to let him find the way to the cheerful regions of peace and good fortune. His nature and his talents continually sought peace and beauty; and yet from youth up he was sinned against by the education and the environ- ment in which he grew to manhood. When he had fin- ished his studies, after a distressing existence as a private tutor, he received a position in the Civil service in which he was obliged to remain until 1856. The fame which he won as a writer was fatal to him in this position and hindered his advancement. As an official 26 GERMAN DRAMA he was not taken at his full value and was considered a suspicious character in the Austria of that day, as was every one whose independent spirit aimed to attain to higher things. Therefore he was obliged in the days of his best powers to carefully repress every expression of independence and was never sure but that the life of his intellectual offspring would be stifled even in the cradle by a stupid censorship. He became a discon- tented, embittered man. Not understood by the easy- going, happy-spirited Viennese, he lived in solitude beside the love of his youth to whom he had never dared to unite himself because he lacked courage to believe in good fortune. The Revolution of 1848 brought the possibility of freedom to write and his almost forgotten works were revived through the instrumentality of Laube; but that did not become in him a joyous in- citement to new activity because his desire to create had died in him. He lived on until Jan. 21, 1872, but during this long period produced scarcely anything new. Grillparzer first appeared to the public as an author when twenty-five years of age. His first acted drama, Die Ahnfrau (1816), was a fate-tragedy in spite of the fact that the poet denied this. It did, indeed, stand high above the seemingly similar plays of Milliner by whom it was most influenced ; not with cool calcula- tion but with glowing passion did the poet transform the contents of a penny-dreadful into a genuine and great work of art. With him the hereditary impulse to evil, which may lie in the blood, does not do away with moral responsibility. In this way Die Ahnfrau is distinguished from the rest of the fate-tragedies as well as from the heredity-plays of the present. Moreover, it is not a question with him, as with his predecessors, FRANZ GRILLPARZER 27 of revealing former events; on the contrary, an action developing with astonishing rapidity in the presence of the spectators compels the attention of all. And thus Die Ahnfrau, which quickly made Grillparzer 's name famous all over Germany, has also justly outlived the vogue of the fate-tragedies. His second tragedy, Sappho (1818), forms the strong- est contrast to Die Ahnfrau. In the latter he borrowed the material from the field of the robber-and-ghost- romances and the passionate pathos from Schiller's early dramas; in the former Goethe's Iphigenie was his model and he endeavored to attain to classic and refined beauty. His characters are just as noble as those of Goethe but their movements are more animated and their acts proceed rather from the accidental con- ditions of a peculiar personality. The heroine, Sappho, is to perish because of the variance between her calling as an artist and the longings of her passionate woman's nature. And yet the poet did not succeed in giving this conflict convincing form, for in the catastrophe she is in reality only a jealous woman in love and ab- sorbed in her passion, a woman who loves a younger man. Phaon, deceiving himself, believes he loved the admired artist but recognizes his mistake when the lovely Melitta comes into his ken. In this couple we see, for the first time in Grillparzer 's works, an awaken- ing through love out of a dreamy existence to a life full of action. Though Die Ahnfrau, because of its affinity to the fate-tragedies and in spite of its success, did meet with opposition from the critics, the poet was now recognized because of Sappho as the greatest among those who had appeared since the classic writers. A brilliant future seemed to be opening up before him 28 GERMAN DRAMA and with glad heart he began the creation of a third work, Das goldene Vliess, which was to far surpass the two preceding in range and importance. The ex- tended treatment necessitated three parts, although Grillparzer himself recognised that the mutual depend- ence of one part on the others would give to the whole something of an epic effect, by means of which it would probably gain in individuality but lose in truth and pithiness. When the first part, Der Gastfreund, and the first three acts of the second, Die Argonauten, had been fin- ished in the brief period between Sept. 29 and Nov. 3, 1818, the suicide of his mother interrupted the activities of the poet for a long time and only in 1820 was the work completed by the addition of the last part, Die Medea. In spite of this, the long-drawn-out composi- tion possesses a complete, well-knit, intrinsic unity. The fleece, as an outward sign of what is desirable and eagerly sought after but unrighteously gained, ruins all its possessors, not, however, as the result of a curse attached to it, but as Jason says: "Nicht gut, nicht schlimm ist, was die Gotter geben, Und der Empfanger erst macht das Geschenk. So wie das Brot, das uns die Erde spendet, Den Starken starkt, des Kranken Siechtum mehrt, So sind der Gotter hohe Gaben alle, Dem Guten gut, dem Argen zum Verderben." Medea, the heroine of the trilogy, develops from a naive child of nature, in whom savagery and tenderness form a peculiarly fascinating mixture, into a deserted woman thirsting for revenge. She murders her own children in order to take vengeance on Jason, an out- wardly pleasant but unimpassioned egoist. The con- FRANZ GRILLPARZER 29 trast between barbaric, unbridled impulse and Hellenic culture forms the background and is another source of the tragic fate of the heroine. Once more only did Grillparzer go back to classic antiquity, in the tragedy, Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (1831), when he made the same subject which Schiller had treated in his ballad, Hero und Leander, the basis of a drama. While Schiller makes the bold youth who ventures everything for the possession of his loved one the hero, Grillparzer glorifies in Hero love itself. This constitutes the conflict and the tragic sub- ject. In Hero all is bright and unconscious. Not a mo- ment does she reflect on the righteousness of her action ; the most gracious charm encircles her; her nature is thoroughly transparent and sensible, but in her soul there glimmers an uncertain, ominous light. The style approaches that of the comedy with its many finely executed touches and its outward calm, which makes the fear of approaching fate flare up at certain points only the more threateningly. This same mixture, even if in a somewhat different proportion, is shown in the fairy-play, Der Traum ein Leben (1834). The technique of the scenes, passing by in vehement rapidity, is successfully caught from a dream and the whole dipped in the gay colors of Oriental splendor. Greatness is recognised as danger- ous, Fame as an idle game : " Was er giebt, sind nichts als Schatten, Was er nimmt, es 1st so viel." How deeply this conviction was rooted in Grillparzer 's breast, is shown by his peculiar plan for the continuation of the first part of Goethe's Faust. After Gretchen's 30 GERMAN DRAMA terrible catastrophe Faust was to take thought with himself and so find in what happiness really consists; in self-limitation and peace of mind. This draft re- mained undeveloped but Konig Ottokars Gluck und Ende (1825) promulgated the same doctrine of the ruin which follows unbridled desire. Beside Ottokar, who in many of his characteristics reminds one of Napoleon, there appeared as his superior opponent, Rudolf Hapsburg, the founder of the Austrian Imperial dynasty. With warm patriotism Grillparzer pictured him in his simple, capable, unassuming manliness and thus to the injury of the drama diverted interest from the fate of Ottokar. Here alone has he pictured that passion, otherwise treated most frequently by modern dramatists, viz: lust for power. Those conflicts ap- pealed more strongly to him which interfered rather with the fine emotions and the solution of which is dependent upon the peculiar nature of the characters concerned. For this reason the character and moral conflict of the Palatine Bankbanus had an attraction for him. But in spite of all the charm which the problem and its psychological treatment possesses in the play, Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn (1828), there is after all something painful and whimsical in it, because the servant's faith- fulness gains the victory over more worthy human char- acteristics and because one can only with difficulty put himself in the place of Bankbanus. And yet the poet succeeded in the delineation of two figures, the beautiful female character Ernys and the arrogant mad Otto von Meran, which are counted among the most original in all German dramatic literature. The drama was played in Vienna, Feb. 28, 1828, amid storms of applause, but FRANZ GRILLPARZER 31 immediately afterwards forbidden, probably because a popular revolt is described, and in spite of the fact that the spirit of Metternich's time, the spirit of implicit obedience, found in the play its most brilliant artistic expression. No wonder that creative work became distasteful to the poet. Finally he desisted entirely from offering his contemporaries new gifts when his comedy, Weh' dem, der liigt, at its first production in 1838 was rejected by the stupid audience of the Burg-theater at Vienna. In place of the usual shallow drollery of comedy there appears in this work a theme of serious importance to humanity, and the treatment is bright and masterly. The conditional nature of all human action, which must not make claim to perfection, is seen in the examples of the bold, lovable, wily scullion Leon and of the wise and extremely kind but unsophisticated Bishop Gregory von Tours. Once more the worlds of culture and of barbarism are contrasted with each other. The rude ludicrous tricks, by which the boorish Germans are characterized, excited for a long time the greatest sur- prise, until the genuine poetry and great merit of this comedy were recognized, for it stands alone in its class. Grillparzer had still more than a generation to live, but the few works which were produced in this period remained locked up in the poet's desk because he did not wish to expose himself to the fickle judgment of a public which had made him uncertain of himself. In his will he devised that two of his most valuable dramas should be burned after his death; Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg and Libussa. Granted that the first of these works is rightly considered ineffective, the author has at least produced in Emperor Rudolf II his most finely 32 GERMAN DRAMA conceived tragic figure. Libussa must, as symbolic poetry, win more and more recognition, the farther the knowledge extends that the greatest problems of poetry lie entirely within the field of the symbolic. What was prominent before in Das goldene Vliess and in ]V< k ' dem, der lilgt significant indeed but not a chief theme the representation of mankind in the transition from unconscious, instinct-impelled existence to conscious will- ing and doing, this is in this play in the dress of the fairy-story, so developed that the pain of departing from a purely natural existence and the blessings of the new and richer life of a more highly evolved human- ity appear in the same warm pure light of historical knowledge. The Judin von Toledo, too, did not become known until after the death of the author. Having its origin in a play by the Spaniard, Lope de Vega, whom Grill- parzer honored very highly in his old age, he repre- sented the youthful, well-trained king as consumed by passion for the cold, sensual, mendacious Jewess who is endowed with all the charms of an original unex- hausted nature. He is completely enslaved. But he soon awakens sobered from his excesses. He is ashamed of his weakness and when the Jewess, murdered by the queen and her partisans, lies lifeless before him, her charm is also completely destroyed. And yet the king recognizes that in her was Truth, "for everything that she did proceeded from herself, suddenly, unexpectedly and without precedent." The Jiidim von Toledo takes rank deservedly with the earlier female characters of Grillparzer, charming be- cause of their unconsciousness. That the seeds of evil and of crime grow in such a creature under the cover- FRANZ GRILLPARZER 33 ing of a most attractive lovableness was to be made manifest in Esther. Only the beginning of this drama was worked out by Grillparzer, but the great love-scene between Esther and King Ahasuerus is reckoned among the most beautiful in all poetry. Grillparzer considered it the goal of his dramatic authorship to be varied and life-like down to the smallest detail, and yet at the same time never to lose sight of the underlying thought. In his diary he once called himself ' ' that middle thing between Goethe and Kotzebue which the times need" and if, at his own valuation, he does place himself too low, he has indeed and in truth, without allowing the great main lines of humanity to vanish entirely, observed better than the classic writers the small curiously drawn arabesques of per- sonages and times, while at the same time he acceded to the demand for external theatrical effect. For this reason his work is far more closely related to the tenden- cies of the authors of the present day, especially in his later dramas, than he himself suspected; also in this, that it is influenced most strongly by his native city Vienna and by the art of its people. The latter also, shows the same fresh appeal to the senses, the same delight in little carefully observed characteristics, the same lack of productive energy. But the pleasure-loving Viennese were entirely hostile to anything over-subtle and did not want to know any- thing of the great problems of life. 34 GERMAN DRAMA FERDINAND RAIMUND The theater in the suburb, Leopoldstadt, was the home of the folk-writers of Vienna, who incarnated the gay naive disposition of the lower classes in scenes from the life of their beautiful Imperial city. Following the old traditions of the Renaissance tragedy and the opera they made gods and spirits appear at the same time in their plays. Everything was calculated for comic effect ; longer than anywhere else in Germany the clown here prolonged his dominion. For this stage FERDINAND RAIMUND wrote his plays. He was the son of a turner, born June 1, 1790, received a brief schooling and was then apprenticed to a con- fectioner. At eighteen he went on the stage and from 1817-1830 played comic parts in the theater of the Leopoldstadt. As actor, he won for himself from the first general popularity. He first supplemented and revised the plays in which he acted. Then he composed, entirely in the style of the old Viennese extravaganza, his first play, Der Barometermacher auf der Zauberinsel (1823). The next was already somewhat more inde- pendent, Der Diamant des Geisterkonigs (1824). His attempt to give a somewhat greater seriousness to the form of the fairy-play produced something new and more valuable in das Mddchen aus der Feenwelt oder der Bauer ah Millionar (1826). This is a picture of a typical destiny deduced from a character likewise of the nature of a type. Grillparzer was right in congratulat- ing Austria that the healthy sense of the nation could produce such graceful plays. He says pertinently that Raimund's half unconscious gift has its root in the spirit of the masses. FERDINAND RAIMUND 35 Grillparzer ascribes it to the injudicious zeal of well- meaning friends that Raimund attempted to leave the broad ground of the popular play. But the ambition of the artist, with all his personal modesty, his great respect for higher culture, for him no longer attainable, and his serious, indeed, gloomy disposition had cer- tainly the chief part in the change that now took place in his creations. When Raimund, after a severe illness, put Die gefesselte Phantasie (1826) and Moisasurs Zauberfluch (1827) on the stage, he clothed serious problems in the usual gay magical scenes and sought to attain the style of great tragedy. But it was not a success, because a labored unnatural style had taken the place of natural simplicity and the cheery element indispensable to folk-pieces had been forcibly repressed. Therefore Raimund turned again to the manner of his first plays and with ripened powers wrote his best works: Der Alpenkomg und der Menschenfeind (1828) and Der Verschwender (1833). The self -tormenting misanthrope had already shown the increasing melancholy of the author who ended his life by suicide, Sept. 5, 1836. With him came to an end also the old Viennese folk- play with its innocent, cheerful mirth and its soulful poetry ; even in Raimund 's day a talented but unscrupu- lous author had arisen in JOHANN NESTROY who now for thirty years ruled the stage of Vienna's suburbs and made it a wrestling place for sharp satire, bold parody, frivolous sensuality and the greatest absurdities. 36 GERMAN DRAMA PLAY AND COMEDY (1800-1830) When in 1800 Schiller and Goethe offered a prize for a bright play suitable for the stage, thirteen works were sent in. Not a single one could be used, the greater number were beneath criticism. Each and every author who provided for the daily needs of the stage was a follower of Kotzebue. For the most part they were players and directors of theatres, such as KARL TOPFER, who wrote Hermann und Dorothea (1820), Des Ko'nigs Befehl (1821), Der Pariser Taugenichts (1839), Rosenmiiller und Finke (1850) ; Pius ALEXAN- DER WOLFF, the follower of Goethe in Preziosa (1821) ; KARL BLUM, who imported the short opera, called vaude- ville, from France, and composed numerous comedies in Kotzebue 's manner, such as Ich bleibe ledig (1835), Der Ball zu Ellerbrunn (1835), Erziehungsresultate (1840). More successful than all the stage writers of the male sex in their day were the two actresses, JOHANNA VON WEISSENTHURN and CHARLOTTE BIRCH-PFEIFFER. The wretched plays and comedies of the former with their disguises and intrigues, their airy speeches and sentimentality were long in highest favor with the public. The latter, after great success on the stage, turned her attention from 1828 to dramatising popular novels and stories, as for example, Der Glockner von Notredame after Victor Hugo (1837), Dorf und Stadt after Berthold Auerbach, Die Waise aus Lowood after Charlotte Bronte (1856), Die Grille, after George Sand (1860). With most unerring judgment she took from her "copy" everything that would contribute to out- ward effect on the stage and wrote most acceptable PLAY AND COMEDY 37 roles for the players. She understood how to make her plays affecting and exciting, just such as the great body of the public demanded, and thus won triumphs which in duration and number are scarcely to be sur- passed. At all times the folk-play and the lower type of drama have occasionally used dialect to produce comic effect. Through the influence of the Romanticists, dialect, so long despised, once more attained a high degree of literary importance and the drama now began to make use of it, no longer exclusively for the purpose of amusement but also as a means of delineating character. DANIEL ARNOLD wrote in the Strassburg dialect his Pfingstmontag (1816), a work which Goethe justly ad- mired. KARL MALSZ sketched the rough peculiarities of the Frankfort people in numberless local plays with stock-figures, as Der alte Bilrgerkapitdn (1820). Louis ANGELY delineated the people of Berlin in the twenties just as inoffensively and kindly as Raimund did the Viennese, though with more modest poetic talent, e. g., Das Fest der Handwerker (1828) ; JURGEN NIKLAS BARMANN composed his Hamburg Burenspillen, and his fellow-countryman, JAKOB HEINRICH DAVID, wrote local farces which were long popular, such as Eine Nacht auf Wache (1835). All the writers named contented themselves with cautiously avoiding all offence to the higher classes and sketching good and bad in their fellow countrymen. The critics ventured at most to attack municipal authorities and regulations. Just in this very thing can be seen how portentous for the drama was the oppression which, after the War of Liberation, was exercised in Germany. The play was supervised more solicitously than any other class of literature. 38 GERMAN DRAMA And yet the theatre meant then, as always in times of political decadence, compensation to the educated classes for the part denied them in public life. That enthusiasm which was not allowed to take an active part in public affairs was kindled and consumed in the enjoyment of inferior writings and of the perform- ances of actors whose importance was vastly over-rated. When one reads the criticisms of Tieck and Ludwig Borne, one is astonished at the lack of critical judgment against which they had continually to fight. The great works of Schiller and Goethe appeared but rarely and like those of Shakespeare became the sport of the "star" actor who, lacking all reverence, destroyed the very framework of these noble productions for the sake of external effect. The efforts of managers of artistic taste, such as Schreyvogel in Vienna and Immermann in Diisseldorf, were but little honored even in individual cases and had no influence at all upon other theatres, in spite of the fact that the means for a proper artistic staging were now oftener at hand because of the establishment of numerous court and city theatres. CHRISTIAN DIETRICH GRABBE There was no place in these theatres for such a fantastical genius as that of CHRISTIAN DIETRICH GRABBE. He was born at Detmold, Dec. 1, 1801, brought up in poor circumstances as the son of the superintend- ent of a house of correction and while a student wrote his first work, Herzog Theodor von Gothland (1822). When completed he sent it to Tieck and demanded that he brand him publicly as an impertinent and wretched CHRISTIAN DIETRICH GRABBE 39 poetaster if he found his tragedy similar to the products of the usual writers of the day. In this utterance is seen his mania for departing from the customary and it put its stamp upon his first as well as on all his later dramas. They are alive with bold cynicism, un- tamed caprice but also with great and genuine passion. There is also the play of brilliant humor, profound contempt for the world and insolent arrogance in the comedy, Schcrz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung (1822), and it cannot be staged at all. In his birthplace Grabbe got a small position and in new work rose to clearer heights. Don Juan und Faust (1824), a bold attempt to contrast with one another these two representatives of the strongest sen- sual and intellectual desires, was free from the earlier outbreaks of affected titanism. In the two tragedies, Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa (1829) and Kaiser Hein- rich VI (1830), he succeeded, with far greater ability than his numerous competitors, in comprehending the spirit of history and the mighty figures of the rulers from the race of the Hohenstaufens. But here already is seen the style of presenting a series of scarcely con- nected and hastily sketched gigantic frescoes instead of a uniform dramatic picture. This manner amounts to the grotesque in Grabbe 's most important work, Napoleon oder die hundert Tage (1831). He makes whole battlefields his stage and de- spises all the requirements of dramatic writing, but he gives historic pictures of true grandeur and great dis- tinctness. What Grabbe later composed, Hannibal, Aschenbrodel, Die Hermannsschlacht, shows that the vice of drink had already deranged his mind even though in many places traces of his original power were 40 GERMAN DRAMA still visible. His early death, Sept. 12, 1836, released him from an existence which was a failure because of an unfortunate disposition and lack of will-power. In his article on Shakespearomania (1827), in opposi- tion to the blind admirers and imitators of Shakespeare, Grabbe says, "The German nation wants the greatest possible simplicity and clearness in language, form and plot, it wants to feel in tragedy an unbroken inspira- tion, it wants to find true and deep emotion, it wants a national and at the same time a genuinely dramatic historical play, it wants not English but German char- acters, it wants strong language and good verse and in the comic scenes, it demands, not peculiar turns or witticisms, which except for the form of expression have nothing witty in them, but sound common sense, a wit that strikes every time like lightning, a poetic and moral power." Finally he mentioned Schiller as the writer who best answered to these requirements. One sees, however, how unreliable Grabbe 's judgment is when he calls Milliner's Schuld and Konig Ingurd the most satisfactory works since Schiller's death. Grabbe did not attempt in any way to meet in his own dramas the requirements he mentions. With his striving after a faithful reproduction of reality and his contempt of all ideals, he may be considered one of the precursors of that trend which later took a position hostile to classic and romantic poetry. Grabbe had as contemporary GEORG BUCHNER, who. as a naturalist, proclaimed the absolute necessity of all that happens being considered as under the dominion of the laws of nature, as for instance in his drama Dantcm's Tod (1835), in his posthumous comedy Leonce und Lena and in the fragment Wozzek. Everywhere ROMANTIC OPERA 41 he aimed at transferring the world of reality without change into his artistic production. Like most natural- ists he was attracted only by the dark sides of life which he reproduced with the keenest powers of observa- tion in all their particulars, even the most repulsive. Later ALBERT DULK pursued a similar course in his dramas Orla (1844), Simson (1859) and Jesus der Christ (1865) ; also ROBERT GRIEPENKERL in Maximilian Robespierre (1851) and Die Girondisten (1852). ROMANTIC OPERA. The musical drama was created in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century, for the purpose of reviving, by the use of an elevated recitative, the solemn effect of the Greek tragedy, but it soon became the prey of stars of the singing world and of the desire for display. Later the genius of GLUCK restored again the original charac- ter of the opera and at the same time there developed from the modest operetta that style which, uniting an attractive appeal to the senses with great dramatic passion, found in MOZART its master and greatest ex- ponent. After his death this style degenerated in Ger- many into humdrum Philistinism and sentimentality, while the great French and Italian masters, such as Mehul, Cherubini, Rossini and Auber, were trying to unite the dignity of Gluck with the inimitable sublime charm of Mozart. Only one immortal opera in classic style was written during this time in Germany, Beethoven's Fidelio, the text of which, adapted at first by Joseph Sonnleithner and then by Friedrich Treitschke, effectively glorified conjugal fidelity in the simplest dramatic form. Three 42 GERMAN DRAMA times revised, this, the only opera by Beethoven, received its final form in 1814. It combines chaste grandeur and warm genuine feeling within its strictly drawn outlines. Although there was still found in classic opera a number of noble masters such as Louis SPOHR, and in comic opera such a successful talent as ALBERT LORTZING who wrote Zar und Zimmermann (1837), and Der Waffenschmied (1845), yet after all the leadership fell from now on to the Romanticists. The longing to ex- press the unconscious, the delight in musical effects, the dislike to reasonable clearness all this went to make music one of the fundamentals of the art of Romantic writers and while they had tried in vain to win success in spoken drama, the German opera of the nineteenth century became permeated with their spirit and chose its materials from their favorite fields, the fairy-story, Ger- man legend and the life of the Middle Ages. CARL MARIA VON WEBER was the creator of the Roman- tic opera. In the year 1821 he finished his Freischiitz, for which Friedrich Kind had written the text accord- ing to a Bohemian legend as told by Apel. The national character of the subject, the richness of melody, and the employment of new and highly impressive means of instrumentation prepared the way for the immense success of the Freischiitz, by which means it gained the ascendancy over the prevailing Italian art and has re- mained the most popular German opera down to the present day. Weber in this work had already made use of recur- ring themes, for the purposes of characterization, and began to do away with the endless arias which destroyed dramatic connection and to employ those freer recita- ROMANTIC OPERA 43 tives which are on the border-line between song and declamation. The dramatic element, represented up to that time by the language alone, had played but an unimportant part; now it appeared in the music on an equality with the melody. At the same time greater demands were made on the acting skill of the singers. The orchestra now no longer served the purpose of giving body and greater fulness of tone by its accom- paniment, but it began, with its explanations and supple- ments, to develop independently alongside the singing voices and in its own purely instrumental movements to become a significant factor of the opera. A second great work of Weber's, Euryanthe (1823), unsuccessful, indeed, because of the unfavorable sub- ject, was still farther removed from the old-style opera by its exact declamation and the strong emphasis laid on characterization and on dramatic passion. In these matters it showed still more clearly the road leading to the art of Richard Wagner. Between Weber and Wagner the link is HEINRICH MARSCHNER. In his Hans Heiling (1833) we hear, in addition to the strains of the Freischiitz, the advance notes of the Fliegende Hollander. In the meantime the so-called "Grand Opera" had developed in France and Italy. It originated, as did the German romantic opera, in an opposition to the quiet, dispassionate art of the classic writer and chose its subjects from the same domains as the former; it did not aim, however, at plunging into the unexplored depths of the soul nor at portraying the mysterious workings of nature, but, by the use of strong and visible passion, did aim at arousing at all costs powerful emo- tion. In the choice of subjects and of artistic expedi- 44 GERMAN DRAMA ents it therefore followed the like-minded Romantic writers of the French. It dazzled by an accumulation of all effects that appeal to the senses, it offered a full, exciting though often quite senseless plot and brilliant stage-scenes to which an extrinsic grandeur was given by massive music and crowds of actors; it antici- pated all the lower instincts of singers and public and ruthlessly destroyed unity and truth by interjecting showy songs and ballets. As in the old Italian opera so here the drama was only an excuse for the satisfaction of curiosity and of the vulgar passion for unusual performances of the singing voice. But more cunningly than their predeces- sors the composers of "Grand Opera" and their com- plaisant text-writers succeeded in concealing these pur- poses from a shortsighted public by an appearance of dramatic unity. The most noteworthy representative of this art was JACOB MEYERBEER. He had constant success from Rob- ert der Teufel (1831) and Die Hugenotten (1836) down to his last work die Afrikanerin which was first played in the year after his death (1864). All this time he dominated the German as well as the French operatic stage. Only when one recognizes the pernicious influence of Meyerbeer upon the German public, does one com- prehend the passionate w r rath with which all, who had the opera seriously at heart, fought against him. At their head stand Robert Schumann and Peter Cornelius, who, with their weak dramatic talents, tried in vain to win the stage back to pure art, and Richard Wagner, the victor in this strife. GERMAN DRAMA FROM 1830-85 YOUNG GERMANY AND ITS FOLLOWERS The fifty-five years from 1830-85 present a picture of the condition of the German drama outwardly similar to that of the preceding period. Schiller remains, with few exceptions, the only model for tragedy, and the tradition of Romanticism continues with decreasing in- fluence until it gradually dies out. The great changes in the political and social conditions of Germany do not find expression on the stage. The greatest writers of the times, who are aiming at a new art suited to their day, are scarcely noticed and gain no influence over the production of the others or the taste of the spectators. The German drama keeps sinking lower and lower to a powerless decadence. The theatre be- comes more and more the home of hollow phrases and shallow entertainment while the belief in the exclusive rights of the idealizing form is strenuously upheld. Musical drama alone reaches the highest point of its development through the mighty creative work of Rich- ard Wagner. How little it was possible in this period to convert the correct perception of the artistic needs of the present into deeds is shown by the example of that group of writers brought together under the name, Das junge Deutschland. They represented in general the demands of the Liberals in Paris in the July-revolu- 45 46 GERMAN DRAMA tion of 1830 and opposed the romanticist alienation from life and reality as well as all false idealism and visionary caprice. LUDOLF WIENBARG, the aesthetic authority of ''Young Germany," insists upon the treatment of sub- jects true to and full of life and emphasizes above all what is important for the present of any particular time. The place of poetic fancy is to be taken by that enthusiasm which inspires to deeds. The Middle Ages have outlived themselves and a protest is made against dead and hollow formulas and also against the attempts to regenerate the present with the help of the ancient. From the drama Wienbarg demands national spirit but not in the form of nature poetry, as the Romanticists made it, but as a work of art with a democratic trend, filled with the idea of a body of free citizens who had become of age in a political sense. His second require- ment was that the contents should be national and yet not in the historical form of Goethe's and Schiller's works and those of their successors. For poetry is not dramatized history and national contents do not depend upon national and historical material but upon the fact that they are interesting and valuable for the whole nation, that is, are national in the true sense. From this is derived the third requirement of contents suited to the times. The youth are to fight on against the tenacity and opposition of reactionary efforts in all departments and begin with what the "Storm and Stress" writers strove for and in the same sense. These requirements were met only in a very small degree by the ' ' Young Germany ' ' writers, Heine, Laube, Gutzkow, in their dramatic works. Heine was never again active as a dramatic writer after his first abortive attempts, Laube and Gutzkow were both too very eager YOUNG GERMANY AND ITS FOLLOWERS 47 for stage effect to place themselves by innovations in decided opposition to the prevailing taste. This external theatrical technique, this cool scheming for effect which had scarcely been known before in Germany, at least in tragedy, was to be ascribed to the strong influence of French models. Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas, pere, at the head of the French Romanticists in historical drama, had taught them ex- aggerated delineation of character and inconsiderate working on the emotions of the public, while at the same time Eugene Scribe, aided by numerous contemporane- ous playwrights, dominated the stages of Europe with his comedies. A fine outer polish, the greatest skill in all that was technical, complete lack of any deeper spirit, exciting intrigues, often carried out at the cost of reality, these are the attributes which mark Scribe. The influence of this thoroughly superficial but ever graceful and entertaining class of drama reaches down into the present and for a long time represented alone finer comedy in Germany. HEINRICH LAUBE was the best judge of the theatre, the foremost manager whom Germany possessed in the nineteenth century. As director of the Burg-theatre in Vienna, he did a great work from 1849-66 in the training of the players and in the enlargement of the repertoire. But for the author those excellencies were fateful which stood the director in good stead. The mechanical nature of the effects was too much in the foreground and instead of creating men he saw only players guided by the invisible hand of the manager. Therefore the most of his dramas are to-day as good as forgotten. Die Karlsschiiler (1841) alone is still played here and there, not because of its intrinsic merit 48 GERMAN DRAMA but because young Schiller, the author of Die Rduber, is its hero; with it the tragedy, Graf Essex (1856), keeps its place because of some good roles. KARL GUTZKOW, too, strives after external effect but with greater talent and more genuine passion than the cool and prudent Laube. Gutzkow said to himself, "The theatre is to reconcile life with art and art with life"; "Put men on the boards who are taken not from past centuries but from the present, not from the Assyr- ians and Babylonians no, from your own surround- ings." But when his first attempts to present the in- herent contrasts of the times upon the stage had failed, he turned again to historical drama and only in the choice of his subjects and in his judgments upon the conduct of his heroes did he permit the liberal view- point of "Young Germany" to be seen. On the border line between the modern and the his- torical plays of Gutzkow stands his best work, Uriel Acosta (1847), changed from a short story to a drama of great elevation and genuine vitality. The conflict between liberal thought and positive dogma, between a sense of independence and of reverence, is here very effectively converted into a succession of scenes argued from a purely human standpoint; the characters, with the exception of the pale youthful Spinoza who comes in at the end, are drawn clearly and with life. This drama may therefore be characterized as the best of its kind, though it clearly shows the traces of decadence in its too strong pathos, its lack of characteristic shad- ing in the language and in its delight in strong, stirring and extraneous incidents. In the field of historical comedy Gutzkow also stands at the head of his contemporaries. Zopf und Schwert YOUNG GERMANY AND ITS FOLLOWERS 49 (1844) does not do justice to the historical importance of Friedrich Wilhelm I, the central figure of the play, because the powerful, far-seeing monarch is degraded to a blustering family tyrant; but the tone is well caught, the intrigues are clever and exciting, after the style of Scribe, the characters superficial indeed and yet not inaccurately delineated, and there is no lack of that deeper spirit which is just as indispensable in comedy as in tragedy. The higher signification of the whole class is the subject of the comedy, Das Urbild des Tartu ffe (1847). It does not equal Zopf und Schwert in outward effect but its artistic merit is greater. While these two works are now very unjustly neg- lected and only rarely considered by the stage, Der Konigsleutnant (1849) has held its ground up to the present. It was originally merely destined to celebrate the centennial of Goethe's birth and the author says in his preface by way of excuse: "Opportunity is the stepsister of the Muse." He knew very well that he had not offered in this play a work of art, but thanks to an effective role, the favor of actors has prolonged the life of this mawkish sentimental play far beyond its own inherent vitality. Dependent upon the French or their "Young Ger- man" imitators were a number of other dramatists whose works attracted the public because of their strong scenic effects and themes acceptable to the actors. To- day they are all rightly forgotten, the most successful of them alone, EMIL BRACHVOGEL'S Narziss (1856), not having yet quite lost its attractiveness for travelling ' ' stars. ' ' The charm exercised by this degenerate genius with his philosophical paradoxes and his despairing humor, as well as the interesting condition of French 50 GERMAN DRAMA society before the Revolution, are made the most of for the sake of effect. But there is a lack of all deeper conception of the spirit of the times and of the historical personages introduced; in their conversations they rep- resent the political tendencies of liberalism and the materialism, colored by natural science, of the author's own times. In comedy the clever technique of the style of Scribe could be better preserved than in serious drama, es- pecially where a stronger temper broke through the out- ward polish and coldness of the French models. In this way EDWARD VON BAUERNFELD succeeded in de- lineating skilfully and ably, kindly and feelingly, the society of Vienna. As with the French so also with him there is a graceful vivacity in the conversations. A fine cultivation of mind is revealed in the spontaneity of his wit, in his fear of the trivial; a strong common sense, enthusiasm for freedom and a cheery optimism give his works their glow and make it possible to over- look the theatrical artifices which he, too, does not disdain for the sake of success. With his comedy Biirgerlich und Romantisch (1835), which shows all the best characteristics of the author, he reached the climax of his powers; among his numerous dramas Die Bekenntnisse (1834), Gross jdhrig (1846), and Ein deutscher Krieger (1847) are also of a superior order. From the French GUSTAV FREYTAG also learned what is best in his dramatic technique. In his first comedy, Die Brautfahrt oder Kunz von der Rosen (1841), he allowed himself to be governed too much by the Roman- tic delight in the bright game of life without considera- tion for the demands of the stage ; then he produced in Die Valentine (1846) a brightly colored play of in- YOUNG GERMANY AND ITS FOLLOWERS 51 trigue which with all its cleverness was not successful because genuine dramatic power is lacking in the funda- mental theme. The same thing is true, too, of Graf Waldemar (1850), which does not portray convincingly enough the conversion of a blase worldling by the awakening of a genuine and noble love. With Die Journalist en (1853) alone did Freytag gain a great and lasting influence because he found in it the subject most suitable for his peculiar talent and his acquired powers. The political extremes, at that time occupying the centre of general interest instead of artistic and philosophical questions, are made use of with success; the vocation of the journalist is faithfully described in its ideal importance and from its dark sides, the whole giving a slightly idealized but yet not an indistinct picture of German life, sketched with a sure hand and finished with fresh colors here and there somewhat too indifferent and cool. It is a very great pity, but it shows Freytag 's clear self-knowledge, that he did not determine to attempt something further in the domain of comedy after this so singular success. His one dramatic work of later origin, Die Fabler (1859), was a tragedy which represented the fall of a great Roman family in conflict with the needs of the newly organized state. This significant but singular play could not hold its place on the stage. 52 GERMAN DRAMA MIDDLE-CLASS COMEDY AND THE FARCE Even after 1830 the majority of writers of German comedy were still following the methods of Iff land and Kotzebue. The consummation of a marriage in middle- class life, trade and the maintenance of an honorable, comfortable living is the sole question with these authors. The horizon is purposely narrowed as much as possible, and not a single glance wanders beyond the borders of the small town. For a long time there was not to be found in these plays a breath of modern times, with its railways and telegraphs, its export in- dustries and its political contests. Especially the latter were passed over most carefully so as in no way to dis- turb the harmless doings of the townspeople. There- fore the ethical teachings of these plays grow more and more nervous, branding all independent expression of emotion as immoral. The sentiments are inherently mendacious and hypocritical, propriety is made the standard for the individual and all great disinterested actions and all independent striving to higher things meet with bitter hostility. This seemingly innocent class of plays became in real- ity very dangerous and harmful, above all because they stood for a long time in the way of genuine art and be- cause, worse than the French plays which were de- cried because of their immorality, they nattered the lower inclinations, the laziness of mind and the self-com- placency of the German middle-classes. Down to the present day they continue unchanged, inwardly coarse and outwardly proper, except that corresponding to the change of public, their horizon has also apparently wid- ened a little and instead of the houses of small merchants MIDDLE-CLASS COMEDY AND THE FARCE 53 we now see the electric-lighted villas of wholesale manu- facturers, councillors and merchant-princes. At the first glance one cannot of course estimate this unfavorable influence in its whole extent, when one con- siders, for example, the plays of RODERICK BENEDIX, which seem to aim only at exciting hilarity especially by means of comic situations. At most one will get an- noyed with the clumsy, stupid dialogue and smile at the lack of all finer details in the drawing of the charac- ters, and the rude, axe-hewn plot. And yet the truth of what has been said will soon be acknowledged when one thinks of the immense numbers and the popularity of the works of this class which rob better ones of light and air. The differences in merit are scarcely sufficient to enable one to pick out individual names from the host of comedy-writers of the recent past who are for the most part stage-experts and often in no way lacking in talent. But public success gives some names a better sound, such as, for example, JEAN BAPTIST VON SCHWEITZER, JULIUS ROSEN and FRANZ VON SCHONTHAN. GUSTAV MOSER achieved the greatest effect with his somewhat finer judgment and light work. His farce, Der Bibliothekar (1878), verges on absurdity but to its advantage is distinguished by genuine fun from the weak hilarity of most of the middle-class comedies. The so-called folk-plays are a grade lower in artistic merit. They take their character's from the people, for example, from the ranks of the mechanics and laborers, inclusive of the proletariat, and from the view-point of middle-class ignorance of the true life of these lower classes deal with the surface of this existence, the essence of which is falsely taken to be merely a longing for the comfort of the middle classes and an amusing lack of 54 GERMAN DRAMA education and society manners. The "authors" sup- pose that they have found a proper style for this class when they forego all artistic care in plot and charac- terization and with the rudest mechanical technique preach an obtrusive philistine morality. The actor and manager HUGO MULLER made a valu- able gift in this line to the theatres of lower rank with his folk-play, Von Stufe zu Stufe, while ADOLF L'An- RONGE, who ranks a little higher, became a welcome helper of court and city theatres in the sterile seventies with his plays, Mein Leopold (1877), Hasemamis Tochter (1877) and Doktor Klaus (1878). An honorable dispo- sition is the distinguishing feature of all his characters and to this especially, together with cheap and oft repeated expedients to produce effect, is owing the favor of sentimental people who believe that they hear in his plays the voice of the German folk-soul. One must not confuse these folk-plays, a degenerate subdivision of the domestic play, with the farce (Posse) which, as a dramatic form of contemporary satire, has grown up in quite a different field. The Berlin spirit, strongly permeated with Jewish elements, was its foster- ing soiL Its ancestors were the writers of operettas and dialect-plays; its father was DAVID KALISCH. The loosely woven plot is intended to beget a very small measure of excitement, because it is only the framework upon which is hung one after another a mass of puns, comic situations and satirical references to events of the day, and these entirely conceal it. The form of couplets perfected by Kalisch joined these real gems of the farce into brilliant showy plays. In his hands they did not fall out of their setting and become, as they did later, an abuse. He also continued to aim at a connected MIDDLE-CLASS COMEDY AND THE FARCE 55 characterization which often caricatured definite per- sonages, and at an outward propriety. He possessed also a genuine, rich, sparkling humor. Only in AUGUST WEYRAUCH did Kalisch find a successor of somewhat equal rank. To-day the Berlin farce, his creation, is the prey of a nasty reckoning upon coarse sensuality; in it absurdity alone wields the sceptre and it is dis- tinguished from the rude comic of the circus clown by its ribald expressions and the situations which excite the horse-laugh. As in Berlin, so also everywhere the dialect and local play has degenerated. In Vienna, it experienced its greatest prosperity because of the stage-writers in Leo- poldstadt, and here, in Nestroy's day and afterwards, many of the most productive and clever writers of the class arose, as for example, FRIEDRICH KAISER. But the exclusive purpose of diverting their unassuming public and of touching their emotions by the cheapest means, as well as blind local patriotism and the arbi- trariness of individual favorite actors, had in the long run a completely destructive influence. There were in- deed in the peasant plays of upper Bavaria the begin- nings of an improvement in dramatic dialect-writing, but here also sentimentality, low comic and mere theat- rical effect remain the characteristics of a tendency ob- noxious to art and of theatrical unnaturalness only im- perfectly disguised by a covering of naive feeling and peasant rudeness. The only truly dramatic works dipped in the colors of dialect went by unheeded. These were the comedies in the Darmstadt dialect, Des Burschen Heimkekr oder der tolle Hund (1837) and Der Datterich (1840), com- posed by the highly gifted but early degenerate ERNST 56 GERMAN DRAMA ELIAS NIEBERGALL. The second work especially is filled with a genuine cynical humor, by which a ragged genius is raised above the cleverly caricatured philistines who do not notice how he is despising them while serving as their jester. In this portrait Niebergall stands out as the precursor of Gerhart Hauptmann's College Grampian, which appeared over half a century later. As a link between the two we have the great phenomenon of LUDWIG ANZENGRUBER, who again raised German dialect and folk-plays into the domain of art. IDEALIZING DRAMA In the high class theatres folk-plays and dialect-pieces were entirely tabooed during this period. The prevail- ing art-ideal only permitted that to pass current which created another and better world far removed from reality and which showed the outward characteristics of harmonious beauty. This limited view originated in the days of the Classicists and Romanticists. The clari- fied serenity of Hellenism was present to their minds as the final goal. Their longing for a more beautiful life wished to find satisfaction in literature. Where a great talent like Grillparzer's was at work with this end in view, there were produced grand works which did not lack inherent warmth and truth, but when lesser talents aspired to the same thing the result was smooth out- ward form without substance and the power of life was lacking in the shadowy forms. The tragical did not arise in them from great inward antagonisms but from external collisions, especially from the conflict of pas- sion with the demands of prevailing custom and the inertia of environment in which these two forces were IDEALIZING DRAMA 57 considered legitimate while passion per se already meant guilt. Historical and legendary subjects were still by far in the majority and most of the writers thought they had done enough when they seized upon some traditional character or other, striking because of its unusual fate, divided its life into acts and scenes, emphasized strongly the climaxes of the course of events and conferred upon the hero those typical qualities by which his fate was humanly to be explained. The particular conditions of time and place, the more intimate relations of things to each other, all psychology that lay in the province of the unknown, was at the same time completely neg- lected. In spite of their efforts to obtain strong out- ward effects, these dramatists seldom attained to even a momentary success because most of them despised the mechanical rules of the stage or were unable to conjoin them with the demands of an idealizing art. Only here and there could a greater poetic content or the charm of the subject delude the audience into overlooking the dra- matic faults. To-day the most of these dramas have sunk into oblivion or still eke out a miserable existence, thanks only to a reverence which is scarcely in place. The most successful author of this group was Eligius Franz Joseph Freiherr von Miinch-Bellinghausen, known by the pseudonym FRIEDEICH HALM. His very first work, Griseldis (1834), showed an author who was master of mechanical expedients. It captured every stage by its romantic subject, melodious language, sentimental feeling and mawkish mood-painting. Among his nu- merous later dramas Der Sohn der Wildnis (1842) had the greatest influence. The contrast between culture and barbarism which Grillparzer had comprehended in 58 GERMAN DRAMA its depth is here used merely to celebrate, in the barba- rian youth Ingomar, the easy victory of love over defiant manliness. This same favorite character in somewhat different costumes becomes Thumelikus of the Fechter von Ravenna (1854) which added to the earlier proper- ties of Halm's art, as approved aids to a shallow success, the hollow pathos of a cheap patriotism and the pungent description of moral depravity. In the dramatic poem, Wildfeuer (1863), the improbability that the heroine had been brought up as a boy and remained unknown in this role almost to the close is gladly accepted for the benefit of the piquant effect of this change of sex. Nevertheless Halm's plays show after all in certain scenes a happy invention; his language is often trivial but the verse is clever and runs well. He knows how to arouse feeling by the insertion of lyric passages and he is reckoned among the few representatives of Ger- man Art-drama who knew the stage and its require- ments exactly. SOLOMON HERMANN HITTER VON MOSENTHAL, who like- wise lived in Vienna, w r as the surest master of technique but for him it was an end in itself. He exerted no in- fluence in historical tragedy but in his pathetic peasant- play, Deborah (1848), he produced one of the most popular dramas of his time. The great conceptions of tolerance and self-control are here incorporated into effective scenes and touching situations and the role of heroine offered actresses for a long time a welcome opportunity to show all their arts. Besides Halm and Mosenthal many an aspiring dram- atist of this period ought probably to be mentioned, but no one would have attained great and lasting suc- cess with dramas of ideal form. Poetic endowment and IDEALIZING DRAMA 59 clear recognition of the problems do not at all suffice to make good the lack of specific dramatic talent and ability. The virile JULIUS MOSEN wished to look at history as "a struggle between opposing principles, in which the contending spirits purify and ennoble each other and so present and solve in the drama the highest problems of man here below" or he wished "to help history to free consciousness and raise it in its ideals as the ancients did with nature." And yet he was not able to trans- late these purposes into a work that would live, how- ever little the best, Ileinrich der Finkler (1836), Her- zog Bernhard (1842) and Der Sohn des Fiirsten (1842), lacked in greatness and historical judgment. In the numerous dramas of RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL rhetorical diction is the most prominent characteristic. In his earlier efforts he is closely allied to "Young Germany," when in Ulricli von Hutten (1843) and Robespierre (1846), with great expenditure of energy, he pleads the cause of liberal aspirations and the rights of sensuousness. Later this tendency vanishes and he treats historical subjects. But this he does with deficient char- acterization and a strong dependence on Shakespeare and Schiller, as in Mazeppa (1855), Katharina Howard (1868), Maria de Padilla (1889), Rdhdb (1898), Der Gotze von Venedig (1901). His greatest success is the comedy written on the model of Scribe, Pitt und Fox (1854). JOSEPH WEIL VON WEILEN was influenced by noble purposes but was likewise no great dramatist. His talent, which was rather a lyrical one, would hardly have drawn him to historical drama, had it not been that in the judgment of that day in it alone the laurels 60 GERMAN DRAMA of a great writer were to be won. To gain these he wrote his romantic tragedies, Tristan (1860) and Dcr arme Heinrich (1860), then a succession of works in which we find some splendid female characters, as in Drahomira (1867) and Rosamunde (1869). What- ever in them was lacking in merit and truth was made good to the spectators by the plastic power of the great tragic actress of Vienna, Charlotte Wolter. Without this same assistance the finer gifts of FRANZ NISSEL, could not obtain recognition and at the end of his ca- reer he looked back on an unusually sad and wasted life. With all his noble qualities there was lacking in him and his works the power to succeed, in spite of the fact that public attention was drawn to him in 1878 when he received the Schiller prize for his drama Agnes von Meran. Like Halm and Nissel, OSKAR VON REDWITZ may also be reckoned as a descendant of the Romanticists, only, however, as a degenerate one. His drama, Philippine Welser (1859), was often acted but is entirely without character, full of a pretty coquettish emotional dis- play. A long succession of other writers who attained to fame and honor as lyrists and epic poets were but sel- dom able to win success when they tried the stage; then it is to be ascribed to their poetic talents and only too often, in the first place, to their name. Otherwise they were entirely without influence in this field. EMANUEL GEIBEL, the most popular lyrist of this period, wrote the tragedies, Konig Roderick (1842) and SopJwnisbe (1868), also the pleasant comedy, Meister Andrea (1847), but only his Brunhild (1861) gained a certain popularity because the great figures of the IDEALIZING DRAMA 61 Nibelungen were toned down to correspond to the pre- vailing taste. A similar fate in drama fell to the lot of PAUL HEYSE. In the long succession of his greater plays there are only two, Hans Lange (1866) and Kolberg (1868), which attained a fair popularity on the stage. Besides these perhaps Die Gottin der Vernunft (1870), Don Juans Ende (1883), Die Weisheit Salomos (1886) and Maria von Magdala (1899) are worthy of mention, the latter because of the political agitation called forth by the censorship. Closely connected with his main field, the short story, are his short dramas in one act, of which he has written a great number, all of them pre- senting clearly a tragic incident but without real dra- matic qualities. Such are Unter Briidern, Ehrenschul- den and Im Bunde der Dritte (1886). With a short comedy, Durchs Ohr (1865), WILHELM JORDAN, the author of Die Nibelungen, also obtained, at least once, recognition as a dramatist because of his charm and resonant rhymed-verse. Quite unsuccessful were the attempts of Friedrich Bodenstedt, Hermann Lingg, Count Adolf von Schack, Martin Greif, Robert Hamerling, Otto Roquette, Friedrich Spielhagen, and Felix Dahn, so that we can spare ourselves mention of any particular work. SUMMARY The general impression of German dramatic produc- tion and of the German stage during the fifty-five years from 1830-85 is entirely unsatisfactory. All forceful progressive movements seem to have died away; the old worn-out fields are cultivated with ever-decreasing profit, the petrified forms resist every attempt at im- provement. The cultivation of formal beauty is the highest aim. Morality is repressed in favor of conven- tional middle-class ethics. Everything reflecting the spirit of the age is carefully avoided by upper-class writers as dangerous and hostile to art while some op- position-natures give vent to their hatred of existing conditions by rude and formless contempt of law and morals. Middle-class drama both of the more serious and the brighter kind loses the worthy character which class- consciousness and the treatment of social differences had formerly given it and aims only at providing enter- tainment. The fantastic style of the farce, the sound humor of the folk-play, degenerate into nasty vulgarity and stale puns. Actors lose serious ambition and all desire to adapt themselves to their tasks. "Stars" mis- use the great works of the classic writers as the sport of their surprising tricks and destroy co-operation in act- ing. Care in rehearsals and in the external decoration of the scenes, obedience to the directions of the author and reverence for his creation are lost gradually and entirely. And yet the ideal drama had a more numerous and more grateful public than ever before or since. Tin- longing for freedom grew intoxicated on the speeches of FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 63 Posa and Tell, the desire for a genuine free humanity got satisfaction in Goethe's characters, and pity for all oppressed and faith in an adjustment of all differences in some higher state was satisfied in Lessing's Nathan instead of in life. Schiller's popularity reached its highest point in this period. The celebration of the hundredth anniversary of his birth in 1859 was made a brilliant festival in which all Germans took enthusias- tic part, with the feeling that in his poetry the best which filled their own souls had been uttered, the unful- filled longing for the freedom, unity and greatness of the Fatherland. When a succession of mighty deeds of war and Bis- marck's genius brought these thoughts and aspirations down from the airy kingdom of ideals to the firm ground of reality, then was lost to art and especially to the drama, that last support which had kept it from sink- ing down completely into a cultivation of external form and low epicureanism. Therefore the years from 1870- 80 became the saddest in the history of the modern Ger- man drama. FRIEDRICH HEBBEL From this background stands out the brilliant crea- tive work of FRIEDRICH HEBBEL, the greatest dramatist that Germany has produced since the days of the classic writers. And he became such while struggling on with heart of steel against the temporal needs of life and at the same time striving to gain a settled philosophy of the world and art, without any aid but his belief in himself and his calling. A descendant of a sturdy race of the " Dithmarsen, " 64, GERMAN DRAMA he saw the light of day March 18, 1813, at Wesselburen in Holstein in the cramped home of a bricklayer. His father, by nature a man of great talents, grew bitter in the unceasing struggle for the necessities of life, for "poverty had taken the place of his soul." All the mortifications which lowliness and need could cause a highminded spirit Friedrich Hebbel's early developed pride had to endure, but under the pressure his will- power grew and at the same time his thought and power of imagination expanded. From his fourteenth year he was in service as secretary to a narrow-minded man, the parish bailiff Mohr in Wesselburen. He soon grew intellectually far above his environment, working un- wearyingly at his education, reading and reflecting. He, too, grew enthusiastic at first over the lofty dic- tion of Schiller, then became enchanted with the shadowy figures which E. T. A. Hoffmann sketched with pecul- iarly realistic touches, and at last through Uhland's poem, Des Sangers Fluch, found the way to his own con- ception of art. Of these points he says in his diary: "I had up to this time felt very comfortable in my strumming in imitation of Schiller and had listened to and picked up many a doubt from the philosopher and many a rule for beauty from the aesthete. But now Uhland took me into the depths of a human heart and thereby into the depths of nature. I saw how he scorned nothing except what I had up to this time looked upon as the greatest thing reflection. I saw that he understood how to find a spiritual bond between him- self and all things; that he, removed from all wilfulness and prejudice I know no more significant word knew how to trace everything back, even the wondrous and the mystical, to the simply human ; how every one of FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 65 his poems had its peculiar vital point and yet was only to be completely understood and estimated by looking back over the whole work of the poet. . . . Not without being close to despair, indeed to madness, did I gain this first result, that the poet must not write into nature but out from it. It is not to be estimated how far I was still removed from the conception of the first and only law of art, namely, to illustrate the in- finite from the individual phenomenon." Hebbel's villenage had lasted for eight years when the authoress, Amalie Schoppe, interested herself in him and made it possible for him to remove to Ham- burg. Here he was now to supplement the defective education of his youth, but instead of this he wrote in his diary the thoughts which poured in upon him, his impressions of people and the results of his self- observation. At the head he set these words: "I am not beginning this notebook merely to please my future biographer, although with my prospects of immortality I can be certain that I will find one. It is to be the music-book of my heart and preserve the key notes, which my heart gives forth, faithfully and for my edification in future days." The scanty aid of his patroness, who expected as thanks obedience to her narrow-minded advice, aimed only at quick bread-winning, was not of so much use to Hebbel as the devotion of the faithful Elise Lensing, for whom no sacrifice was too great, and who had recog- nised his greatness long before the world knew of him. He had indeed nothing to offer her but friendship and esteem and when later a deep and genuine love took possession of him, Elise had to give way. Hebbel was not ungrateful and not cruel but only clear and firm 66 GERMAN DRAMA in thought and feeling in spite of all his gentleness of disposition. Hand in hand with Elise he could not have reached and maintained the height of his develop- ment. His development was soon so far advanced that he considered it his life's work to symbolize his inner life as far as it was fixed in important instances in word and figure. This self-description meant at the same time something higher because art was to him realized philosophy as the world was realized idea. But he did not, like the Classicists and Romanticists, support him- self by a fixed and final conception of the world which solves contradictions by an appeal to a higher unity. He declares the problematical to be the breath of life to poetry and its only source, that for it anything finished, perfect and dormant, is as little in existence as the healthy body for the physician. Hebbel sees the deep plague spots of the day, he feels in himself the feverish ague which shakes diseased society, the conflicts, the contradictions of life for which there is no solution. The class of literature in which all this is artistically presented is for him, tragedy. It has to do with what is incurable and unavoidable in man's fate and, because he is so conscious of its office, he is zealous against unfruitful coquetting with the beautiful and against the one-sidedness of the drama, because it is either historical, social or philosophical. In his plays he joins all three divisions to make a new one which always, even when portraying the past, reflects the present and its struggles, and at the same time, from a lofty standpoint, lightens up the inner spirit of the times. In Hebbel is found a cool, keen intellect, finding FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 67 satisfaction in a dialectic which is often subtle, a glow- ing sensuousness and a thorough conception of reality combined with a perfect comprehension of causes and a clear understanding of his own times, its problems and needs looked at from the point of view of universal history. He is not full of contradictions but of a grand many-sidedness, the consistency of which, how- ever, cannot be perceived offhand. He lacks joy in the little charms of life, the quiet enjoyment of nature, the blind enthusiasm of youth or the beautiful and noble, but so much the deeper does he feel true great- ness and with really dignified contempt does he score what is vulgar. His earlier works* lack harmony, be- cause he did not find it in himself and in the world and because he was too proud to be willing to delude himself and others by a delusion into overlooking what was painful and hateful. But this harmony is by no means equivalent to artistic perfection, as many sup- pose; if one considers that an artist is great because with the aid of great ability he brings a deep, inner content clearly to view, then Hebbel is to be counted among the great artists, although simplicity of feeling and production was denied him. Only too often does his discussion of problems cause neglect of the real purpose of the drama, viz: to present scenes full of life and characters that are humanly significant. To his student years in Heidelberg and Munich, full of poverty and wretchedness, and only endurable be- cause of Elise Lensing's aid, he owes less increase in knowledge than growth and maturity of heart and mind. Even at that time he was making great plans and in a poem written on a later visit to Munich, the following words occur: 68 GERMAN DRAMA Hier zeigte wie iin Traume Sich mir die Judith schon, Dort unterm Tannenbaume Sah ich den Tischlerssohn. Da driiben winkle leise Mir Genovevas Hand, Und in des Weihera Kreise Fand ich den Diamant. When he returned to Hamburg in 1839, he wrote Judith, the first of the works referred to in the above lines. Just as clearly as Goethe's Gotz von Berlichingen or Schiller's Rduber does this first drama of Hebbel's also bear the marks of exuberant power, too glaring colors, stormy revolt and feverish passion. But when we look into its contents we find nothing of youthful vagueness of thought or of artistic purpose and at the same time the author has the greatest and most unerring command of form. Biblical subjects had in earlier days been long popu- lar on the French and German stage. The Classicists and Romanticists had turned away from them because the field seemed to have been exhausted and individual- ism thought there was no place to be found for it there. At that time Gutzkow had just tried, in a drama Konig Saul, to treat a biblical incident in modern fashion and to justify it psychologically. But his power was not equal to the task and when Hebbel heard the play praised he set up his Judith as a con- trast. In the biblical narrative belief in God, which is a living faith in Judith, triumphs over the heathen. Her woman's feelings are not considered in what she does, nor is Holofernes, her opponent, given features which surpass those typical of a conqueror and tyrant. Here Hebbel's art steps in to supplement. Holofernes FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 69 becomes the mighty representative of unbroken per- sonality, which, as a power with equal rights, boldly opposes, like the giants of old, the world-will, i. e., God. With his exaggerated feeling of power, the expression of which sometimes appears grotesque, Holofernes is just the right man to prove by his fall the greatness of God, and the victory of eternal law. The means which God employs is Judith. To become his instru- ment, she must possess qualities which make her stand out prominently from the multitude of women. Judith is an Oriental woman of a strongly sensual nature, endowed with great spirit. Among her faint- hearted fellow-countrymen she did not find the man she longed for. She had been married, but her husband, early deceased, had, with inexplicable timidity, as if in the presence of something incomprehensible, not ventured to touch her. Now she is living shut up in her home as a virgin widow. She had plunged into the eternal One as one plunges into deep water, that is, she drowns the thoughts of her condition, which is an enigma to herself, in an unswerving faith in the secret will of God, until, through Holofernes, suffering comes upon the country and her own city is besieged. She hears that Holofernes kills women by kisses and embraces, just as he does men by spear and sword. Something whispers to her: "Had he known that you were within the walls of the city, he would have come for your sake alone." Judith answers with a sudden thought which betrays her desire to see and possess this man. "If that should be true then I should only need to go out to him and my city and land would be saved." But she is still far from this resolve. Only when the suffering of the city had become very 70 GERMAN DRAMA great and no aid was to be discovered, does she feel certain that the invisible God had chosen her for his instrument to save his people. And while driven out into the hostile camp, as if by an inward force, she believes she is fulfilling the will of the Highest, but when she stands in the presence of Holofernes the woman in her awakes; what was driving her out to him was unconscious longing for the man himself. In vain she prays: "God of my fathers, protect me from myself, that I be not compelled to honor what I despise! He is a man." She yields to him and when her desire is satisfied, she becomes conscious that she has been unfaithful to her mission. If she now slays Holofernes she is no longer the instrument of God, but she is avenging on him her own desire which she recognises as sin. A selfish wish instead of religious enthusiasm and patriotism had led her into his arms and not with rejoicing, as in the biblical report, but as a broken sinner she goes back to her people, trembling with the fear that she will bear Holofernes a son who will immor- talize her crime. But Jehovah is the victor. He has broken the mightiest of men : he has also destroyed the woman who was this instrument. His power alone remains undiminished, shown to be stronger than ever. Somewhat subtle is Hebbel's motivation of Judith's deed because of her peculiar condition of being neither wife nor maiden. At the same time her relation to Holofernes is to represent the never-ending conflict of the sexes and the metaphysical basis of this relation. Both figures in common embody the nature of the strong- willed poet with passionate desires. The social instincts serve as a background and stand out strikingly, as never FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 71 before on the German stage, in the powerful folk-scenes of the third act. Everywhere Hebbel's chief aim is that which he recognised as the most important in Shakespeare's art, "to disclose the roots of morality in life in the grandest possible manner by cutting away the weeds that cover them up." Nowhere is it his object in his works to plead the cause of an abstract idea. He is an absolute Realist although the form keeps clear of all trivial reproduction of reality and his language indulges in bold metaphors. Judith may be called the first modern drama of the nineteenth century because here for the first time, unconcerned about artistic tradition, the expression of the peculiar nature of the present is attempted in a suitable corresponding dramatic style. It was put upon the stage in Berlin, July 6, 1840, a bold venture, and at one stroke Hebbel became known. The critics, with all their objections, had after all to acknowledge the depth of thought, the loftiness of artistic purpose and the astonishing maturity of the young author. After a somewhat lengthy pause a work, which had been planned earlier, was finished, Genoveva (1840- 1841). Once more he chose an old, well-known subject which he tried to explain by human motives. For a long time he had been thinking over the problem which for him consisted in this, that a noble, yielding, inno- cent, youthful nature because of sensual love to a trans- figured saint falls a victim to criminal madness. That is the misfortune, the guilt and the justification of Golo, the real hero of this tragedy. Genoveva, on the other hand, steps into the background and remains in- 72 GERMAN DRAMA wardly unaffected by all that befalls her. The most guilty is the husband who believes in her infidelity upon mere circumstantial evidence, because according to Hebbel it is far more sinful not to suspect the divine in our neighborhood, and without further investi- gation to take it for its black adversary, than to de- molish it in world-destroying madness because we can not possess it. In spite of the fact that Hebbel's work is superior by far in genuine poetic merit to the works of the same name by Maler Miiller and Ludwig Tieck (vide p. 10) yet he could not after all remove the fundamental weakness which lay in the legend, the preponderance of the epic and lyric, although he did with firm hand strengthen the plot in the earlier acts. In his work, too, the miraculous and the reflective gain too great an influence, and again the manner of treatment and the motivation of the chief characters is too subtle. Hebbel could not use the reconciliation which comes at the close of the old legend if he was to be true to his belief in the incurable nature of the world's woe. And yet to comply with the demand for it he wrote an epilogue in 1851, in which the forgiveness of all wrongdoing is brought about by the husband volun- tarily offering to take upon himself all Genoveva's suf- ferings due to him, and by Genoveva forgiving Golo, her accuser, in the words of the Lord's Prayer. In the unhappy Golo Hebbel has revealed his own thoughts in the period of their development and in their antitheses ; in this character therefore is the best key to an acquain- tance with the young poet. The whole drama reveals his view of the world with the same power and with still stronger proofs than FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 73 Judith. Everything that happens is only from our standpoint good or bad, everything originates with the world-will which rests in God and the business of the poet is to reproduce in his work of art, in a clear and comprehensible manner, the working of this will back of life which represents it veiled and unconsciously. In order to be able to do this he must dive down deep in the abyss of personality to discover the first motives for the acts, which have their root in the soil of the eternal interdependence of all things. In this connec- tion Genoveva with all its dramatic faults is very sig- nificant. In the prologue to the comedy, Der Diamant, which was finished immediately after Genoveva (1841), it is said by the poet: Er ist in die bewegte Welt Als fester Mittelpunkt gestellt, Der, unberlihrt von Ebb' und Flut, In sich gesattigt, schweigend ruht, Weil er in sich jedweden Kreis Begonnen und beschlossen weiss, Und weil in ihm der Urgeist still Die Perl', sein Abbild, zeugen will, Das, wenn es in die Zeitlichkeit Hinaustritt, jeden Riss der Zeit, Schon dadurch heilt, dass sie erkennt, Was sie vom ew'gen Wesen trennt. His purpose to give, in a cheerful light, a picture of the working of the original spirit did not, however, succeed. Here, too, it was not a question with Hebbel of individual phenomena but of the connection of trifling, seemingly unimportant and ridiculous incidents with the eternal conditions of existence. Through the diamond is to be revealed the innermost nature of all 74 GERMAN DRAMA who struggle for its possession. But especially the scenes which take place at a fanciful court are lifeless and contrast too strongly with the rough comic of the rest, the nature of which corresponds to the highest conception of what is comical and yet is not easily and directly comprehensible. When Hebbel sought aid in Kopenhagen from the King of Denmark, his sovereign, a handsome travelling scholarship was granted him for two years. Even be- fore he left his home-land the greater portion of that tragedy had been written which of all his works was best to reflect national character, Maria Magdalena. It was finally finished in Paris and appeared in 1844 with its important preface on the relation of dramatic art to the times. It is based on incidents which Hebbel saw in Munich when he was living with a cabinet- maker who, like his hero, was called Anton. "I saw how all the members of this worthy middle-class family grew gloomy when the gendarmes led away the foolish son. I was deeply moved when I saw the daughter, who waited upon me, really breathe freely again when I joked and fooled with her in the old fashion." Heb- bel had become the confidant of this daughter; from her confessions Clara's story took its origin. The fate of the unhappy, deserted sweetheart had often been made use of for dramatic effect even before Goethe wrote his Gretchen-tragedy, but mostly from the stand- point that the seducer belonged to the nobility, the fallen girl of the middle classes, and that fear of a rough honorable father drove her to child-murder or to suicide. The difference in rank does not exist in Hebbel 's play. It is no longer the oppressed citizen of the eighteenth century but the middle-class of the FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 75 nineteenth which esteems itself the real representative of the people. But only so much the narrower is the constraint of life which destroys all free judgment and all free conduct because their social position and self-respect is based upon traditional ideas of honor and right and not upon a view of morals arrived at independently. Hebbel had already written in his diary at Munich: "There is no worse tyrant than the common man in his family circle." He had learned that in his own youth, so many of the impressions of which had gone into the Maria Magdalena, and he now copied it with its most striking characteristics into the figure of the cabinet-maker Anton. In this drama everything is unconditional necessity. The character of the people is entirely conditioned by the class to which they belong; for them this means fate, and the ethical point of view peculiar to this class suffers no opposition from any individual. No one is capable of venturing an independent judgment of the world that closes him in; it decides as to fortune and misfortune, life and death, and from this comes the depressing feeling left by this great work of art. It is not a question here of a struggle between equal opponents, but the whole of middle-class society goes to smash from within before the eyes of the spectators without any new or better substitute showing itself in the background. To uphold middle-class respecta- bility at all costs is the main point just as in the older middle-class drama, but while this latter shows only the advantageous exterior of a society supported by firm principles, Hebbel lights up the interior and proves how much that is humanly valuable is destroyed for the sake of appearance and how rotten the pillars of 76 GERMAN DRAMA this society really are. The unfortunate Clara, who was originally to give the name to the play, is a victim of the class whose views mean for her the eternal cosmic system. When she believes herself deserted by the lover of her youth she becomes the loveless be- trothed of Treasurer Leonhard merely to escape de- rision and to stifle in her own heart her love for the supposedly faithless one. Her lover returns and keeps away from her because of her engagement. She yields herself to her betrothed because he demands this proof of her affection and, according to the views of their class, this cannot be considered a grievous sin with engaged couples. "If she is going to become my wife then she knows that she is risking nothing." Then all is suddenly changed because of a supposed theft by her brother, which covers Clara's family with shame and causes the loss of her small dowry. The Treasurer cancels the engagement, especially when an advanta- geous union with the ugly niece of the mayor offers itself and Clara's prayers cannot bring him back to her. Even the lover is completely steeped in class-prejudice and says when he hears of Clara's trouble: "Nobody can get over that! To be obliged to lower her eyes in the presence of the fellow in whose face one would like to spit? ... Or one would have to put the dog who knows it out of the way by shooting ! ' ' Clara had sworn to the father that she would not bring disgrace upon him and therefore goes voluntarily to death. But even this sacrifice is made in vain, for her purpose of avoiding the suspicion of suicide is unsuc- cessful. Thus everything works together to destroy her and the father whose sole life-purpose is the preser- vation of a stainless reputation. In the closing words FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 77 of Master Anton, "Ich verstehe die Welt nicht mehr," middle-class ethical standards proclaim their bank- ruptcy; they fall in ruins before our eyes. With Maria Magdalena begins the social drama of the present day. No longer is the contrast of classes brought before us in passionate conflicts but society is described and its defects revealed. Therefore the delineation of conditions becomes more important than the plot and a new technique is the result. Only the last stages of a course of destiny are shown ; these are just as much settled by general conditions as by the peculiarities of the people concerned and from this the necessity of all preceding incidents is analytically deduced. The principal difficulty with this technique consists in making known without omissions the necessary as- sumptions in the course of the plot and yet dovetail- ing them without effort into the dialogue in such a way that the interest of the spectators is retained to the close and the action advances continuously. Be- cause of these peculiar conditions, the modern society- drama is akin to Greek tragedy in its construction and in its portrayal of typical characters but with the reser- vation that, conformably to the complicated conditions of the present, the personages are no such simple crea- tions as those which the Greek writers present. The general impression derived from both classes is one of fate. But while in the Greek the justice of the course of the world is proven, here the final result is a depress- ing conviction of the unconditional and unfailing effect of social and natural laws by which freedom of action seems done away with. The representatives of ' ' Young Germany ' ' had already 78 GERMAN DRAMA aimed at such a drama theoretically. Hebbel came in- dependently to similar requirements, supported far more strongly by thought and experience. He satisfied them in his Maria Magdalena more completely than his predecessors and with the same devices as his most important successor, Ibsen. In the society-dramas of his middle period the latter stands entirely on the shoulders of Hebbel. Thus Maria Magdalena is the cornerstone of the new dramatic art but at the same time in another respect the conclusion of the old. In the magnificent figure of Master Anton, hewn as it were from granite, we see the descendant of music-master Miller in Schiller's Kabale und Liebe. He lacks, however, the joyful self- confidence, the fighting spirit and the rude cheeriness of his ancestors. The quills, which the middle-class citizen in the early days of that class wore on the outside, have been turned inwards; he does not venture to struggle, he thinks nothing at all about people, nothing bad, nothing good, and only in his sense of middle-class honor does he see the standard which he applies to all things. With his great heroic spirit he is held fast in a narrow circle of thought and clings to the belief that the existing cosmic order is just and complete. If this belief goes to pieces, then he too, and his class, must be ruined. That is proven in the younger generation which grows up beside him light- hearted and assertive. To him who looks deeper there are revealed in Maria Magdalena the causes of the convulsions which society has witnessed since 1840, except that here that influence is not yet visible which was gained soon afterwards by the new social forces which came into being because FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 79 of the development of industry. No longer the upper classes, but the organised masses of workmen, demand- ing equality, are now the opponents with which the middle classes have to contend. The outlook opens upon a new middle-class drama which now does not picture a condition of rest but the passionate struggles of two mighty opponents. To find for this just as complete an expression on the stage as Maria Magdalena gives of the self-destruction of the middle class is re- served as one of the greatest artistic problems for the twentieth century. Hebbel's criticism of society is continued in the two dramatic works which had their source in his impres- sions of travel. In Paris he took delight in the larger bustling life going on all around him. He had, it is true, been born and had grown up in a small place but was by nature and inclination a metropolitan who would feel permanently comfortable only in the full stream of busy public life. Then when he went to Rome, the ruins which formerly had spoken so eloquent a language to Goethe could only speak to him of van- ished greatness. The deep moral degradation and the wretched government of the city, as well as in the neighboring kingdom of Naples, where he stayed later, confirmed his view of the incurable nature of the world's conditions and again he sought to give pictures of the present, in which they should be delineated. In November, 1845, he found a second home in Vienna, where he had been detained by an accident. It was a year later before there stirred in him again the impulse to create and he wrote the two dramas of the present, whose scene of action is laid in Italy; the tragi-comedy, Ein Trauerspiel in Sizilien, and the trag- 80 GERMAN DRAMA edy, Julia. Both are taken from the sphere of the disgusting, of the simply horrible which Ilebbel thinks is the result of modern conditions. In the first the fundamental element of humor is to so combine the hor- rible with the bizarre that the one as well as the other will only have a moderated effect. The fearful appears in the lowest form because in the play the obsolete police-governed state is fate, and at the same time the contrasts of economic inequality represent the fearful danger of an unevenly increasing wealth. The effect of this mixture of the horrible and the comic can not but be disagreeable. The very same is true of Julia, which likewise is intended to reflect Italian conditions before 1848. The heroine finds herself in the same condition as Clara in Hebbel's middle-class tragedy; her father, like Master Anton, considers himself a just man but the solution of the problem is complicated because other factors play a part. The note of responsibility to the coming generation is already struck in the play when Count Bertram, shattered in health by excesses, declares that marriage between "life" and "death," between healthy youth and worn-out debility, is the "mother of ghosts." Thus there sounds in our ears not only the subject but even, accidentally, the title of one of the most sig- nificant of Ibsen's works. Artistic command of his material, clearness and cer- tainty in grasping reality here fail the author and therefore, in spite of the historic importance which Julia plainly possesses, in spite of the scenes of inimita- ble grandeur and beauty, justly praised by Otto Lud- wig, the work after all must likewise be considered a failure. FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 81 The bitter despair voiced in it is an echo of Hebbel's youth. When he wrote the Trauerspiel in Sizilien and Julia (1846) the pressure of poverty had been taken from him, he had found in Vienna a second home, and in the noble actress Christine Enghaus a life companion such as he needed. No unconquerable passion had led him to her because, as he said, the whole man in him belonged to poetry, to that power which to him was the most important, for out of it alone springs his own happiness and the advantage which the world can derive from him. What new works he wrote from now on were not to embody eternal contrasts in that accidental form which the circumstances of his own time gave them. He chose by preference the turning-points of history where these contrasts, represented by two ages and their points of view, had come together in mightiest collision. This was the origin of the great works of his last period, at their head Herodes und Mariamne (1847-48). Herod, whom fate has placed at that point of historic development where the heathen-Jewish and the dawning Christian world are both visible at the same time, sees in his wife, in agreement with the old passing view-point, merely a costly possession ; she, however, loves him with a different, to him new and incomprehensible love, which seeks its happiness in sacrifice. This is the source of the conflict in this thoughtful drama and it is made greater by the general conditions of the time and by those peculiar to the Jewish tetrarch dependent upon Home. In him pulses in feverish excitement the blood of his great forefathers and upon him weighs the curse of the old egoistic ethics and of the heart-loneliness springing therefrom. He- 82 GERMAN DRAMA rodcs wnd Mariamne became a universal drama in the highest sense. Hebbel did not aim at describing ' ' Jealousy, monster of frightful mien, ' ' as Calderon had done before with the same subject; on the contrary, his very successful purpose was to make the historic anecdote the expression of necessary human conduct. Mariamne is beheaded, but that which was in her lives on and, when Herod immediately afterwards gives com- mand for the murder at Bethlehem in order to destroy the Messiah of this new world, his blind rage cannot stay its victory. In this tragedy Hebbel has clearly striven for that pure beauty of form which graces the works of Schiller and Goethe, but he does so without giving up anything of his own peculiar nature. He now dispenses with any display of mere force, any subtle dialectic, any emphasis upon what is striking and strange in the characters and if apparently anything of the kind is still left in them, then the impression arises only from the fact that Hebbel penetrates deeper than earlier dramatists into the mysterious origin of personality and discovers features there which at first sight strike one as irregular and wilful. Full of great significance are also the two dramas, seemingly dashed off with easy touch, Der Rubin (1849) and Michel Angela (1850). Dcr Rubin conceals under the cloak of an Eastern fairy-story so much deep thought that it can scarcely be interpreted fully and, especially to the superficial Viennese public, was just as little comprehensible as Grillparzer's kindred comedy, Weh' dem, der liigt. The rights of the more highly gifted as compared with the mass and the excuse for the assumptions of the lesser sort is the subject of Michel FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 83 Aiujclo. The play is an artist's merry anecdote "of cerulean hue" which with the greatest sense of justice does not deny self-consciousness, and is indispensable for the full understanding of Hebbel, however little its merit as a work of art may be in comparison with his other plays. Hebbel has also accepted the right of the whole, as contrasted with the individual, as existing uncondition- ally for the freest of the sons of earth, the artist. He defined more generally the value of eminent people in the most beautiful of his tragedies, Agnes Bernauer ( 1851 ) , in which beauty in itself means tragedy. Agnes Bernauer 's beauty is in a way a privilege which the individual assumes over against the whole; it kindles the most violent passions and in its innocency causes greater harm than the blackest sinner can accomplish. Hebbel himself has thus characterized the idea of this drama: "In it is expressed quite simply the relation of the individual to society. Accordingly it is illus- trated by two characters, of whom the one belongs to the highest classes and the others to the lowest, that the individual, however grand and great, noble and beautiful he may be, must yield to society under all circumstances, because in it and in its necessary formal expression, the state, all human natures lives, in the individual, however, only the single phase comes to development. That is the stern bitter lesson for which I expect no thanks from the shallow democracy of our times, but it runs through all history and whoever cares to study my earlier dramas in their sum total, instead of conveniently stopping with individual ones, will find that it has already been proclaimed even there as far as each separate sphere permitted." 84 GERMAN DRAMA As in the case of the other subjects which had already been treated before Hebbel's time, he is in these also completely distinguished from his predecessors by his point of view, not because of a striving after originality but because he knows how to go deeper into the nature of things. All former writers had glorified Agnes Bernauer, the unfortunate and beautiful barber's daughter of Augs- burg, as a martyr, and pictured her murder as an act of revenge, of patriotism or of cruel class-pride. Heb- bel proves the necessity of her death for the sake of higher interests. He shows that Duke Ernest, who has her killed, sacrifices his feelings as a man for the good of the state and that the tragic note of heroic renunciation is inherent in his genuine greatness. He shows further that the son who puts the possession of the sweetheart above everything else must first be trained for the ruler's office to which he is born. Sim- ilarly Agnes' death means for her husband the victory of the sense of duty over selfish, sensual desires, as does the death of the Judin von Toledo for the king in Grillparzer's drama. Agnes falls a victim, without protection and without a struggle, and her death, which does not mark the close but the central point of the tragedy, cannot impair the great and uplifting effect of the whole. In this Agnes Bernauer is most clearly dis- tinguished from Maria Magdalena, which stands next to it in other respects because of its well-knit, compact construction, its wealth of individual features and the compelling logic of the motivation. The language is smoother than in the early work, and happily colored by the slightly archaic touch of the time of the action. For the comprehension of a woman's feelings in their FRIEDRICH HEBBEL 85 deepest depths Agnes is as little adapted as any of Hebbel's earlier woman-characters, because in them all special conditions of personality permit what is gener- ally legitimate for their sex only to shine as it were through a mist. Gyges und sein Ring (1854) delineates a woman who, completely cut off from the world, with- out any disturbing influence from outside, develops one- sidedly in the specifically female direction. Her ex- aggerated feeling of modesty feels even the glance of a stranger as a stain which she must remove at all costs. Perhaps purity is here exaggerated to a paradox but everything develops logically from this feeling which has complete mastery over Rhodope. She says to her- self: "Only my husband may see my face; therefore he who has seen it must become my husband and there- fore must first murder my earlier husband. But I cannot possibly live in marriage bonds with the mur- derer," and she stabs herself before the altar after the outrage to her feeling of purity is atoned for by her marriage with Gyges. Kandaules, the husband, is not merely a boaster as in the legend told by Herod- otus. Hebbel deduces his conduct from the deepest motives of his nature. As the descendant of a great family, as the last of the Heraclides he aims at intro- ducing a new era for his people. He lacks reverence for traditional custom, for the historical as well as the enlightened, the liberal. He depreciates the old values without being able to put new ones in their place. Hebbel thought that he had here found the point of intersection in which the ancient and the modern atmosphere pass over into one another. He supposed he had solved in a general human fashion, comprehensi- ble for all times, a problem such as could only have 86 GERMAN DRAMA originated in that legendary period. He did not intend to give the drama any particular idea as a background but to his greatest surprise, after its completion, there suddenly issues out of it, like an island out of the ocean, the idea of custom as that which conditions and binds everything together. In this in reality lies an aid to the full understand- ing of the strange work. We find another in the com- parison of Rhodope with the figure of Nora, seemingly so very different from her, in Ibsen's Doll's House, of whom one is already reminded by Hebbel's M831), 89. Korner, Theod. (1791-1813), 23. Kotzebue, A. v. (1761-1819), 4, 8, 10, 14, 23, 33, 36, 52, 157, 167, 204. Kreutzer, K. (1780-1849), 210. Langmann, P. (1862- ), 178. L'Arronge, A. (1838- ), 54, 208, 209. Laube, H. (1806-84), 26, 46, 47, 48, 123, 207. Lauff, J. (1855- ), 135. Laufs, C., 167. Lensing, E. (1804-53), 67. Lenz, J. M. R. (1751- 92), 2. Leasing, G. E. (1729-81), 1, 2, 63. Lewinsky, J. (1835- ), 100. Lindau, P. (1839- ), 105, 106, 107. Lindner, A. (1831-88), 103, 121. Lingg, H. v. (1820- ), 61. Liszt, F. (1811-86), 126. Lortzing, A. (1803-51), 42, 210. Lothar, R. (1865- ), 184. Lubliner, H. (1846- ), 106. Ludwig II, King of Bavaria (1845-86), 131. Ludwig, 0. (1813-65), 80, 94- 102, 151, 194, 203, 209, 210. Luther, M. (1483-1546), 96. Maeterlinck, M. (1862- ), 182185 Makart, H. (1840-84), 103. Malsz, K. (1792-1848), 37. Marbach, 0. (1810-90), 107. Marr, W., 107. Marschner, H. (1796-1861), 43, 124, 125, 210. Mehul, E. N. (1763-1817), 41. Meyer-Forster, W. (1862- ), 165 Meyerbeer, J. (1791-1864), 44, 124. Moliere (1622-73), 19, 111, 161, 162. Moller, M. (1868- ), 184. Mosen, J. (1803-67), 59. Mosenthal, S. H. v. (1821-77), 58, 107. Moser, G. v. (1825-1903), 53, 107, 166, 208, 209. Mozart, W. (1756-91), 41, 204. Miiller, F. (Maler) (1749- 1825), 72. MOller, Hugo (1831-82), 54. Milliner, A. (1774-1829), 14, 15, 26, 40, 96. Mfinch-Bellinghausen, E. F. T. von (1806-71), 57. Murad Effendi (1836-81), 106. Najac, E. v. (1828-89), 107. Nestroy, J. (1802-62), 35, 55, 207. Nicolai, 0. (1810-49), 211. Niebergall, E. E. (1815-43), 56, 151. Niemann, C. (1854- ), 165. 222 INDEX Nietzsche, F. (1844-1902), 169-170. Nissel, F. (1831-93), 60, 108. Novalis (1772-1801), 171, 182. Qffenbach, J. (1819-80), 105. Ohlenschiager, A. G. (1776- 1850), 11. Otto, C., 100. Otway, T. (1651-85), 186. Philippi, F. (1851- ), 164. Platen-Hallermlinde, E. A. v. (1796-1835), 11. Plautus (254-184 B. C.), 19. Racine (1639-99), 86. Rader, G. (1810-68), 208. Raimund, F. (1790-1836), 34- 37, 117, 207. Raupach, E. B. S. (1784- 1852), 13, 24, 87, 135, 207. Redwitz, O. v. (1823-91), 60, 207. Ring, M. (1817-1901), 106. Roquette, 0. (1824-96), 61, 107. Rosen, J. (1833-92), 53, 107. Rosmer, E. (1866- ), 179. Rossini, G. (1792-1868), 41. Rostand, E. (1868- ), 162. Ruederer, J. (1861- ), 178. Sachs, H. (1494-1576), 131. Sand, G. (1804-76), 36. Schack, A. v. (1815-94), 61. Schenk, E. v. (1788-1841), 24. Schiller (1759-1805), 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 14, 15, 17, 18. 19, 22, 25, 29, 36, 38. 40, 45, 46, 48, 59, 60, 63, 64. 68, 78, 82, 89, 90, 93, 95, 99, 101, 102, 103, 121, 126, 133, 137, 151, 161, 172, 175, 194, 206. Schlaf, J. (1862- ), 149, 178, 192. Schlegel, A. W. v. (1767- 1845), 9, 10, 117. Schlegel, F. v. (1772-1829), 10. Schlesinger, S. (1832- ), 107. Schmidt-Hassler, W. ( 1864- ), 184. Schneider, L. (1805-1878), 207. Schnitzler, A. (1862- ), 180. Schonthan, F. v. (1849- ), 53, 166, 209. Schonthan, P. v. (1853- ), 166. Schopenhauer, A. (1788-1860), 130. Schoppe, A. (1791-1858), 65. Schreyvogel, J. (1768-1832), 38. Schroder, F. L. (1744-1816), 2. Schumann, R. (1810-54), 44. Schtitz, W. v. (1776-1847), 11. Schweitzer, J. B. v. (1833-75), 53. Scribe, E. (1791-1861), 47, 49, 50, 59. Shakespeare (1564-1616), 1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 15, 38, 59, 71, 94, 96, 97, 101, 102, 111, 115, 121, 123, 161, 172, 194, 200, 216. Sigl, O., 107. Skowronnek, R. (1862- ), 165. Sonnleithner, J. (1766-1835), 41. Sophocles, 186. Spielhagen, F. (1829- ), 61, 106, 107. Spohr, L. (1784-1859), 42. Stein, L. (1863- ), 167. Strauss, Joh. (1825-99), 105. Strindberg, A. (1849- ), 145, 146, 150. Sudermann, H. (1857- ), 152-161, 177. Thoma, L., 178. Thomas, B. (1865- ), 167. Tieck, Dorothea (1799-1841), 9. INDEX 223 Tieck, L. (1773-1853), 10, 11, 14, 15, 38, 72, 124, 171, 182. Tirso de Molina (1585-1648), 163. Tolstoi, Count Leo v. (1828- ), 146, 149. Topfer, K. (1792-1871), 36. Treitschke, F. (1776-1842), 41. Uchtritz, F. v. (1800-75), 24. Uhland, L. (1787-1862), 16, 23, 64. Vega, Lope da (1562-1635), 32. Voss, R. (1851- ), 104. Wagner, H. L. (1787-79), 2. Wagner, R. (1813-1883), 43, 44, 45, 87, 120, 122-133, 150, 195, 204, 211. Waltner, O. (1851- ), 167. Walther von Stolzing, 131. Weber, C. M. v. (1786-1826), 42, 43, 123, 124, 125, 204, 210. Wedekind, F. (1864- ), 181. Weigand, W., 175. Weilen, J. von (1828-89), 59. Weissenthurn, Johanna v. (1773-1845), 36. Werner, Z. (1768-1823), 13, 14, 15, 96, 182. Wesendonk, M., 130. Weyrauch, A. ( ), 55. Wichert, E. (1831-1902), 107, 162. Wieland, C. M. (1733-1813), 9. Wieland, L., 16. Wienbarg, L. (1802-72), 46. Wilbrandt, A. (1837-1904), 103, 107, 108, 162. Wildenbruch, G. v. (1845- 1909), 100, 133-136, 152. Winter feldt, A. v. (1824-89), 106. Wolff, P. A. (1782-1828), 36, 206. Wolfram v. Eschenbach, 132. Wolter, Charlotte (18(34-97), 60. Wolzogen, E. v. (1855- ), 177. Zola, G. (1840-1902), 141, 143, 191, 192. Zschokke, H. (1771-1848), 16. 224 INDEX 2. WORKS. Abenteurer u. die Sangerin, Der, 185. Achilleus, 127. Afrikanerin, Die, 44. Agnes Bernauer (Hebbel), 83, 84. Agnes Bernauer (Ludwig), 100. Agnes Jordan, 175. Agnes von Meran, 60. Ahnfrau, Die, 15, 26, 27, 206. Aladdin oder die Wunderlampe (b'hlenschlager), 11. Alarcos, 10. Alessandro Stradella, 211. Alexander the Great, 91. Alexandra, 104. Alexis, 13. Almansor, 15. Alpenkiinig und der Menschen- feind, Der, 35. Also sprach Zarathustra, 169. Alte Biirgerkapitan, Der, 37. Altenglisches Theater, 10. Alt-Heidelberg, 165. Alte Wiener, 119. Amerikafahrer, Der, 177. Amphitryon, 19. Anatol, 180. Andere, Die, 180. Andreas Hofer, 13. Angele, 150, 177. Anna-Liese, Die, 207. Argonauten, Die, 28. Arme Heinrich, Der (Weilen), 60. Arme Heinrich, Der (Haupt- mann), 201. Arria u. Messalina, 103. Aschenbrodel, 11, 39. Auf dem Heinwege, 149. Aufrichtigen, Die, 162. Austreibung, Die, 178. Ball zu Ellerbrunn, Der, 36. Bannermann, 164. Barometermacher auf der Zau- berinsel, Der, 34. Bartel Turaser, 178. Beiden Klingsberg, Die, 5. Bekenntnisse, Die, 50. Belmonte und Constanze, 2. Bergschmiede, Die, 178. Bertha v. Frankreich, 117. BerUhmte Frau, Die, 166. Biberpelz, Der, 175, 198, 199. Bibliothekar, Der, 53, 208. Bogadil, 106. Braut von Messina, Die, 6, 14, 206. Brautfahrt oder Kunz von der Rosen, Die, 50. Brave Leut' vom Grund, 119. Bruderzwist in Habsburg, Ein, 31. Brunhild, 60, 88. Brutus und Collatinus, 103, 107. Burenspillen, 37. Biirgerlich und Romantisch, 50. Burschen Heimkehr oder der tolle Hund, Des, 55. Cardenio und Celinde, 12. Catilina, 141. Charlie's Aunt, 167. Citronen, 107. College Crampton, 5ii, 194. Comedy of Love, The (Die Komodie der Liebe), 141. Correggio, 11. Cyrano de Bergerac, 162. Dame aux Came"lias, La (Die Kameliendame), 104. Dammerung, 179. Dantons Tod, 40. Datterich, Der, 55. Deborah, 58. Demetrius (Hebbel), 89. INDEX 225 Demetrius (Schiller), 6, 89, 206. Deutsche Hausvater, Der, 3. Deutschen Kleinstadter, Die, 5. Deutscher Krieger, Ein, 50. Deutsches Theater, 10. Diamant, Der, 73. Diamant des Geisterkonigs, Der, 34. Dichter und der Komponist, der, 116. Ditmarschen, Die, 91. Doktor Klaus, 54, 208. Doll's House, A (Ein Puppen- heim), 86, 142. Don Karlos, 2, 13. Don Gil, 163. Don Juan und Faust, 39. Don Juans Ende, 61. Doppelselbstmord, 116. Dorf und Stadt, 36, 208. Dornroschen, 11. Drahomira, 60. Dramatic Art and Literature, 10. Drei, 179. Drei Reiherfedern, Die, 159. Durchs Ohr, 61. Egmont, 2, 194. Ehre, Die, 152, 155. Ehrenschulden, 61. Einsame Menschen, 150, 193. Einsame Weg, Der, 181. Eisgang, 177. Elektra, 186. Elfriede, 117. Elga, 201. Emilia Galotti, 1. Enemy of the People, An (Der Volksfeind), 142. Ephraims Breite, 178. Erbforster, Der, 96-98, 99, 210. Erdgeist, Der, 181. Erfolg, Ein, 106. Ernst, Herzog von Schwaben, 23. Eroberer, Der, 177. Erziehungsresultate, 36. Esther, 33. Euryanthe, 43, 125. Eva, 104. Ewige Liebe, 163. Fabier, Die, 51. Fahnenweihe, Die, 178. Fallissement, Ein, 145. Familie Schroffenstein, Die, 16, 17. Familie Selicke, Die, 149. Faust (Goethe), 2, 7, 29, 206. Faust (Grillparzer), 29. Faustschlag, Ein, 117. Fechter von Ravenna, Der, 58. Feind im Hause, Der, 107. Fest der Handwerker, Das, 37. Fidelio, 41, 204, 210. Fiesco, 121. Flachsmann als Erzieher, 164. Fleck auf der Ehr', Der, 119, 160. Fledermaus, Die, 105. Fliegende Hollander, Der, 43, 124, 211. Florian Geyer, 196. Frauenadvokat, Der, 106. Frau fur die Welt, Die, 107. Frau Lili, 163. Frau ohne Geist, Die, 106. Fraulein Julie, 145. Fraulein v. Scudery, Das, 100. Freischiitz, Der, 42, 43, 210. Freund des Fursten, Der, 162. Friedensfest, Das, 192. Friedrich der Rotbart, 127. Friedrich II, 101. Fritzchen, 158. Friihlings-Erwachen, 181. Fuhrmann Henschel, 200. Gastfreund, Der, 28. Gefesselte Phantasie, Die, 35. Generalfeldoberst, Der, 135. Genoveva (Hebbel), 71, 72, 90. Genoveva (Maler Miiller), 72. Genoveva (Tieck), 11, 72. Gerechtigkeit, 164. Gerettete Venedig, Das, 186. 226 INDEX Geschichte aus Kentucky, Eine, 107. Ghosts (Gespenster), 142, 149. Gestiefelte Kater, Der, 10, 11. Getreue Eckart, Der, 124. Girondisten, Die, 41. Glaserne Patoffel, Der, 11. Glockner von Notre-Dame, Der, 36. Gltick im Winkel, Das, 158. Goldene Eva, Die, 166. Goldene Kreuz, Das, 211. Goldene Liige, Die, 163. Goldene Vliess, Das, 28, 32. Gotterdammerung, 128, 211. Gottin der Vernunft, Die, 61. Gotz von Berlichingen, 1, 68. Gotze von Venedig, Der, 59. Graf Essex, 48, 207. Graf Waldemar, 51. Grille, Die, 36, 208. Griseldis, 57. Grosse Glocke, Die, 166. Grosse Siinde, Die, 180. Gross jilh rig, 50. Grossmama, 179. Griindung Prags, Die, 11. Grime Kakadu, Der, 189. Gustav Wasa, 11. G'wissenswurm, Der, 116, 210. Gyges und sein Ring, 85. Hagestolzen, Die, 3. Halali, 165. Hamburgische Dramaturgic, 1. Handschuh, Der, 149. Hanna Jagert, 177. Hanneles Himmelfahrt, 197. Hannibal, 39. Hans Heiling, 43, 124, 210. Hans Lange, 61. Harold, 134. Hasemanns Tochter, 54, 208. Haubenlerche, Die, 134. Hauptmann von Kapernaum, Der, 106. Hedda Gabler, 142. Hedwig, 23. Heerohme, Der, 135. Heimat, 156, 157, 177. Heimgefunden, 119. Heinrich der Finkler, 59. Heinrich und Heinrichs Ge- schlecht, 136. Henriette Marechal, 199. Herbst, 184. Herraannsschlacht, Die (Grab- be), 39. Hermannsschlacht, Die (Kleist), 20, 106. Hermann und Dorothea (Top- fer), 36. Herod, 91. Herodes und Mariamne, 81. Herostrat, 163. Hero und Leander, 29. Herr Senator, Der, 166. Herzog Bernhard, 59. Herzog Theodor von Gothland, 38. Hexe, Die, 103. Hoehzeit der Sobeide, Die, 185. Holofernes, 91. Hugenotten, Die, 44. Ich bleibe ledig, 36. Im Altertumscabinett, 107. Im Bunde der Dritte, 61. Im Hafen, 163. Im weissen Ross'l, 166. In Behandlung, 179. Intruse, 183. Ion, 10. Iphigenie auf Tauris, 2, 27. Jager, Die, 3. Jealousy, monster of frightful mien ( Eiferaucht, das grosste Scheusal), 82. Jesus der Christ, 41. Jesus von Nazareth, 127. Johannes, 158. Johannes Herkner, 179. Johannisfeuer, 159. John Gabriel Borkmann, 143. Journalisten, Die, 51, 207. Jtidin von Toledo, Die, 32, 84, 151, 206. INDEX 227 Judith, 68-71, 73, 90, 99, 194. Jugend, 170. Jugendfreunde, 163. Jugend von heute, 164. Julia, 80, 81. Julian Apostate, 91. Julius Caesar, 120, 194. Junge Deutschland, Das, 45. Junge Siegfried, Der, 128. Jungferngift, 117. Jungfrau von Orleans, Die (Hebbel), 91. Jungfrau von Orleans, Die (Schiller), 6, 121, 206. Kabale und Liebe, 2, 78. Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa, 39. Kaiser Friedrich II, 13. Kaiser Heinrich VI, 39. Kaiser Octavianus, 10. Kaltwasser, 163. Kameraden, Die, 163. Kammersanger, Die, 181. Karlsschiiler, Die, 47, 207. Karolinger, Die, 133. Katharina Howard, 59. Kathchen von Heilbronn, Das, 20, 21, 206. King Alfred of England, 101. Kleine Welttheater, Das, 185. Kolberg, 61. Komtesse Dornroschen, 107. Komtesse Guckerl, 166. Komtesse Julie, 150. Konigs Befehl, Des, 36. Konig Harlekin, 184. Konig Ingurd, 40. Konig Laurin, 136. Konig Ottakars Gltick und Ende, 30. Konig Roderich, 60. Konig Saul, 68. Konigin von Saba, Die, 211. Konigskinder, 179. Konigsleutnaut, Der, 49. Kreuzelschreiber, Die, 114. Krieg im Frieden, 166, 209. Kritische Schriften, 11. Kritische Waffengange, 189. Kunst und Klima, 128. Kunstwerk der Zukunft, 128. Kurmarker und Die Pikarde, Der, 207. Lady From the Sea, The (Die Frau vom Meere), 142. League of Youth, The (Der Bund der Jugend), 141. Leben und Tod der heiligeu Genoveva, 10, 11. Lebe das Leben, Es, 159. Ledige Hof, Der, 117. Ledige Leute, 178. Leonce und Lena, 40. Libussa, 31, 151. Liebe fur Liebe, 106, 107. Liebelei, 180. Liebestraume, 179. Liebesverbot, Das, 123. Little Eyolf (Klein Eyolf), 142. Lohengrin, 125, 126, 211. Lokalbahn, Die, 178. Lorenzino, 175. Ludwig der Bayer, 24. Lumpacivagabundus, 207. Lumpengesindel, Das, 177. Lustigen Musikanten, Die, 11. Lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Die, 211. Lysistratus, 114. Madchen aus der Feenwelt oder der Bauer als Millionar, Das, 34. Magda, 104. Makkabaer, Die, 98-99, 100, 194, 209. Maler, Die, 103. Maria de Padilla, 59. Maria Magdalena, 74-79, 84, 89, 209. Maria Magdalena, Vorwort zu, 93. Maria Stuart (Ludwig), 101. Maria Stuart (Schiller), 6, 206. Maria und Magdalena, 106. 228 INDEX Maria von Magdala, 61. Mariamme, 178. Marino Falieri, 101. Marion, 105. Marius in Minturna, 107. Martha, 211. Martin Luther oder die Weihe der Kraft, 13. Maskerade, 163. Master Builder, The (Baumeis- ter Solness), 142. Maximilian Robespierre, 41. Mazeppa, 59. Measure for Measure, 123. Medea, 28, 206. Meeres und der Liebe Wellen, Des, 29, 206. Mein Leopold, 54, 208. Mein Wort tiber das Drama, 93. Meineidbauer, Der, 115, 116, 210. Meister, Der, 180. Meister Andrea, 60. Meister Olze, 178. Meister von Palmyra, Der, 162. Meistersinger von Niirnberg, Die, 131, 211. Mennonit, Der, 134. Menschenhass und Reue, 5, 157. Merlin, 13. Michel Kramer, 200. Michel Angelo, 82. Minna von Barnhelm, 1. Mirandola, 90. Miss Sara Sampson, 1. Mitmensch, Der, 179. Modelle des Sheridan, Die, 106. Moisasurs Zauberfluch, 35. Moloch, Der, 91. Monna Vanna, 184, 186, 187. Morituri, 158. Milller und sein Kind, Der, 207. Mutter, Die, 180. Mutter, Die, 175. Mutter Erde, 177. Mutter Gertrud, 104. Nacht auf Wache, Eine, 37. Nachtlager in Granada, Das, 210. Napoleon (Hebbel), 91. Napoleon oder die hundert Tage, 39. Narziss, 49, 207. Nathan der Weise, 2, 63. Nebeneinander, 176. Nero, 103, 107. Neue Gebot, Das, 134. Neue Herr, Der, 135. Neunundzwanzigste Februar, Der, 14. Nibelungen, Die (Hebbel), 87, 89, 107, 128, 209. Nibelungen, Die (Jordan), 61. Novella d'Andrea, 162. Oberon, 210. Oedipus und die Sphinx, 186. Oper und Drama, 128. Orla, 41. Othello, 97. Pagenstreiche, 5. Pariser Taugenichts, Der, 36. Parisina, 107. Parsifal, 132. Passionierter Raucher, Ein, 107. Pauline, 176. Penthesilea, 19. Pfarrer von Kirchfeld, Der, 109, 113, 114, 210. Pfmgstmontag, Der, 37. Philippine Welser, 60, 207. Pillars of Society, The (Die StUtzen der Gesellschaft), 141. Pitt und Fox, 59. Ponce de Leon, 11. Post Festum, 162. Powers of Darkness, The (Die Macht der Finsternis), 146, 149. Preziosa, 36, 206. Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, 21, 206. INDEX 229 Probekandidat, Der, 180. Probepfeil, Der, 166. Promethidenlos, 188. Quitzows, Die, 135. Rahab, 59. Ratcliffe, 15. Raub der Sabinerinnen, Der, 166. Rauber, Die, 2, 48, 68, 121. Registrator auf Reisen, Der, 209. Renaissance, 166. Renaissance, Die, 175. Revolution in Literatur, 189. Rheingold, Das, 128, 211. Richard III, 9, 115. Rienzi, der letzte der Tribunen, 124, 211. Ring des Nibelungen, Der, 87, 122, 128, 131. Ritter, Tod und Teufel, 184. Robert der Teufel, 44. Robert Guiskard, 16, 18, 99, 194. Robert und Bertram, 208. Robespierre, 59. Romantische Oedipus, Der, 12. Romanesques, Les (Die Ro- mantischen), 162. Romeo und Julie auf dem Dorfe, 116. Rosamunde (Korner),23. Rosamunde (Weilen), 60. Rose Bernd, 201. Rosen von Tyburn, Die, 104. Rosenmontag, 177. Rosenmiiller und Finke, 36. Rosmersholm, 142. Rote Hahn, Der, 198. Rubin, Der, 82. Sappho, 27, 206. Schatz des Rhampsinit, Der, 12. Schauspielerin, Die, 92. Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tie- fere Bedeutung, 39. Schluck und Jau, 200. Schmetterlingsschlacht, Die, 157, 158. Schritt vom Wege, Ein, 162. Schuld, Die, 14, 40. Schwester Beatrix, 184. Schwur der Treue, Der, 166. Seelenretter, Der, 107. Shakespearomania, 40. Shakespearestudien, 94, 102. Shakespeares Vorschule, 10. Sieben Prinzessinnen, Die, 183. Siebzehnjahrigen, Die, 180. Siegfried, 211. Siegfrieds Tod, 128. Simson, 41. Sittliche Forderung, Die, 177. Sklavin, Die, 163. Sodoms Ende, 155, 156, 158. Sohn der Wildnis, ^>er, 57. Sohn des Fiirsten, Der, 59. Sophonisbe, 60, 108. Spanisches Theater, 9. Spatfruhling, 176. Spieler, Der, 3. Star, Der, 180. Stein unter Steinen, 100. Sternsteinhof, 109. Stiftungsfest, Das, 208. Stille Wache, Die, 165. Strom, Der, 177. Sturmgeselle Sokrates, Der, 160. Talisman, Der, 163. Tannhauser, 124, 211. Tante Therese, 107. Templer und die Jtidin, Der, 125. Therese Raquin, 141. Tiberius Gracchus, 101. Tochter des Wucherers, Die, 117. Tod des Tintagiles, Der, 183. Tod Tizians, Der, 185. Toni, 23. Tor und der Tod, Der, 185. Torquato Tasso, 2. Totentanz, 184. 230 INDEX Trauerspiel des Kindes, Das, 107. Trauerspiel in Sizilien, Ein, 79, 81. Trauerspiel in Tirol, Ein, 12. Traum ein Leben, Der, 29, 206. Traumulus, 165. Treuer Diener seines Herrn, Ein, 30. Tristan, 60, 132. Tristan und Isolde, 130, 211. Tropfen Gift, Ein, 166. Trutzige, Die, 117. Uber den Wassern, 163. Uber die Mauer, 107. Uber unsere Kraft, 145. Uber den Stil des Dramas, 93. Ulrich von Hutten, 59. Ultimo, 208. Undine, 210. Ungllicklichen, Die, 5. Unter Briidern, 61. Unterstaatssekretar, Der, 162. Urbild des Tartuffe, Das, 49. Uriel Acosta, 48, 207. Valentine, Die, 50. Vatikanische Apollo, Der, 127. Vampyr, Der, 124. Vater Der (Strindberg), 145. Vater, Der (Weigand), 175. Vatermord, Der, 90. Veilchenfresser, Der, 208. Verhangnissvolle Gabel, Die, 12. Verlorene Paradies, Das, 163. Verlorene Sohn, Der, 106. Verschwender, Der, 35, 207. Versucherin, Die, 107. Versunkene Gloeke, Die, 199, 201. Vierte Gebot, Das, 118, 149, 210. Vierundzwanzigste Februar, Der, 13, 14. Von Gottes Gnaden, 104, 149. Von Stufe zu Stufe, 54. Vor Sonnenaufgang, 189, 191, 192. Waffenschmied, Der, 42, 210. Waise aus Lowood, Die, 36, 208. Waldleute, 178. WalkUre, Die, 128, 211. Wallenstein (Ludwig), 101. Wallenstein (Schiller), 5, 6, 121. Walpurgistag, Der, 176. Was 1st eine Plauderei, 106. Waterkant, 165. Weber, Die, 194, 195, 196. Weg zum Licht, Der, 176. Weh' dem, der Itigt, 31, 32, 82, 206. Weisheit Salomos, Die, 61. When We Dead Awaken (Wenn wir Toten erwachen ) , 143. Wert des Lebens, Der, 184. Werther, 5. Wie die Alten sungen, 165. Wieland der Schmied, 127. Wienerinnen, 180. Wild Duck, The (Die Wilden- te), 142. Wildfeuer, 58. Wildschiitz, Der, 210. Wilhelm Tell, 6, 194, 206. Wozzek, 40. Wunder des heiligen Antonius, Das, 184. Zankapfel, Der, 107. Zar und Zimmermann, 42, 210. Zartlichen Verwandten, Die, 208. Zauberflote, Die, 2. Zeitung fiir die elegante Welt, 123. Zerbrochene Krug, Der, 17, 21, 206. Zopf und Schwert, 48, 49, 207. Zriny, 23. Zu Hause, 175. Zu irgend einer Zeit, 92. Zwei Eisen im Feuer, 163. 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