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GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
BY
OTTO MANTHEY-ZORN
PROFESSOR OF GERMAN, AMHERST COLLEGE
BOSTON
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY
1922
COPYRIGHT-I922-BY MARSHALL JONES COMPANY
THE PLIMPTON PRESS •NORWOOD 'MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED-IN-THE- UNITED- STATES- OF -AMERICA
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FOREWORD
IN THE summer of 1920 Amherst College granted me a leave of absence until January, 192 1, to go to Germany and attempt to analyse the state of mind in which the Germans were facing the conditions and problems resulting from defeat and the revolution.
As chance would have it, the summer and fall of 1920 were unusually opportune for such a study. The logic of events culminating in the conference at Spa had finally made the Germans begin to realize the extent of their defeat and of their obligations. An ever greater number were beginning to see the futility of wilful blindness or resentment, and coming to the conclusion that it was better to face conditions and seek a way of meeting them. Also the mere economic situa- tion did not seem as hopeless to the Germans as it does today. Work was beginning to be generally resumed. The mark had depreciated until its value was about two cents, but compen- sation for most grades of work and returns on most varieties of investments had risen in proportion to the mark's fall. The purchasing value of the mark within Germany was then only a shade above its actual value on the world market. The entire social fabric seemed to be organizing itself upon a basis ap- proximating the actual economic condition of the country.
Everything below the surface, to be sure, politics and the whole spiritual life of the country, was as chaotic as it is today. But the momentary physical and economic relief gave some real impetus toward an attempt at broad reconstruction, and made it possible for an observer to get an idea of the direction the reconstruction will ultimately take, the principles that have a chance to survive through the process, and the
9is?;.
VI
FOREWORD
spiritual resources which, released by the revolution, will give those principles the necessary force.
My chief concern was the study of these spiritual forces. These may indeed manifest themselves in any of the larger fields of activity: in economics and politics, religion, education, or in art. I am not a student of economics or of politics. My investigations in this field were merely to test the state of mind with which the people were meeting the political situa- tion, and the spiritual attitude they assumed to the supreme economic problem of their daily bread. I found a situation so confused and so threatened by distress and passion, that positive spiritual forces were exerting no influence over it as yet. I have not dared to venture upon a description of the religious life of new Germany. There were evidences of changes that may in time have large importance, but they do not lend themselves to either fair or adequate treatment. The institutional church of Germany had allowed itself to become so entirely a part of the state that, when the latter fell, a full share of the discredit rested upon the church. The laws of the new government, intended to guarantee a greater freedom to religious expression, could do little to produce a new spirit. Whatever attempts at organized expression of a renewed re- ligious spirit I could find were quite apart from the church and so vague that any description would lead to false impressions. In liberal education a new spirit is calmly exerting itself and is squarely and bravely meeting the new conditions. My main interest, however, is centered upon the mind and spirit of men and peoples as expressed in literature, and upon the spiritual forces that men and peoples evidence in their attitude to the great expressions of literature.
In teaching German literature the question of the relation of the drama to the ruling principles and forces of life is con- stantly brought into the foreground. The drama is considered by most German authors and critics to be the highest form of literary expression. Even the ordinary theater-goer has a pe- culiar reverence for what the German calls a drama as distin- guished from a play, and he considers sacrilegious any attempt
FOREWORD vii
to make the drama a mere form of entertainment or a source of profit. The object of the dramatist is to create in his characters living men, who embody, or come into conflict with, the funda- mental forces of life. The German dramatist must have not only the ability to see and express such forces, but also a suffi- ciently strong faith in the possession of them by man to make the drama convincing. Where such faith is lacking, the dramatist is expected to show at least a strong longing for it. The German audience, by national habit, is constantly looking for evidence of this faith in the great characters before it, in order that each hearer may acquire an insight into the funda- mentals of his own life.
The question often arose in my classes, whether this was really a guiding principle of the German drama. Therefore, when the opportunity came to test this thesis, by observing dramatist and stage and audience in a serious crisis, I was glad to seize upon it. My leave of absence gave me the opportunity which rarely comes to a student of literature: to test in the reality of actual events the statements concerning the German drama which I had taught in my classes. If, in the emergency, dramatists could be found attempting to express faith, or at least a strong longing for faith, in a new German character, if audiences could be found eagerly searching the dramas for a faith to serve as a basis for individual and national recon- struction, then an important question in the study of the German drama would be answered, and it would be possible to determine the state of mind which has the greatest chance of outlasting the present crisis and ultimately controlling reconstruction.
I devoted the largest part of my investigation to the situation in Berlin and Munich, because these cities are the most active and dominating centers of Germany, and because they are most opposed to one another in purpose and method. I went to Weimar to observe the interesting attempt to reestablish its traditional spiritual leadership. Such other German cities as I visited, among them Hamburg, Hannover and Leipzig, were in the main following the lead of Berlin and Weimar. They
'
viii FOREWORD
were important simply in their special interpretation of the forces emanating from these centers. In Salzburg, I witnessed a strong concerted effort by the leaders of Austria to devise a program of spiritual reconstruction by enlisting the power of art in saving what remains of the country.
The first result that I must record is purely negative: not one of the poets, old or new, has enough faith or enough insight in redeeming forces to be able to express such faith clearly, or to present it to the people with strong conviction. It is encouraging, however, to note that the foremost poets of the nation are not giving themselves over to despondency, but are trying to rise above the confusion and to calm the disturbed spirits of the people, hoping that serenity will give them light and insight. A similar longing to prepare the way for faith in a new spirit governs the ventures of Weimar and Salzburg. The most important discovery, however, is that there has arisen throughout Germany a new audience which has developed a strong consciousness of the relation of the drama to personal and national character. In it are the people who are facing the vast responsibilities arising out of the revolution and are seeking for standards with which to judge them. They are convinced, moreover, that they cannot find such standards unless they know themselves and the fundamental national forces of which they are a part. They believe that they can gain this knowledge by studying the characters of the great dramas of their past and by encouraging the better drama- tists of their own time to help them search. For this purpose they have organized powerful drama leagues.
It proved impossible to treat this audience merely in its relation to the drama and the theatre. The same people con- stitute that calm progressive element among the Democrats and Majority Socialists which is comparatively free from the general political confusion. The organizations for popular liberal education are composed almost entirely of these same people, and are able to maintain their strongly liberal, non- vocational character because of the high standards these men attain through their relation to art.
FOREWORD ix
Because this new audience is still in the making, and its position within German life is far from being fully established or recognized, the description of its activity is constantly inter- rupted by personal interpretations. The results derive a con- siderable degree of certainty, however, from the fact that the activity of this group, especially in its relation to the drama, is not altogether new. The revolution has given it the first real opportunity and has enormously increased its size; but the history of its growth goes far enough back into German life to establish its permanency with some degree of assurance.
That which most impresses the observer with the power of this group, and gives him reason to believe that its standards will be those that ultimately will prevail in the process of re- construction, is the extreme patience it shows in the search for standards and its serenity in the presence of the country's chaos.
Otto Manthey-Zorn
Amherst College
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Foreword v
I. The Struggle with Confusion 3
II. Education, Old and New 30
III. Youth in Revolt 46
IV. The People of Berlin and Their Theatre . . 60 V. Weimar 95
VI. The Mind of Bavaria 109
VII. Austria's Dream 124
A Final Word 132
Index 137
1X1
GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION
DO THEY repent?" No other question was so in- cessantly put to me upon my return from five months travel through defeated Germany. In most instances it was the expression of a sincere desire to win back the faith in humankind that the sight of Germany in war had rudely shaken. To people of this frame of mind the visible repent- ance of the German people is as necessary a condition to an honest renewal of relations as the penitence of a serious trans- gressor in their own midst. The more definite their code of morals, the more insistent are they on the confessions of the sinner and the more prepared to receive him back within the fold, if he repent. Others who asked the same question nerv- ously hoped for a negative answer. They had enjoyed to the full the hatreds of the war and the sense of superiority it gave them, or even the opportunities for material and spiritual profit- eering, and now feared that they might lose their advantage. But there is no definite answer to this prevailing question.
The German nation is not down upon its knees before the other nations of the world. The sight of its defeat is horrible enough. The pillorying of defeated sinners is a spectacle that human justice craves and victors always demand. But to see a whole nation prostrate before its fellow nations to confess its sins, is a horror that becomes almost unendurable, even as you only visualize it in presence of the spiritual disintegrations of " unrepentant " defeat. You feel that the kneeling, if it were sincere, might well be a symptom of a disease so serious as to
3
4 GERMANT IN TRAVAIL
seem incurable. The legend of the Prodigal Son is incom- plete without the character of the father.
The German nation is repentant, however, in that it has turned against those men and thoughts that ruled it in the disastrous days before the war. This repentance is the more sincere in that the German people have turned against former thoughts more than against the men whom their peculiar system had made their rulers and, as such, executors of these thoughts. The princes are in exile and are easily forgotten by the great majority. Their replacement is a matter of political readjustment which can be organized with time and studious application and popular good will. The revolt against former habits of thought is a more serious affair. Those men who think at all now find that they can no longer trust the standards by which their thoughts were once directed. They find that the standards by which they judged their most inti- mate actions, their relations to their fellowmen, their attitude to the state and even to the church, were not genuinely theirs in the sense of being instinctive, but were artificially imposed upon them by a strange, mighty, selfish force that suddenly exploded in its last burst of overbearance. Now they must seek new standards by searching for those spiritual powers that are genuinely their own.
What with defeat and economic and political hardships, however, the times are not conducive to this most difficult and delicate spiritual task. Defeat has thrown most Germans into a confusion which, however explicable, arouses the disgust one feels on seeing men becoming hysterical in face of sudden disaster. They have lost faith in themselves and in the exist- ence of fair play anywhere. They hate the old regime that brought them into competition and war, just as they hate the thing that brought on their revolution and, as they see it, dis- order and uncertainty. They impatiently distrust the men who offer a remedy for their misery. They close their eyes
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 5
and clench their teeth and try to live as best they can from day to day. If they have money, piles of it, they spend it madly and try only to avoid the actual clutches of the law. This money, they say, is no good anyway; it is only bulky paper that will at best buy nothing but narcotics. So why not live and get drunk on drink and food and jewels and excitement? If they have no money, they close their eyes and tighten their belts and dream. They dream their pet political and social theories and philosophies; but always with their eyes tightly closed to conditions as they really are. Any excess is good, if only the dream be colorful enough and take them far enough away from actual conditions. Those who are not rich enough to live to excess, or refined enough to dream to excess, exhaust themselves in despair and hatred and gloomiest apathy. And then a large part merely starves.
The disintegrating force of this confusion is clearly illus- trated by the mere struggle for daily food. Partly out of a desire to supply all the people with at least a scant minimum, but partly also as a most powerful bid for popularity, the government has framed laws for the distribution of food. It is able to enforce them to only a very small extent, however. The situation of the country probably demands that these laws be as stringent as they are, but faithful observance of them ^ would put everybody upon starvation rations. Consequently no one with money enough to pay the price demanded by the illicit trade will hesitate to break the law. If his conscience troubles him, he quiets it by saying to himself that, after all, the government is merely a makeshift as yet and not one in which he can place his faith, and that its laws are therefore not sacred. Food-profiteering is consequently one of the most flourishing occupations. In the summer of 1920 complaints against the profiteering by the hotels of Berlin became so persistent that the government was obliged to take action. The proprietors threatened to close down if the demands were insisted upon, and the government had to yield. This same situation has made the farmer secretive and extorting. He gives deceitful answers to the government officials who come to
6 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
take an inventory of his crops, and instead of bringing his food to market he sits at home to pass upon the bids and entreaties of the wealthy who come to him. He represents the latest and largest class of war profiteers. Whoever can afford it, is his willing victim. Even in the smaller cities, where almost every family has a back-yard garden, the wor- ship of the new beast-god, the " hamster " or German chip- munk, is more universal than ever was the popularity of the " blond beast " in Germany's wildest hour. Several times a week each family sends a delegate out to the farm to play the " hamster," to gather in by begging and buying at any price what eggs or butter or other produce can be obtained. " To go hamstering " is the most popular of the new expressions that the times have added to the German language. The poor in every class of society, whose scant rations taste all the more bitter because they cannot take part in this new illicit national sport, waste themselves in futile anger and vainly threaten to emulate the Russian example and organize raids on the farmers. It is not in the German character to indulge in such an extreme disregard for authority; but at present the respect for law is dormant.
As in the search for food, so in most economic questions dire need and greed confuse the problem and upset the minds of the people. It seems improbable that these situations will be squarely met or adequate solutions will be found, until the people examine themselves and, on the basis of such an exami- nation, clear the confusion of their minds and find a new faith to rise again above the stage of mere animal existence.
in
The efforts toward political readjustment are beset with equal distress, and present as little chance for the thorough examination and the calm and patient application necessary to revise old standards or search for new ones. Not a single one of the broader national movements that seek to make adjustments to the new conditions presents a clear outline.
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 7
The revolution itself appears to have been an outburst of uncontrollable natural forces rather than the expression of any large popular will. It seems simply to have been the inevi- table result of an unsuccessful war waged for four years on the basis of general conscription. Most Germans now admit that their army was in a sadly demoralized condition; but conditions behind the lines during those days seem to have been even less stable. The spirit of the country had grown in- creasingly seditious since the impossible winter of 191 6, when the people were forced to live on turnips and on bread half filled with sawdust. The ghastly pallor that that winter placed upon the faces of the children was too strong a com- petitor to the frantic exhortation of the military authorities to carry on. At the first undeniable evidence of defeat the country broke down from sheer exhaustion, and the revolution that followed was due to this rather than to the American demands for democratization or to the agitation of the German Socialists.
The Socialists took control, merely because they were the only organized body that was prepared even theoretically for the emergency. Many of them were well-intentioned, a few were able, but the great majority were inexperienced and in- competent. Most of the departments were poorly manned, money was scarce, and disorder soon prevailed. The chaos was increased by a competition for the highest places between the two principal factions of the Socialists. This competition , was ended by putting in charge of the highest offices a repre- sentative of each of the factions, who quarreled with each other over every important order. When this situation became im- possible, the extreme Left was ousted from the government and went into opposition. The Majority Socialists now had to bear the entire odium for the chaos of the country, especially since they held control without legal sanction. They deter- mined to secure that sanction from the people by issuing a call for the Constituent Assembly. From time to time the elections to that assembly were postponed, simply because the provisional government had no definite plan for a constitution.
8 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
The helpless officials eagerly seized upon some constructive suggestions which appeared in a newspaper article by Hugo Preuss; and, although Preuss was not a Socialist but a Demo- crat, they called upon him to frame the constitution. The elections to the assembly favored the liberal parties, Majority Socialist and Democratic. The vote at these elections, how- ever, is construed in Germany today as expressing not so much a democratic conviction as a general desire for law and order with which to get under way.
The signing of the treaty came in the midst of the Con- stituent Assembly. I asked several of the men who had been most prominent in urging the signing of that treaty, and each one gave the same answer: he was not sure that he had acted wisely. You cannot get a more definite answer to any of the leading questions in Germany today. The condition of the country is still so chaotic that its leaders cannot see clearly or have definite convictions. At the time most Germans evi- dently thought that the treaty was largely a bluff; but they were soon undeceived. With the resulting despair came a strong wave of nationalism and a popular swing to the Right. • The people as a whole quickly reasoned that, since the new order was bringing confusion and oppression, the old order must be restored. This mood was encouraged by reactionary agitators, who, as soon as they had the slightest success, lost their heads and organized the stupid and criminal attempt in the spring of 1920, headed by Kapp and Ludendorff, to rein- state the old regime. They acted too quickly and with too much of the old Prussian spirit. Though the Socialist govern- ment at first gave way, it soon managed to drive them out again by organizing a general strike throughout the empire. But the strike with its agitation was also too violent a measure to combat a movement so little real. Within the industrial centers of the Ruhr and Saxony it set in motion radical elements which had to be put down by force. Because on the one hand the treaty in forbidding a militia required a professional army, and on the other hand the government Socialists forbade men of their party to take up the profession of soldier, Noske was
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 9
obliged to move against the Ruhr with a reactionary army, hostile to his methods. This army answered red excesses with white terror, and so increased the confusion and the un- popularity of the government in the country at large.
In the midst of this turmoil the campaigning for the elec- tions to the first German Parliament began. It was merely an insane clash of emotions. Chauvinism won and put in control Hugo Stinnes and his clever helpers, who roughly represent the biggest industries of Germany. The government bloc that assumed control was clearly obedient to the wishes of Stinnes, though he himself kept in the background. It was popularly called the " legalized Kapp Putsch." The defeated Moderate Socialists went over to the opposition. Their control and their program of socialization had utterly failed. In combining more closely with the extreme Left, moreover, they found them- selves deprived of all convincing party propaganda excepting the cry of passion. So Germany today is roughly divided into two passionately opposed camps. On the Left they cry: " Down with religion and the church and capitalism is done for and Utopia will come! " and on the Right: "Down with the Jews, the enemies of religion and the instigators to bolshe- vism, and order will be restored and prosperity rise again!"
Because of his opposition to the reparation agreement Stinnes withdrew his party from the government in the spring of 192 1 and the Majority Socialists half-heartedly relinquished their opposition. Thereby the dominant power within the government bloc fell to the lot of Germany's great neutral party, the Catholic Center, whose party program is best de- scribed by the single word, compromise. To meet the new situation it characteristically changed front. The right wing under Fehrenbach, which had held to Stinnes, surrendered the party leadership to the more radical wing under Wirth and Erzberger. Because of the unpopularity of the decision of the Entente in regard to the division of Upper Silesia, the Wirth Cabinet had to resign in October 192 1. No other way could be found to form a government, however, than to per- suade Wirth again to undertake the formation of a cabinet.
io GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
He succeeded under most curious circumstances, which show that Germany's progress toward political stability is negligible. Wirth's own party, the Center, and the Democrats permitted members to join only as individuals, without a guarantee of party support. The Majority Socialists, on the other hand, rallied more closely to the Chancellor and even persuaded the Independent Socialists to abate their opposition.
So the whole political situation is a brew of seething un- certainties. The reason lies partly in the general confusion of mind in Germany, heightened by the economic turmoil of the times. But the awkwardness of popular political thought combined with an unyielding party dogmatism is even more to blame. The Germans are hopeless dogmatists. Each man has his pet little faith in his own careful formulation. Every question you put as to his views on the social or political, eco- nomic or cultural conditions of his country is an occasion for him to expound his own philosophy and then violently to attack the Treaty of Versailles; but always he will end in an even more violent attack upon those of his own countrymen who hold views different from his own. Germany's greatest disease has always been this sort of dogmatism. Out of it grew German efficiency and superspecialization, so lacking in broader outlook that it could be perverted by clever systems of control to any end whatever. Today it acts as the most dis- turbing obstacle to the process that would restore some sort of balance to the national mind, suffering under the shock of defeat and revolution. An examination of the principal po- litical parties of Germany makes one inclined to agree with the conviction of the many earnest men whom I approached, that Germany's political reconstruction must wait upon a thorough regeneration of the people.
The party of the extreme Right, the National People's Party (all parties must have a democratic name, of course), is in the control of the old Junker crowd with its unabashed mon- archical and agrarian political rhetoric. Its members are bombastic sentimentalists, none of whom are able to realize the extent to which conditions in the country have changed.
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION u
They are conscious, however, of two political assets which they industriously nourish; the traditional affection for a divinely appointed ruler, and among the unthinking the un- bridled passion of resentment against the victor. On the crest of the wave of nationalism which swept the country at the elections in 1920 they managed to secure 65 seats. Their immediate program is purely negative. They want to prove the impotence of the present government, hoping that a general confusion will make necessary a reinstatement of their former " efficiency." They speak rhetorically of a return of the old emperor; but if, as they suspect, the Hohenzollern House has permanently lost its cause, they would as readily welcome the rule of a Wittelsbach to bring them and their system back to power. Since their end is, according to their claim, divinely inspired, they resort to any means whatever, even to plotting in conjunction with the extreme Communists. Individually they are a sad lot. If they have money, they use its power to evade the laws and to organize revels, at which they try to console themselves for the loss of the extravagant court functions. If they have no money, they weep and grieve and exhaust their starved bodies with feasts of hating. Their blindness makes them ridiculously futile. I met one of their leaders, after a meeting of the party in Berlin, in high spirits because a half dozen women of the people had joined their ranks within a fortnight. He seemed to see the entire city population thronging back into the fold.
The German People's Party is practically the creation of Hugo Stinnes, the supreme industrial magnate of new Germany. Germany is full of stories of the plots and machinations of Hugo Stinnes. It seems that his strangle hold upon a large part of German industry was gained by the shrewd exploita- tion of the contract he made with the government during the war to rob the factories of Belgium and Northern France. He managed to arrange these operations so that none of the resti- tutions demanded by the treaty result in a personal loss to him. He is really the uncrowned ruler of the economic in- stitutions which the old system had carefully developed for
12 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
its own purpose and for the recasting of which the new govern- ment has enunciated radical principles, though it has not been able to apply any of them to an appreciable extent. Stinnes, I am sure, is a man interested in the power of his purse rather than in the welfare of his country. His entry into politics, at the time of the national elections in 1920, was an attempt to find an efficient substitute for the old deposed monarchy to act as guardian of his treasury. He bought control wher- ever it was on sale. Forty per cent of the German press is said to belong to him, and his precautions went even to the extent of acquiring an interest in some of the highly professional critical journals.
Before the national elections the German People's Party was a rather insignificant remnant of the nationalistic, semi- liberal parties of the old regime. By clever organization and vigorous propaganda Stinnes secured 61 seats for it in the Reichstag. Its program is squarely conservative along old capitalistic lines. Its appeal is in its promise of a quick return to prosperity and of protection against attacks upon capital by the Socialists. It takes no definite stand on the question of monarchy, though it offers a safe retreat to all those who are sentimentally attached to the old rulers but have not the courage to denounce the new constitution openly. Conse- quently the German People's Party becomes the refuge of most of the small capitalists of the country, of a large part of the petty bureaucrats of the old regime, and of most of the Protestant teachers and preachers. From among the last group the rhetoricians of the party are recruited, but the control and command rests solely with Stinnes and the lieutenants of big industry.
The Catholic Center is very much the same in size and program that it was before the war. It is a well-organized, highly disciplined party, held together by church authority and frankly admitting and following a policy of political oppor- tunism. Its real leader is said to have been Matthias Erzberger, often described as the best hated man in Germany, who was under constant persecution from reactionary zealots
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 13
and was finally murdered on August 26th, 1921. Erzberger was a strong liberal and until the elections of 1920 held his party sternly to the support of the Majority Socialists in spite of violent internal opposition from South German members. Because these elections, however, expressed a decided popular turn to the Right, he had to relinquish his leadership to the conservative wing in accordance with the established discipline of his party. But when, in the spring of 192 1, Stinnes refused to let his party approve of the reparation agreement and the Majority Socialists again were forced to enter the govern- ment bloc, thus giving it a more radical complexion, Erzberger resumed control. Though his lieutenant, Dr. Wirth, acted as Chancellor, Erzberger was really the dominant force in the government. Fear of what he might do probably maddened reactionary fanatics into killing him.
The Democratic Party is another party of compromise. In the Constituent Assembly it was very numerous. At that time it had received the votes of all who wished to confess democratic leanings, either because they were sincere or simply in order to mollify the Entente while it was preparing the treaty. At the last election it secured only 45 seats, and even now its members are not necessarily honest democrats. Both of the conservative parties and the Center ban Jews from their ranks, so that all Jewish voters are forced to join one of the Socialist parties or the Democrats. As a result all conservatives of Jewish extraction ally themselves to the latter party, whatever the shade of their conservatism; and thus make impossible a clear party program. On the other hand, the best idealistic liberals and many of the foremost intellectual leaders of the country are members of the Demo- cratic party, and' win a great national respect for it because of their enlightened liberalism. The most respected element of the 1 daily press is in the control of its members. And yet its in- fluence is strangely weak, owing partly to its false composition and partly to the tragic circumstance that here, as everywhere in the present crisis, the best idealists lack the power of trans- lating their principles into practical action.
i4 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
The three remaining parties are socialistic labor parties grading from mere progressives to extreme Communists. This general group polled forty-four per cent of the 26,000,000 votes at the national elections in 1920. If it were united, it could easily sway the policy of the country; but its three parties fight with each other more dogmatically even than with the parties to their right. The old Majority Socialists contain most of the skilled laborers and all the large body of German liberals who prefer the slight Marxian dogmatism of this party to the political ineffectiveness of the Democrats. The Majority Socialists still have no seats in the Reichstag, more than any other single party. Their program is one of progressive social and political evolution. They still are Marxian in name and still use the vocabulary of class warfare; but all this appears principally as party habit, developed through party traditions and propaganda. Occasionally a fleeting hope of winning back the dissenters into the fold gives new strength to the habit. But when they actually inaugurate laws for new social and political control, they ride with fair command and much care- ful reckoning the wave that is rolling Europe along to new organizations.
The Independent Socialists function principally as an oppo- sition party to the Majority Socialists. They have no other program than to prove the older party poor Socialists. They accuse the older party of lack of class consciousness and claim that it abuses the authority of Marx. Marx is the Bible of all the socialistic parties in Germany, each claiming that it alone reads and interprets him aright. Because the Independ- ent Socialists have no definite program of constructive action, they do not realize the responsibility of government, and there- fore engage in extravagant propaganda of class rule, revo- lutionary action and full and immediate socialization of public utilities. Because the Majority Socialists were popularly held responsible for the chaotic conditions of the provisional re- publican government, the Independent Socialists had unex- pected success at the elections of 1920 and secured 80 seats. This success, however, was little to their advantage, inasmuch
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION i5
as it united moderates with irreconcilable extremists. I visited their palatial Berlin club rooms in the early August of 1920, just at the time when it seemed possible that the Russians might break through the Polish army into Germany in an attempt to spread the Bolshevist revolution through Europe. But in spite of the cynical glee of anticipated triumph that held the party together at the time, the melodramatic gathering of whispering groups, scattered through the rooms, gave me a sense of the ludicrous ineffectiveness of these people. The country merely smiled at their extravagant threats. At their convention in the fall of 1920 they fought each other so vio- lently over the party attitude to Lenine's commandments of the Third Internationale that the party split and sixty per cent of the members went over to the Communists. The remaining forty per cent are moderates who would sacrifice but a shade of party convictions if they were to rejoin the original Majority Socialists; but party dogmatism and the comfort of irre- ponsible opposition restrain them from taking that step.
Because of this rift the Communist Party of Germany is at present of unwieldy size. It represents 3,200,000 voters. Its program consists theoretically of allegiance to the Russian leadership in World Revolution and Dictatorship of the Prole- tariat; actually it is a blind passion for some radical change which might improve the personal fortune of the individual members. Too many stories of Russian misery and Bolshevist misrule penetrate into Germany to make the desire for a Russian alliance, even among the most illiterate and starving, more than merely theoretical. The Communist leaders are of two groups. Some few of them are highly refined idealistic dreamers and poets who are able to divorce communistic ethics from Bolshevist practice and who revel in delightful dreams of blessed Utopias. Because the rank and file of German Communists are recruited from the most illiterate section of the population, the effect of these dreamers is not so disintegrating as it otherwise would be. The other leaders are demagogues who delight in their power to sway the masses as they please. I spoke to some of the most prominent and
1 6 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
found that they had far more ambition for political power than conviction regarding the principles which they hurled at the confused minds of their blind followers. They do not hesitate to boast that they can make these hungry unthinking people do as they will.
Thus not one of the German political parties has convictions sufficiently clear to enable it to assume a strong leadership. Nor has a single one sufficient strength in the Reichstag to govern without compromise both to the Left and Right. Above all things the country needs an education toward liberalism. If the spirit of party dogmatism can be checked, there is likely to be a significant strengthening of the intelligent pro- gressives among the Majority Socialists and Democrats. Within this group the constructive policy for the nation must originate.
The chaos of the country is still so great and the problems confronting it so clouded, that even the clearest in this group are confused or fantastic in their views. I managed to in- sinuate myself into a closed meeting of the Democratic Party just before the opening of the Reichstag for its fall meeting in 1920. The principal speaker was Professor Troeltsch, con- sidered by many Germans of various parties the strongest and clearest liberal in Germany today. He reviewed the course of the revolution and tried to find some way out of the chaos. His remedy was rather far-fetched. He thought that in order to regain stability and to win back the respect of other nations, Germany must for a time organize on the plan of a greater Switzerland. A new federation of states should be created with Prussia dismembered, so as to put an end to its hegemony. A decentralized Germany, united by close ties, would allow each state to develop economically in accordance with its peculiar resources and would offer the only feasible remedy for the financial chaos. Under such a scheme Germany would revert to an agricultural state as far as possible; she would be able to feed herself, and, by thus cutting down the neces- sity for many of her imports, she would more quickly reestab- lish a trade balance. The excess industrial labor would be
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 17
systematically distributed to work on farms. Any excess be- yond that would have to emigrate, but in an organized way so as not to lose the spiritual connection at least with the mother country. A militia, he thought, recruited in large part from the farming classes would be very effective in putting down any attempts at violence from radicals and reactionaries alike. After a lengthy period of recuperation by this method Germany could again take up her former history.
The picture is too far removed from probable events. The discussion from the floor, however, was far more confusing. There was talk of opportunities of revenge and for sudden re- covery when the members of the Entente begin to quarrel with one another and similar sentimental dreams common among stupefied Germans.
Shortly after this meeting I called upon the little, stoop- shouldered, emaciated, but extremely keen editor of Die Glocke, Max Beer, whom the Majority Socialists consider one of their most intelligent expounders. He is an author well known in England, where he lived for many years as corre- spondent of Vorwaerts, and wrote an excellent History of British Socialism. I was surprised that his idea of a remedy for the German confusion was almost identical with that of Professor Troeltsch, though it had a more socialistic coloring. The state, he figured, could supply from its reservations one hundred thousand families with five hectares of land each, leased to them for two hundred years. He would abolish fifty per cent of the universities and found agricultural schools, which would lay particular stress on truck gardening and poultry farming. He was opposed to emigration, however, and thought that all excess labor could be employed in building homes for workers.
If these are among the clearest political thinkers of Germany, the country is still far from recovery. Yet these men see at least that conditions have changed. Both made the remark to me that probably only five per cent of the population is able to see that radical changes have taken place; that four out of five use this knowledge to profiteer; that only one per
1 8 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
cent devoted itself to an honest effort at rebuilding, and only a small fraction of that one per cent has any real ability to do so.
rv
But even though confusion so prevails in economic and political questions that no clear analyses of them are being made, and people are therefore blind to the fundamental tasks confronting them, yet there are impressive numbers of men, mostly among the laboring and lower middle classes, who at least know that they do not see and are determined to acquire the ability to see, however unaccustomed and slow the process may be. The belief that a greater intimacy with the best of art and education will best help them know themselves and the basic human and national powers in themselves, is a German tradition the importance of which the revolution brought home to these classes for the first time. I was told that the little Berlin suburb of Karlshorst, where mostly humble people live, assembled in town meeting after the revolution and alloted five million marks for higher education for their daughters instead of thinking of obtaining food.
With the responsibilities which the revolution brought to them, the people of this class seem to have acquired also the consciousness of their dependence on art, that formerly was so characteristic of the educated middle classes. Like the latter they seem to have a realization of what art has accom- plished in German crises. To the German people the Renais- sance, for example, is principally the Reformation with Luther as its hero, not so much because he gave them religious free- dom, as because with his translation of the Bible he created for them a common language and made them free to express themselves intelligibly from one end of the nation to the other. The Germans also consider the great European political de- velopments and upheavals of the eighteenth century as quite secondary to the literary revolution of their " Storm and Stress," which gave them confidence in themselves and a con- sciousness of national individuality.
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 19
But even this instinctive turning to art to find the way out of spiritual distress is not free from the dangers of confusion. Fanatics are attempting to distort it, and profiteers are schem- ing to use its power for personal gain. So-called prophets travel from city to city and exhort the inhabitants to congregate in the squares to sing and dance to regain health and joy in life. Large audiences are attracted by strange performances of new dances which in some mysterious way are to restore a new spiritual balance. New fads in art have never before made so bold or so successful an appeal for devout congrega- tions of faithful dupes.
The most profitable distortion of this kind is the widely spread society of Dadaists, which through its art offers a final solution of every physical and spiritual problem. I visited its headquarters and publishing house in Hannover under the guidance of a literary critic of that city. I found a few rooms stacked to the ceiling with pamphlets and a few of their latest pictures tacked against the shelves. At least they called them pictures. They were boards plastered over with transfer tickets, small scraps of newspapers, wisps of hair, and a little hay and mud. The publisher and priest was a keen-eyed and raven-haired hunchback. With his cynical smile he asked me to guess at the titles of the pictures, and when I answered in a bantering way, he was a bit offended, though he tried not to show it. I tried to get him to tell me something about his Dadaism. He made a speech something like a barker at a circus about ultimate value and last secrets and " see for yourself." His talk came fast and his mocking eyes danced; but he explained nothing at all. When he heard that I was from the land of the universally desired dollar, he tried to talk business and his eyes danced even more. It seems that less than a year ago he had been a type-setter at a very low salary, but had saved fifty marks. With this and what money he could borrow on his unlimited nerve he had pub- lished his first Dada pamphlet of poems solving all problems but with no sense or rhyme or reason. The fish bit lustily and in a year he had published ninety volumes in half a million
20 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
copies. He is a shrewd communistic capitalist. He gave me a few typical pamphlets to ponder over. Before I left he introduced the youngest priest of Dadaism, his little month-old son, who sang some very good Dada songs, though he could not yet pronounce the mystic word itself, but would do so within a very short time, his father thought.
Dadaism is advertised as the ultimate development of ex- pressionism. It claims to express the truth itself in its ab- stract reality by means of the most real materials of life and without selection. It turns its back upon all the media of the artists of bourgeois society, such as perspective and color, rhyme and logic, and harmony and counterpoint. It advo- cates new materials, such as bits of paper and dirt, and the new technique of " simultaneity " and " bruitism." Finally it boasts of destroying art itself and of being the international revolution. It is the keenest bit of advertising I have ever seen, expertly adjusted to the condition of a fagged and be- wildered nation. I have before me a novel of forty-nine pages, called Second through Brain, a bewildering confusion of adventure, cynicism, eroticism, even of type thrown helter skelter on the page. One tenth of the space is used to warn against imitations of the only true Dadaism, obtainable at Steegemann's in Hannover. Incidentally, this publishing house is using its present prosperity to publish very fine de luxe editions of standard authors, so that it might still have some business if the country should return to reason.
The creed of Dadaism demands:
"i. The international revolutionary union of all creative and intellectual persons in the world on the basis of radical Communism.
2 . The introduction of progressive unemployment by means of a comprehensive mechanization of every activity. Only by unemployment does the individual acquire the chance of gain- ing knowlege of the truth of life and of finally accustoming himself to experience life.
3. The immediate expropriation of property and the com- munistic feeding of all people, as well as the building of
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 21
beautiful communistic cities which shall educate man to freedom."
The Central Council favors:
"(a) The daily, public dinner of all creative and intellec- tual people on the Potsdammer Platz (Berlin);
(b) That all preachers and teachers subscribe to the dada- istic creed;
(c) Relentless warfare against all so-called spiritual workers (Socialist poets), against their concealed middle-class ethics and against expressionism and post-classical education;
(d) The immediate building of a national art-house;
(e) Introduction of the simultaneous poem as official communistic prayer;
(/) Surrender of the churches for performances of bruit- istic, simultaneous and dadaistic poems (by this they mean poems accompanied by an orchestra of typewriters, kettle- drums, rattles and pot covers);
(g) Formation in every city with over 50,000 inhabitants of a dadaistic soviet to rearrange life;
(h) Immediate execution of dadaistic propaganda with 150 circuses to enlighten the proletariat;
(i) Control of laws and ordinances by the dadaistic Cen- tral Council of the World Revolution;
(k) Immediate regulation of the sexual relationship in the international dadaistic sense by dadaistic headquarters." x
This is, of course, merely a wildly extravagant perversion of the consciousness within the German people of the intimate relation between their art and their lives. It is keenly ad- justed to the confusions and the political extravagances of the times and therefore has a rather formidable success. But with the lessening of post-war diseases it will quickly die out, while the sane and less sensational movements in art and edu- cation will continue to grow in importance and influence.
The general confusion, however, and the delicacy of the task, which demands that the very fundamentals of life be
1 En Avant Dada, Richard Huelscnbeck, Hannover, 1920, p. 29.
22 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
reviewed and revalued, are still clouding the minds of even the most honest and courageous thinkers. As a result over- zealous and oversensitive investigators are making curious per- versions of history which find a large response. I met a group of splendidly refined men in Munich who, in their effort to find a basis for a new unified German culture, have trans- planted themselves back into the Middle Ages and deny all later German developments including the Reformation. They place the responsibility for the present debacle not so much upon the modern statemen as upon Luther and the whole of German culture born of Protestantism, particularly upon Kant and Goethe and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. They attack Luther for having torn asunder the heart of the nation with complicated problems, and Kant for having stifled the nation's life by throwing it into a mad whirlpool of dialectics. They recommend to German youth that it disregard all modern philosophy and apply itself again to a study of the old German mystics of the Middle Ages and thus regain its sim- plicity. Reprints of these old mystics are being sold in large editions. But such distortions are slowly being overcome, and there appear more clearly the broad outlines at least of the essential problem.
When the certainty of coming defeat slowly forced itself upon the minds of the people and patriotic enthusiasms weak- ened, disturbing criticism of the government and of the nation's very foundations arose. Those men who had the power and the courage to think began to search the history of their people and to examine the validity of the principles and of the national phrases with which the people had been urged to war. Dimly they began to suspect that there was something radi- cally wrong with the fundamental standards by which they were living. They began to see that the war had merely accentuated that wrong to the point where it must be faced. They caught a blurred vision of how a powerful force had tampered with their lives for generations, had robbed them of
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 23
their individuality and made them into mere instruments. Just how they could thus have been abused, they do not as yet quite know. Even the bare outline of such a vision was terrifying in that it threatened the truth of every accepted standard. When, however, the picture takes on sharp out- lines, and becomes clear to the whole nation, it will be the principal incentive to definite reconstruction.
Meanwhile to an important minority the picture is begin- ning to take the following form: On the one hand appears the unselfishly acquired idealism of Kant and Goethe and Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt and Stein and Hardenberg, a basis upon which the nation might have developed true to its best qualities. On the other hand some, at least, are beginning to see the true nature of that one-tracked, selfish system we call Prussianism and of the insidious fight which it has waged for generations against the finer, unsuspecting and unprotected idealism. Because of the refined, delicate qualities of idealism, the more robust material system could almost imperceptibly force it into its service. Because idealism held the best affections of the think- ing and flattered the sentimentalities of the unthinking, the system borrowed its language and manners, until like a true parasite it had assumed the outward appearance of its victim and thus could all the better work its cleverly concealed will. Finally it was enjoying from the people the respect and loyalty they owed to their idealism and in the latter's cloak it led them to their present downfall. It was a slow, relentless and insidious process. The system had, indeed, the honest strength of strict limitation of purpose; but to succeed it had to destroy the only basis of life of the nation that it wished to use. Its own life, therefore, had of necessity to be short, in spite of large ephemeral successes and in spite of such geniuses of restricted purpose as Frederick the Great and Bismarck and Treitschke. Success and genius, and the subtle borrowing of its garb, made it so attractive that the few alert and sensitive spirits of the nation, who before the war sensed and tried to disclose its real nature, could not convince their hearers.
24 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
But today there are not a few who know that here lies the real disease of the nation, — men who are directing their eyes boldly upon the picture, however disheartening its aspect and however painful the conviction that accustomed standards must be revamped and freed from the old taint and that Kultur must be refined to culture. A more difficult spiritual problem cannot confront an individual, much less a nation. Kultur had not been a matter of the individual. It was a cul- ture minutely prepared and sternly dictated: replete with the comfort of a choice already made. Now each man is to be forced to make new judgments on his individual responsibil- ity, and yet upon the basis of his national character. The proc- ess must be slow. Its first stage is purely negative; the old standards seem to be wrong. As a result men do not know what to think or do. Then those who have the courage strike out for a new balance. Their venture still is more a longing than an attainment. Some of the gentlest have retired wholly within themselves to dream of a spiritually regenerated and united nation, and unfold fantastic sentimentalities. Others have been given courage, because of their very yearning, to direct their eyes more squarely upon the essential problems, and they are making promising beginnings, though they themselves may still be near despondence. Their search for faith in life and in a nation is, however, the spectacle that held me during my stay with them and of which I shall speak in these essays. The process is one that will continue for a long time. My reports, therefore, will be only of the beginnings I have found, but these beginnings are not only interesting but of extreme importance in the study of reconstruction on its spiritual and, therefore, most important side.
VI
Before I started out for Germany, I felt sure that if there were any one within the nation who had his eyes wide open upon the real conditions of the country and possessed the courage and insight and faith to lead the way along a new
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 25
and truer path, he would be found among the people's greatest poets. Some of the younger poets, I thought, who at the front had been forced into most intimate contact with the system and seen it crumble under stress after almost crushing the very life out of its subjects in an effort to maintain itself, would have been able to see its nature clearest and would have the clearest view of those powers which might bring the nation back to itself. But I could not find a single poet of the younger generation who had sufficiently risen above the con- fusion that surrounded him. Not one of them has given testimony of sufficiently strong faith in definite redeeming forces. There is not a single clear, convincing composition in a new drama or novel which unfolds before the people the forces that are trying to awaken within them. The confusion, and the jealousies and prejudices arising from confusion, de- mand for such a task unusual clearness of sight and force of conviction.
Ernst Toller is the most promising of the younger poets of Germany. His drama, Die Wandlung, is an intensely bold human struggle to clear from cant and from national and personal conceit the path toward a solid foundation. Polit- ical prejudices within the audience, however, not only over- emphasize the minor weaknesses of the drama, but turn the very intensity of it into inartistic rhetoric. The reactionary government of Munich is still detaining him in prison because he took control of the Munich mobs during the last commu- nistic uprisings, though everybody admits that he did so merely in the hope of checking their excesses. Meanwhile the ex- treme Socialists of Prussia repeatedly try to hoot his play out of the theatre because they consider it reactionary propaganda.
Richard Dehmel enlisted for the front in spite of his ad- vanced years and went through all the hardships of active service because he longed as one of the nation's leading poets to be in the midst of his people's sufferings and most intense deeds in order to test his faith in them. He came out of the war with a scathing accusation of the system but clutching hard at his belief in the people. His death, which occurred
26 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
soon after the defeat, was brought on, as his most intimate friends informed me, by his inability to endure the spiritual dissolution of the country.
Gerhart Hauptmann is without any hesitation accepted in Germany as the foremost poet. I had the privilege of being his guest on several occasions and of listening as he spoke to me of his nation's distress. Hauptmann's deep and genuine sympathy has made him the unusual poet that he is. He always tried to protect the soul of his people against the system; nor was he ever liked by the system's zealous servants. During the war he was not very sure of himself, afraid to hurt his people, it seems, whichever way he spoke. So he be- came abstract or tried to save his faith by seeking human qualities in situations remote from the confusion immediately before him. He has grown very old and nervous and when he speaks is plainly confused, often stopping his pictures before they are completed and seeking a better way to shape what rises before him. But he is most calm when asked if he has any fear lest his people be unable to rise above the disintegra- tion now at work. As he talked of this, his patience was the quality which impressed me most. He sees that it may take a very long time before the real spiritual growth of the people becomes apparent. He realizes that he himself may not live to see convincing expressions of it. But his quiet faith, in which there is no trace of resignation, is the most convincing individual testimony I found. His work meanwhile harks back to the realm of fairy story. He is even recasting some of his older dramas and changing them more into fairy tales as the expression of his quiet optimism. So while he knows no definite answer to any definite immediate problem, his mes- sage to the people is, " Be calm: do not forget that you have a soul which will awaken if you believe in it and give it time."
Thomas Mann of Munich, the greatest prose writer of Germany, is a man of quite another stamp. He is not one who sees large visions, but rather a keen analyst of the circum- stances about him. Before the war he directed many a sharp criticism against the growing materialism of the country.
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 27
During the war he fought against the democratizing influences that were making themselves felt in the nation and wrote an impassioned defense of those forces of aristocracy which he believed necessary for the country's growth. In these writings his patriotism rather dulled his usually keen perceptions. But this patriotism was stressed by an intimately personal quarrel with his brother. Heinrich Mann was drawing popular caricatures of the Prussian system with cutting satire that deeply offended the older brother, who tried too hard to counteract such influences by means of his essays. In my conversations with him, however, I found little of the admirer of Prussia. The demand that he particularly insists upon is that the power of Prussia and with it the juror politicus, as he termed it, be thoroughly curbed. For only then will Germans turn to a real consideration of spiritual values, upon a regeneration of which, he insists, the welfare of the nation depends. He has too little of the quiet faith of Hauptmann, but at least he is using his influence as a leader of the nation to point out the sort of regeneration that goes to the very core of the country's life.
It is not the poets, however, who are giving the strongest impetus to the process of renewing standards. After all, they are not the moral persuaders of the people but its expressors, who give clear form to that within the people which is of vital strength, though not yet conscious of itself. Accordingly they fix upon the stages that the onward march has reached, and by revealing the marchers to themselves, and what they have done by virtue of themselves, they open up the road to further progress. But when the people are confused or lacking in genuine force, the nation's poets too are helpless and their speech lacks clearness and a confident point of view. The nation itself, though it may not be clearly conscious of its direction, must have the power in itself to march ahead and must give evidences of a will to exert that power.
28 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
VII
Germany is today in a sad confusion and very many of its university men and. others of its intellectual and moral leaders are badly mired in the general upset. But there is a strong minority of the people, mostly from the lower middle classes and the skilled workers, who are not only conscious that they must clear the paths for newer and truer progress, but have banded together into strong organizations for a common pur- pose. These are the men whom the old system had most com- pletely tied ; whom, according to its " efficient " wisdom, it had made very useful and quite prosperous at the expense of their individuality and the prerogative of thinking for them- selves. The encouraging element in the revolt of these men is that it is not directed toward greater prosperity or even principally toward greater political freedom, though of course they have political organizations. Their most enthusiastic organizations are directed toward attaining fuller spiritual freedom and a clearer picture of themselves upon the basis of which such freedom can be won. I shall describe their efforts toward adult education in which there is no attempt at vocational training but simply a strong desire for a liberal culture, that they may know themselves more fully and better grasp their relations to each other and to the forces of society. Among preparatory school students I found a strange but in- teresting concerted effort to reinvestigate the principles of the accepted educational systems in order to make them conform more closely to the basic human needs of the youth. This effort culminated long before the war in a violent struggle against the system's pedagogues and against subservience of the home to the school. Throughout the country there are large and important drama leagues by which the people hope to make accessible to themselves the great poets of their past, to guard their great expressions against the corrupting influences now upon the country in its confusion, and also to encourage their living poets to help them find themselves.
THE STRUGGLE WITH CONFUSION 29
In liberal education and in art they seek the means by which new spiritual standards may be made effective. The confusion threatens this search with the possibility of many serious mistakes. The habitual affections and comforts of old conditions as well as the glamour of new promises threaten to spoil the search with vain sentimentalities. Therefore, they are trying to prepare themselves by a liberalizing education, and in the visions of their poets they are seeking correctives, and direction. In times of national stress the people's attitude toward art has often been almost a religious one. Today this attitude is accentuated by the feeling that in every other phase of their living they are under the control of their victors. With their art, however, they are free to do what their personal convictions and desires dictate. The clearest indication of the coming reconstruction of Germany is the faith of an important minority that the great dramas, as the highest artistic ex- pressions, provide the means to clear away the confusion by revealing that which is most genuine in themselves, and the calm determination of this minority to apply themselves to art with this purpose.
II
EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW
WHEN a national crisis reaches the point where old standards are discredited and new standards are demanded, the universities must clearly manifest their worth and prove the genuineness of their liberalism. For if liberalism be genuine, it will have not only the insight and the freedom from prejudice to make thorough and minute analysis of accustomed habits, but it will also have a full appreciation of those elements in the old standards which are still representative of the nation's life. By such liberalism alone can the universities lay the foundation for a revaluation. In former crises, in the eighteenth century and in the move- ment that culminated in the Revolution of 1848, the univer- sities took a leading part in liberalizing thought. Today they are generally considered the centers of reaction, and in their passionate fight against the new they renounce even the free- dom they attained in former struggles and champion the prej- udices of feudal days.
Upon examination you find that in the materializing process of Prussia, especially during recent decades, the universities were more completely caught in the machine than any other of the large national institutions. This machine, cleverly conscious of its advantage, had made the universities into great training schools for its public and confidential servants. The university degree was an unfailing recommendation to the in- numerable positions of trust which the system controlled in foreign service and in every conceivable branch of public life
30
EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 31
within the empire: in administration, in judicial service, and in church and school. The command of the army alone, and a few positions of highest dignity in other branches, were pre- served as prerogatives of birth. If only education was con- sistent with the aims and purposes of the system, its quality was preserved and liberalism, even, was encouraged. Academic freedom became increasingly the freedom of a protected privi- leged class. With the downfall of the system and the radical social changes resulting from the revolution, the inevitable results of such education became so evident that all respect by the people as a whole for higher education seemed en- dangered. The universities had not been institutions of liberal culture but highly specialized vocational schools. To the students the revolution brought serious uncertainties and new disquieting competitions. The church was freed from the control of the state; judgeships were to be awarded upon a broader basis than merely a university degree; promotions were to be determined by merit rather than by a definite period of service; some positions, such as those of municipal administration, were to become elective, while some of the free professions, such as that of the physician, were ultimately to be drawn into civil service. Therefore conformity to the new state of things demanded excessive sacrifice and more un- selfish interest than vocational training can produce, or did produce in Germany.
Accordingly the large majority of alumni, students and faculty angrily went into opposition against the social change. Because the first contact with it was painful, they have re- fused to recognize it or to examine it. To be sure, the economic changes resulting from defeat affected the university class more painfully than any other single group. As the mark dropped in value, workers' wages rose almost in proportion to its fall, and business reorganization and profiteering still made exist- ence comparatively carefree for the capitalists, both large and small ; but professional incomes and salaries of the civil servant became more and more inadequate, and brought the educated middle class nearer to starvation than any other group in the
32 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
country. During the war these people in their patriotic fervor had invested their little savings in government bonds, the in- come from which shrank to a mere pittance with the deprecia- tion of the currency. In addition this class had always been very proud, and had carefully manipulated its modest income to keep up appearances of dignity. Poverty to them, there- fore, meant starving in a double sense. It is only human that their misery kept them from facing the situation bravely and set them in such an angry opposition to the new conditions that they were in no mood even to examine them.
This is the class that sends its sons to the universities. Under the old system university training was their special privilege. Today it cannot afford to supply its sons with the allowances necessary to support them while they get their training. But these sons inherit with their parents' poverty their pride, which has always made it seem undignified for them to work their way through college. Now they must work or give up their schooling; and because the latter would be the greater blow to their self-esteem they seek with grim determination the means of earning a scant living, under serious difficulties and with none of the cheerfulness of the American student. They drive cabs or clean the streets at night or sell second-hand books in carts at street corners. Meanwhile the sons of the new war rich or of the workers not only offer new competition, but have the money and the time to make that competition seem unfair, and they also crowd the universities beyond capacity. So everything accumulates to make the temper of the former educated class a menace to reconstruction.
Unfortunately the leaders at the universities, the faculties, have just as little courage. They too are suffering, and there- fore violently attack the new order and wish that the old were back again. Thus they encourage the blindness of their students instead of being faithful to their calling and helping them to see. To confuse the situation even more, soon after the revolution the universities filled up with that large body- guard of the old regime which formerly would have trained in its own schools for commissions in the army. With the
EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 33
dissolution of the army under the treaty they entered the universities for want of knowing what else to do. These men are using the higher schools as centers for their resentful propaganda, and find a fertile field in the confused state of mind of the traditional student.
During the communistic disorders throughout the empire in the early days of the revolution, it was the students who saved the country from extreme disorganization. Now they consider that the country is greatly indebted to them and under obligation to follow their lead. But instead of leading towards a new social or spiritual organization, they have be- come fomenters of monarchial reactions: at times of national elections the students join to defeat democracy, when disorder threatens they organize irregular bands and terrorize towns suspected of harboring radicals, periodically they set out upon Jew-baiting expeditions, and they otherwise obstruct the en- deavors of the official government to bring order out of chaos.
11
In the midst of the reactionary confusion of university life as a whole I found in the individual members of university faculties and in small groups of students the keenest insight into the present affairs of the country and the highest aims for national development. The selfishness and blindness of university life is at least being insistently attacked from within. Minority student organizations at every university are attempt- ing to analyse the changes that the country is under- going, and I found them persisting in their work in spite of much derision from their fellows and even some persecution. Faculty meetings since the revolution are said to be the scenes of violent combat between the reactionary majority and the few who, having the courage to look things squarely in the face, see that society has changed and that the university should make itself the leader of the new order.
In the description of political parties it was pointed out that among the leaders of the Democratic Party are those who
34 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
have the clearest insight into Germany's real conditions, and the strongest determination to lead the country in the direction of honest and sane recovery. Due to the respect these men command because of their unselfish rectitude, they exert an influence quite out of proportion to their party's strength. The strongest of these leaders are members of university faculties, men like Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber. Troeltsch, who is Professor of Philosophy at Berlin, has been Prussian Undersecretary of State since the revolution and has made his influence felt in every critical decision of the Prus- sian Ministry. Weber, until his death from overexertion in the summer of 1920, was Professor of Political Economy at the University of Munich and the most fearless and thorough champion of democratic thought in Germany. The loss of his leadership, just when Bavaria was beginning her sad role of impeding the empire's reconstruction by tactics of extreme reaction, was most unfortunate both for Bavaria and the empire as a whole. Such men attract within the universities a following which, though none too large, is extraordinarily strong and has, in spite of the reactionary attitude of the larger part of university circles, maintained among the people as a whole some respect for university training.
in
During the earlier days of the revolution, when the Social Democrats were in more complete control of government than they are now, there was persistent demand that the univer- sities be opened far more generally to the people as a whole and adapt their teaching more directly to the immediate economic needs of the people, or that, in order to save expenses, the various universities be consolidated into a few absolutely necessary ones, and purely " decorative " departments be elim- inated. Owing chiefly to the respect for the small group of liberal-minded men about Professor Troeltsch, reason finally prevailed in this very ugly quarrel. Konrad Haenisch, who became Prussian Minister for Education and the Arts
EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 35
after that position had been held by narrow-minded and dangerous fanatics, is a prominent Socialist but a highly cultured, fair, and liberal-minded man who guards most care- fully the nation's rich intellectual resources. He has opened the universities to the people so far as he could without en- dangering their standards of scholarship. He is in the midst of the difficult task of devising effective means to liberalize teaching. But he has stopped all talk, at least within the government, of eliminating any of the departments of the universities. He is fully conscious that the universities are too vocational already and opposes all attempts to make them more so or to change them into a new kind of vocational schools for another class of the population. Where new departments were needed because of a broadening of the life of the country, he has created them, as, for example, the new courses in labor leadership at the University of Miinster. But his efforts are more strictly directed toward liberalizing the spirit of the universities, in student body and faculty. He is wisely direct- ing his efforts more toward the students than toward the teachers. I am told that his work is bearing fruit: that more and more are willing to open their eyes to the changes that have taken place and are beginning to realize that if they wish to enjoy the prerogatives of youth and to work toward leadership among their fellows, they must put themselves at the service of their new nation and make themselves indis- pensable to it.
rv
Meanwhile, not so much outside of as side by side with university education, a new popular education movement has sprung into life. This is a movement toward liberal culture by adult workers whose economic fortunes had not permitted them such privileges in their younger days.
There have always been organizations for workmen's educa- tion in Berlin, but these were conducted by political parties, principally those of the Left, for purposes of party propaganda; or they were private undertakings, some more or less philan-
36 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
thropic, some purely commercial, which fed their members in a haphazard way on popular lectures.
When the revolution freed the workers from the spiritual bonds of the old regime and with the new freedom had come added responsibilities, the more thoughtful worker felt a keen desire for a broader education to enable him to approach his task intelligently. Within a short time scores of workmen's educational associations were formed in Berlin. But these groups were often controlled by sentimental theorists, incom- petent educators, or dishonest special pleaders, who created confusion or even misdirected an honest search for knowledge. The University held itself aloof from the movement of work- men's education as it had done from the entire revolution. A few teachers maintained that it was the duty of the Univer- sity to bring these groups together and to direct the work in the spirit in which the workers had conceived it. They were met by violent opposition from their colleagues, as though they were proposing to give valuable assistance to a dangerous enemy. But they insisted on their point and gradually won a small number of enthusiastic supporters. In the spring of 1919 the Prussian Cabinet forced consideration of the matter upon the universities by decreeing that at all universities in Prussia councils for popular education be established to give advice and aid to workers' educational associations. Through the breach thus made the interested members of the faculty directed their attack. Thus, though a large number of its members still persist in a reactionary attitude and grumble at the innovation as much as they dare, today the University officially plays an important part in the movement.
The aim of the interested educators was to combine the many associations into one large effective body, to define its aims, and to devise methods of realizing them. In March 191 9 Professor Merz of the University, and Sassenbach, a member of the city council, formulated the principles upon which should be built the organization which they called the Volkshochschule Gross-Berlin. They persisted in their en- deavors, and in the fall of 191 9 the constitution was adopted
EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 37
by representatives of the communities of Greater Berlin and of all the principal labor unions. The University was then forced to accept the situation, especially since the organization had soon grown to large dimensions. By the fall of 1920 it had absorbed most of the smaller organizations, and was con- ducting 135 courses with a faculty of 118 teachers.
The Association is supported by three institutions: the city communities which furnish the necessary finances, the estab- lished labor unions whose interest guarantees popular confi- dence, and the University which watches over the standards of the work. The University, to be sure, does not act officially through its Faculty, but through its Council for Popular Edu- cation. While this does not assure the support of all the members of the University, or even of a majority, it attaches to the work those most truly interested, and thus saves much friction and delay. The university faculties of Germany are only too justly accused of being stupidly reactionary, and so do not enjoy the confidence of a very large proportion of the people. The Prussian Cabinet therefore decreed that in addi- tion to representatives of the Faculty the Council should con- tain specialists not connected with the University, the chair- man and business manager of the Workmen's Educational Association, and six workmen's representatives. The executive committees of the Council is composed of an equal number of university men and of delegates of the Workmen's Educational Association.
In all departments of the Workmen's Educational Associa- tion care is taken to give as much attention to interested popular opinion as is consistent with the standards that the work must attain. The parliamentary functions are vested in what is called the Committee. This is a very large body. About fifty delegates to it are elected by the different communities of the city in proportion to their population. All unions of a mem- bership of five thousand or more send delegates in proportion to their size, and with them are included also those political parties that maintain departments of cultural education, the expectation being that they will let the Workmen's Educational
38 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
Association do the work for them and thus separate education and party propaganda, as is proper. This group of unions and political parties also sends about fifty delegates. The faculty and the classes of the Workmen's Educational Association send twenty delegates, ten from each group. Finally, a few repre- sentatives of those popular educational associations not yet ab- sorbed, and a few prominent scientists, artists and educators are invited by the Executive Council to become members.
The governing body of the Association is the Executive Council. This is composed of thirteen delegates chosen on the principle of proportional representation by the four main bodies of the Committee. To these are added the business manager of the Workmen's Educational Association, two experts in workmen's education, and one representative from each of the higher schools of the city: the University, the Institute of Tech- nology, and the School of Commerce. This body is chosen for one year only.
The most important office is that of the business manager, who is the principal executive of the Association and the final authority in all its affairs. His personality may determine to a very large extent the success or failure of the undertakings, and great care is therefore taken in his choice. Three candi- dates are nominated by the University Council for Popular Education after conference with the Executive Council of the Workmen's Educational Association; from these three the Executive Council chooses a manager and their choice must be ratified by the Committee. According to the constitution, the business manager must resign if at any time he does not com- mand the confidence of the Executive Council, expressed by a majority vote. As long as the Association enjoys the services of its present manager, Professor Merz, it is certain to be led extremely well. He is an energetic, practical idealist, whose eyes are open to the situation confronting Germany and whose will is steadfastly directed toward a sane solution.
The two principal bodies of the organization are so consti- tuted as to give the widest, possible representation to the workers and to the population from which they come, and at
EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 39
the same time to include a strong corps of interested scholars to guard the standard of work. The Committee is intention- ally made a large as practicable, because it is felt that the con- tinuous and free discussion between scholars and workers will best clarify the aims of the Association, and lead to their being widely disseminated through the masses.
The purpose of the undertaking, as formulated by Professor Merz, is " to develop spiritually independent personalities, and to put them into intimate relation to society." In all respects the institution aims to serve the general culture of the citizens, and it in no wise gives the vocational training of the regular schools. The men within this movement seem clearly con- scious that the higher schools have gained their vocational effi- ciency by the sacrifice of general cultural training, and they hold this condition largely responsible for the inflexible, re- actionary spirit at the universities today. Therefore the Workmen's Educational Association is in no way to be a uni- versity on a lower basis, but it must establish a dignified posi- tion of its own, and even exert upon the academic institutions important new influences. It wants to put its students into touch with the spiritual riches of humanity, to sharpen their power of observation and their sense of fact, and on this basis to develop logical thinking and a sane understanding of human interrelationships.
v
To attain these objects the following grouping 01 courses has been outlined. Since the first step must be to develop a sense of fact and an ability to make the correct deductions in- herent in facts, the studies in mathematics and natural, sciences are encouraged first. Here the facts and processes are simple, and simple laws are logically deduced. Also simple problems can be manipulated, the penetration of which is important for a rational view of life. Twenty-eight per cent of all the courses belong to this group. In the study of science practically all the emphasis is put upon principles. In the few courses (about
4o GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
five per cent) dealing with applied science only those scientific accomplishments are studied which have decisively influenced spiritual culture or the structure of human society, or which through the manner of their application have become works of art.
The study of literature, music, and graphic and plastic art is placed next in importance. In these subjects the object is to learn to know the nature of artistic expression and its relation to life. This is sought not through informative his- torical study but through intimate associations with a few great works of art. For example, a class will devote a whole quarter to the study of Hamlet: first the play will be read to them by an eminent actor, then a detailed study will be made the basis for class discussions, which will incidentally uncover funda- mental questions of artistic expression. In the study of music, small orchestras are called in to assist, and much of the study of the other arts is carried on in the city museums. This group comprises twenty-two per cent of the curriculum.
All the work is directed toward the development of a true social structure in which the thoughts and acts of each indi- vidual are led by the conviction that he is serving the best interests of society, and that he is conscious of his responsi- bility to it. The class must gain an insight into the develop- ment of the ideas of right and law, and of the principles of state and society. It must investigate how various social conditions have arisen, whether they are a necessary develop- ment, and how in the future they can be influenced in the interests of society. This is, of course, the study of history, geography, social science, and economics. Much attention is paid to the development of democracies, especially to the re- cent history of Russia and of Germany. Much time is given to investigating the historical roots of the new institutions in- augurated or proposed by the new German government, on the principle that the worker should make a close examination of those spiritual- movements that seek to change economic and social conditions for the alleged benefit of society as a whole. To be sure, the country is still in the midst of the revolution
EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 41
and there is a consequent strong consciousness of social shift among the workers, so that much interest is centered about the study of the principles of democracy and socialism. The emphasis on the study of Marxism is a little out of proportion in an otherwise carefully balanced liberal program. But this is a subject constantly forced upon these men outside the classes; within the classes it seems to be treated dispassion- ately and in a thoroughly scholarly way, and may help to give these students the balance of liberality so much needed in Germany's present confusion of passions. Thirty-three per cent of the courses belong to this larger group.
The crowning efforts are meant to come in intensive studies in philosophy and the science of religion. In these studies the class seeks the cultural standards peculiar to peoples or to whole epochs, the intimate knowledge of which should help each man to build the bridge which puts his own personality into relation with the rest of the world. Here, too, the purely historical study is avoided. First, introductory courses are offered to present the character and problems of philosophy, and then separate philosophical problems and separate phi- losophical systems are studied intensively.
Finally, a few courses in pedagogy are presented which are meant to test the methods of the Association. These consist mainly in lectures on universal education, on reforms such as the " ground schools," or on the work of the Workmen's Edu- cational Association itself. The general plan is to arrange the courses so that any one subject, in so far as it is adaptable to the work of the Workmen's Educational Association, may be exhausted in two or, at most, three years. Three types of courses are offered in each of the groups: first, introductory courses which consist largely of lectures intended to give an idea of the scope and purpose and method of later courses; then the intermediate courses which are to supply the material for the final work; finally, the " Arbeitsgcmeinschaft," or spiritual workshop itself. In the introductory courses the numbers are large, and the lecturer predominates, but per- sistent attempts are made to encourage discussion after each
42 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
talk. In the more advanced work the numbers are carefully limited. The intermediate courses seek to have the student acquaint himself with the material of his branch of study and search for the best method of employing that material. Lectur- ing is therefore discouraged, and all the work is done by means of discussions, still directed, however, by the teacher. In the workshop the aim is to approach more and more the point where teacher and student realize that they are searching in common. Here the attitude of the student, both in his ob- servations and in his conclusions, provided only that the conclusions be logical, should be one of strict independence maintained in an atmosphere of honest intellectual rivalry and sincere companionship. Teacher and students should form an intimate commonalty of workers.
VI
It is the duty of the business manager to keep himself con- tinuously informed as to how far the organization is fulfilling the purpose of uniting the brain worker and hand worker in common efforts. He keeps in constant touch with the classes by arranging numerous conferences with committees from the classes to discuss the aims with the students and to hear suggestions from them. A meeting of all the classes and teachers within one of the city communities is held from time to time, in which an effort is made to get faculty and students freely to exchange views. Occasionally the entire organiza- tion of the whole of Greater Berlin meets in convention for similar discussion. I was not privileged to attend such a convention, but Professor Merz is said to have conducted several with interesting results. The business manager also edits a general magazine to which both faculty and students freely contribute discussions on the work of the classes or on the general cultural problems disclosed to them through their work. Perhaps it is simply the new broom, but in the few numbers that have appeared thus far the student contributions are of unusual strength.
EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 43
The success of the undertaking depends most, however, upon the ability of the business manager to build up a body of teachers fitted for the work. I have attended meetings of the present faculty, and it was impressive to see how thoroughly they had absorbed the enthusiasm and the strong convictions of their leader. At these meetings the aims and the methods of teaching were reviewed, reports of experiences or observa- tions on the work were made, and general discussions carried on which were very lively but were kept strictly to the subject under discussion by the chairman. Professor Merz also calls frequent group meetings of the faculty, to which he usually invites experts in that particular field from outside the organi- zation, as well as those men whom he hopes to attach to the faculty. These smaller meetings are used wholly to review the method and standard of the work, with a view to keeping it on the desired level and within the purpose of the Asso- ciation.
The Association has existed only since the fall of 19 19. At the end of the first year a faculty of 118 members were con- ducting 125 classes in the ten communities of Greater Berlin. All the teachers were doing this work in addition to their regular occupation. They received a compensation of only fifty marks, less than one dollar, an evening. As the Associa- tion gains in permanency it will, of course, have to have its own faculty. This must practically be created for the purpose, principally from men of younger blood who are able to adopt and perfect the new methods demanded by the new situation. Above all, they must be men of strong individuality and deeply conscious of their duty to society. They must not be dema- gogues, but sound investigators sanely interested in the edu- cation of the people. It will matter little to the Association whether such men have been teachers by profession or not, but it will be of immense benefit to the universities if a goodly number from their faculty will aid in such work and thus bring the old system into contact with the new.
The classes of the Association presuppose the regular ele- mentary education of the German Volksschulc, corresponding
44 GERM ANT IN TRAVAIL
to the work of the proposed " ground schools." Partly to supply such preparation to those who have never had the opportunity to acquire it, but mainly to revive it for those who have long since forgotten, Professor Merz has built up a subsidiary organization which offers preparatory courses in arithmetic and language. The courses run for twelve weeks of two hours each, and are conducted by university students recommended by individual professors as especially fitted for work with the laboring classes. These students are the par- ticular hobby of Professor Merz. From their numbers he hopes to recruit the future permanent faculty of the Work- men's Educational Association, and he therefore watches care- fully to see which of the students best develop the spirit of cooperation and the power of sympathetic leadership necessary for the success of the venture.
In the larger organization most courses run in four quarters of eight evening meetings of an hour and a half each; some have two-hour meetings, and a very few meet only five evenings in a quarter. The fee paid by the students is figured at fifty pfennigs an hour, making only eight marks a quarter for the longest course. The fee in the preparatory work is only four marks a course. With the mark worth a little over one cent this is, of course, a merely nominal fee, meant only to express the initial interest of the worker in the opportunities offered. Most of the finances must come from the city com- munities. Because of the present unsound financial status of Germany, and because of the reactionary influences that are insidiously manipulating the present political confusion, the communities are not so liberal as the success of the under- taking warrants, and they are therefore imposing upon the business management the necessity of subtle economies. These are simplified, however, by the enthusiastic and unselfish sup- port of the faculty. Meanwhile, the attendance is growing by such leaps and bounds that the spirit of the organization will slowly but surely permeate the communities whatever ephemeral phases they may pass through within the next few years. Then it will not only be possible to perfect the plans
EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW 45
of the founders of the institution by building up a permanent faculty and paying them properly for their work, but the en- lightenment and sanity and strength developed within the many workers of the classes will surely lead the country in the direc- tion of sound reconstruction and save it many of the mad ex- periments of ignorance. In one essential respect, at least, the workers in these classes have a distinct advantage over the rest of the country: they are serious, patient, calm, and willing to open their eyes.
vn
No other city of Germany has developed a Workmen's Edu- cational Association so strong as that of Greater Berlin. In Munich the bitter excesses of the two attempts at a commu- nistic republic have created a distrust of all popular move- ments and put reaction in complete control. In Leipzig there is an organization for workmen's education which is imposing on paper, but actually is in the same hopeless confusion as all the public institutions of this most radical of the larger German cities. The Leipzig worker has not yet learned that to see is better than to dream. The new universities of Frankfurt and Cologne and Hamburg show a marked interest in developing like movements but they all seem to lack an organizer of the power of Professor Merz. Each of these cities is accordingly wasting strength in numerous smaller ventures that are com- peting where they should combine. At the University of Minister an institute for the study of social science was established in the spring of 1920 for the express purpose of offering intensive training to labor leaders, or to students who hope to develop labor leadership into a sound profession. The founder and head of this institution, Professor Plenge, is a man who enjoys the highest respect in academic circles as in the important labor unions of Westphalia. He is work- ing with unusual success in a section where animosities be- tween labor and capital are greatest.
I
III
YOUTH IN REVOLT
I
N MY search through Germany for those who had the power to clear away some of the confusion that lay upon the country and to find some basic force in which the people had faith and which could serve as the foundation of new standards, I repeatedly met with the assertion that the best men of this type had gone into seclusion to keep away from the ever more confounding political squabbles and economic passions of the day. One of the very best of these men, I was often told, was a former professor of philosophy of the University of Heidelberg, who had been driven from office at the outbreak of the war and had retired to a secluded spot near Munich. He had published only a single drama and a few short articles since then, but his influence among those who knew him was so strong and seemingly so inspiring that I determined to look him up as soon as I came to Munich. He lived out in Percha, a little village near the Starnberger Lake, in a small villa furnished in simple old furniture and secluded in an estate of old high trees, with rugged walks along a winding brook: a most romantic setting for the radical I had expected to find. The man himself was a tall, well-set-up, athletic figure of middle age, with powerful but pleasant voice, long curly hair and kind blue eyes. Instead of a modern radi- cal, he appeared to be a last remnant of the old idealistic German students of the type of Karl Schurz, who had led the unsucccessful revolution of 1848. In his attitude, his views
46
YOUTH IN REVOLT 47
and hopes, he proved to be just that: " the last Burschen- schafter," as one of his friends later described him to me.
His idealism had made him a pessimist as to the present conditions of Germany, but the kind of pessimist who really suffers for lack of being able to fix his faith upon some definite and radical reserve of health within his people. The times had almost got his nerve, I thought. His one great concern was to keep alive the essential resource by which he lived: the ability to make a sharp distinction between appearances assumed by things, especially in a crisis, and what those things really and inwardly are. " Today," he said, " all public ex- pressions are merely front, and if any of the nation's seers claims he has any faith, he lies. He can only hope that, by some miracle or other, things may so clear that he can see and create again. At present there is nothing genuine. The best the poets can do is to fight hard to maintain that which is real and true^about things as they were; but even for that they had best retire. Otherwise they will be contaminated by re- cent movements, none of which is free from the black plague of materialism, — a materialism that increasingly demanded its toll from the whole of German life, brought on the war and the defeat, and finally the present confusion."
To him the war was a hopeless one from the beginning, be- cause the materialism that waged it was already on the verge of bankruptcy. Naturalism, the artistic expression of ma- terialism, together with its descendants, impressionism and cubism, was already at the point of death. In the footsteps of Maeterlink and Verhaeren a new spirituality was beginning to appear; though it too had its cults and cants, it did lead men away from sham and inspired them to pry into the real nature of a thing before they followed it. When war came, the men of this new movement supported it enthusiastically, not because they believed in those who were carrying it on, but because they thought it would create a crisis in which men would be what they are, that thus the last remains of materialism would be forever killed. But war did the very opposite. Man got to be neither spiritual nor beastlike, but
48 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
merely a machine. So that the new movement was rudely shaken, and now it is necessary not only to begin anew, but to remove from it a most disturbing confusion. Meanwhile the great mass is deluding itself with cant of various sorts.
He then spoke of one movement which before the war had best embodied the new spirit and which, he said, may rise again and carry it on: a movement by the youth of Germany in revolt against their teachers and parents, who were forcing them to deny their personal ambitions, instincts, and ideas in favor of the demands of the state. I had often before heard mention of this movement, and of its unique power and in- fluence on German secondary education and the workings of the young German mind. Upon examining it I found that it had almost swept the famous German system off its feet.
n
■
The movement started in 1898 in Steglitz, a rather dignified suburb of Berlin on the road to Potsdam. Steglitz had an efficient and proud Prussian population glorying in its stern loyalty to the demands which the rising state was pleased to make, and fostering an awed regard for Potsdam traditions. Its schools, especially its classical gymnasia, were of the most approved standards. Two ideals governed them in the edu- cation of their youth: the ideal of scholarship based upon Greek culture, and the ideal of service to the state. But the first was strictly subordinated to the second. The state was a jealous god who demanded love and reverence and pious subordination and fear. As in all German schools, but espe- cially in the classical gymnasia, there was close contact with the church. The teachers were all more or less willing assistants to the priests: not only did they open the session with prayer, but they were obliged at every opportunity to harmonize the mandates of the stern North German protestantism with the obligations due to the state. Duty ruled every phase of life within the school, until the scholar had completely surrendered his individuality to it and had thus become a model pupil
YOUTH IN REVOLT 49
and the joy and pride of his parents. Whatever interfered with this duty, this stern categorical imperative in which the universal law was the. state guarded on one side by the church and on the other by scholarship, was suppressed with much painstaking severity and pious zeal by overzealous servants and with much ruthless cruelty by ambitious climbers. The personality of the young German boys was ground down some- times into very delicate, sometimes merely into cruder parts of the great automaton. In the small studies of their homes, alone or with a few kindred spirits, these little chaps would often turn into enthusiastic rebels and feed voraciously on the ideas of some radical modern philosopher or the visions of some rebellious poet. But even among themselves there would hardly be mention of political action, and once back in the school they immediately became again the awed and docile pupils. The system's school had so easy a success with this education that it lived in smug security and was quite un- prepared when chance circumstances aroused the stifled roman- ticism in the youth of Steglitz and fired it to revolt.
Steglitz was a center in which the system felt comfortably secure. It had a loyal, sturdy, prosperous, middle class popu- lation. Its schools were of the very best with highly efficient faculties. In Steglitz lived the aged philosopher and so-called liberal, Frederick Paulsen, an old, kind-hearted, typically north German fighter, and a puritanical, evangelical scholastic. Phi- losophy and theology were one to him; with sincere convic- tion he put them both at the service of the state. His ideas of school reform were the proud garment in which the system hid in Steglitz. He was the kind of servant whom the system valued most, because he lent himself so well to use and abuse without a vestige of suspicion. But because the system felt so safe, it brought stronger men into the faculty, and among them caught a personality who insisted on the right of personal views. Gurlitt despised those of his colleagues who had sur- rendered unconditionally to the system; he considered them shallow or dangerously insincere. Moreover, he did not be- lieve in the eternal sanctity of a fixed set of standards and he
5o GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
frankly aired his point of view before his class. " His teaching was an undermining of sacred heritages; he put into the heads of the youth ideas which robbed them of their peace and upset them; he taught them to look upon the world from an angle which had never been taught them before, which had been carefully kept from them, a point of view which led them from the proper path and threw many a one heedlessly from a carefully chosen career out on to the path of independent thinking. He spoke of things that were taboo."1 Gurlitt seemingly was an excellent though dangerous teacher. The system would have got rid of him if he had been merely a local official, but he was uncomfortably well known for his writings and therefore, according to the methods of the system, had to be treated cannily. He had to submit to a great deal of chicanery by patriotic colleagues. At an official inspection it was finally determined that he was not sufficiently master of his subject to be a worthy teacher. The school quietly accepted a good number of his reforms after he had been dis- missed and danger no longer threatened timid souls, but the pupils had been seized by a new spirit which presented a far more radical danger to the system.
The quarrels of their teachers had been strongly sensed and keenly followed by the boys. It made them alert and sharp- ened the dull rebellious spirit they had timidly nourished in their private studies. " If teachers fight as to standards where they have seemed so certain, then all things may be uncertain and we who are young have the most reason to investigate." Because they had been subdued so long, they set out upon this search with all the excess of their newly discovered revolu- tionary romanticism. Above all, they felt, the search must be their own and not in any way directed or interpreted by their teachers or even by their parents. Indeed, suspicion of their parents was even deeper in these rebellious lads than suspicion of their teachers. After all, the teachers were merely carrying on their jobs, and their fine talk of ideals was merely
1 Hans Blueher, Wandervogel, Charlottenburg, iqiq, p. 35- I have freely taken details from this most popular but curiously biased history.
YOUTH IN REVOLT 51
part of the required equipment; there was no pretense of the intimacy of the home. What makes the revolt so interesting a picture is that it gave the lads their first real taste of youth with all youth's craving for romantic life.
in
There never was a system that set out more ruthlessly to throttle the basic impulses of youth than did the German gymnasium of the last few decades, where the classical ideal, the religious ideal, even the ideal of scholarship, were carefully prepared to make the young man into an efficient instrument of the state. All free movement was carefully controlled so as to prepare for this main purpose. " The school had to exert every ounce of its powers so to train the intellect of youth from the start that at a certain stage of its maturity it could not help thinking according to the wishes of the state and acknowledging a high degree of probability to the ideals which were preached in school." 2 This process was so per- sistent and so carefully clothed in almost all the high and accepted ideals of the age, that only a few escaped and these few only after loneliness, pangs of conscience, and persecution by their friends. In Steglitz, however, conditions were ripe for a most natural reaction to overstressed order; and so it happened that the German youth burst forth there in the greatest of their spontaneous mass movements to free themselves from artificial bonds, an outbustof repressed in- herent romanticism. At bottom was a deep spirit of revolt, and among a few consciousness of revolt, against the system and its professional teachers and most of all against the parents, who upheld system and teachers instead of being their sons' friends. Where such consciousness was strong it sometimes violently snapped accustomed bonds and created a cynical and nihilistic attitude toward all culture, but there was some- times a sane reserve. In the early days of the movement one boy writes to another: " You write that love for our parents
2 Wandervogel, p. 75.
52 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
is a phrase that we have outgrown. Don't you believe it! Out of love for us only do our parents take these steps that bring us to despair. The tragedy of it is, that they do not understand us and have quite a wrong conception of the char- acter of our inclinations. But it is terrible that we must show them gratitude for that which makes us so unhappy. That really worries me." 3
The leader of the movement was not a reckless spirit simply seeking a chance to lead his fellows on mad escapades in order to sow wild oats without restraint. He was rather a romantic rebel of the type of Karl Moor, the hero of every German sentimental youth whose passion is to be himself, who is con- scious of ideals which he thinks better than those which society imposes, and who devotes his life to winning respect for them in the face of social opposition. On Sundays the leader would take his friends out on an all-day hike, and at night they would lie about a camp fire on the open heath, airing their grievances and talking of things that were taboo at school; and Karl Fischer, or " Crazy Fischer," as the boys called him, would try to inspire them with his ideals. He was none too clear, it seems, about these ideals, and therefore could not give a very definite direction to the movement at the start. But he was very serious and very much respected by the friends he gathered about him. While he was a romanticist with a strong passion for freedom to be himself, he insisted, like Karl Moor, on the severest self-discipline. He was a passion- ate nationalist, because the foreign was unreal to him and he feared to come under its influence. He loved to revive old Germanic customs. As the most solemn celebrations of his organization, he reinstituted old Germanic rites around high bonfires on the nights of the summer and the winter solstices. While he was willing to discard the accustomed ideals of home and church and militaristic state, he insisted that the new ones must be found by fighting for self-possession against the in- ward tendency toward excesses and passions. Therefore, though these young lads were in revolt against their elders, they still commanded not a little respect.
3 Wandervogel, p. 81.
YOUTH IN REVOLT 53
IV
At the very outset Karl Fischer was intent not upon a local club but upon a large national organization, independent of the school and founded and maintained by youth. Although the school forbade all such societies, Fischer managed to dis- cover a way out of this difficulty. He found a number of parents in Steglitz who believed in his sincerity and trusted his intentions. They formed a " Committee for Scholars," as they called it, which functioned as the official organization but did nothing except protect the boys against interference and supply funds when necessary. The boys enrolled their names with this committee in a so-called Scholarenbuch which be- came famous as the real record of the movement. They called themselves Wandcrvogel, birds of passage, for their most dis- tinctive mark was simply that they wished to get away, when possible, and wander out into the open heath or the hills and forests, so as to be by themselves. The first long hike was conducted by Karl Fischer in the spring of 1898 into the Bohemian forests, Karl Moor's favorite haunt. Later, as the movement spread rapidly over Germany and Austria and into Switzerland, short tramps were arranged for every week-end throughout most of the year. For the school vacations long hikes were organized that took the boys through Germany and into those parts of foreign countries, preferably into Russia, where German settlers abounded. The Wandervogel is described as " a brown, dirty fellow with a soft felt hat, somewhere a few green, red and gold ribbons, on his back a rucksack and over his shoulder a sooty pot and a guitar." They scorned hotels and mocked at the rain and generally gloried in their health and freedom. They delighted in their similarity to the Traveling Scholar of the Middle Ages, studied his habits and his language and even imitated his dialectics. There was no tendency, however, to imitate the habits of drinking and duelling of the modern German university student, though in the early days the members did at times
54 GERMANY IN TRAVAIL
enter an inn and mildly carouse for an evening. Mostly they sat about the fires with groups of boys from some distant locality whom they had joined on the march, and discussed conditions of home and school; finding that everywhere the same situation prevailed and the same need of change.
On their hikes they met and fraternized with tramps, letting the magic of tramp slang play upon them and adopting much of it. They listened to their stories and their songs and made a record of many of them, especially of their epics. At first, as they marched about, and at their fires in the evening, they sang the songs of the Revolution of 1848 and some of the rebellious German student songs, but as they came into contact with the simple folk in the hills and forests of Germany and on the marshy heaths, they discovered a new store of folk songs which they eagerly snatched up and set to music for the guitar, the magic of which instrument, they claim, had been long lost in Germany and was rediscovered by them. These folk songs one of their leaders, Hans Breuer, collected and published under the title of Zupjgeigenhansl (Pick-fiddle John). It represents a real contribution to German popular song, and is, according to the statements of experts, the best collection that ever has been made.
So these young rebels grew into a healthy lot, who reveled in nature and let it sharpen their senses and cleanse their appetites, who taught each other the loyalty of friendship and in a most natural way strengthened national consciousness. But whatever these benefits they were still rebels, and were slipping more and more from the control of their teachers. The school, true to the character of the system, did not dare proceed openly against, the organization, though the more con- scientious a teacher was in his institutional duty toward youth the more he felt himself obliged to stamp it out in spite of all the good it was producing. The teachers engaged in petty jealous chicanery. The leaders in the Wandcrvogel called
TOUTII IN REVOLT 55
themselves Bachants from the title of the leaders of the old Traveling Scholars, derived from vagans or vagus and having no connection with a possible worship of Bacchus. But the zealous philologians on the faculty were studiously careless in examing the title, read it Bacchants, and raised a cry of intemperance against the boys. A fourteen-year-old boy, writing a composition on his vacation days, gave an enthusi- astic description of a hike, in the course of which he said, " We caroused until four in the morning." The teacher at once made a case of discipline of it. The examination of the boy proved the composition a mere piece of imagination, still the teacher drew a fat red line under the remark and inserted the exclamation: "Lie!" The poor chap was disciplined and forbidden to take part in further excursions. The incident also served as an excuse for passing a rule that henceforth over- night excursions should be forbidden to boys under sixteen. These methods, however, only knit the boys closer together and brought to light more clearly the essential health and clean- ness of the movement. Therefore the system was forced to proceed " cleverly." The teachers set out to praise the move- ment extravagantly and to patronize it. They clothed it with their own regular patriotic motives and attempted to send into its rank those upon whom they could depend to make it harmless. Then they solicited invitations from the boys to join their hikes. They hoped that, once participating, their standing would quickly put them into a position of command, and that they would soon win the boys back to the authority of the school. At first the boys were on their guard against such interference, but when the movement grew to large pro- portions and its organization became more complex, dissen- sions occurred within the ranks. The teachers with their authority then had a better chance to interfere, and they very nearly killed the spirit that had originally called the move- ment into being.
As long as Karl Fischer, the founder and romantic idealist, could watch over the movement and keep its idealism and romanticism fresh, it ran little risk of successful interference
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by the pedagogues. Fischer was an absolute monarch in his way and tolerated no opposition. As the movement grew he tried to hold fast to his authority by assuming ever higher sounding titles. But by the time he was about to exchange the gymnasium for the university, his organization was over- developed and factions were splitting off. A reaction set in against his authority and against the extreme primitiveness of his romantic ideals. The richer boys wanted to enjoy ex- pressions of their freedom in more refined ways. Instead of hikes they organized wagon and automobile tours through Germany with elaborate hotel accomodations. Of course, they lost their spirit of revolt, and with it the appeal to youthful romanticism. At once the teachers protected this new faction; soon they were in control of it and were able to make larger and larger inroads upon Fischer's following. Fischer put up one last fight when he saw his followers dwindling. He called his friends out into the heath to the old camping ground. There they met at night about a huge fire and looked their situation in the face and decided to stand up against it. They renewed their oaths of allegiance to each other and went back confident of victory, took up the fight, and not long after were again in command. Because of the protection that the " rational factions " enjoyed, they were freer than ever from authority, except for that of Fischer.
But when Fischer went to the university, he had to leave the direction to others. Because the Wandervogel was now a large organization it systematized itself and sought more help from teachers and was soon split again into various factions. When Fischer angrily interfered he was tried by a " court of honor/' composed largely of elders, and ousted.
VI
On the Rhine lived an elderly gentleman named Jansen, who had a passion for youth and was fascinated by the spirit of the Wandervogel. He, too, disliked the system and believed he could help his nation by clarifying this revolt. He con-
TOUril IN REVOLT 57
tributed liberally of his wealth, spread Wandcrvogel propa- ganda throughout the country, and helped to organize many branches throughout South and West Germany. But Jansen, being older, was more a free thinker than a primitive roman- ticist. He undertook to free the movement of false ideals and to introduce a more rational outlook. In doing so, he created new discords and introduced subtle differentiations that only gave the school a better chance to get control.
Finally a friend of Fischer's, Hans Breuer, undertook to revive the original spirit of the Wandervogel and created the Wandcrvogel, Dcutscher Bund, from those who were in sympathy with him throughout the factions. He revived the traditions of the Traveling Scholar, and with the guitar con- ducted the remarkably successful search for hidden German folklore. His love for nature made him an enemy of alcohol, and he urged abstinence upon the members of the Bund. The interest in nature of these " unbacchanalian Bachants " is said to have been very keen, and on their jolly hikes their interest in folklore grew and took the place of the traditional student songs. The Zupfgeigenhansl is their lasting con- tribution to German culture. These boys commanded respect wherever they went.
Again the system saw its chance, and teachers and elders insinuated themselves. On the basis of the clean morals of the boys they started a movement among them to pledge them- selves to total abstinence and consistent democracy in their social organization. They systematized and spoiled and caused dissension. Because the boys were clean they per- suaded them to allow girls to join their ranks. While that was successful for a time, a constant emphasis on the delight- ful simplicity of such companionship forced a distorted con- sciousness of the relation of sex upon the youth, and made that relation artificial. They managed to induce the Bund to accept into its ranks the boys of lower schools, and thus brought in a new element which could not easily be absorbed. When the movement was thus weakened, the teachers took control, so that they were soon in command of every phase
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of the original revolt. " Ten years had passed. The Wandervogel movement had its beginning in a revolt against the pedagogues and parents in order to go its own ways. An enmity had broken out between youth and old age. In this enmity youth had developed, had built up a rich culture, and had found many a thing that had formerly been kept from it. Now it set about finding a reconciliation, — and inevitably it had to sink."
VII
When the movement was sufficiently weakened, the school no longer hid its purpose. It arbitrarily put in teachers as leaders everywhere. If it met with opposition it adopted stern disciplinary measures. Just before the war many a youngster had to suffer under its persecution. The state also had its say. It set about to change the enthusiasm for German national character back into systematic loyalty to the state, and the desire for outdoor life into a system of military drill. The Wandervogel was to be the backbone of the German Boy Scouts or " Young Guard," as the War Office called it. When this last move was made, many of the youngsters threatened a new revolt. In the summer of 1914, however, General von der Goltz, holding a grand review of the Young Guard at Heidelberg, fired them to such a patriotic heat that they pub- licly denounced their former ideals and openly broke with those who still insisted on them. It was for championing this de- nounced minority that the Professor of Philosophy, who first told me this story, lost his position at the university.
It is well worth noting, however, that the spirit of revolt, and a strong consciousness of the artificiality of the system, was extremely active in Germany before defeat brought the system into disrepute. To this spirit many a man is now pinning his faith, and is anxiously looking for the time when it will appear again as strong and healthy as it appeared in these boys in the days before the war. There are only a very few of these boys left. When the war broke out, they saw in it the hour when men would throw off artificiality and
TOUril IN REVOLT 59
become themselves; or else they saw their country in distress and had no time or patience to analyze the system's responsi- bility in bringing war about. What fiery romantic youth would have done otherwise? They were among the first and the most reckless in battle, and the system, of course, did not have the interest nor yet the wisdom to spare them. So today they are gone or broken, but faith in their spirit still remains, and this spirit may yet become active and take a strong part in leading the country out of its confusion.
IV
THE PEOPLE OF BERLIN AND THEIR THEATRE
I
F THE Prussian state of mind, in its present confusion and its efforts to find a way out, can be read in any one institution, it is in the attitude of the people of Berlin to their theatre. They feel that in every practical activity, as well as in their rather helplessly childish but laborious attempts at political reorganization, they are not masters of themselves but subject to the endless obligations which de- feat has heaped upon them. Even though they are at work as busily as any nation is today, they go about their work with the staggering dullness which comes from a growing realization of defeat. Work is both a panacea and an opiate to them, but does not as yet express consciousnes of accom- plishment. In the theatre, however, they are free: free to exhibit the heavy scum of passions which the war produced, and the distorted growth of recent decades which the war has brought to light; but free also to express whatever attempts at clarifying are going on beneath, attempts which are being watched longingly by an ardent minority. In the theatre, they claim, they are trying to find means of expressing them- selves as they now are; there, they say, they are allowed to be themselves, and can still put into symbols and symbolic action the forces by which they hope to carry on.
Both in theory and by long tradition the theatre in Germany is quite a different institution from the theatre in America or in England. It is essentially neither a commercial undertak- ing nor a place of entertainment, but a national forum for
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BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 61
self-expression. It still shows clearly that its real beginnings lie not so much in the attempts of the church of the Middle Ages to bring its miracles vividly before the people, or in popular pageantry, but rather in the pulpit of the Protestant reformer, in protesting German philosophy, and in humanistic idealism. The history of the German theatre is not the story of the increasing success of playwright, manager and actor in discovering the temper of the audience and humoring it, of " putting a play across " in Broadway style and making large fortunes. That has been done in Germany, of course, as long as there has been a theatre. But plays of this nature are not allowed to appear in the subsidized public theatres or even in those private theatres whose managers profess artistic standards. They have large tinseled houses of their own that make their appeal frankly to those who seek mere entertainment. These theatres are often very prosperous while the others must depend on subsidies, but they do not command popular respect and their plays are soon forgotten. Throughout the German people there is unusual differenti- ation between a show and a drama. The drama must produce characters and the characters must be representative of the life the nation is leading or would like to lead. Tt must ex- press the basic forces of the nation, its essential common standards, in characters that will reveal the people to them- selves. So the people sit reverent and puzzled, often, before the drama and, in an attitude of expectation, let its visions play upon them. Most of the dramas that the German people now call great were but little suited to the stage on which they first appeared, and were full of unaccustomed vision to the audi- ence; but because they gradually and forcibly disclosed the people to themselves they were accepted as great national possessions.
The theatres at which these dramas appear do not advertise in newspapers excepting for a brief announcement. Dramatic critics, therefore, are not press agents in any sense but serious students of the drama who jealously watch over its function. The greater freedom of the press, resulting from the revolution,
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has made them even more exacting than in the times when royal patronage had still to be in some measure considered; though it is expressive of the part that the drama plays among the people, that in no phase of public life has arbitrary royal interference been less successful than in dramatic criticism. Even the sneering displeasure of the Crown Prince at the first performance of Hauptmann's anti-militaristic Festival Play in 1 913, which was to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Napoleon's fall, succeeded in influencing hardly a single one of the better critics of the day.
11
The theatre, therefore, assumes a role of first importance in the struggle of the people for a new direction to their existence, and all the forces of this struggle come together and clash furiously on the stages of Berlin. The fury of this struggle results from the impact of four principal forces: the old theatres of the crown that have been turned over to the state and are expected to be the great popular forum for the ex- pressions of the new democracy; the great Berlin Drama League that has sprung spontaneously from the so-called lower classes as an expression of themselves; the theatres of Reinhardt, who claims to be able to unite a commercial ven- ture with the ideal of preserving for the people the best of their dramatic expressions ; and finally the more or less frankly commercial ventures that measure the desires of the people merely by box-office receipts.
The last class naturally comprises the largest number of theatres, especially as the picture plays must be included. The latter are drawing tremendous crowds in Berlin today as they are everywhere. Because of the large salaries it can afford to pay, the moving picture industry is drawing upon some of the very best and most convincingly artistic actors of the country and on the foremost scenic artists. But the very best efforts of the artist are turned into sensational effects by money-mad managers, who, by the promise of a new
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refinement in excitement, lure the crowds to stupefying entertainment.
The other entertainment theatres are an equally sorry sight. Here all the degrading influences of war and defeat, of profit- eering and senseless passions, are exploited. The reviews are crude, splashy, and poorly played imitations of London music halls, mixed with awkward attempts at French sug- gestiveness; the comedies are disgustingly sensuous and extrav- agant, and the more serious shows play to the cheapest war-time passions and prejudices of the audience. Excepting for the motion picture houses, however, all theatres of this class are exceedingly expensive, so that they attract only the very rich, or rather that large class of people who, by war-time speculations, have temporarily come into a large amount of spending money. That this is a passing crowd is as plain as it is fortunate, and, its money gone, its theatres will go with it. Today the number of these theatres is rather greater than before the war. Then Berlin could boast of several private theatres whose managers had the highest standards and,- not being interfered with by suggestions from the court, often supported venturesome dramatists who were opening up im- portant new paths for the drama. But the refined audience that supported such theatres has been financially ruined by the war, and the managers, in order to live, are forced to draw the crowds of profiteers and to pamper their dull nerves with large doses of strong stimulants. It is interesting to note that in the judgment of almost every reputable critic of Berlin the famous Sudermann is rated as belonging to this category. He maintains a theatre of his own, where every season a new play or two of his is produced before an audience that likes the carefully respectable way in which he excites its nerves, and which remains loyal to him, as an addict is loyal to his stimulant, in spite of the warnings, anger and ridicule of critics. The composition of the Sudermann audience seemed very different from that at any other theatre of the city. It appeared to be composed of that remnant of the upper middle class and of officialdom that has known how to escape the
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financial ruin that the war brought to most of them. It has retained Sudermann to entertain it with drawing-room inde- cencies and comforting satires on the new order, which it hopes will soon pass over.
However numerous the class frequenting the theatres of this general type, it is an inactive class and one of stupid spirit: not at all expressive of what the public ultimately will demand. It is simply a symptom of the post-war disease. The attempts to stamp it out are indicative of what may ultimately be ex- pected of Germany. All the remaining theatres, those of Reinhardt, of the state, and of the People's Drama League, are working with varying degrees of honesty and success at the process of self-expression.
in
As far as I could judge from a personal interview with Reinhardt, he is absolutely convinced that his theatres are serving only the interests of the best drama and are devoted to enriching the literary tastes of the people. He is, clearly enough, a masterly genius of the stage, rather than of the drama; but in his ideals he is deeply sincere. By almost all dramatic critics of Berlin, however, and by a large proportion of the public seriously interested in the drama, Reinhardt is passionately hated as a man professing an ideal, but in practice seeking merely to please in order to enrich himself. In a large mass meeting of Berlin workers, for example, called to discuss the relation of the drama to the people, I heard every mention of Reinhardt, even when casually made, answered by an angry sneer from the crowd. Neither Reinhardt nor his critics are altogether right. As I will try to show, Reinhardt has got on a curiously wrong track and is reluctant to leave it. The passion of his critics is largely due to the extreme jealousy and pride with which they guard their ideals of the importance of the theatre in the scheme of national life.
Aside from a few commercial ventures such as the Theater des Western, where reviews of comic operas are staged in the
BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 65
new extravagant Berlin style, but in connection with which Reinhardt's name never appears, he controls three theatres: an experimental stage, called the Kammerspiele; the old, his- toric Deutsches Theater, which for forty years has been the pathfinder of the German drama; and his new immense circus theatre, the Grosses Schauspielhaus. The Kammerspiele is a small experimental stage of the highest order, where modern plays of all nations are tried out, or modernized studies of older plays are staged, by the best actors in Reinhardt's em- ploy. It deserves much credit because of its broadening in- fluences, but it is an exclusive club for connoisseurs, so to speak, small and very expensive. Because its influence upon the public is indirect only, it is not appreciated as it deserves. Moreover, much of the time of the very best of Reinhardt players, men like Moissi and Krauss, two of the most talented actors of the German stage, is occupied by the Kammerspiele so that they can appear only occasionally before the larger audiences, which strongly resent such treatment.
In Reinhardt's two remaining theatres the prices are popular, and a repertory is selected with the avowed intention of giving the people the best drama in the best possible setting. It is intensely interesting to observe that popular opposition to Reinhardt sets in at this very point. When democratic Germany shook off the influence of the princes from the many court theatres, it wanted no substitute for their authority. Because Reinhardt presumes to educate them from above, they resent his attitude and mistrust his acts. If he had strongly persisted in his attitude, he might have convinced the people, but, instead of that, he made apparent concessions in organization and tried to flatter their whims in the pro- duction of his plays. In both respects he is tragically in the wrong. Through the attempts to please the audience the artistic quality of the Deutsches Theater, even, has seriously suffered. With each new play produced the effects become more striking and sensational. Thereby his intentions become more obvious to the audience, and its anger turns into mock- ery and scoffing.
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The Grosses Schauspielhaus is an old circus, skillfully trans- formed into an immense theatre seating over three thousand people in a semicircle about a gigantic stage. This consists first of a large but somewhat shallow picture-frame stage of the ordinary sort, in front of which a spacious oblong platform extends out into the auditorium. Below this second stage runs a wide, deep pit beneath the level of the front seats. It is not at all a stage as we know it, but a tremendous forum. With the Greek drama Reinhardt has achieved remarkable effects upon this stage, but it is an impossible arrangement for a modern drama that does not depend upon spectacular crowds for its effect. When the crowds are not in the pit of the stage, the actors must so strain their voices to carry across the expanse between themselves and the audience that that struggle occupies the attention of the audience to the exclusion of the drama. When the crowds fill the pit their effect becomes so spectacular that again the real dramatic effect is lost. I saw an excellent performance there of Romain Rolland's Danton; excellent, in that each separate part was admirably interpreted by very able actors; but Danton's roars would not let you forget that you were sitting in a former circus, and in the last act the trial of Danton before the revolutionary tribunal and in the presence of the turbulent crowds of Paris was so magnificently exciting that Rolland's part in the creation was entirely lost. One feels that Rein- * hardt has grown jealous of the popularity of the startling effects of the screen and has determined to compete by offer- ing large cinematograph effects upon this stage. The theatre very clearly is a failure, however honest Reinhardt's intention may be. But it is a costly undertaking and one he is there- fore reluctant to abandon. To maintain it, however, his plays are becoming more and more spectacular and less and less artistic. Reinhardt's unusual genius may find a way out. He claims that the problem is complicated and fascinating and that he has not yet been able to discover the real possibilities of this stage. Meanwhile the opposition is growing from day to day. The distrust of him may soon be so deeply rooted that
BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THEATRE 67
no solution will be able to convince. In order to attract an audience he will then be wholly dependent upon sensational effects.
In the summer of 1920 Reinhardt startled the theatre world of Germany by announcing that he had retired from all of his Berlin theatres in favor of his friend Max Hollaender. After the first shock the Berlin critics simply discounted this state- ment. Hollaender, who is a shrewd manager, they considered simply a dummy; and they believed that Reinhardt was trying to escape the increasing storm of criticism to be free, the better to carry on a difficult fight he was waging with the state authorities over the heavy amusement tax. As a matter of fact, Reinhardt's activity at his Berlin theatres has decreased but little. He is devoting much time to an important venture in Austria, and in the late fall of 1920 he made an elaborate tour with a picked ensemble through the theatres of Scandi- navia; but he is also putting in a good deal of hard work at his old theatres, much as before.
Just before he publicly announced his retirement, but when the rumor of it was already widespread, I had an opportunity to question him in his summer castle in Salzburg, Austria. There he outlined his attitude toward his Berlin activities in idealistic terms, but clearly showed the strain he was laboring under because of the criticisms resulting from the direction in which his circus theatre was forcing him. (i The Berlin theatres, once the leading field for the development of the stage and the best drama," he said, " are seriously in danger of decay. The Prussian passion for work and efficiency, powerful enough before the war, is only heightened by the necessities imposed upon the country by defeat. People of Berlin no longer have leisure to enjoy art as it must be enjoyed. They go to the theatre as tired business men do, with ragged nerves, and demanding excitement and sensation. Meanwhile the moving picture industry is drawing the actors away from the best theatres. The star system is again forcing out the repertory program. To produce the best plays you must have a company of first-rate actors, so that every part is taken
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by an artist, and you must keep them fresh by a repertory program which demands much devotion and understanding of the drama, as well as much time. The high salaries in the motion picture industry, especially attractive now that living is so high, have seriously impaired the devotion to art. When first-rate actors are asked to play secondary parts, they prefer the large salaries of the motion picture manager and thus spoil the chances for an artistic ensemble. Then, too, the state finds it necessary to levy a tax as high as thirty per cent on all box-office receipts instead of coming to the help of the theatre as it did once. This makes for very high admission fees and consequently a greater dependence of the director upon the whims of the audience. As a result the Berlin theatre is rapidly undergoing a change. The repertory program has already disappeared from a number of the best theatres and some annual hit is being featured in Broadway style."
Reinhardt believes that good plays simply cannot be given in artistic fashion on the star plan. It certainly is a fact that the high standard of the German stage was achieved only after the star system had made way in favor of the repertory theatre. It is equally true that wherever the star system is introduced today, crude and sensational entertainment takes the place of the old artistic repertory. Reinhardt professes that he has retired to avoid devoting himself to that sort of thing, though the change makes it possible for the theatres to continue, and to hold their good actors because they are not required to attend rehearsals after the season's play is once well started, and consequently have considerable spare time to sell to the motion pictures. In Berlin, Reinhardt thinks only the large people's playhouses like the circus theatre will be able to maintain the old artistic program. The tremendous size of such a house makes it possible to sell admission at a low price, to get an unsophisticated audience receptive to ideal effects, and thus give the actor and director a proper atmos- phere in which to work. The large receipts also enable the payment of good salaries to the actors.
However, as already indicated, Reinhardt is not acting boldly
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in accordance with his expressed conviction, but is allowing himself to be drawn into an endless system of compromises. Even the " People's Theatre," as he delights to call his Grosses Schauspielhaus, is becoming more and more a spectacle, rather than a stage upon which the nation's best dramas are inter- preted for the people. So Reinhardt has lost caste today. But this is simply because in the national misery the ideals to which he was perhaps honestly aspiring have been neglected in favor of his practical activity as a producer. Reinhardt is an actor and an unusually ingenius manipulator of stage effects. Of the stern ideals of the German drama, and of its intimate relation to the inner life of the people, he has been an ardent student, but is not a naturally endowed interpreter. A growing consciousness of this accounts, no doubt, for the popular spirit of mistrust in which he is being shunned by those who are searching the visions of their poets to help clear away their own confusion.
IV
When, with the revolution, the state assumed control of the old court theatres of Berlin, it concentrated all its efforts at reform upon the theatre devoted to the spoken drama. In those early days of the revolution the state officials were not only extremely radical, but were amusing themselves and frantically seeking popular favor by proposing immediate realization of Utopian theories for popularizing the institutions of art. The theatre employees, both high and low, organized a sort of soviet of their own. Yet the changes actually effected were unusually sober and rational. There seems to be no doubt that the almost reverent attitude of Germans toward the drama acted as a powerful check upon over-hasty oper- tions, although it must be admitted that some of the Utopian proposals would have cost the state far too much. The most important change effected was to oust from the Kaiser's own large theatre in the heart of Berlin the old officials who had been subservient to his whims, and to appoint as general manager Dr. Leopold Jessner, who is genuinely liberal in his
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views and has also won an enviable reputation as a thorough scholar and as an able interpreter of the drama. In talking to managers of other large city theatres I found only the highest respect for Dr. Jessner's ability, and never once heard mention of his politics. Dr. Jessner was given complete con- trol of the theatre and of its work. He enjoys the confidence of the public, and the state is wise enough to see that in matters of artistic standards constant interference by an always chang- ing popular taste is detrimental to the people's good.
The theatre was made accessible to the people by issuing very reasonable subscriptions to its repertory, and by turning over a large part of the house for several evenings of each week to the People's Drama League. Because of the financial embarrassment of the state this policy has not yet been fully realized. On first nights and at other gala performances sub- stantial prices are still being charged so as to flatter the profiteer into involuntary contributions to a popular institu- tion. Nevertheless the state pays to Dr. Jessner's work a subsidy of many millions marks a year.
Dr. Jessner is the very antithesis of Reinhardt. Already he has swept the tinsel of the Prussian trappings off the former emperor's favorite stage. He believes that instead of working by means of mass effects in decoration, chorus, ballet and other such stimulants for tired nerves, the stage should seek its effects by presenting spiritual conflict as directly as possible, in a simple, convincing way. He believes that audiences must be educated to this kind of performance and that sim- plicity will most surely awaken in them a healthy reaction to art. His genius lies in his ability to impart to his actors a thorough knowledge of the peculiar character of the individual plays, to train them in a rich and clear diction, and by simple effects to reduce background and costumes to a symbolic pic- ture of the action. Through the extreme simplicity of the decorations and costumes, he forces the whole attention of the audience upon the spoken word. Because of the excellent training in clear diction which he gives his actors, he produces remarkable effects and succeeds in winning close attention
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from his audience. It would never occur to a Jessner audience during one of his successful performances to interrupt the play with applause before the final curtain drops. At times, to be sure, his expressionistic theory leads him too far and his symbolism appears a mere caricature; but with a reverent audience even an experiment that dares too much will succeed. Jessner's simplicity so well expresses the transition from court to people's theatre, that when he becomes too subtle the audience tends to blame itself rather than the director. The attitude of the old court audience that still persists in visiting the theatre also enhances Jessner's popularity. At the end of a new interpretation of an old favorite a part of the audience often will applaud wildly, while the smaller, older group will hiss and raise the cry: "We want our old stage! " That, too, gives the people a new sense of their freedom.
Examination of the repertory under Jessner's direction does not disclose a very radical change from the days of the court theatre. The difference lies rather in the truer, freer spirit of their interpretation. The old system was wise enough to play the nation's classics. It was more through the distri- bution of emphasis that it undertook to carry on its " clever " education. Only in patronage of modern authors did it openly show favoritism. Like most German directors when they have arrived at the head, of their profession, Jessner delights in winning startling effects from new interpretations of Shake- speare. He plays Schiller as the old court theatre never saw him, opening up before the people the whole fervor of Schiller's revolutionary ardor and letting the pathos of his ex- hortation to national restraint make its irresistible appeal. He has not yet had time to introduce his own ideas of Faust, but of the nineteenth century classics, particularly those of Hebbel and Kleist, he has given excellent productions. In accordance with the common German taste, his favorite modern dramatists are Hauptmann, Wedekind, Strindberg and Ibsen. But he disregards the early work of Strindberg and concentrates upon the quiet, thoughtful, far more spiritual later dramas; he drops entirely the later problem plays of Ibsen and tries to
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make his audience intimate with the soul of Brand and of Peer Gynt and the inner conflict of Hakon and of Skule. Among the youngest dramatists he favors those who approach nearest his own interest in inner spiritual action. He expended much effort, while I had the opportunity of watching him, in attempts to rescue Hans Franck's Godiva, a work excellent in parts but unequal. But Germany's present confusion is not producing very clear dramatic expressions, and Jessner is at least alert enough not to be caught by the immature pro- ductions of the new expressionists, who turn out so-called " spiritual " dramas according to the latest demands of ex- pressionistic theory, but do not create a deeper vision of their life or of the life of the nation.
Jessner also has closed his stage to those old favorites of the court who before its fall lived an easy life by lending their talents to flattering its vanities. If Jessner can prevent it, Sudermann will not be seen upon his stage. When he took control he refused to play a new drama of Sudermann's, the contract for which he had inherited. Sudermann, however, went to court and won, and Jessner had to bring out his play. He made an excellent performance of it and took in good receipts to help him in his more serious experiments, but his attitude clearly gave warning that Sudermann's tribe will have to seek another stage than the one which is devoted to giving the people expressions of themselves.
The old court opera proved too expensive an institution to popularize: With the exception of Wagner's music drama the opera is by nature a decorative appendage of the court and, in spite of the artistic gems contained in it, its expensive trappings tend to estrange the people. To meet the excessive cost of the opera it was necessary to increase considerably the prices of admission. For economic reasons the gaudy settings of the old regime had to be retained. Arrangements are now being considered, however, both to modernize the opera in accordance with the more genuine and less pretentious taste of the time, and to devise means by which the people may be given a chance to hear the opera at popular prices.
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But Jessner, with all his reform and his deep sense of obli- gation to the people, is nevertheless an official of the state. Though it is a revolutionary state and representative of the will of the people, it does not yet command their faith. There- fore, while the people respect Jessner and sit reverently before his stage, they hesitate to accept his work whole-heartedly. Their hesitation does not mean a lack of appreciation for the drama but rather the very opposite. They see in the great dramas of their poets so intimate an expression of themselves, and in the crisis now upon them they are so intent on getting the clearest possible insight into those expressions, that they instinctively and often vehemently resent anything that makes these dramas seem more distant. That is why they turn in such anger against Reinhardt and why Jessner must still work without their full confidence. That accounts too for the marvelous success of the People's Drama League of Greater Berlin, which today maintains two large theatres built from the people's voluntary contributions and which, if equipment permitted, could quickly double its present membership of 120,000.
The People's Drama League is an organization of long standing. Arising from the conviction, which has never wholly been lost sight of among the German people, that the drama is mainly a crystallized and solemn expression of the essential experience common to the people as a whole, it has had from the beginning the object of freeing the theatre from commer- cialism and paternalism, and of again emphasizing the spiritual attitude of the people to the drama. Its idea is not, nor was it ever, merely to give better performances than were pre- sented on many a royal stage, where toadying often went for more than talent; nor does it principally seek chances to per- form those plays which the court refused through fear of their revolutionary spirit; but it strives to rejuvenate and re- fresh the stage at the very heart of it by a thoroughly new reunion with the people as a whole. At the very beginning of
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the movement it was realized that the means of reaching such a goal must be those most natural to the growth of the stage, but also the most difficult: a reorganization of the audience so as to establish an intimate relationship between it and the stage.
With the rise and victory of the new naturalism in the eighties of the last century a revolutionary spirit took strong hold of the German drama under the leadership of the great international quartet: Ibsen, Tolstoy, Dostoievski and Zola. The government exercised a ruthless censorship to keep the dangerous spirit off the stage; but with the founding of the Freie Biihne by Otto Brahm, official interference was avoided by those, at least, who could afford to belong to this exclusive society of liberal devotees to art. With the rise of the new drama and its intense interest in the miseries and hardships of the lower classes, these classes began to grow more conscious of themselves, to demand a greater share of life, and to organize for political action. What was more natural than that the desire should arise, on the one hand to make accessible to these masses the visions of their struggle, that the great dramatists were attempting to express, and on the other hand to win for the dramas the audience for which they were principally meant? This idea was set in motion in the spring of 1890 by Dr. Bruno Wille. In the summer of that year at a large mass meeting, attended by the interested authors and some two thousand workers, it was decided to form a society which should meet monthly at some large theatre to attend a per- formance of one of the new plays. The conditions of ad- mission were arranged so that even the poorest could be present. At the first performance on October 19, 1890, The Pillars of Society was given. Ibsen remained a decided favorite for a long time. The only older German plays given were Schiller's revolutionary dramas, The Robbers and Love and Intrigue, and Hebbel's Mary Magdalene. Of the new dramatists Hauptmann was played most, then Anzengruber and occasionally Halbe and Sudermann. The organization of the society was thoroughly democratic
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except that the director and his advisory council, who were chosen by the society in convention, were given absolute authority in artistic matters. All seats were of one price, about ten cents, and were distributed by lot at each per- formance.
The spirit of the audience in those early days can be seen best from the following anecdote: 1 " In February 1891 Henrik Ibsen attended a performance of the Freie Volksbiihtie at the Lessing Theatre. He sat between Bebel and Bruno Wille. Oskar Blumenthal, the director of the theatre, told us of the impression made upon him by the breathless attention and devotion of the audience. The play was Sudermann's Ehre. When the storm of applause broke over the house after the powerful effect of the final scene, the taciturn Ibsen, full of astonishment, turned to his companion and cried, " What an audience!" and again, "What an audience!"
Because the movement was organized as a private society the police could not lawfully apply the censorship. An injunc- tion proceeding was, however, instituted against it in an effort to prove it a political society, and therefore subject to control. In court it established the fact that while it professed social- istic principles, these were not political but principles of general conduct, and the injunction was dropped. The old Prussian paternalism never did succeed in finding a way of subduing revolt that assumed the philosophical form of a Weltan- schauung. Even in its machinations it was " orderly."
A certain amount of party politics has always exerted some pressure within the organization to its real detriment, even though at the very start the principle was insisted upon that political and artistic expressions should not and could not inter- fere with each other. The more dogmatic party Socialists became dissatisfied with the repertory selected by the director and his council, and demanded a share in the arrangements.
1 Wesen und Weg der Berliner Volksbiihnenbeivegung, Berlin, 1920, p. 6. This is a collection of essays on the work of the Drama League, edited by Julius Bab, one of the foremost dramatic critics of Berlin today, to whose liberal help and inspiration during my recent trip to Germany I owe very much.
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A bitter strife ensued with the result that in October 1892 Bruno Wille and most of the authors interested in the move- ment split off and formed the Neue Freie Volksbiihne, in which freedom of artistic standards from socialistic influence was insisted upon more strongly than was pleasing to the majority of the older society. This quarrel became very in- tense. The two societies felt that they fundamentally dis- agreed. In actual procedure the more "political" Freie Volksbiihne soon realized that harm must result from a mix- ture of motives, and that art and politics are not compatible. The Neue Freie Volksbiihne, on the other hand, could not attain its main object, the rearing of a new and fresh audience for the drama, without an intimate relationship with the people and the great labor organizations. So it happened that, though each society fought its fight alone for two dec- ades, they could finally reunite without the necessity of much compromise.
The Freie Volksbiihne, under the chairmanship of the liberal Franz Mehring, who was widely known among the workers for his writings, organized along far-reaching demo- cratic lines. Even the director, and the advisory council for matters pertaining to artistic standards, were chosen by the society at large. The program was directed primarily toward making good drama accessible to the people at a very low admission, and developing within this new audience a thorough understanding and genuine appreciation of the drama. The society also hoped, through the pressure such an audience would exert, to bring about the birth of a new modern drama: a drama which, in a real sense, would mirror the new life that was coming. In 1895 it had a membership of 6,000. The police then saw their chance to interfere. They maintained that with so large a membership the society could so longer claim the immunity of a private organization, but would have to be considered a public institution, subject to censorship. Well knowing that with Prussian censorship in control its real life would be slowly but effectually throttled, the society fought hard in the courts to maintain its character. The Neue
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Freie Volksbiihne, with all the authority of its many well- known writers, came to the aid of the older society. Even a large part of the press helped in the fight. But the court decided in favor of the government.
Rather than submit, however, the society decided to dis- band. The few years it had been allowed to function un- molested had not brought to realization the hope that many of the members were most anxiously and impatiently enter- taining. The new drama which was to be the expression of the inner powers of a new class failed to appear. Hauptmann's Before Sunrise and The Weavers had raised their expectations high, but neither the work of Hauptmann nor the German drama in general developed in such a way as to bring the goal nearer. Where it was best, it took another course entirely; where it held too closely to the course, it became propaganda, losing its artistic value and along with this its appeal even to an audience such as the society afforded. For though these people were very humble and untutored they were unusually keen to sense the difference between the real and the affected, and they were led by men sincere in purpose and with no trace of a desire to use their popularity with the people for political ends.
Though disbanded and though disappointed in their prin- cipal hope, yet they persisted in their desire for good drama, especially for better and more intimate performances of the dramas of older days. After two years they reorganized with a constitution carefully prepared to make it hard for the police to interfere. For thirteen years the work went on unmolested. At first the performances were given on Sunday after- noons in a theatre rented for the purpose, and by a company of interested actors, many of whom were among the best in the city and willing to give their services free. As the society grew and had to expand, blocks of seats were rented for its members at the regular theatres when plays were given in conformity with the spirit of the society. But as the neces- sity of this policy grew and the control over the repertory decreased the society strongly desired a theatre of its own,
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a Kunstheim for the workers of Berlin. Plans for such a theatre were made and a goodly fund started by issuing to members building bonds of five dollars each, but the police again interfered. This new interference is hard to explain on any other grounds than the Prussian system's stupid jealousy of all education outside of its own omniscient tutelage.
The members of the Freie Volksbuhne were mostly of the class of skilled workers and small merchants. Of the 7,000 members in 1901 less than a thousand were unskilled workers. The repertory of plays from the time of reorganization to the outbreak of the war was one of which any theatre might be proud. Hauptmann and Ibsen were played most, followed in the order of the number of performances, by Schnitzler, Strind- berg, Dreyer, Goethe, Shakespeare, Hebbel, Anzengruber, Shaw, Schiller, Lessing, Grillparzer, Moliere, Bjornson, Heyjermans, Sudermann, Halbe, Bahr, Maeterlinck, Fulda, Nestroy, and a few scattering lesser men. Of this list Dreyer alone might be called a mediocre propaganda dramatist. Shaw was always very popular on the German stage, not so much for his caustic satire upon society as for his humor. German dramatists do not give their audience much chance to laugh. In the above list Bahr alone has a keen talent for comedy, Fulda's comedies being rather heavily sentimental. The German stage frankly depends for its good comedies on Moliere, Oscar Wilde and Shaw.
The Prussian police, however, paid little attention to artistic standards or to justice. The famous, much decorated von Jagow was Polizeiprasident and was thoroughly enjoying his authority. In the winter of 191 0 he issued a typical ukase imposing strict censorship upon both drama leagues, and the German courts upheld him with typical servility, though almost the whole of literary Germany vehemently and publicly pro- tested. This time, however, the leagues did not disband. They submitted to Prussian censorship and had to suffer re- peated stupid interference. Conscious of their strength they fought on in the hope that their point of view would ultimately
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triumph. Persecution again brought the two leagues together and thus prepared the way for the work they were to take up with the outbreak of the revolution.
VI
The story of the dissenting league, the Neue Freie Volksbuhne, is one of similar struggle, but of even greater success. It started with a healthier foundation, freer from any danger of mixing politics and art. It differed from the older league in that it determined that matters of artistic standards should be left wholly to competent authorities and not be subject to the will of the society as a whole. It could thus maintain the highest standards and steer directly for the purpose both leagues professed supreme: that of rearing from among the common people a fresh, receptive, but under- standing audience. Among its members it counted the fore- most of German writers. It opened its program in November 1892 with an excellent Sunday afternoon performance of Faust, at a membership admission of fifty pfennigs. It worried the police by giving the first performance of Haupt- mann's Weavers while this play was still forbidden on the public stage, and produced for the first time in Germany the equally disturbing play by Bjornson, Beyond our Powers. In 1895 tne police succeeded in stopping it for a while, the occasion being a proposed production of a satire on the clergy by Anzengruber. The censor interfered, and the trial that ensued was so long and costly that it exhausted the resources of the members and for a while the League disbanded. It soon reorganized, however, with a constitution assuring greater immunity from persecution; but it had to wage a long and hard up-hill fight for nearly fourteen years.
Its alert interest in the forward march of the drama enabled it to seize upon the moment when a natural change in dra- matic expression was taking root, and it thus profited from the momentum of new and sound departure. The old naturalism, which had given birth to the league idea, was turning into
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sensational materialism on the regular stage, and in the leagues was being spoiled by too strong a tendency to socialistic propa- ganda. The moment called for the healthy, joyous appeal to the senses, without which no drama ever can exist for long. Reinhardt, who was just beginning to capture the imagination of Germany, saw the need and took measures to meet it. He had just opened his first large theatre in Berlin, and with an excellent company, gathered together with his unerring instinct for stage talent, he played a repertory of Maeterlinck, Hofmannsthal and Wedekind. The Neue Freie Volksbiihne at once leased every Sunday and holiday matinee at Reinhardt's theatre. In a short time its membership increased to 10,000, composed, very much like that of the older league, of small merchants and skilled workers. When in 1905 Reinhardt took over the famous Deutsches Theater, the League followed him. Owing to his excellent performances the League grew very quickly, so that Reinhardt, who today is scorned by the mem- bers of the League and suspected of commercialism, is in a large measure responsible for its existence.
In 1907 the League, with a membership of 19,000, elabo- rately celebrated its fifteenth anniversary by electing to honary membership its four most popular champions, Agnes Sorma, Clara Viebig, Gerhart Hauptmann and Richard Strauss. In 1908 it was leasing the afternoon performances in eleven theatres, and certain evening performances at the Deutches Theater. It then decided that in order to perform its work properly, in order to give its members the repertory it believed to be best, and the surroundings it thought essential, in order to develop the new style which it thought the spirit of the League would ultimately create, it must have a house of its own. The balance of 10,000 marks in the League's treasury was converted into a building fund. With each ticket was sold a building fund stamp of 10 pfennigs. Fifty marks' worth of stamps would buy a certificate which bore interest at five per cent. By this method and by the purchase of bonds of low denomina- tion, 250,000 marks were contributed by 1910. Two years later the membership had increased to nearly 50,000 and the
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building fund to 650,000 marks. The police repeatedly tried to interfere with the growth of the society by indiscriminate application of the censorship, but on each occasion vehement protests were made throughout the country, as a result of which the League gained the sort of wide public respect of which the Prussian system has always stood in awe. It therefore now assumed a friendly attitude to the League. In the final plans for the erection of a theatre the city came to the League's aid. Out in the eastern part of the city several blocks of dilapidated and disreputable slums had just been razed. This site the city offered to the League at a very reasonable figure for the erection of its house, and also granted to it a loan of 2,000,000 marks at a low rate of interest.
When the success of the undertaking was thus assured and the road cleared for the realization of its project, the Neue Freie Volksbuhne approached the older league. It proposed that they settle their differences and unite into one large league, so as to proceed the more surely toward the common goal: the putting of art at the disposal of the people and the opening of their minds and senses to an even greater understanding and appreciation. There still threatened a bit of friction be- cause of socialistic dogmatism within the older league, but an appeal to the supremacy of art succeeded in clearing away all obstacles. Just before the war the union was effected and the building was begun. The outbreak of the war produced a strong spirit of chauvinism and a strong assertion of the authority of the state against popular movements, especially of a spiritual kind. But though delayed in its work the League still maintained its purpose. On December 20, 1914, the new theatre was dedicated. It had cost 4,500,000 marks, more than half of which was represented by bonds held by 14,500 individual members of the League, mostly workers. The building is large, seating nearly two thousand, stately and even rich, but without a trace of pretentiousness. It is equipped with the latest approved stage machinery, revolving stage and other mysterious apparatus, explained to my igno- rance by the proud head mechanician as he led me with a
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proprietary air through his back-stage labyrinth of intricate machines and chambers of horrors. The pride and joy in it evinced by even the scrubwomen is one of the greatest testi- monies to the spirit that has made its building possible. The broad, almost semi-circular auditorium is very different from the usual ostentatious Berlin theatre. There is not a trace of gilded stucco or of startling plush. All the woodwork is of rich and beautiful mahogany, with quiet, symbolic carvings sparingly distributed. It has a large floor space, a fairly deep balcony, two narrow galleries, and not a single box. It makes a comfortable, dignified auditorium, clearly showing that the builders were intent upon eliminating so far as possible all difference in seating preference, and upon giving each guest the comfort necessary to enjoyment. The entrance lobby and the refreshment halls and promenades on the various floors are planned in the same rich and dignified simplicity. The back of the theatre is furnished with the numerous offices and committee rooms necessary for carrying on the business of the League. The building with its dignified fagade faces a large square in the most congested center of humble workers' tenements. From over the six massive pillars of its curved front there blazes out the mes- sage: Die Kunst dem Volke.
The drain of the war, however, was too hard upon the League. It could not pay for the upkeep of the house and support the heavy expenses of its own company. Reinhardt again had to come to the rescue. In return for a free use of the theatre, he proposed to play there with his company and turn over half the seats for each performance to the League. In that way the crisis was bridged. But as the revolution approached, the people became more intent again on taking up their own purpose through a repertory by the men in whom they placed their faith. In September 191 8 the League again took full control with its own company, in charge of Friedrich Kayssler, who is not only one of the best actors in Germany, but a critic of the finest discernment and high standards and an ardent advocate of the idea of the People's League. In the
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public announcement of his appointment, the future program of the League was formulated thus :
" In his whole character Friedrich Kayssler manifests that respect for his fellowmen, that affection for the great, darkly struggling mass of the people, without which our principal coworker cannot be imagined. And yet, more than many who are in the midst of the gay clamor of the so-called ' great society,' he shows that proud, independent, defiant and re- served nobility, without which no real artist can prosper. From the hands of such men the People's League may hope to receive that which it most needs.
" What is it that we hope and expect? Not sensation. We do not expect extraordinary innovations or dazzling hits. We expect the slow, quiet, firm and serious development of a company of our own, with our own purpose in view, in a broad repertory which will have regard for all the values of great dramatic literature. Neither in respect to literature nor to acting nor to stage reform do we want the predominance of a fad, however dazzling or popular it may be; but we do expect new adjustment and new perfecting of all the means of the theatre to meet the special character of the most varied prob- lems which the prominent poets of the past and of the future will set before us. We also expect that the most recent German drama will be fostered, but without any of the haste which seizes upon oddities in order to attract attention and get the better of a competitor. We intend to take a risk for the sake of young talent, and will not shun further risks after a first failure; but above all things, effort and time must be reserved to express with ever new devotion and to offer with greatest clarity, to the people who are desirous to enjoy them, the great dramatic expressions from Aeschylus to Hauptmann and from Shakespeare to Strindberg."
When I saw the League in action in the fall of 1920, its influence, power, and hold upon the people were definitely fixed. It was forced to limit its membership to 120,000 rather than to make new appeals. Because large numbers were
2 Wesen und Weg der Berliner Volksbiilinenbewegung, p. 22.
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clamoring for admission, it had decided at the beginning of the 1920 season to increase its accommodations by allowing each member only ten peformances a year instead of eleven. This made room for 20,000 new members. At nine o'clock on the morning of August nth the applications were received. The line about the theatre had formed at six, and at nine extended all around the building four abreast. By noon of August 13th the last membership ticket had been issued and the remaining crowds had to be refused. According to the statement of the officials the membership would be quickly doubled if there were means of finding proper accommodations.
Though it is doing so reluctantly, the League is at present forced to rent large blocks of seats at thirteen theatres. Its relations with Jessner at the state theatre are very cordial and intimate. His sympathy with the movement goes to the ex- tent of a conviction that the future of the German stage de- pends principally upon the organization of people's drama leagues. The leaders of the league idea, however, are con- vinced that only in theatres of their own will their purpose have a chance fully to mature. They have, therefore, decided upon a second house. They have leased from the city for a term of twenty-five years the large Kroll Opera House, which, in anything but good condition before the war, was used as a hospital during that period and is now in very bad repair. The terms of the lease require of the Volksbiihne that it con- vert the old building into a dignified people's theatre and turn it back to the city in good repair at the expiration of the lease. In return, the city assumes the burden of staging there, with the companies of its two theatres, performances of both drama and opera in repertories approved by the authorities of the League. This will enable the society to accept an additional 100,000 members, and also to supply its members with an opportunity of enjoying opera, the want of which has long been felt. The plans for the remodelling of this theatre are already complete. It will have a seating capacity of 2150 and will cost approximately twelve million marks. The plans for selling bonds for the new project had been announced only
BERLIN PEOPLE AND THEIR THE. IT RE 85
a few months before I visited the society, but three million marks had already been subscribed in denominations varying from twenty to one thousand marks. I was at the offices of the theatre on the evening of the first of the month, and saw these workers in what was evidently their best attire, waiting in long lines for a chance to make their regular payments toward the loan. It was a quiet, eager throng, in pleasant contrast to the shabby gayety that crowds about the cheaper movies or the race-courses of Germany today. These men, at least, are soberly and intently interested in becoming ac- quainted with those values which, once well learned, will be a great help in dispelling the darkness through which they now stumble along the paths of their new responsibilities.
The membership of the League is, of course, not limited to any one class. The idea of creating a fresh audience, un- sophisticated and receptive to simple artistic expression, was paramount in the minds of the founders and has persisted. One of the primary purposes of the League — and it is still as strong as ever — was the desire to clarify the minds and senses of the workers; but a strong stand is taken against introducing any political propaganda, or fostering any so-called proletarian art. Because of this stand the League has bitter enemies who deride it as " bourgeois " propaganda. The Independent Socialists, for example, rather than encourage their members to join the League, arrange each winter, in Reinhardt's circus theatre, a series of " festive hours for workers," at which some excellent things are done but also much frank political, party instruction is given. The Volks- biihne is happily free from such a thing; the whole question of class struggle seems lo have been set aside. Membership fees are very small, and theatre admission in the fall of 1920 was only two and a half marks for matinees and four marks for evening performances, with the mark worth less than two cents. It is not cheapness, .however, that accounts for the popularity the League enjoys among the workers. Their interest and pride in it, the jealousy with which they guard its purpose is far too deep for that. Besides, the motion picture theatres are
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both cheaper and infinitely more sensational. The low ad- missions have drawn a large number of the middle class, who find that they cannot afford to pay the regular prices at the theatres, and flock into the League, not because they believe in or are particularly interested in its purpose, but to satisfy their cravings for good drama. The coming of this class has made no perceptible difference in the society. Moreover the intermingling of the classes at the theatre, the absolute equality of persons guaranteed by the constitution and emphasized by its machinery, tends to wipe out the consciousness of class dis- tinctions, while the quality of the performances inspires all alike with the dignity of the endeavor.
Each member is assigned ten performances a season which he pledges himself actually to attend. If for some good reason he finds it impossible, other arrangements will be made for him. But the society has no provision for members who wish simply to give their moral support and not attend the plays in person. On the day of his assigned performance the member buys his ticket of admission on presentation of his card at the nearest of the many substations scattered about the city. With this ticket he goes to the theatre and from one of the large urns in the entrance lobby draws his seat, or block of seats, if he is with his family. Where he sits or who his neighbor will be is merely a matter of chance. Partly to help toward paying the expenses of the house, partly to avoid the danger that a constantly assured and definitely constituted audience may lower the standard of acting or dull the critical sense of the manager, about a fourth of the seats, scattered throughout the house, are sold at regular box office prices, ten times that of the membership admission. Thus far these seats have always been in great demand, so that the audience is thoroughly repre- sentative and there is very rarely a vacant seat When blocks of seats are bought for members at other theatres, these also are selected from all over the house, except that they include rrone of the poorest gallery seats, the discomfort of which makes impossible a full appreciation of the play.
The ushers, called Ordner ("arrangers"), form an impor-
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tant group within the organization. They are members who vol- unteer to usher, collect the tickets, supervise the allotment of seats, inspect the membership cards, and do whatever other work is necessary in the auditorium or lobbies during a per- formance. Because of the interest they manifest by thus do- nating their time, and because of their constant contact with the members, they act as intermediaries between the bulk of the members and the officers. In order to give the members a better chance to express their wishes, as well as better to reach each member with an explanation of the purpose of the League, the larger organization is divided into sections of about 4000 each. Each section meets at least once a year to discuss the work of the League and to choose delegates for the general convention, half of whom must be ushers.
The general convention elects the business management of the League and half of the advisory council. It gives instruc- tions to the business management and passes resolutions in the form of recommendations to the advisory council. It also has the power of confirming the choice of the general director of the theatre on recommendation from the advisory council and the business management.
The advisory council consists of nine men chosen by the general convention and of an equal number, experts in the drama and the theatre, designated by the business manage- ment. This body, together with the officers of the League, determines the repertory and has general charge of the artistic standards. A thorough and free discussion of these standards is invited and encouraged in the League at large. But the final determination and the responsibility for it lies with the advisory council, so as to safeguard the principal aim of the society: the education of the audience. The means to the realization of this aim is the introduction of a better repertory, presented with the greatest truth, simplicity, and artistic setting, in order to create the most intimate relation between the audience and the vision of the artist on the stage. Far from fostering a proletarian drama the council rather bends its efforts to so organizing the repertory that in the course, not of
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a season, but of years, a synthetic picture of the drama will be constructed. While they profess to favor a revolutionary program in the present crisis, they explained to me that they considered any drama revolutionary, old or new, if it gives the people a better insight into themselves and the forces of society, and starts them upon a clearer onward path. At the same time it is decidedly the tendency of the League to encourage modern playwrights, both in order to give young authors every possible chance to see their plays produced, and to test before an audience which is fresh, but for that very reason quick to resent adulteration, attempts at crystallizing the new spirit. Before they are accepted, however, these modern plays must show real qualities of art. There was some stir among the members, to be sure, when the advisory council refused to stage the revolutionary drama by Kurt Eisner, which was found among the effects of this most popular martyr of the revolution after his assassination. The wishes of the members were denied because, in the estimation of the council, this drama contained no real artistic qualities. During the season of 1 91 9 to 1920 the modern plays presented at the League's theatre were: '5 Jungferngijt, by Anzengruber, who has re- mained a favorite with the people since the early days of naturalism; Kaiser's Gas, a terrible picture of society as it de- generates into a machine, and Die Burger von Kalais; The Love Potion, by Wedekind; and Predigt von Littauen, by Lauckner. Of the German classics Goethe's Gbtz von Ber- lichingen, Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, Hebbel's Gyges und Sein Ring, and Kleist's Das Kdtchen von Heilbronn were given, as well as three farces by minor playwrights. Of non-German dramas the League presented Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Calderon's The Judge of Zalamea, Bjornson's Paul Lange and Zora Parsberg, and of Strindberg Luther and the first part of Toward Damascus. This repertory is certainly not over-revolutionary.
But more than the repertory, the attitude of the audience and the quality of the acting made this theatre distinctive as an institution. All the actors are professionals and several of
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them of high repute in Germany. Their close cooperation, and the atmosphere of religious intensity or of popular humor that they are able to create upon the stage, shows how thoroughly their leader, Friedrich Kayssler, has imbued them with his faith in the importance of the work. At times this attitude is decidedly overdone, especially when the actors are tugged too hard by the heavy German sentimentalism to which this audience seems more subject than the old more sophisti- cated one.
For the programs at the theatre one of the advisory council, or more often Kayssler himself, prepares a short essay in order to acquaint the members with the author and the play, its part in the history of the drama, and the particular interpretation which the company has put upon it. Some of Kayssler's very best work lies in these essays. He never condescends in them, as though he were instructing men of lower intelligence. The essays are simple, scholarly talks setting forth his personal attitude to the author and to the play concerned.
The work of the League is not wholly confined to the drama. For those who care to attend, lectures are arranged through- out the season, dealing especially with the history and under- lying principles of the drama. In addition a series of readings from modern lyrics, an elaborate and excellent concert program under the supervision of Leo Kestenberg, even expeditions through the museums of Berlin for a glimpse of other arts, are all provided.
The most genuine enthusiasm and serious purpose is, how- ever, concentrated upon the drama. By applying themselves to it, the people seek to enter into the mystery of the relation of art to life. That it is one of closest intimacy is a conviction which has been the very life of German drama. Now that this new theatre has made the best of drama accessible to the people the conception of its relation to their lives is taking strong hold upon them, so that they are not only assuming a more intelligent attitude toward the drama but are demanding closer contact with it. Some of the more enthusiastic leaders of the movement, seeing the rapid improvement of the
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audience, were anxious to go a long step forward, and started an agitation for the complete communizing of the theatre. They proposed, somewhat on the theory of the League that the cities be divided into theatre communes, to which each person in the specified district would belong upon pledging himself to attend performances. The city was to requisition the existing playhouses and allot them to the communes. The repertory and its execution were to be determined by the delegates of the communes, and the expenses defrayed from the taxes of the city. Nothing expresses more clearly the quality of the League's work and the effect of that work upon the members, than the sober reaction to proposals such as these. They refused to run the risk of political interference with their purpose or of bureaucratization. They expect the city to express a sympathetic attitude by lightening the finan- cial burdens of the League, and by freeing them from the impo- sition of the taxes to which commercial theatres are subject; but they desire no political interference. They believe that their present organization practically solves the question of the socialization of the theatre. They are convinced that they will be able to provide additional houses without outside help as more and more of the people clamor for admission, and they are very proud of the progress they have made in eliminating not merely commercialism but all sense of class distinction.
VII
In October 1920 a long sought purpose of the General Secre- tary of the Volksbiihne, Dr. Nestriepke, was realized at a national conference of similar societies throughout Germany, which he had succeeded in calling under the auspices of the Berlin society. At this meeting the " Union of German Drama Leagues" was organized by representatives of some thirty cities of North and Central Germany. The absence of repre- sentatives from South Germany was felt with more grief than resentment since they realized the reactionary spirit which controlled the government of the South to the exclusion of
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successful popular movements in those places. Even in Southern Germany, where, in spite of official opposition, such movements had established themselves, the regional mistrust of Prussia would still make cooperation difficult.
I attended the meetings at which the new Union was organ- ized and on many points I found a spirit of perfect agreement. In the main the Union is to be an organization for mutual assistance in the development of the league idea by encourag- ing an exchange of views between the various leagues, by ad- vising and aiding the members thereof, by public propaganda for its principles, by defending the interests of the societies within the Union against the courts and public officials, and by furthering all undertakings which aim to put art at the dis- posal of the people in theatres of their own. Membership in the Union is to be granted to those societies whose purpose is " to make available to their members, at the lowest possible uniform prices of admission and without profit, dramatic per- formances of high artistic standard by professional actors," and to organize themselves on the principle of the " self-deter- mination of their members." Thus far there was very little discussion. The term " self-determination of members " seemed to delight the meeting, but no one undertook to discuss its exact meaning. On the next point, however, there ensued a very lively fight. It was finally decided that all societies seeking admission to the Union must " acknowledge the prin- ciple of political and religious neutrality and under all condi- tions refuse to put themselves in opposition to the socialist movement." During the discussions arising out of this formu- lation, the old political quarrel which had once disrupted the work at Berlin and finally been successfully allayed, came to the fore and dangerously threatened for a while. It probably will grumble underneath for a long time to come and take much tactful handling. The delegates from the more radical centers, especially of Saxony, openly fought for the idea that the Union must be a powerful instrument for socialistic, political propaganda. But the men of Berlin, particularly the keen dramatic critic, Julius Bab, forced them into a discussion of
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the nature of artistic standards and the impossibility of a re- lation between art and propaganda, political or any other kind ; and they had to retreat with what grace they could. For a time these radicals maintained that they should not be able to induce their societies to join under the circumstances; but the large majority replied to this threat with dignified regret and with a new insistence upon artistic standards. They were ready, however, to emphasize their principle by stating that they also refused to have their work serve for anti-socialistic propaganda.
Wherever the Union appears it has to contend with much opposition from the reactionary elements. In the Rhine provinces and in South Germany, where reaction is in the con- trol of the Catholic Center, religious and political opposition unite to impede its work. The delegates from Cologne, for example, contended that they should not be able to join the Union if in its constitution it insisted upon political and religious neutrality, because the authorities of Cologne would arbitrarily refuse them a theatre license. They were advised to join in spite of this and to take up the fight, if need be, in the assur- ance that the Union would help them win their rights.
This religious and reactionary opposition generally takes on a more subtle and interesting form than such crude political interference. After the establishment of the Volksbuhne a society was incorporated in Frankfurt on the Main by wealthy, ardent Catholic reactionaries, who set up in every center of the Rhine Provinces, where the Volksbuhne meets with success, a counter Buhnenvolksbund. This offers the people a chance to enjoy dramatic performances under conditions similar to those of the Union, but rarely of as high a quality, and with the set purpose of educating the audience " in the spirit of popular German culture and in a Christian view of life." The work they do is often very good, but they spoil it by their propaganda against all plays whose authors they can convict of socialistic or even of liberal leanings. In one interesting instance, in the City of Miinster in Westphalia, the Volksbuhne and the Buhnenvolksbund both run very good theatres and even coop-
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erate extensively. They seem to accept the situation that the devoutly Catholic population cannot attend performances of the regular League in an unprejudiced spirit, and that the artis- tic reaction of this group is therefore purest in its own theatres.
In a similar way, the more radical elements of the Berlin League, who are sincerely and passionately striving to know the meaning of the revolution, to see the nature of its new ethics and the new human powers which are developing through it, are exerting pressure upon the officials to offer greater opportunities for the plays of young revolutionary poets. Arrangements have been made to rent some small theatre occasionally during the season of 1921-1922 in order to stage such of these plays as the advisory council deems of suffi- cient artistic excellence. But because neither the style nor the subject matter of such plays is intelligible or sympathetic to the average member, they will not be included in the reper- tory and admission to them will require a special fee, so as to draw only those interested.
I watched the spirit and the work of the League in Berlin at every possible chance. In the main the members are simple folk, a bit too serious perhaps; but the times are more serious still. While the majority of the workers are seeking stupefying enjoyment and excitement, these people are calmly intent on watching the expressions of great artists, to see if through these they may learn to know themselves better and to get hold of some stable force in the bewildering confusion. Moreover, many of their fellow members are of the cultured middle classes, who seek through the advantages of the League to maintain that contact with art which they can no longer find at the regular theatres, controlled by the profiteer with his money and his insistence upon cheap stimulants. So the workers and the cultured middle class are learning to know and appreciate each other to their mutual advantage.
When I spoke of the League to my friend, the former Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, hidden away in the small village by the Starnberger Lake so as not to be caught in the present shams and confusions of his country, he shook
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his head at my faith in its work. " The greatest cant in Germany today is ' the people.' They do not go to the theatre for the reasons you infer. They go because formerly it was the privilege of their superiors, and now they take the chance to ' decorate ' themselves with art." But that, I know, is not the case with those audiences of the League which I watched at Berlin. There was no affectation in their attitude, but calm concentration upon a new purpose. Their influence will not appear at once; but I feel convinced that with the members of the Workmen's Educational Association they will do more than any other group to bring the country gradually back to health.
V
WEIMAR
WEIMAR is a natural objective for a student of literature who travels through Germany today in search of some indication of a spirit within the people which may lead them out of their turmoil. Weimar is but a very small city. The inhabitants are dulled, both because their trade has too long been simply to cater to visit- ing sight-seers, and because the artificial political organization of a petty but proud principality has weighed too heavily upon them, especially in recent decades. It is, nevertheless, the center from which, only a little over a century ago, the power of German liberal idealism so radiated over all of Germany that its force still persists in spite of every obstacle.
The men of Weimar, to be sure, were not the pioneers who first fixed upon, clarified, and developed the idealism of eighteenth-century Germany. That credit belongs above all others to Kant. Kant possessed the keen critical sense with which to clear of inconsistencies and irrelevancies the path toward idealism. He had the lofty ethical fervor which en- abled him to sense accurately the native German force and thus give his idealism a real foundation. Still he could not make this idealism the ruling power within the life of the people, for his metaphysics, his visions, and his language were not the kind to establish contact with their thoughts and long- ings. Before the principles of Kant could enter actively into German life, they had to be expounded by a great teacher who, from a point of view intimately related to the people, could
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explain the nature of these principles in terms that everybody could understand. That teacher was Herder.
Weimar was the home not only of Herder but also of Herder's greatest pupils, Goethe and Schiller. These two com- pleted the expression of the idealism of Kant as taught by Herder. Goethe fused the idealism with the basic forces in the nation's life in visions so clear that they became a mirror in which Germany need only look to be reminded of itself. Schiller took the deeper longings and hopes of the people and clarified and strengthened them by means of this same idealism, and then, in his great popular dramas, gave back these native impulses renewed and full of life. Thus to the people Kant is a very great but very distant metaphysician, Herder is a teacher to be highly revered, but Goethe and Schiller are the poets and seers of that which is highest and most fundamental. They are the ideals of the people personified. They are the people's national legend. To the people Weimar and Goethe and Schiller are one. Thus Weimar itself has become the legend containing for the people that which is eternal in them- selves; this legend they intimately search for guidance when- ever the conviction is forced upon them that their life needs a real renewal.
Never since Weimar's classical days has Germany seen such a dangerous time as it is living through today. Even as it gropes back to Weimar, its touch is not steady or altogether honest. Germany's confusion is so dark that in its greatest distress there are many who are even willing to use its clearest force to further selfish ends.
When the National Constituent Assembly sought a place in which to meet for the framing of the republic's constitution, it fixed upon Weimar, ostensibly because the new republic had been born in a democratic spirit based upon the Weimar ideals of freedom and humanity, and because the new laws were to be an expression of that idealism. The German revolution, how- ever, though it will surely lead the country back to Weimar as it clears, was simply a revolt against unbearable conditions; the natural reaction to an unsuccessful war which a powerful
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propaganda had made appear the people's war and which the V people had to wage under a general draft. The large demo- cratic vote in the elections to the Constituent Assembly was not so much an expression of conviction as a desire to mollify the victors by a show of change of heart. Weimar was chosen for the meeting because police protection could easily be arranged there against the threatened interference from reactionaries and radicals, and because Weimar might favor- ably impress the statesmen of the Entente. This was ex- plained to me by delegates to the Convention who were most sincere in their hope that the real Weimar might revive and who were bitterly disappointed by the spirit that took hold of the nation when the victors were not easily misled into a full acceptance of the German change of heart. Yet such men as these delegates retain their faith in the ultimate power of Weimar to heal and gradually to lead the nation to a genuine recovery, for they know that this force is fundamental in the nation's life and that once set in motion it will slowly but surely work upon the national mind. So the choice of Weimar was partly for the effect it might have upon the outside world, yet it was also a direct appeal to the true liberalizing idealism of Weimar against the distortions of it by the old system, and therefore it set this idealism freer than it had been. Now the question is how to make it still freer. In the larger cities the people's drama leagues and some of the better new city theatres are doing important work in fostering Weimar's spirit. But if the Weimar legend, with the mysterious power that a national legend has in the shaping of lives, is to take real hold upon the people, Weimar itself must be intimately connected with the work in order to stimulate the people's memory
ii
At the time when the Constituent Assembly met in Weimar the general director of Goethe's theatre was the neo-classical dramatist Ernst Hardt. He is thoroughly alive to the oppor- tunity and, as he sees it, the obligation confronting him: to
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restore the Weimar theatre to the position Goethe and Schiller had once conceived for it as the national stage on which to keep the expressions of the national art and ideals before the eyes and minds of the people of the whole country. In these plans Goethe was clearly conscious of setting Weimar in opposition to the ideas of the new national center in Berlin, whose political and material ambitions he mistrusted; and Schiller repeatedly refused a call to the theatre at Berlin be- cause he feared that in the Prussian capital the idealistic motives would soon be buried under theatrical pomp. But within the last half century, the Weimar theatre had degener- ated simply into a royal stage whose directors were subservient to the whims of the ruling prince under the dominance of Prussian politics. The revolution swept away the many petty princes of Thuringia and welded it into a single republic, again conscious of the cultural gifts this little romantic patch of German woods had bestowed upon the country in former crises. It put Ernst Hardt in charge of the theatre at Weimar, not only because he is a dramatist of note and had shown him- self a fearless liberal in times of stress, but because among the modern poets he is one of the best authorities on German classical literature, and, in the estimate of men like the Goethe expert, George Witkowski of Leipzig, one of the very best pro- ducers and interpreters of the dramas of Goethe and Schiller. In order that his intentions might immediately be estab- lished before the country, Ernst Hardt sought and received from the provisional government at Berlin permission to des- ignate the Weimar theatre " The German National Theatre." Thus he tried to direct the eyes of the nation once again upon the need for a rebirth of its culture in a return to Weimar. On the evening of the 6th of February, 191 9, the first day of the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly, the delegates met for a performance at the theatre. As a curtain raiser was given a prologue, The Fountain, composed by Hardt himself. It is a simple picture of Weimar longing for the return of its people. In a corner of the Weimar park between a bust of Goethe and a similar one of Schiller bubbles a fountain. On the base of
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the fountain a youth in Greek garments lies asleep. For a hundred years he has been guarding the fountain and has helped many an eager pilgrim to a refreshing drink. But wearied by the protracted loneliness of many recent years, he has fallen asleep. Heavy, shuffling steps arouse him from his slumbers and there approach a haggard woman, dressed in deep mourning and exhausted with grief, and her only re- maining son, a wounded soldier, insane with anger at himself and every other man and thing, capable only of degraded appetites and lusts. But the touch of the youth quiets the ravings, and he leads his soldier-brother to the fountain to drink; then he speaks in simple admonition:
" Come, let me take your sick hand,
My brother! Do not rave and grieve yourself;
Raise up your head and think upon your worth.
I've guarded here these hundred years and more
This fountain. O my brother, if you had
But dipped from it these fatal hundred years
You would not stand before me as you are.
For here there rises clear from virgin soil
The clearest fount of human hopefulness
Which other people ever praised in you.
Bend down and drink, for here you can grow sound.
Come, mother, leave your son here at the fount
To look upon himself in solitude.
Upon his head unseen there gently rest
The greatest German poets' loving hands
And bless him as he bravely looks afresh
Upon his life. Come now, and I will dip
This cloth far down into the fount and cool,
While he collects himself, your eyes for you;
Your poor, dear eyes, which tears have bitten sore."
Then followed a performance of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, on which Hardt had worked a long time to make it express as clearly as possible Schiller's vision of that spirit of freedom
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to which the German people should aspire. On the 23rd of March, 1848, a performance of Tell at the Berlin Opera had fired the people to a deeper understanding of that revolution and had helped to crystallize the popular purpose. Hardt may have expected a similar effect, but while the reception of the play was hearty, he nevertheless feels that it was not spon- taneous nor wholly genuine. It taught him, so he says, that the spirit of Weimar is as yet none too well received in Germany. But for that very reason there is all the greater need of express- ing it more clearly and more frequently. Soon after this per- formance Hardt appeared before the Convention to plead with it for moral and financial support of his undertaking. Instead of granting him the 500,000 marks a year which he requested as a subsidy from the national government, it gave 100,000 marks for a period of three years, together with a goodly sup- ply of praise. However, the new Republic of Thuringia has greater faith in the German National Theatre and grants a yearly subsidy of 1,500,000 marks. In the season of 1919- 1920 the box office receipts amounted to 1,700,000 marks. But the purchasing value of a mark is not very high in Germany today and the cost of running a theatre has increased greatly. Hardt found himself at the end of the year with a deficit of 1,500,000 marks. So far he has been able in one way or another to cover this deficit. He feels he must persist until the country realizes that it cannot build up a new national life before it clarifies the fundamental national culture con- tained in its heritage at Weimar. The difficulties of his task have made him perhaps more pessimistic than the conditions of the country warrant; yet his views are not much darker than those of many another German who has a real desire for the return of the best German culture.
Hardt understands very clearly how the Prussian system was more and more impoverishing German spiritual life by building up its own complicated machine, how it forced the