Educators of the Theatre

Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner: The Educators of the Theatre. Dramaturgy between Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment . The development of the dramaturge parallels the European Enlightenment of the 18th century and reflects the goals of the Enlightenment itself: the start of a new individualism, the capacity and courage to think for oneself, resisting tradition, convention and authority as sources of wisdom and knowledge. A better, happier, "new" human being was the objective, a person able to decide for himself. However, the intellects of the Enlightenment were not only philosophers; they sought to influence realpolitik as well, hoping to emancipate the bourgeoisie from feudal absolutism. The theatre became the medium of dissemination for their views, a medium for the education of the bourgeoisie. Plays from England and France – George Lillo's The London Merchant (1731) and Denis Diderot's Le Père de Famille (1756) – became examples. The new genre of "domestic tragedy", or drame bourgeois, spoke to middle-class sensibilities, making non-nobles the subject of tragedies. In Germany, the theatre found itself at the centre of Enlightenment discourse: According to Johann Christoph Gottsched, theatre was to be a "secular pulpit"; for Gotthold Ephraim Lessing it was a "school of humanity, of feeling and the moral world". From the onset of the Enlightenment theatre was tasked with an educational responsibility in order that people might learn civic virtue. Public theatre was to instruct, to edify, and to better its audience. The new, dramaturgical vocation was not only a product of the Enlightenment but was also intended to propagate its ideas. Lessing advocated dramaturges' working directly with theatre companies rather than in isolation. In the 1760s the German theatre was underdeveloped and of low quality in contrast to theatres in France and England, not suited to the spreading of ideology. Good German-language pieces were rare; the skills of German actors were far too meagre to meet the dramatic challenges posed by Lessing's pieces. German audiences, too, were still a long way from accepting the theatre as a kind of "civic evening school" and allowing themselves to be educated by it (Haider-Pregler 1980). It was only in the course of the Enlightenment that strolling players gradually became representatives of the bourgeois struggle for power, the German theatre an organ of bourgeois educational ideas. The splintered nature of Germany's many principalities provided a further, political complication. A discourse on national theatre conducted by Enlightenment figures saddled the theatre with the responsibility of bringing about the national unification of art and culture. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing became a role model for intellectuals and young bourgeois playwrights, 1 providing the movement with significant inspiration. His model of the educational theatre gave birth to the vocation of dramaturge, an important tool for the dissemination of the humanistic idea of the free individual: tolerant of, respectful and equal to other individuals. After describing Lessing´s and Friedrich Schiller´s work as dramaturges, this study will show the perversion of this ideal during National Socialism and the German Democratic Republic – a reversal of the dramaturgical profession and its humanitarian ideal, serving the state and repressing the citizenry. 1. Lessing, the World's First Dramaturge In the 18th century it was very unusual for an intellectual to work for the theatre itself. In 1767, with the initiation of the ambitious and privately financed German National Theatre, Lessing was appointed as dramaturge with an annual salary of 800 talers. A consortium of twelve businesspeople financed the first attempt at the formation of a German national theatre, now known as the "Hamburg Enterprise": Lessing was the world's first officially appointed dramaturge (Lockurst 2006: 24). He codified a range of dramaturgical activities that is still valid today: play reading, literary guidance, critical reflection on both performances and acting, the impact of a play on the audience, and general consideration of the theatrical arts and theatre's role in society. As a student Lessing had already gained theatre experience with the well-known Neuber Company in Leipzig, translating and contributing his services for performances. The Leipzig company had successfully performed his debut work, Der junge Gelehrte (1748). As he put it, this experience had taught him "a hundred little things that a dramatic author needs to learn" (Qtd in Nisbet 2008: 70). Lessing's stable status as in-house dramaturge allowed him – for the first time – to support himself independently; the practical theatre work came at a time when he had already made a name for himself in dramatic circles. Lessing's work Hamburg Dramaturgy stems from this period, between 1767 and 1769. It is not a complete or homogenous work but more of a journal, intended for the public. It might be described as a series of reviews, offering (rather unsystematic and unconventional) commentary on performances and their backgrounds. It was totally original in conception. Similar to his Laocoon, the Hamburg Dramaturgy set the standard for the discussion of aesthetic and literary theoretical principles. His plays (including Die Juden, Miss Sara Sampson, Minna von Barnhelm – the first German comedy – and Emilia Galotti, the most significant German- language bourgeois tragedy) set similar standards for German theatre. 2 Lessing's works, with their modern feeling of individualism and naturalistic speech, are the first plays written in the German language still regularly performed today, in both German- language and international theatres; the dramas of his contemporaries have since been relegated to college seminar discussions on literary criticism. "Lessing's work was conceived of as an ambitious educational project" (Lockhurst 29). Lessing – dramaturge and playwright, editor, translator and critic as well as theoretician – raised the bar very high for his successors: he was highly educated, could read and speak several languages and was conversant with drama and the development of the theatre in the ancient world. He also had a profound understanding of Aristotle's Poetics, upon which his own theory of tragedy was based. When he spoke on contemporary dramatic literature he was able to reference the entire range of European theatre. He knew the theoreticians and their objectives, the dramatists and their poetological statements; he was familiar with the theatres, the actors, and the character of the various audiences. He translated many theoretical essays, including writings on the actor’s art by Rémond de St. Albine and Francesco Riccoboni. He was editor of several theatre journals. In Hamburg his major interest was the impact of theatre on the audience. In Hamburg Dramaturgy No. 12, for example, he writes about the different receptions of a Voltaire comedy in the Netherlands, France, England and Italy, setting standards with his analytical method: typically, he describes the play in its literary context and its previous reception then moves on to the theatrical performance itself. He offers expert commentary on stage adaptation and the difficulties in translating verse and metaphors – the same problems faced by modern dramaturges when translating pieces in a foreign language. His goals were ambitious: Lessing wanted to be the in-house critic at his theatre and yet remain independent. He sought a lively discourse with the public but also to instruct actors. He strove to "follow every step of both the writer's and the actor's art", as stated in the Hamburg Dramaturgy's "Announcement". However, this first dramaturge in European theatre history soon began to feel the contradictions of his situation. The actors in particular were a problem; they did not care to see their methods criticised. In a famous quote near the end of the Hamburger Dramaturgy Lessing writes: "We have actors, but we have no dramatic art" – unjust, since at that time the National Theatre in Hamburg had the best acting troupe of its day, including Conrad Ekhof, the "father of German acting", Konrad Ackermann, Sophie Friederike Hensel and Sophie Schröder, all of whom were well-known in Europe. Lessing particularly respected Ekhof; however, Madame Hensel often suffered from the sharpness of 3 Lessing's tongue. He became upset when the text was not fluently spoken, when wordplay was delivered slowly or stammeringly or the punch lines failed to come quickly enough – all of which he criticised in his performance reviews (Hamburg Dramaturgy nr. 9). At some point a discussion of principles must have taken place, for Lessing soon relaxed his criticism of the Hamburg actors. The point was not so much that he criticised, but that he did it so publicly, blaming the actors' vanity. Even today, public criticism or ridicule of one's own theatre troupe would be a deadly offence. Lessing attempted to defend his position by evoking a (fictive) 'true virtuoso' – "possessed of no vanity; to him the art itself is more important than anything. He loves to be judged frankly and loudly; he would rather be criticised wrongly on occasion than too rarely." And if an artist does not behave like this, Lessing adds, "he is not worthy of being studied" (Hamburg Dramaturgy nr. 25). Both in his role as educator of society and as a cultural intermediary between the stage and the public, Lessing felt the discrepancy between being an independent intellectual and a dramaturge bound to his theatre. Due to the limitations of his publisher he was not able to realise his plan of quickly opening a public debate after premieres. Nonetheless, in Germany the Hamburg Dramaturgy was widely read – and even appeared in pirated editions. Although Lessing considered the effect of the theatre on its audience more closely than almost anyone else, he was not able to prevent the eventual failure of the Hamburg National Theatre. Too few spectators came and the theatre's finances eventually caused its death, probably due to its repertoire.

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