Buber, Expressionism and Ernst Toller's Search for Community
Between “I and Thou”: Buber, Expressionism and Ernst Toller’s Search for Community
David U. Garfinkle
When Ernst Toller’s Die Wandlung [Transfiguration] was first produced at the Berlin Tribüne Theater in 1919, critics were split along lines of political affiliation.1 Some conservatives applauded the production and its director, Karl-Heinz Martin, yet found fault with the text. Com- munist critics attacked the elitist formalism of the work as a whole. On the left, the critical avant-garde championed the work as exemplary of a radical challenge to the bourgeois aesthetics of realist individualism. Such diversity of opinions attest to the controversy of the play’s recep- tion in terms of its immediate political impact. Yet, contrary to what conservative critics called a “naïve” representation of human relations, Die Wandlung continues to resonate as a radical departure from the realism of modernist bourgeois drama. This early expressionist play, with its challenge to the bourgeois status quo, merits further investi- gation to clarify what was, and still may be, radical in its depiction of human relations. From a Jewish perspective, the work reveals the political struggle of its author to find an artistic form that would help to transform community. Drawing from the political philosophy of Martin Buber and the character types from contemporary Freudian psychology, this essay explores how the dramaturgy of its protagonist, Friedrich, reflected the political conditions of the work’s production as an example of Toller’s creative hysteria during wartime. In its represented relations of the individual to the group, Die Wandlung stands out in Toller’s oeuvre as a powerful and unique work of messianic communal idealism.2 Three key individuals—Toller as
1 rühle, Günther, Theater Für Die Republik Im Spiegel der Kritik, Band 1. 1917–1925 (Berlin: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesselschaft, 1988) 156–164. All quotes from critical reviews are found in Rühe’s volume, under the heading for Ernst Toller Die Wandlung. 2 Wurgraft (1977). Both Marxist and Judaic political perspectives are explored in the chapter called “The expressionist origins of activism,” 11–21. Thoughts on the politics of geist by Buber and Landauer are clarified in the chapter on “Activism and 122 david u. garfinkle author, Friedrich as the play’s protagonist, and the leading actor Fritz Kortner—each made major contributions to the creation of the work’s message, and each exemplified remarkable messianic efforts of a decid- edly Jewish worldview. Critical judgments on the director, the pro- duction, the text, and the work as a whole help to situate the work’s immediate reception within an historical, albeit partisan context. Yet, such post-hoc responses belie the dynamic process and ethical inten- tions that produced the work in its formative creation. What appears lacking from the archive of the work’s contemporary critical reception is an account of the historical relations behind the event—the means of production for its emerging relations, linking the author and his political milieu, the playwright and the artwork, and the actor and his audience. Common to these three messianic individuals is the creative effort to realize an art form where the individual can only be under- stood inter-subjectively, as one member who is in a relation within a community. A psychological approach to characterization offers a helpful through-line to identify the parallel threads of ethical, aesthetic, religious and political messianism of the work’s major contributors. A key notion for understanding Toller’s radical contribution cen- ters on the individual’s relationship within his community. Theater scholars continue to explore this relationship as represented in Die Wandlung in particular, and in Toller’s radical contribution overall, such as in Raymond Williams’ short chapter in Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (1952), and Michael Ossar’s book on Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller (1980).3 Williams described Toller’s work as an exploration of “the characterization, often critical and even revolutionary, of a social system.”4 Further, as a formative work of German expression- ist drama, Toller’s Die Wandlung exemplified the potential for expres- sionism to surpass “naturalism in its capacity for consciousness,” to propose a “possibility [. . .] of penetrating customary relationships and a known world.”5 Although it may sound as a truism of all theater, Williams’ view that the play’s characterizations inscribe and inform our understanding of the social relations of the individual within his
Social Organization,” 31–40. Political developments of activists in the Weimar in rela- tion to drama are outlined in “Activism in War and Revolution,” 40–54. 3 For the most recent comprehensive study of Toller and his plays see Cecil Wil- liam Davies, The Plays of Ernst Toller, a Reevaluation, (London: Routledge, 1996). 4 Raymond Williams, “Ernst Toller.” Drama from Ibsen to Brecht. 2nd Rev ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968) 297. 5 Ibid., 303.