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Glories of German Theater
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15738 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1989 |
2,956 Words |
| Author
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Herb Greer
Herb Greer is an American writer and playwright who lives in
Britain and on the Continent. |
German theater tends to have an image like that of a well-fed and upright alderman. Excepting occasional examples like the spectacular productions by Peter Stein in Berlin or the work of Erwin Piscator, Brecht, and a few others in earlier times, the critical bromide is that in Germany there are none of the great heights that appear in English and American theater: Coleridge's lighting does not strike there. On the other hand, there are no formidable disasters such as are sometimes found on Broadway or at, say, the National Theater in London, with its connection to the commercial world. Leaving metaphors and similes aside, the accepted wisdom is that German theater is on the whole pretty dull.
This lukewarm quality is supposed to be caused by the peculiar nature of theater in Germany. It is not a buccaneering enterprise, financed by angels or eccentric souls who risk their cash on the unpredictable talent of neorogues and vagabonds, freebooting playwrights and directors, and other uncivic (and sometimes uncivil) types. The point is that German theater is thoroughly municipal--as much so as the local waterworks. One writer in the famous newspaper Die Welt remarked that Germany should take publicly subsidized theater for granted as a species of Geistig-seelische Mullabfuhr--in other words, intellectual-spiritual garbage collection, a civic commodity.
Independent Statelets
This odd metaphor would make sense only in a country where theater has in fact been municipal for centuries. When Germany was a mosaic of independent statelets, each princeling had his own company of actors and singers and an orchestra for the entertainment of the nobility. Later, the middle classes of the bigger cities had their version of the same facility. After the First World War, the two traditions merged, but essentially nothing changed. Theater continued to be a recognized public amenity, seen as much more than mere distraction or entertainment. It was felt to be an integral part of the community's culture and education, with a self-consciously civilizing function. This justified and even required its support with generous subsidies from the public purse. After the Second World War this was apparent in a peculiar way: In cities where most public buildings had been razed by bombing, civic theaters were among the first to be repaired or rebuilt, even when priorities seemed to point elsewhere. And one of the first things the new companies did was to stage works that had been forbidden under the Third Reich.
There is a certain homogeneity of
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