Anarchism and Other Essays
On his return Robert discovers that his sister had been seduced by
young Muhling, whose father graciously offers to straighten matters
with a check for 40,000 marks. Robert, outraged and indignant,
resents the insult to his family's honor, and is forthwith dismissed
from his position for impudence. Robert finally throws this
accusation into the face of the philanthropist millionaire:
"We slave for you, we sacrifice our heart's blood for you, while you
seduce our daughters and sisters and kindly pay for their disgrace
with the gold we have earned for you. That is what you call honor."
An incidental side-light upon the conception of honor is given by
Count Trast, the principal character in the EHRE, a man widely
conversant with the customs of various climes, who relates that in
his many travels he chanced across a savage tribe whose honor he
mortally offended by refusing the hospitality which offered him the
charms of the chieftain's wife.
The theme of HEIMAT treats of the struggle between the old and the
young generations. It holds a permanent and important place in
dramatic literature.
Magda, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Schwartz, has committed an
unpardonable sin: she refused the suitor selected by her father. For
daring to disobey the parental commands she is driven from home.
Magda, full of life and the spirit of liberty, goes out into the
world to return to her native town, twelve years later, a celebrated
singer. She consents to visit her parents on condition that they
respect the privacy of her past. But her martinet father immediately
begins to question her, insisting on his "paternal rights." Magda is
indignant, but gradually his persistence brings to light the tragedy
of her life. He learns that the respected Councillor Von Keller had
in his student days been Magda's lover, while she was battling for
her economic and social independence. The consequence of the
fleeting romance was a child, deserted by the man even before birth.
The rigid military father of Magda demands as retribution from
Councillor Von Keller that he legalize the love affair. In view of
Magda's social and professional success, Keller willingly consents,
but on condition that she forsake the stage, and place the child in
an institution. The struggle between the Old and the New culminates
in Magda's defiant words of the woman grown to conscious independence
of thought and action: "...I'll say what I think of you--of you
and your respectable society. Why should I be worse than you that I
must prolong my existence among you by a lie! Why should this gold
upon my body, and the lustre which surrounds my name, only increase
my infamy? Have I not worked early and late for ten long years?
Have I not woven this dress with sleepless nights? Have I not built
up my career step by step, like thousands of my kind? Why should I
blush before anyone? I am myself, and through myself I have become
what I am."
The general theme of HEIMAT was not original. It had been previously
treated by a master hand in FATHERS AND SONS. Partly because
Turgeniev's great work was typical rather of Russian than universal
conditions, and still more because it was in the form of fiction, the
influence of FATHERS AND SONS was limited to Russia. But HEIMAT,
especially because of its dramatic expression, became almost a world
factor.
The dramatist who not only disseminated radicalism, but literally
revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. His
first play VOR SONNENAUFGANG[3], refused by every leading German
theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a
beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating the
entire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of an
extensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his
economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth,
both on the victims who created it and the possessor thereof, is
shown in the most vivid colors, as resulting in drunkenness, idiocy,
and decay. But the most striking feature of VOR SONNENAUFGANG, the
one which brought a shower of abuse on Hauptmann's head, was the
question as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit
parents.
During the second performance of the play a leading Berlin surgeon
almost caused a panic in the theatre by swinging a pair of forceps
over his head and screaming at the top of his voice: "The decency and
morality of Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussed
openly from the stage." The surgeon is forgotten, and Hauptmann
stands a colossal figure before the world.
When DIE WEBER[4] first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the
land of thinkers and poets. "What," cried the moralists,
"workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to be put on the stage! Poverty
in all its horrors and ugliness to be dished out as an after-dinner
amusement? That is too much!"
Indeed, it was too much for the fat and greasy bourgeoisie to be
brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It
was too much because of the truth and reality that rang like thunder
in the deaf ears of self-satisfied society, J'ACCUSE!
Of course, it was generally known even before the appearance of this
drama that capital can not get fat unless it devours labor, that
wealth can not be hoarded except through the channels of poverty,
hunger, and cold; but such things are better kept in the dark, lest
the victims awaken to a realization of their position. But it is the
purpose of the modern drama to rouse the consciousness of the
oppressed; and that, indeed, was the purpose of Gerhardt Hauptmann in
depicting to the world the conditions of the weavers in Silesia.
Human beings working eighteen hours daily, yet not earning enough for
bread and fuel; human beings living in broken, wretched huts half
covered with snow, and nothing but tatters to protect them from the
cold; infants covered with scurvy from hunger and exposure; pregnant
women in the last stages of consumption. Victims of a benevolent
Christian era, without life, without hope, without warmth. Ah, yes,
it was too much!
Hauptmann's dramatic versatility deals with every stratum of social
life. Besides portraying the grinding effect of economic conditions,
he also treats of the struggle of the individual for his mental and
spiritual liberation from the slavery of convention and tradition.
Thus Heinrich, the bell-forger, in the dramatic prose-poem, DIE
VERSUNKENE GLOCKE[5], fails to reach the mountain peaks of liberty
because, as Rautendelein said, he had lived in the valley too long.
Similarly Dr. Vockerath and Anna Maar remain lonely souls because
they, too, lack the strength to defy venerated traditions. Yet their
very failure must awaken the rebellious spirit against a world
forever hindering individual and social emancipation.
Max Halbe's JUGEND[6] and Wedekind's FRUHLING'S ERWACHEN[7] are dramas
which have disseminated radical thought in an altogether different
direction. They treat of the child and the dense ignorance and
narrow Puritanism that meet the awakening of nature. Particularly
this is true of FRUHLING'S ERWACHEN. Young boys and girls sacrificed
on the altar of false education and of our sickening morality that
prohibits the enlightenment of youth as to questions so imperative to
the health and well-being of society,--the origin of life, and its
functions. It shows how a mother--and a truly good mother, at
that--keeps her fourteen-year-old daughter in absolute ignorance as
to all matters of sex, and when finally the young girl falls a victim
to her own ignorance, the same mother sees her daughter killed by
quack medicines. The inscription on her grave states that she died
of anaemia, and morality is satisfied.
The fatality of our Puritanic hypocrisy in these matters is
especially illumined by Wedekind in so far as our most promising
children fall victims to sex ignorance and the utter lack of
appreciation on the part of the teachers of the child's awakening.
Wendla, unusually developed and alert for her age, pleads with her
mother to explain the mystery of life:
"I have a sister who has been married for two and a half years. I
myself have been made an aunt for the third time, and I haven't the
least idea how it all comes about.... Don't be cross, Mother,
dear! Whom in the world should I ask but you? Don't scold me for
asking about it. Give me an answer.--How does it happen?--You cannot
really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years old, still
believe in the stork."
Were her mother herself not a victim of false notions of morality, an
affectionate and sensible explanation might have saved her daughter.
But the conventional mother seeks to hide her "moral" shame and
embarrassment in this evasive reply:
"In order to have a child--one must love--the man--to whom one is
married.... One must love him, Wendla, as you at your age are
still unable to love.--Now you know it!"
How much Wendla "knew" the mother realized too late. The pregnant
girl imagines herself ill with dropsy. And when her mother cries in
desperation, "You haven't the dropsy, you have a child, girl," the
agonized Wendla exclaims in bewilderment: "But it's not possible,
Mother, I am not married yet.... Oh, Mother, why didn't you tell
me everything?"
With equal stupidity the boy Morris is driven to suicide because he
fails in his school examinations. And Melchior, the youthful father
of Wendla's unborn child, is sent to the House of Correction, his
early sexual awakening stamping him a degenerate in the eyes of
teachers and parents.
For years thoughtful men and women in Germany had advocated the
compelling necessity of sex enlightenment. MUTTERSCHUTZ, a
publication specially devoted to frank and intelligent discussion of
the sex problem, has been carrying on its agitation for a
considerable time. But it remained for the dramatic genius of
Wedekind to influence radical thought to the extent of forcing the
introduction of sex physiology in many schools of Germany.
Scandinavia, like Germany, was advanced through the drama much more
than through any other channel. Long before Ibsen appeared on the
scene, Bjornson, the great essayist, thundered against the
inequalities and injustice prevalent in those countries. But his was
a voice in the wilderness, reaching but the few. Not so with Ibsen.
His BRAND, DOLL'S HOUSE, PILLARS OF SOCIETY, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF
THE PEOPLE have considerably undermined the old conceptions, and
replaced them by a modern and real view of life. One has but to read
BRAND to realize the modern conception, let us say, of
religion,--religion, as an ideal to be achieved on earth; religion as
a principle of human brotherhood, of solidarity, and kindness.
Ibsen, the supreme hater of all social shams, has torn the veil of
hypocrisy from their faces. His greatest onslaught, however, is on
the four cardinal points supporting the flimsy network of society.
First, the lie upon which rests the life of today; second, the
futility of sacrifice as preached by our moral codes; third, petty
material consideration, which is the only god the majority worships;
and fourth, the deadening influence of provincialism. These four
recur as the LEITMOTIF in Ibsen's plays, but particularly in PILLARS
OF SOCIETY, DOLL'S HOUSE, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.
Pillars of Society! What a tremendous indictment against the social
structure that rests on rotten and decayed pillars,--pillars nicely
gilded and apparently intact, yet merely hiding their true condition.
And what are these pillars?
Consul Bernick, at the very height of his social and financial
career, the benefactor of his town and the strongest pillar of the