Ibsen on the German Stage 1876-1918 Forum Modernes Theater Schriftenreihe l Band 53 begründet von Günter Ahrends (Bochum) herausgegeben von Christopher Balme (München) Jens-Morten Hanssen Ibsen on the German Stage 1876-1918 A Quantitative Study Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.dnb.de abrufbar © 2018 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Internet: www.narr.de E-Mail: info@narr.de CPI books GmbH, Leck ISSN 0935-0012 ISBN 978-3-8233-8271-3 5 Table of Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Chapter 1: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 1.1 IbsenStage: the database as a research tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 1.2 The quantitative approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 1.3 From literary to theatre studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 1.4 From textual analysis to data analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 1.5 The dataset of German events 1876-1918 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society . . . 31 2.1 The introduction of Ibsen on the German stage 1876-1881 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878-1880 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.2.1 The scope of Ibsen’s success with Pillars of Society on the German stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.2.2 Hypotheses about the success of Pillars of Society . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.2.3 The role of the theatre agencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 2.2.4 The spatial distribution of Pillars of Society on the German stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 2.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 . . . . . 63 3.1 The network of German stage artists producing Ibsen 1876-1881 . . 64 3.2 A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 3.2.1 The two variants of Nora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 3.2.2 The critical reception of A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 3.3 The ‘silence’ of the years 1882 through 1884 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 3.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Chapter 4: Ibsen’s real breakthrough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 4.1 Ghosts and the independent theatre movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 6 Table of Contents 4.2 German Ibsen events 1885-1889: A Doll’s House and the Pillars trajectory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 4.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 5.1 Ibsen’s 1890s plays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 5.2 The network of German stage artists producing Ibsen 1885-1899 . 113 5.3 A Doll’s House and the star system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 5.4 Ibsen and the modernist movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 5.5 Ibsen and the Volksbühne movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 5.6 German as source language in relay translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 5.6.1 The tradition of domesticating names and titles in Ibsen’s plays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 5.6.2 German theatre agencies marketing Ibsen abroad . . . . . . . . . . . 147 5.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 6.1 The stage success of When We Dead Awaken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 6.1.1 Consecration, canonization, naturalization: Ibsen the German dramatist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 6.1.2 Publication in book form and theatrical distribution of When We Dead Awaken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 6.1.3 The spatial distribution of When We Dead Awaken in 1900 . . 158 6.1.4 The theatrical context of When We Dead Awaken on the German stage in 1900 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 6.2 Ibsen’s symbolist dramas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 6.3 The advent of the Ibsen ensembles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 6.4 The Ibsen cycles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 6.5 The German hubs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 6.5.1 Ensemble clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 6.5.2 Solo versus ensemble acting: social implications . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 6.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage . 197 7.1 Peer Gynt ’s late arrival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 7.2 The death of a father figure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 7.2.1 Brahm’s Ibsen legacy and beyond: a generational perspective 206 7.2.2 Brahm vs. Reinhardt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 7.2.3 Brahm vs. Barnowsky, Jessner, Lindemann, and Bruck . . . . . . 212 7 7.3 The ‘other’ Ibsen: changes in the critical perception and reception of Ibsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 7.4 Ibsen performances during World War I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 7.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 Chapter 8: Concluding remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Appendix: Archival sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Physical collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Digital sources I: playbills, theatre programmes, performance data . . . . 252 Digital sources II: newspapers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Performance data in printed form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 List of tables and figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 9 Acknowledgements Scholarly work is social and collaborative by its very nature. I have had the privilege of pursuing my interest in Ibsen in multiple projects both in and outside academia ever since 1998, and I cannot conceive of any of these projects without the people with whom I had the pleasure of collaborating. I shall take this opportunity to express my gratitude to a few of these. First of all I need to thank Kathrin Heyng and Valeska Lembke at the Narr Francke Attempto Verlag and Christopher Balme, the main editor of their series “Forum Modernes Theater”, for offering me the opportunity of publishing my dissertation as a book. Together with Jonathan Bollen and Ellen Rees, Balme also served as member of the committee that evaluated my doctoral thesis on behalf of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oslo. Their criticisms, comments and suggestions, put forward in the committee report as well as during the public defence in February 2018, proved extremely valuable in the process of revising my dissertation for publication. It was a true privilege to have them as my examiners. My sincere thanks go to my brilliant supervisors Frode Helland and Julie Holledge not only for guiding me so carefully through the process of writing the dissertation, but also for inspiring and encouraging me to develop the doctoral project in the first place. Through two periods of my career (1998-2004 and 2014-2018) the Centre for Ibsen Studies at the University of Oslo has been like a home for me. I owe a great thanks to former as well as present colleagues of mine at the centre: Astrid Sæther, Knut Brynhildsvoll, Vigdis Ystad, Jon Nygaard, Randi Meyer, Mária Fáskerti, Laila Henriksen, Chengzhou He, Sabiha Huq, Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman, Ellen Rees, Liyang Xia, Kamaluddin Nilu, Giuliano D’Amico, Ruth Schor, Nina Marie Evensen, Torhild Aas, Thomas Rasmussen, Martin Kroglund Persson, Ragnhild Schea, and last but not least my PhD colleagues Svein Henrik Nyhus, Thor Holt, Solace Sefakor Anku, and Gianina Druta. Special thanks go to Erika Fischer-Lichte for her mid-way evaluation of my thesis. I must also thank the Centre for Ibsen Studies for granting me financial support to cover the printing costs. I thank a number of colleagues at other departments of the University of Oslo: Christian Janss, for making useful comments on an early draft of the project outline and for our ongoing dialogue related to the earliest productions of A Doll’s House on the German stage; Ståle Dingstad, for reading and sharing with me his thoughts on an early draft of chapter 2; Jakob Lothe, who served 10 Acknowledgements as the head of the PhD programme for the better part of my doctoral period, for stimulating seminars; Annika Rockenberger, for her infectious enthusiasm for digital humanities and for co-presenting a paper at DHN’s first conference in Oslo in 2016; Iris Muñiz, for sharing with me her research findings related to the appropriation of A Doll’s House during Silver Age Spain; and the DMLF team, especially Asgeir Nesøen, for invaluable technical support related to the use of IbsenStage as a research tool. I am grateful to the University of Oslo for granting me the PhD scholarship. In 2001, when I was hired as an editor of the website formerly known as Ibsen.net, I could not anticipate that I would eventually be basing a doctoral project on data gathered as part of the Repertoire Database project. As it turned out, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Liv Sundby and Benedikte Berntzen, my closest collaborators during the Ibsen.net years (2001-2014). I am truly proud of what we accomplished together and look back with joy on our years of collaboration. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Bjørg Harvey, May-Brit Akerholt, and Sabine Richter for their contributions to the website. On several occasions during my doctoral period, Sabine Richter has also carried out archival research on my behalf. I do not know how to thank her enough for this, and I am proud to call her my friend. Ibsen.net was initially set up during the planning period of the centennial commemoration of Ibsen’s death in 2006. I am grateful to the National Ibsen Committee of Norway, headed by the late Lars Roar Langslet, for trusting me with the task of developing the website. In this regard, I am particularly thankful for the support of Helge Rønning, who was both a committee member and the chairman of the Ibsen Centre’s board during my initial years as an employee at the centre. In 2007, the editorial office of the website was transferred to the National Library of Norway, which agreed to host Ibsen.net on a permanent basis. I am thankful for the generosity of Vigdis Moe Skarstein, who made this possible, and the efforts of Marit Vestli, Therese Manus, Kristin Bakken, Jon Arild Olsen, and Hege Høsøien to ensure that I, among other things, was able to continue the work of gathering performance data for inclusion in the Repertoire Database. Needless to say, the AusStage team of researchers - above all Julie Holledge, Jonathan Bollen, and Joanne Tompkins - cannot be thanked enough for pioneering the research methodologies that I am applying in the present study. I would also like to thank the IFTR Digital Humanities in Theatre Research working group chaired by Nic Leonhardt and Franklin J. Hildy for stimulating sessions and memorable conference days in Hyderabad in 2015 and in Stockholm in 2016, and my fellow members of the board of the Norwegian Literature and Language Association (NSL) - Aasta Marie Bjorvand Bjørkøy, Hilde Bøe, Nina 11 Marie Evensen, Ellen Wiger, Arnfinn Aaslund, and Jon Haarberg - for exploring the field of digital humanities from yet a different angle. Having spent a substantial part of my career building research infrastructure, I have learned to appreciate the value of user-friendly, well-organized, and well-maintained databases, archives, museums, and library collections, and I take this opportunity to pay homage to all those who are involved in building infrastructure for research and to express my special gratitude to all those archivists and librarians whom I have contacted ever since 2001 - there have been hundreds of hundreds of them. Their work constitutes the backbone of my research. Finally and most importantly, I need to thank my family - Tone, Jonatan, Julia, and Thea - for their love and for bringing joy and happiness into my life. A special thank goes to Jonatan for coming to my rescue with his computer skills on a number of occasions. 13 Chapter 1: Introduction On 1 June 1891, Der Zeitgeist , a weekly supplement to the Berliner Tageblatt , printed a stage song under the title “Das Lied vom Ibsen”, whose first stanza went as follows: Ibsen, Ibsen, everywhere! There’s nothing like it! Over the whole globe Ibsen fever rages. The whole world is Ibsen-mad, […] for the entire air is full of Ibsen-germs! No salvation! Fashions and advertisements everywhere proclaim Ibsen’s name, trumpet his praise! On cigars, ladies’ trinkets, pastries, bodices, ties is flaunted the word in letters of gold: Ibsen! A la Ibsen! 1 Written by Maximilian Krämer, the editor of the Lustige Blätter , clearly to be used as part of an act at one of Berlin’s cabaret clubs - the details of the performance are not known - the lyrics suggest that Ibsen pervades all facets of human life. Modern existence itself is entirely inconceivable without him. He is idolized, ideologized, fetishized, merchandised, and capitalized on, and appears as the measure of all things. Only the closing lines of the final stanza call for sobriety. The Ibsen vogue is profound and all-pervasive, but prevails only ‘until God lets Ibsen succumb to new trends’. 2 Krämer applies genre devices well known to the cabaret song: satire, ridicule, exaggeration, irony. Yet the general observation that informs the contents and in all likelihood inspired him to write the song in the first place does not seem far from the truth: At the close of the nineteenth century, Ibsen had only two rivals in respect of world-wide renown, Tolstoy and Zola (Archer 1901, 182); in Germany, no dramatist earned as much attention, recognition, and fame as Ibsen. Here, “Das Lied vom Ibsen” serves first and foremost as an appetizer, as a testimony of something else. The song in itself does not interest me as much as the context that conceived it and the fact that it was written for the stage. The present thesis is intended as an investigation of Ibsen from the point of view 1 Ibsen, Ibsen überall! / Da geht nichts mehr drüber! / Auf dem ganzen Erdenball / Herrscht das Ibsen-Fieber! / Alle Welt wird Ibsen-toll, / Wenn auch wider Willen, / Denn die ganze Luft ist voll / Ibsen-Ruhm-Bacillen! / Keine Rettung! Ueberall / Künden Ibsens Namen, / Preisend mit Posaunenschall, / Moden und Reklamen. / Auf Cigarren, Damenschmuck, / Torten, Miedern, Schlipfen. / Prangt das Wort in gold’nem Druck: / „Ibsen! A la Ibsen! ˮ Quoted and translated in McFarlane 1991, 112. 2 “Bis Gott Ibsen unterliegt / Einer - neuen Mode ! ˮ Der Zeitgeist. Beiblatt zum Berliner Tageblatt , 1 June 1891. 14 Chapter 1: Introduction of the German stage. How was he introduced? How did his plays fare on the German stage? Who were the people that produced them? What characterizes the German Ibsen tradition when seen from the perspective of the stage? My approach is quantitative, historical, transnational, and guided by research methodologies from the field of digital humanities. I will examine the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays over a period of forty-two years. 1918 is chosen as the end point for two main reasons: First of all, that year marked the end of two empires, the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 3 The political structure of these two empires is crucial to an understanding of the events put under scrutiny in this thesis. Second, as will be shown, the volume of German Ibsen performances increase constantly from the mid-1880s until World War I, from when the numbers decrease until the 1950s. Measured in volume of theatrical events, the period of the German Empire was marked by growth and advancement whereas the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich saw recession. By 1918, Ibsen was produced on stage in German at venues all over the Western world, from Moscow in the east to San Francisco in the west. Previous research on the German Ibsen tradition was predominantly carried out within the framework of the nation as a basic knowledge category (cf. Stein 1901; Eller 1918; George 1968; Bernhardt 1989). By contrast, I propose the application of a consistent methodological transnationalism known from migration studies to unravel the transnational entanglements of Ibsen’s German stage history (Manz 2014, 2-7). German Ibsen performances transcended the borders of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland both through the German diaspora and through the international touring circuit. Scholarship has failed to take into account the impact of migration on the spread of Ibsen. Likewise, not enough attention has been paid to the role of transnational and international touring in the stage history of his plays. Throughout its six stanzas, “Das Lied vom Ibsen” leaps back and forth between the local and the global. It contains references in abundance to the prosaic reality of Berlinese consumer culture, yet claims that the Ibsen craze applies to the world at large and closes by introducing the otherworldly perspective of a merciful God bringing Ibsen hysteria to an end. In parts of my thesis, the German perspective and the global perspective will go hand in hand in a similar manner. The German introduction of Ibsen paved the way for him being introduced into other language areas and cultural markets. Polish audiences first 3 To avoid confusion with today’s Germany and Austria - and as a reminder of the fact that the political map of Europe was quite different from today - I will systematically use the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire or simply Austria-Hungary to refer to the ‘Deutsches Kaiserreich’ that existed between 1871 and 1918 and the ‘Österreichisch-Ungarische Monarchie’ that existed from 1867 to 1918. 15 encountered Ibsen in Wawrzyńiec Engeström’s small monograph Henryk Ibsen: Poeta norwegski (1875). In large parts, this booklet is a loose translation of the chapter on Ibsen in Adolf Strodtmann’s book Das geistige Leben in Dänemark (1873, 223-258, cf. Kłańska 2006, 180-181). Ibsen’s first major success on the European continent, Pillars of Society , which was soon published in three different German translations and staged by more than sixty theatre companies in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe in the late 1870s, spread out over several language areas. The very first Hungarian, Serbian, Czech, and Dutch performances of Pillars of Society used translations based on German translations, thereby constituting specific side effects of Ibsen’s German success. In the further course of events, German translations led to the introduction of Ibsen’s works in languages like Russian, Italian, Latvian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, and Romanian. This has made scholars assume that Ibsen’s German breakthrough led to his subsequent international breakthrough (Reich 1908, 193). However, as will be shown, the matter is more complex. The above-mentioned offshoots of Ibsen’s German success with Pillars of Society left no lasting impact. More importantly, instead of following up on the success of the preceding play, A Doll’s House initially failed both critically and financially on the German stage. In this thesis, I will revisit the assertion that Ibsen’s German breakthrough led to his international breakthrough and treat it as a hypothesis still to be tested. Undeniably, the German stage was key in introducing Ibsen’s plays to performance venues across the entire Western world, but German Ibsen performances did not necessarily contribute to the making of Ibsen the world dramatist. The stage history of Ibsen’s plays in the period of the German Empire is not unknown territory, far from it. I rely on numerous volumes of Ibsen scholarship carried out by scholars and non-scholars before me. At the same time, in terms of methodology I deviate radically from traditional Ibsen research, first and foremost as a consequence of my use of the performance database IbsenStage as a research tool and e-research methodologies pioneered by the AusStage team. The particularities of my methodological approach are best described through the following shifts: • the shift from traditional to digital humanities, • the shift from qualitative to quantitative approach, • the shift from literary to theatre studies, • the shift from textual analysis to data analysis. 16 Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 IbsenStage: the database as a research tool Our combined knowledge of Ibsen resides not only in documents and items (books, articles, manuscripts, etc.) in libraries, archives, and museums across the globe, not only in the minds and bodies of all those who have read Ibsen, written about him, or portrayed his characters. It also resides in digital resources independent both of print media and the human mind: digital repositories, databases, collections of files in multiple formats, and so forth. These resources represent new and still largely unexplored modes of knowledge formation and production that the emerging field of digital humanities has taken into consideration. The pool of digital resources generated on the basis of Ibsen’s life and works is relatively rich and manifold. The Ibsen Concordance, available online since 1993, was the first of its kind. It facilitated search for words in Ibsen’s complete works. Over the years, digital Ibsen resources proliferated. Simple research questions that only twenty-five years ago required days and weeks or even months and years of work to determine are now potentially solved in a matter of seconds thanks to resources like the International Ibsen Bibliography, the digital edition of Henrik Ibsen Skrifter , the National Library of Norway’s Ibsen site (formerly known as Ibsen.net), and IbsenStage. 4 Set up by the Ibsen Centre at the University of Oslo in collaboration with the National Library of Norway and the Australian live performance database Aus- Stage, IbsenStage is an event-based, relational performance database currently holding more than 23,000 records with data from Ibsen performances from 1850 until the present day. Burdick et al. claim that [d]igital humanities is born of the encounter between traditional humanities and computational methods. With the migration of cultural materials into networked environments, questions regarding the production, availability, validity, and stewardship of these materials present new challenges and opportunities for humanists. In contrast with most traditional forms of scholarship, digital approaches are conspicuously collaborative and generative. (Burdick 2012, 3) The story behind IbsenStage is a striking illustration of this point. In its essentials, IbsenStage is a combination of four things: a collection of data, a way to organize the data, a set of procedures to facilitate interaction between data and users, and a set of research methodologies to enable scholars to use the database for research purposes. The collection itself stems from countless volumes 4 See www.nb.no/ bibliografi/ ibsen/ ; http: / / ibsen.uio.no/ ; http: / / ibsen.nb.no/ . 1.1 IbsenStage: the database as a research tool 17 of Ibsen scholarship and from more than seventeen years of gathering performance data from archives, libraries, and museums. The Repertoire Database of the website formerly known as Ibsen.net became “the first ever attempt to map exactly to what extent, by whom, when and where Ibsen’s plays have been staged in theatres all over the world” (Hanssen 2014). Ibsen.net was initiated by the National Ibsen Committee, appointed by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture to coordinate the plans for the Ibsen Year 2006 to commemorate the centennial of Ibsen’s death. In 2007, the editorial office of Ibsen.net moved to the National Library of Norway and eventually changed to its current domain name, Ibsen.nb.no. By March 2014, the Repertoire Database consisted of 9,670 records. 5 AusStage was instigated by the Australasian Drama Studies Association in 1999, setting out to “address the need for research information in Australian theatre, drama and performance studies by building an index of performing arts events in Australia, and a directory of research resources on the performing arts”. 6 An online database was established. Around 2008, initiatives were taken to establish a tripartite collaboration. Initially, Ibsen.net’s contribution was to share all the data on A Doll’s House from the Repertoire Database with the AusStage team. A research project on the global production history of A Doll’s House conducted by Julie Holledge applied e-research methodologies developed by the AusStage team on the dataset (Bollen et al. 2009; Bollen and Holledge 2011; Holledge et al. 2016). The project was part of the international research project “Ibsen between Cultures” at the Ibsen Centre (Helland and Holledge 2013). In 2012, the three institutions came to a mutual agreement to expand the collaboration. The National Library agreed to share the total dataset of 9,670 records from the Repertoire Database. The Ibsen Centre at the University of Oslo agreed to set up and run IbsenStage, and AusStage agreed to share their database model and research methodologies. IbsenStage was launched in March 2014. IbsenStage differs from the Repertoire Database in a number of ways. There are three main differences. First of all, the Repertoire Database is a production database, whereas IbsenStage is an event database. In IbsenStage, the event is specified as a 5 For the record, as the editor of Ibsen.net from the start in 2001 until 2014, I was myself in charge of the Repertoire Database. The database has not been updated since March 2014. 6 www.ausstage.edu.au/ pages/ learn/ about/ project-history.html, accessed 7 March 2017. 18 Chapter 1: Introduction distinct happening defined by title, date/ s and venue; typically, a performance or series of performances at a venue. […] Multiple presentations of the same production at different venues (e.g. touring productions) are recorded as separate events. 7 Take as an example a theatre production performed over three consecutive seasons at a local venue, which, in addition, tours venues in ten cities. The Repertoire Database would record this production in one single record. In IbsenStage, on the other hand, the example would give altogether thirteen (associated) event records, one for each of the ten touring performances, plus three records for the consecutive seasonal runs. A theatre production is likely to change as a function of time and space. Instead of collapsing the production data into one single record, IbsenStage structures the data in a way which provides greater flexibility and accuracy. Second, IbsenStage is a relational database, while the Repertoire Database is a hierarchal database. Like AusStage, IbsenStage has been developed on the basis of the relational model of data which means that data are organized into tables (or ‘relations’) of columns and rows. Each table represents one entity type, the rows represent instances of that entity type, and the corresponding columns represent values attributed to that instance. IbsenStage consists of six core tables: events, contributor, organization, venue, resource, and work. At the front end, an event record typically displays a combination of data from multiple tables. Take the event record of Ghosts at the Kammerspiele Berlin as an example. 8 The event name (Gespenster) and the date of the first performance (8 November 1906) are derived from the event table; the venue name (Kammerspiele) and the corresponding street address (Schumannstraße 13A, Berlin) are derived from the venue table; the name of the organization, that is the theatre institution in charge of the production (Deutsches Theater) is derived from the organization table; and finally, the contributors, here twelve fully named individuals, including the director Max Reinhardt, the designer Edvard Munch, and the leading cast members Agnes Sorma and Alexander Moissi, are derived from the contributors table. Every event is associated with one or (occasionally) more works, in IbsenStage defined as “the abstract conception of an event, typically (though not always) expressed as a material resource, such as a script or score”. 9 Here, the event in question is associated with one of Ibsen’s dramatic works, 7 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ learn/ show/ category/ About/ content/ Data+Models, accessed 7 March 2017. 8 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 79324, accessed 7 March 2017. 9 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ learn/ show/ category/ About/ content/ Data+Models#work, accessed 7 March 2017. 1.2 The quantitative approach 19 Ghosts . At the back end, SQL (Structured Query Language) is used to maintain the database and to perform queries according to specific research questions. Third, IbsenStage is a research tool. Although the intention of the Repertoire Database was to build research infrastructure and facilitate research, the database gradually faced shortcomings due to the choice of database model. The Repertoire Database was developed as an integral part of the Ibsen.net website, which in its overall design was more targeted at the general public than the research community. IbsenStage is a research tool first and foremost because of a set of e-research methodologies and techniques inherited from the AusStage project. Every venue is georeferenced by using latitude and longitude coordinates according to the GPS system. A map interface applying Google Earth/ Google Maps provides a tool to study the geographical distribution of events from the point of view of cartography. The contributor dataset, holding data on every individual who has contributed “in some capacity to the conception, production or presentation” of an Ibsen event, enables users to undertake analyses of artistic networks of contact and collaboration across time and space. 10 Furthermore, IbsenStage is a research-driven project. Data exported from the Repertoire Database have been supplemented through research work, and new data are continuously being added as a result of individual research projects and collaborative projects involving cooperating institutions. 1.2 The quantitative approach A shift from qualitative to quantitative approach implies a shift of focus from the particular to the general, from the extraordinary to the ordinary, from the atypical to the common. Instead of drawing general conclusions on the basis of analysis of a presumed representative sample of particulars, one starts with the general and raises new issues and problems and poses new questions on that basis. In quantitatively driven hard sciences, there are long traditions and more or less standardized procedures on how to carry out quantity research. In the humanities - historically “the province of close analysis of limited data 10 By way of cross-linking tables, IbsenStage creates a web of links which lends itself to relational analysis. The contributor-event table links each contributor with each event in which s/ he participated; the contributor-function table joins contributor data with data about the function(s) the contributors had in the events (actor, director, designer, dramaturge, composer, translator, etc.); the contributor-contributor table links each contributor with all other contributors featured in the events in which s/ he participated. To see how data retrieved from multiple tables are displayed online, see for example the contributor page of Max Reinhardt: https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 427222. 20 Chapter 1: Introduction sets” (Burdick 2012, 37) - quantitative research methods have been a case of experimentation only since the turn of the millennium. One of the pioneers in using quantitative research methods in humanistic studies is Franco Moretti, who coined the term ‘distant reading’ in opposition to the established concept of close reading. The trouble with close reading, Moretti argues, is “that it necessarily depends on an extremely small canon”. At its core, close reading is “a theological exercise - very solemn treatment of very few texts taken very seriously” (Moretti 2013a, 48). Moretti’s alternative is distant reading - “where distance […] is a condition of knowledge : it allows you to focus on units that are much smaller or much larger than the texts: devices, themes, tropes - or genres and systems” (Moretti 2013a, 48-49, italics in original). Close reading would normally fit into the category of qualitative research methods, while distant reading as a procedure would point in the direction of quantitative research methods. Moretti’s term has indeed inspired my thesis in that I intend to perform a kind of distant reading of German Ibsen performances in the period 1876-1918. In his article “Conjectures on World Literature”, originally published in 2000, 11 Moretti applies distant reading as a procedure of synthesizing research findings from a long list of scholars in order to analyse world literature as a system, his hypothesis being a possible law of literary evolution: [I]n cultures that belong to the periphery of the literary system […], the modern novel first arises not as an autonomous development but as a compromise between a western formal influence (usually French or English) and local materials. (Moretti 2013a, 50) He finds support for the hypothesis, but also “that the compromise itself was taking rather different forms” and that “world literature was indeed a system-- but a system of variations . The system was one, not uniform. The pressure from the Anglo-French core tried to make it uniform, but it could never fully erase the reality of difference” (Moretti 2013a, 54, 56, italics in original). In his 2005 book Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History , Moretti applies distant reading in a slightly different fashion, more in line with how the term is understood today. Less focus is given to the synthesizing technique, and instead distant reading is now an approach in which the reality of the text undergoes a process of deliberate reduction and abstraction. ‘Distant reading’, I have once called this type of approach; where distance is however not an obstacle, but a specific form of knowledge : fewer elements, hence 11 New Left Review 1 January - February 2000, 54-68; re-printed in Moretti 2013a, 43-62. 1.2 The quantitative approach 21 a sharper sense of their overall interconnection. Shapes, relations, structures. Forms. Models. (Moretti 2005, 1, italics in original) As outlined by the book’s title, Moretti uses models drawn innovatively from quantitative history (graphs), geography (maps), and evolutionary theory (trees) in order to study the rise of the novel in Britain, France, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Spain, India, and Nigeria, literary maps in village stories, clues as a device in British detective fiction, and stylistic variations in the use of free indirect speech in novels across time and space. Moretti’s preferred object of study is the modern novel, and his preferred discipline is book history. To what extent is Moretti’s methodological approach applicable to the field of theatre studies? First of all, there are parallels between the synthesizing technique in Moretti’s “Conjectures on World Literature” and the process of gathering and recording performance data undertaken since 2001. IbsenStage does indeed represent an instance of what Moretti (2013a, 48) describes as “a patchwork of other people’s research”. Since the vast majority of the records in IbsenStage are based on data from the Repertoire Database, it is a patchwork of work and research carried out by the staff of Ibsen.net. Their work in turn was based on information gathered from thousands and thousands of sources of various kinds (theatre programmes, playbills, theatre reviews, theatre ads, repertoire lists, research articles, monographs, databases, online resources, etc.) synthesized into a database. 12 Second, a parallel could be drawn between Moretti’s “process of deliberate reduction and abstraction” and the design of IbsenStage. When studying the geographical distribution of Ibsen performances on a map, the performances are represented by identical-looking drops. Individual traits are erased. Moreover, IbsenStage presents a careful selection of events data while remaining silent about data left out. By primarily focusing on metadata like names and dates, the database reveals next to nothing about the artistic qualities and the individual characteristics of the performances as such. The general idea, however, is that the volume of events leaves us no other choice. The quantitative approach requires a selective procedure. The shift from qualitative to quantitative approach is not a radical break, but a shift of emphasis. In two regards I depart from Moretti’s line of reasoning. “Quantitative research provides a type of data which is ideally independent of interpretations”, he claims at the beginning of his book Graphs, Maps, Trees , adding that “that is of course also its limit: it provides data , not interpretation” (Moretti 2005, 9, italics in original). Here, Moretti is at odds with one of the ten- 12 Cf. the appendix for a survey of archival sources used in the process of building up the database. 22 Chapter 1: Introduction ets of hermeneutics, that there is no escape from interpretation. Selecting data for analysis is not value-neutral activity. Designing a data model involves making judgments according to a set of criteria for inclusion and exclusion. These judgments are not necessarily devoid of interpretation. In IbsenStage, artistic functions are emphasized at the expense of technical functions: set designers, costume designers, lighting designers, and sound designers are recorded, but set constructors, costume makers, light board operators, and sound operators are not. Thus, the interplay between art and craft is intentionally left out of consideration. The database presents the stage history of Ibsen’s plays first and foremost through the lens of artists. Moretti also does not address the fact that it is hard to draw a sharp line between quantitative and qualitative research. My point of departure is quantitative. To begin with, all German events covering the period 1876-1918 - the sum of which constitutes the initial forty-two years of the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays - are regarded as equally significant. Yet on that basis new questions are posed, and new problems raised. In the further process of interrogating the dataset, quantitative and qualitative considerations are likely to walk hand in hand. 1.3 From literary to theatre studies The question of whether Ibsen wrote literary works or theatre plays represents an age-old debate in Ibsen scholarship. At the opening of his biography, Michael Meyer declares that he considers Ibsen “as a man writing for the theatre rather than for the printed page, and it is primarily from that viewpoint that I have written this book” (1971, xvii). By contrast, Jon Nygaard claims that Ibsen “insisted on writing books for readers, not scripts for the theatre”, that his dramas are “literature, not theatre” - they “are literary texts pretending to be, and by many misunderstood or misinterpreted to be, theatre” (1997, 97). There are at least two ways to solve this conundrum, either by acknowledging that Ibsen wrote his dramatic works with a double audience in mind, readers and spectators, as Egil Törnqvist (1997) does, or, simply, by leaving the question of authorial intent aside. Bourdieu’s model of the field of cultural production implies a break with “the narcissistic relationship inscribed in the representation of intellectual work as a ‘creation’” (1993, 192). His proposition is a non-essentialist, generic, and sociological approach to works of art and literature. Bourdieu claims that 1.3 From literary to theatre studies 23 [t]he ideology of the inexhaustible work of art, or of ‘reading’ as re-creation, masks […] the fact that the work is in fact made not twice, but hundreds of times, thousands of times, by all those who have an interest in it, who find a material or symbolic profit in reading it, classifying it, decoding it, commenting on it, reproducing it, criticizing it, combating it, knowing it, possessing it. (Bourdieu 1996, 171) On the theoretical level, my thesis is informed by Bourdieu’s model. It resists any temptation to lend supremacy to the textual side of Ibsen’s oeuvre. Instead, Ibsen’s works (and the author himself) will be studied within the framework of the field of cultural production. Theatre and literature represent different subfields, operating according to a distinctly different set of mechanisms. IbsenStage reads Ibsen’s oeuvre as an endless chain of theatrical events scattered in time and space. To get a proper sense of these events, they must viewed in the context of theatre and performance culture. Schechner distinguishes between drama, theatre, script, and performance. Drama is a “written text, score, scenario, instruction, plan, or map” and belongs to “the domain of the author, the composer, scenarist, shaman”; script is “the basic code of the events” and belongs to “the domain of the teacher, guru, master”; theatre signifies “the event enacted by a specific group of performers […]. Usually, the theater is the manifestation or representation of the drama and/ or script”, theatre is “the domain of the performers”; performance, finally, is “the whole constellation of events […] that takes place in both performers and audience from the time the first spectator enters the field of performance […] to the time the last spectator leaves”, the performance is “the domain of the audience” (Schechner 2003, 70-71). Schechner’s taxonomy is fruitful, all the more since Bourdieu does not pay any attention to these concepts. 13 Schechner admits that the boundaries vary greatly from culture to culture and situation to situation (ibid.). To make his model applicable for the purpose of the present study, awareness is required of social groups operating at the intersection between the domains. In the case of the German stage, drama was the domain not only of the author, Ibsen, but also of his German translators. For a drama by Ibsen to materialize in the eyes of the German public, it had to be translated. In the hands of the theatrical agencies, responsible for distributing Ibsen’s works to the theatres, his dramas transformed into playtexts. However, as will be detailed below, more often than 13 Bourdieu writes about theatre as a genre next to novel and poetry, i.e. he uses ‘theatre’ where strictly speaking ‘drama’ would be the more appropriate term (cf. e.g. Bourdieu 1996, 114). Yet more than Bourdieu himself his English translator, Susan Emanuel, is to blame for this inaccuracy, as théâtre in French may indeed refer to the dramatic genre as such or even a specific set of dramatic works (as in le théâtre de Molière ). 24 Chapter 1: Introduction not the editions printed by the publishing houses were distributed to book shops as well as theatres. Hence, not only theatrical agents but also printers, editors, and publishers were acting as mediating bodies within the distribution system of the theatre industry. Any theatre studies approach to Ibsen rests on the basic premise that performance and dramatic text are to be separated from one another and that a performance constitutes a work of art in its own right, to be studied on its own terms irrespective of any material representation of the dramatic text as such, whether in the form of a manuscript, book, script, or score. By implication, this means that the relationship between a drama and its performance is non-symbiotic and abstract. IbsenStage has inherited its data model - specifically designed for recording information about the performing arts - from AusStage. In this model, the drama or the dramatic text is subsumed under the work category, whereas performance is subsumed under the event category. Leaning on the AusStage model, Jonathan Bollen and Julie Holledge define work as an abstract concept which defines the identity of a collection of texts and events: the play script in its various versions and translations, and productions of the play live on stage or recorded for dissemination by film, radio, television, Internet and so on. (Bollen and Holledge 2011, 228) In other words, as Bollen says elsewhere, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is the “overarching” work that encompasses a whole collection of texts and events: the original manuscript, the first edition, the premiere production in 1879, the Wilhelm Lange translation, and “all publications, translations, productions, and adaptations since” (Bollen 2016, 626). Work is an abstract entity, whereas the event invariably refers to a specific happening, defined by date and venue. Unless otherwise noted, I shall in what follows use the terms ‘event’ and ‘work’ as defined in the AusStage/ IbsenStage model. 1.4 From textual analysis to data analysis The present study is written in the age of information and big data. My investigations are rooted in data analysis and not within the framework of textual analysis. The primary object of study is a dataset of event records stored in a relational database. A standard procedure for preparing a dataset for analysis is to transform the data into visual form. The graphs, maps, charts, and tables of this study have been generated on the basis of the IbsenStage dataset according to a two-step process. The first step involved making queries written in compliance 1.4 From textual analysis to data analysis 25 with SQL - a formalized language enabling users to engage in a ‘dialogue’ with the relational database. As queries return only raw data in the form of a result set (a set of rows from the database), the second step entailed transforming the result sets into visualizations using software tools of various kind. Visualizations have a long prehistory as a procedure to make data “speak to the eyes” (Friendly 2008, 22). The obviously greater reward lies in making them ‘speak to the mind’. With the advent of digital humanities, visualizations have assumed new functions. Rather than serving as mere illustrations, they begin to act as arguments in their own right. Accordingly, my visualizations will tend to appear at the beginning and not the end of a line of reasoning. They are not inserted to illustrate arguments or underline conclusions, but to initiate the process of questioning conventional assumptions and testing new hypotheses. Since I am adopting methodologies pioneered by the AusStage team, I should add that my use of visualization techniques and data interrogation as a research methodology is indebted to collaborative research carried out by scholars affiliated with the AusStage project and the Centre for Ibsen Studies (cf. Bollen and Holledge 2011; Helland and Holledge 2013; Holledge et al. 2016). A relational database is not an object one would normally set out to ‘read’ as if it were a text. As a cultural form, the database complies with its own ‘language’, distinctly different from the language of the linearly structured narrative. As the object of study changes from textual entities to data, the shift has theoretical and methodological implications that must be kept in mind. First, data analysis inevitably rests on the quality of the dataset. More often than not, the data analyst cannot necessarily take for granted that his or her dataset is complete. IbsenStage clearly represents the largest knowledge base of performance data in the history of Ibsen scholarship, and the sheer process of gathering performance data has already expanded our knowledge, but it needs to be stressed that it is inconceivable that the database will ever reach completion. Second, unlike literary texts that create fictional universes, a database is generally considered to stand in a more straightforward relationship to the ‘real’ world. Dates and names are either correct or not, they are not subjected to interpretation. Yet Johanna Drucker maintains that data do not “pre-exist their parameterization” and are “taken not given, constructed as an interpretation of the phenomenal world, not inherent in it” (2014, 128). Neither do data visualizations in themselves provide privileged access to matters of fact above other modes of representation. “Visualizations are always interpretations”, Drucker writes, adding that “data does not have an inherent visual form that merely gives rise to a graphic expression” (ibid., 7). Visualizations are an effective means to identify patterns in datasets, to form hypotheses and develop research questions on their basis, but above all they provide a point of departure for further data interrogation. 26 Chapter 1: Introduction Third, as suggested above, a database is always designed according to a set of criteria for inclusion and exclusion. This means that data are always taken out of context. There is indeed a world outside Ibsen events that IbsenStage is unaware of. In the process of interrogating the dataset, I will occasionally juxtapose Ibsen data with data retrieved from other sources - as will be demonstrated especially in chapters 2 and 6, in which Ibsen events will be seen in the light of Bjørnson and Hauptmann events, respectively. 1.5 The dataset of German events 1876-1918 The present thesis’ main object of study is a subset of 2,035 event records from IbsenStage selected by querying the database according to two criteria, namely language and time; events in languages other than German have been deselected, and only events before 1 January 1919 have been selected. In what follows, I will outline the subset broadly by displaying how the events distribute across time, according to works association, geographical dissemination, and social cohesion. Figure 1.1 below shows a graph of the annual distribution of records as a function of two variables, time on the x axis, that is the years from 1876 to 1918, and the number of events on the y axis. The graph indicates the annual frequency with which German Ibsen events have been presented in the given period. Table 1.2 displays the distribution of events according to works association. For the sake of linguistic consistency, titles are rendered according to the Oxford Ibsen edition (OxI 1966-1977) - as they are in IbsenStage. 14 Events associated with twenty-three different Ibsen works are recorded. All but one dramatic work available in German translation were presented on stage. 15 Figure 1.3 shows the spatial distribution of events as depicted on a map generated from geospatial data contained in IbsenStage. 16 By 1918, German Ibsen performances were presented in areas today belonging to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The 14 Likewise, I will later refer to plays by dramatists such as Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Frank Wedekind by using standardized English titles, to the extent available. 15 Emma Klingenfeld’s translation of Olaf Liljekrans was published in 1904 as part of the second volume of Henrik Ibsens Sämtliche Werke in deutscher Sprache (ISW 2), but has to my knowledge never been presented on stage in German. 16 The maps in this book were created using QGIS 3.0. A special thanks to Jonatan Hoffmann Hanssen for helping me create the maps. 1.5 The dataset of German events 1876-1918 27 events have been plotted on the map according to the GPS coordinates of 381 different venues. 17 The entire contributor dataset of IbsenStage holds data on 88,905 individuals with unique identifiers, connected to 23,262 events at 9,598 different venues around the world. 18 The body of contributors in the German events 1876-1918 comprises 6,372 unique individuals recorded across nine different functions. The distribution of contributors according to function is as follows: • 1 playwright • 15 costume designers • 17 composers • 18 adapters • 19 conductors/ musical directors • 40 translators • 48 designers • 381 directors • 6,108 actors 19 17 Cross-checking the venue and events datasets from the perspective of event figures, the following twenty venues have the highest numbers of event associations: Lessingtheater (120), Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf (72), Königliches Hoftheater Stuttgart (61), K. K. Hof-Burgtheater (59), Thalia-Theater Hamburg (47), Großherzogliches Hoftheater Karlsruhe (41), Altonaer Stadttheater (40), Leipziger Stadttheater - Neues Theater (37), Leipziger Stadttheater - Altes Theater (37), Großherzogliches Theater Oldenburg (30), Großherzogliches Hoftheater Darmstadt (29), Königliches Residenztheater München (29), Landschaftliches Theater Linz (28), Stadttheater Basel (28), Carl Schultze Theater Hamburg (27), Großherzogliches Hoftheater Weimar (27), Deutsches Theater Berlin (26), Königliches Schauspielhaus Dresden (25), Neues Deutsches Theater Praha (24), Stadttheater Bern (24). 18 Source: https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ , accessed 29 May 2018. 19 The last export date of the German subset of data was 29 May 2018. Bear in mind that the performances are almost exclusively recorded on the basis of contemporary sources, mainly playbills and theatre programs printed by the theatres themselves. Several functions commonly included in the list of credits nowadays, like dramaturge, choreographer, and lighting designer, were normally not listed in playbills in the era of the German Empire. 28 Chapter 1: Introduction Figure 1.1: Distribution of German Ibsen events by year. Play No. of German events 1876—1918 A Doll’s House 393 Pillars of Society 215 Ghosts 212 Rosmersholm 180 Hedda Gabler 177 The Wild Duck 123 An Enemy of the People 108 When We Dead Awaken 104 The Lady from the Sea 91 The Master Builder 81 John Gabriel Borkman 80 Peer Gynt 61 Little Eyolf 41 The Vikings at Helgeland 36 The Pretenders 31 The League of Youth 26 Brand 22 Love’s Comedy 21 The Feast at Solhoug 16 Emperor and Galilean 8 1.5 The dataset of German events 1876-1918 29 Lady Inger 6 The Burial Mound 2 Catiline 1 Sum 2035 Table 1.2: Distribution of German events according to works association. Figure 1.3: Map of German Ibsen events 1876-1918. The chapters of my thesis follow a chronological order, albeit not the chronology of Ibsen’s life nor the order in which he wrote his plays. They are instead structured according to the major patterns of the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays as they emerge in the visualizations of the German dataset 1876-1918. Hence, I do not begin with Ibsen’s juvenile plays that were hardly produced, but with a chapter on the introduction of Ibsen on the German stage in the second half of the 1870s mainly focusing on his first major success with Pillars of Society . Then follows a chapter on the early failure of A Doll’s House , before turning to the second half of the 1880s when Ibsen was reintroduced to the German stage after a couple of years of utter ‘silence’, Ghosts becoming the centre of attention. Chapter 5 looks into the 1890s and is characterized by a double perspective. As suggested by “Das Lied vom Ibsen”, the start of the decade saw the contours of an Ibsen craze, both in German-speaking areas of Central Europe and internationally. Ibsen the world dramatist was in the making, above all due to the resounding and far-reaching success of A Doll’s House . 30 Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 6 describes the initial decade of the new century, as the frequency of Ibsen events reached new highs, Ibsen being ‘in command of the German stage’ like never before. The last chapter suggests that a shift in the German Ibsen tradition occurred around 1910 and focuses its attention on Peer Gynt , which after being left untouched by the German stage for more than three decades all of a sudden turned into one of Ibsen’s most frequently performed stage plays during World War I. Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society 2.1 The introduction of Ibsen on the German stage 1876—1881 Ibsen was not entirely unknown to the German-speaking world when the very first German production of one of his plays, The Pretenders , premiered on 30 January 1876 at the Herzogliches Hoftheater in Meiningen. Two poems of his, “Med en Vandlilje” and “Lysræd”, appeared in print as early as in 1868, included in an anthology of Nordic poetry, Album Nordgermanischer Dichtung , edited and translated by Edmund Lobedanz and published in Leipzig (HIS 13k, 101). In the first half of the 1870s, German translations of Brand , The League of Youth , and The Pretenders were issued in book form. 20 Parallel to this, critical introductions began to appear, the first of which was P.F. Siebold’s biographical article in Illustrirte Zeitung in Leipzig in 1870. 21 In 1876 and 1877, two of Ibsen’s historical plays, The Pretenders and The Vikings at Helgeland , began to circulate among a handful of court theatres. The Vikings at Helgeland was presented at three stages: the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich in April 1876, with revivals given the following two seasons; the Königliches Hoftheater Dresden in September 1876; and the K. K. Hofburgtheater in Vienna in October 1876. The Pretenders was staged by two companies. After the premiere in Meiningen, the company of Georg II presented seven guest performances of the play at the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater in Berlin. The Großherzogliches Hoftheater in Schwerin mounted the play in November 1876. In the event statistics of IbsenStage, these performances amount to nine events, seven in 1876 and two in 1877. As shown in the graph in figure 1.1 above, the number of events increases substantially to fifty-three events in 1878, marking Ibsen’s first major success on the German stage, then drops to thirteen in 1879, twelve in 1880, and seven in 1881. These five years, 1876 through 1881, 20 Brand appeared in two different translations: P. F. Siebold’s translation, published by Theodor Kay in Kassel in 1872, and Julie Ruhkopf’s translation, published by Kühtmann in Bremen in 1874. Adolf Strodtmann’s translations of The League of Youth and The Pretenders were published by Paetel in Berlin in 1872. 21 P.F. Siebold, “Henrik Ibsen”, Illustrirte Zeitung , 19 March 1870, 215-218. Siebold’s article was an adapted and translated version of an Ibsen article written by Lorentz Dietrichson (cf. HIS 13k, 101-102). 32 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society constitute the prologue to the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays during which a total of ninety-four events are recorded, distributed according to works association as displayed in figure 2.1. Figure 2.1: German Ibsen events according to play 1876-1881. One should not underestimate the significance of the fact that Ibsen was introduced to the German stage by the renowned Meininger company of Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, which played a pivotal role in reforming and revitalizing German theatre. Their legendary European tours covering thirty-six cities in fourteen countries from 1874 through 1890 turned the company into a major force in the development of nineteenth-century theatre (DeHart 1981, 15). Georg saw a production of The Pretenders while visiting Norway in 1875, which prompted him to seek out the historical locations of the play and study the various regional costumes (DeHart 1981, 38-39). The play obviously matched his company’s preferences well, as their repertoire was dominated by historical plays-- the Meininger company did not revolutionize European theatre by producing modern, realistic plays but by staging classic, historical plays in entirely new ways, by designing them with meticulous historical exactitude, by developing a realistic acting style, and by dropping the established ‘star’ system and perfecting the interaction of the whole ensemble (Brauneck 1999b, 151-154). Yet after the guest performances in Berlin in June 1876, The Pretenders disappeared from the repertoire of the Duke’s company, never to resurface again. According to DeHart, the production of The Pretenders “suffered from the Duke’s impetuosity” (DeHart 1981, 39). In general, performances of Ibsen’s historical plays assume only a marginal role in the stage history of Ibsen’s plays. During the initial phase of this history, it is rather Pillars of Society that dominates the picture. 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 33 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 2.2.1 The scope of Ibsen’s success with Pillars of Society on the German stage Though seemingly well documented by J.B. Halvorsen in the Ibsen chapter of his encyclopaedia of Norwegian authors, Norsk Forfatter-Lexikon 1814-1880 , the full scope of Ibsen’s success with Pillars of Society on the German stage in 1878 onwards has not been thoroughly uncovered until now. ‘Hardly any other dramatic work by Ibsen’, states Halvorsen, ‘not even A Doll’s House , has reached the public masses of Europe in such a short amount of time as Pillars of Society ’. 22 That was indeed correct when Halvorsen made the observation and the IbsenStage dataset confirms that this remained true throughout Ibsen’s career. Measured by production density, the Pillars of Society events in 1878 stand in a unique position. Halvorsen gives the geographical coordinates of the success by specifying that Pillars of Society made Ibsen’s entry into the German stage of Central Europe and presenting a list of altogether thirty productions with dates and venues, of which twenty-six are from 1878, three from 1879, and one from 1888. To illustrate the scope and the singularity of the success, he adds that within a week at the beginning of February 1878 no less than five different theatres in Berlin gave performances of the play, ‘a success without parallel in the annals of Berlin theatres’. 23 In his bibliographic annotations to the sixth volume of Ibsen’s Samlede værker , issued in 1899, Halvorsen lists additional productions of Pillars of Society and adds that no other language outnumbers the many productions of this play given in German. […] At the end of 1878, it was included in the repertoire of no less than twenty-seven court and city theatres all over Germany and Austria. In 1879, it made its entry into even more theatres and has later on further expanded its command of the stage in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland […]. At least sixty theatres have staged more than 1,200 performances of the play in German translation. 24 22 “Af alle Ibsens dramatiske Arbejder har neppe noget, ikke engang ‘Et Dukkehjem’, i saa kort Tid som ‘Samfundets Støtter’ naaet frem til det store Publikum i Europa” (Halvorsen 1892, 59). Unless otherwise noted, translations of quotes from non-English sources in the running text are prepared by myself. I use single quotation marks for these, whereas the original quotes are given in foot notes with double quotation marks. 23 “[…] en Sukces, som er uden Sidestykke i Berlins Theaterhistorie” (ibid.). 24 “Ikke paa noget Sprog har dog dette Stykke oplevet saa mange Opførelser som paa Tysk. […] Det blev inden Udgangen af 1878 sat paa Repertoiret for ikke mindre end 27 Hofog Stadttheatre over hele Tyskland og Østerrige, holdt i 1879 sit Indtog paa endnu flere og har senere dels yderligere udvidet sit Herredømme paa andre Theatre i Tyskland, Østerrige og Schweiz […]. I tysk Oversættelse har Stykket til nu gaaet paa mindst 60 Theatre og oplevet over 1200 Opførelser.” FU 6, vi-vii. 34 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society In the history of Ibsen scholarship, references to these figures have proliferated almost to the extent that the history of Pillars of Society on the German stage has become the history of these figures. Ibsen’s biographers cite them - with or without reference to Halvorsen (Gran 1918, 2.37-38; Koht 1971, 309; Meyer 1971, 441; Figueiredo 2007, 182). They are referred to in introductions to editions of Ibsen’s collected works in various languages (CWI 6, xvii-xviii; HU 8, 27; OCI 11, 115; OxI 5, 432-433; HIS 7k, 65) as well as in many anthologies and monographs (Stein 1901, 3; Dzulko 1952, 32; Friese 1976, xi; Gentikow 1978, 57; Bernhardt 1989, 206-208; Bloom 1999, 53; Englert 2001, 32; Dingstad 2013, 168-169). The Ibsen chapter of Norsk Forfatter-Lexikon 1814-1880 is a cornucopia of references and information. Every generation of Ibsen scholars has benefited greatly from it. Needless to say, Halvorsen’s work proved extremely valuable for the Repertoire Database project as well. For the sake of verification, completion and further research, however, the Ibsen.net staff members had to go beyond his references. Playbills, theatre reviews and other documentation of the productions he lists were sought for in archives, libraries, and museums for the purpose of recording the productions with cast lists, precise opening dates, and so forth. German theatre journals, almanacks, and repertoire surveys were systematically checked for references to productions not listed by Halvorsen. The outcome of this research was stunning. The scope of Ibsen’s initial success with Pillars of Society on the German stage was in fact more than twice the size indicated by Halvorsen, with no less than sixty-seven events: fifty-one in the standout year of 1878, thirteen in 1879, and three in 1880. 25 Although the introduction of Pillars of Society on the German stage has largely been treated as a set of figures, that is as a quantity, it has not been analysed quantitatively. In what follows, the scope of the success with Pillars of Society will be examined in view of other Ibsen events in the initial phase (from 1876 through 1881) as well as from the perspective of the German stage in general. The very first German production of Pillars of Society took place at the Belle-Alliance-Theater in Berlin on 25 January 1878. By the end of the theatre season the play was performed at thirty-nine German theatre venues, and by the end of the calendar year the number had increased to fifty-one. Throughout his entire career, Ibsen would never experience success on a scale anywhere near that in such a short time with another play in any theatre culture, not even in the 1890s when he was at the height of his European fame. This is all the more remarkable given that Ibsen at the time was still virtually unknown outside of Scandinavia. 25 The number of events according to theatre season were thirty-nine in 1877/ 78, fifteen in 1878/ 79, twelve in 1879/ 80, and one in 1880/ 81. 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 35 What was the nature of Ibsen’s success with Pillars of Society on the German stage? What implications did it have for Ibsen in the short run and in the longer run? How did it affect his standing as a playwright in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe and elsewhere? Looking at the graph in figure 1.1 above, two observations strike us: First, the success of Pillars of Society did not have a lasting effect, and second, Pillars of Society dominates the picture entirely in the initial years, but displays a waning tendency over time. A Doll’s House , which would earn its author major recognition and establish his global fame in the decades to come, did not follow up the success of Pillars of Society on the German stage. Instead A Doll’s House turned out to inaugurate a threeyear-long period of almost complete silence. From 1885 onwards, however, as Ibsen was reintroduced on the German stage, A Doll’s House would take over the spearheading role among Ibsen’s plays, never to lose it, whereas Pillars of Society displays more modest event numbers. This progress of events begs for an analysis which somehow accounts for their interconnection. How do these three processes - the success of Pillars of Society , the initial lack of success of A Doll’s House , and the three-year-long silence - relate? 2.2.2 Hypotheses about the success of Pillars of Society Several aspects of Ibsen’s initial success with Pillars of Society have yet to be adequately investigated in Ibsen scholarship. Over the following pages I will look into the theatrical context, the critical reception of Pillars of Society , the role of the theatre agencies in its dissemination, and the spatial distribution of the play. But first of all it seems appropriate to consider possible causes of the success. Ståle Dingstad has discussed six possible explanations of Ibsen’s German success with the play (2013, 169-175). In what follows I will assess Dingstad’s hypotheses by using IbsenStage and the sources that have been gathered in building up the dataset. Dingstad’s various hypotheses can be summarized as follows: 1. Georg Brandes’ Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature had been translated to German in 1872, and Pillars of Society successfully met Brandes’ famous demand that contemporary literature should submit problems to debate. Moreover, Brandes lived in Berlin at the time of Ibsen’s German breakthrough, and the two were kindred spirits. 2. The success was the culmination of long-term efforts over ten years to introduce Ibsen to the German market by way of introductions, translations, and reviews. 36 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society 3. Pillars of Society was a well-made play and well suited for conservative German theatre audiences. In harmony with the genre characteristics of the German Lustspiel , the play ends well for nearly everyone. 4. Ibsen’s plays were not protected by copyright, and German theatres could perform them for free. Theatre managers noticed the widespread success of Pillars of Society and included the play in their repertoire to earn similar success. 5. It was not Ibsen’s play in itself that aroused the interest of the general public, but the theatre companies and their actors, not least Ernst von Possart, who according to Dingstad played Consul Bernick more than two hundred times in Munich and other German cities. 6. It was first and foremost to Emil J. Jonas’ credit that Pillars of Society became a success on the German stage. Jonas wrote an adaptation of the play in which he reduced the exposition from around forty to five pages and left out some of the minor characters, making the play more accessible. Dingstad discusses the pros and cons of each of these hypotheses and ends up more or less rejecting the first two. During the initial years of their personal acquaintance, Brandes and Ibsen inspired and influenced each other mutually, but their relationship cooled down, to the extent that Brandes grew more and more hostile towards Ibsen from around 1874. Between 1877 and 1882 they had no contact whatsoever, and Brandes did little or nothing to promote Ibsen in Germany (Dingstad, 2013, 139-147, 170). 26 In IbsenStage, Brandes is featured as a translator, but that came much later, as he was one of three editors of the ten-volume edition Henrik Ibsens sämtliche Werke in deutscher Sprache (ISW 1-10). A counter-argument against hypothesis 2 is, according to Dingstad, that the German introductions, translations, performances, and reviews of Ibsen’s work in the 1870s did not add up accumulatively in the minds of the general public. They were singular events whose influence was only felt in limited circles for a limited period of time. Intuitively one might also think that the hypothesis reverses the causality. Ibsen’s rising popularity was not the cause but an effect of his success with Pillars of Society . According to Georg Brandes, however, that was not the case. In an entry in his memoirs dated 5 February 1878, that is in the middle of the very week in which Pillars of Society was performed at five different stages in Berlin, Brandes noted that ‘[a]t the moment, no epidemic rages in Berlin as much as Pillars of Society ; not at all because Ibsen is particularly well 26 Cf. also thesis 7 in Dingstad’s epilogue (2013, 283): ‘In connection with the so-called modern breakthrough, Georg Brandes hardly made any difference at all to Ibsen, especially not in Germany in the years from 1877 to 1883’ (“Georg Brandes spilte en forsvinnende liten rolle for Ibsen i forbindelse med det såkalte moderne gjennombrudd, især i Tyskland i årene fra 1877 til 1883”). 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 37 known here, but due to the great lack of modern plays and the convenience of not having to pay any author royalties’. 27 Hypothesis 5 is contradicted by the dataset. The sixty-seven events of Pillars of Society from 1878 through 1880 were all discrete productions. The extent of touring was minimal, and no touring companies are represented, that is the productions were presented by discrete company casts with (almost) no overlaps. Only one instance of solo touring is recorded, when Ernst von Possart, who played Consul Bernick at the Königliches Residenztheater in Munich (which premiered on 5 February 1878), was later invited to play the same role at the Stadttheater Nürnberg (opening night on 3 April 1878). 28 The tradition of inviting star actors and actresses to play the leading parts was particularly strong in what Marvin Carlson labels ‘the Virtuoso period’ (1830-1870) in the history of the German stage (1972, 91-163). When not as dominating, the tradition was still active as a structural pattern throughout the period of the German Empire, as will be accounted for in chapter 5. Pillars of Society , however, was not disseminated by the forces of the ‘Virtuoso’ system. The common denominator that all events point towards is Ibsen’s play, not a star actor or a specific theatre company. Of Dingstad’s six hypotheses, I am left with nos. 3, 4, and 6. As will be shown below, hypothesis 3 - about Pillars of Society as a well-made play - needs to be clarified. I believe that the most likely explanation of Ibsen’s German success with Pillars of Society lies in a combination of these three hypotheses and an additional one, added on my own account, which concerns Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s influence and the impact of what I would call the initial wave of modern, realistic plays, in which both Bjørnson’s A Bankruptcy and Ibsen’s Pillars of Society play prominent parts. Was Pillars of Society an irresistible combination of the French pièce bien faite and the German Lustspiel , as indicated in hypothesis 3 above? 29 To examine this I will first and foremost analyse data and not the play’s text - Dingstad himself 27 “Ingen Epidemi grasserer i dette Øjeblik i Berlin som ‘Die Stützen der Gesellschaft’, og det ingenlunde fordi Ibsen her er synderlig kjendt, men paa Grund af den store Mangel paa moderne Skuespil og Behageligheden ved intet Forfatterhonorar at have at betale.” Brandes 1885, 55. 28 The key premise of hypothesis 5, as formulated by Dingstad, that Possart played Consul Bernick more than two hundred times in Munich and other German cities (Dingstad 2013, 173; cf. also Dingstad 2016, 108) is a piece of unsubstantiated information. In IbsenStage, Possart is linked to only three events of Pillars of Society . He performed the play eleven times in Munich and once or twice in Nuremberg during the 1878 spring season, and six times at the Amberg Theater in New York in 1889/ 1890. Note that J.B. Halvorsen states that Possart played Berent in Bjørnson’s A Bankruptcy more than two hundred times, not Consul Bernick (Halvorsen 1885, 312). 29 In what follows, I will stick with the French and German genre names as the English ‘well-made play’ has some other connotations than the French pièce bien faite . 38 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society does the latter convincingly (2013, 229-246). In order to carry out such a data analysis, however, a detour needs to be made beyond the IbsenStage database. What other plays were presented on the German stage at the time? How ‘big’, how ‘remarkable’ was Ibsen’s success with Pillars of Society , measured in production numbers, compared to these other plays? The theatre season 1877/ 1878 has been checked using two sources: Joseph Kürschner’s Jahrbuch für das deutsche Theater (1879) and Albert Entsch’s Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach (1879). 30 The research confirms that Pillars of Society was among the most popular plays that very season, but at the same time the sources indicate that there was nothing extraordinary about Ibsen’s hit play, as the German stage featured similar successes every season, including in 1877/ 1878. The ten most frequently performed plays in the German theatre season 1877/ 1878 were: Play Playwright No. of productions Hypochonder , Lustspiel Gustav von Moser 64 Größenwahn , Lustspiel Julius Rosen 63 Hasemann’s Töchter , Volksstück Adolph L’Arronge 62 Durch die Intendanz , Lustspiel Elise Henle 55 Dora , Sittengemälde Victorien Sardou 48 Johannistrieb , Schauspiel Paul Lindau 48 Die Stützen der Gesellschaft , Schauspiel Henrik Ibsen 39 Die Rosa Dominos , Posse Alfred Charlemagne Lartigue Delacour and A. Hennequin 35 Wenn man im Dunkeln küßt , Schwank Carl Mallachow and Oscar Elsner 26 Der Sklave , Lustspiel Gustav von Moser 25 Table 2.2: Ten most performed plays on the German stage in the theatre season 1877/ 1878. 30 Though not explicitly referred to in the Ibsen chapter of Halvorsen’s Norsk Forfatter-Lexikon 1814-1880 , Joseph Kürschner is in all probability the main source of his information. As for productions of Pillars of Society in 1878 and 1879, the list given by Halvorsen (1892, 59-60) is identical with Kürschner’s production lists (1879, 207; 1880, 203). Entsch’s repertoire survey is more comprehensive than Kürschner’s. 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 39 Six out of the ten plays in table 2.2 are comedies ( Hypochonder , Größenwahn , Durch die Intendanz , Die Rosa Dominos , Wenn man im Dunkeln küßt , Der Sklave ), and four of the ten are of foreign origin (French for Dora , Hasemann’s Töchter 31 and Die Rosa Dominos , Norwegian for Die Stützen der Gesellschaft ). Neither statistic is surprising. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the German stage underwent a process of commercialization, and the prominent court theatres, as a general rule managed by a member of the aristocracy, gradually lost their privileges and hegemonic position. Theatre became rather a matter for the rising bourgeoisie. In 1869, a new Trade Law ( Gewerbeordnung ) enacted by the North German Confederation removed legal restrictions on the formation of theatres ( Jelavich 1985, 102). Numerous profit-oriented private theatre enterprises were established causing fierce competition. The repertoires were dominated by entertaining comedies, farces, and light operas - plays capable of drawing large audiences. At the same time, there was a strong presence of what the theatre critics half lamentingly and half reproachingly called Ausländerei , that is repertoire elements of foreign origin. Through many decades from 1830 onwards, France was the main exporter of dramatic works into the German theatre market. From 1875, Scandinavia would gradually claim a position in this regard. From a contemporary perspective, the playwrights in table 2.2 are prominent names. Victorien Sardou was, alongside Eugène Scribe, the leading exponent of the pièce bien faite . Moser and L’Arronge were distinguished comic playwrights, and the latter was also known as the theatre manager of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. Lindau had considerable success both as an author of dramatic works and novels and as a theatre manager. However, all the plays in table 2.2 have in common that their success led to neither shortnor long-term critical recognition. Except for Pillars of Society , they are forgotten plays, rarely or indeed never to be witnessed on stage today. Except for Ibsen, the playwrights are mostly forgotten as well. In Joseph Kürschner’s summary of the 1877/ 1878 theatre season, neither of these plays, Pillars of Society included, was considered worth mentioning. The German repertoire, Kürschner sums up, is ‘poor in new plays of good and splendid quality’, adding that it was the ‘less good’ ones that had enjoyed the most success. 32 But there is a bright spot in this misery, and that is Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung , which was ‘auspicious’ and ‘shining in the glory of a new artistic era’. 33 Kürschner refers to productions of the work, in 31 Although written by the German playwright Adolph L’Arronge, Hasemann’s Töchter is based on Victorien Sardou’s play La Famille Benoîton (cf. Grange 2006, 154). 32 “[U]nser Repertoire [ist] an neuen Stücken guten und trefflichen Gepräges arm […] gerade das weniger Gute [hatte] den meisten Erfolg.ˮ Kürschner 1879, 291. 33 “[…] glückverheißendˮ, “erstrahlend im Glanze einer neuen Kunstepocheˮ. Ibid. 40 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society parts or the whole cycle, in Vienna, Leipzig, Weimar, Schwerin, and Hamburg. In addition, he points out certain cyclic performances of ‘great masterpieces of the past decades and centuries’: the cycles of Schiller’s plays and Shakespeare’s history plays in Berlin, Ernst von Possart’s cycle of Schiller’s plays in Munich, the cycles of historical operas and Mozart’s operas in Kassel, and a cycle of Molière’s comedies in Nordhausen. 34 Kürschner establishes a contrast between Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung and the ten plays above. Whereas Wagner’s work represents what the French would describe as a succès d’estime , or critical (as opposed to popular) success, the ten plays represent the exact opposite, namely popular but low-esteemed commercial success. I will now turn to the critical reception of Pillars of Society on the German stage. Was it critically received as a combination of the French pièce bien faite and the German Lustspiel ? Was it denounced as a box-office success? In Skandinavien als präkapitalistische Idylle , Barbara Gentikow (1978) examines the critical reception - first and foremost as it appeared in German journals-- of selected works from the Scandinavian literatures in the period from 1870 to 1914, among them Pillars of Society . Gentikow’s study is well informed, and her survey of reviews of Pillars of Society counts more than twenty critics, with the reviews spanning from 1878 up to Ibsen’s death in 1906. Her central research question is how the German critics received the thematic innovations of Scandinavian literature in the period of the Modern Breakthrough, the most important keywords of which are that literature should submit problems to debate and be realistic and socially critical (Gentikow 1978, 24-28). Pillars of Society is examined alongside Bjørnson’s A Bankruptcy , and Gentikow’s conclusion is that the social criticism of these two plays was ‘neutralized’. This was effected by emphasizing the moralizing, individualizing, and romanticizing tendencies of the texts, by dehistoricizing and/ or demonizing the social conflicts, by rejecting the contemporaneity with reference to the geographic distance, and by uplifting the authors to classics. In the early phase of the critical reception, the thematic innovations were often not acknowledged because they were new, in the later phase they were often dismissed as ‘outdated’. 35 34 “[…] großer Meisterwerke vergangener Jahrzehnte und Jahrhunderteˮ. Kürschner 1879, 292. 35 “Das geschah in groben Zügen durch die Selektion der moralisierenden, individualisierenden und romantisierenden Tendenzen der Texte, durch die Ent-Historisierung und/ oder Dämonisierung der gesellschaftlichen Konflikte, durch die Ablehnung der Aktualisierung unter Hinweis auf die geographische Distanz, und durch die Erhebung der Autoren zu Klassikern. In der frühen Phase der Rezeption wurde die thematische Innovation häufig nicht realisiert, weil sie zu neu war, in der Spätphase häufig als ‘veraltet’ abgetan.ˮ Gentikow 1978, 92. 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 41 Gentikow’s study is highly valuable as it analyses the general outlines of the German criticism of Pillars of Society . For the purpose of my approach and my study, however, her conclusions need to be further tested. First of all, only three out of twenty-two reviews are from the year 1878. Second, her selection of reviews almost exclusively falls in the category of literary criticism. My main focus of attention concerns how the play was produced on the German stage, not the qualities of Pillars of Society as a literary work. No fewer than twenty-three theatre reviews of productions in the course of the calendar year 1878 have been traced regarding the following productions (number of reviews in brackets): Belle-Alliance-Theater Berlin (4), Stadttheater Berlin (5), Stadttheater Chemnitz (1), Stadttheater Wien (5), Stadttheater Magdeburg (1), Aktientheater Osnabrück (1), Thalia-Theater Hamburg (1), Stadttheater Frankfurt an der Oder (1), Königliche Schauspiele Hannover (1), Stadttheater Kiel (1), Landestheater Graz (1), Landschaftliches Theater Linz (1). What information do the reviews add about the narrative of Ibsen’s German success with Pillars of Society ? First of all, the majority of the reviews are favourable. They tend to confirm that the play was indeed a success on the German stage. The success is varyingly characterized as ‘fine’ ( gut ), ‘great’ ( groß ), ‘significant’ ( bedeutend ), or even ‘unprecedented’ ( beispiellos ). In Berliner Tageblatt ’s review of the very first production at the Belle-Alliance-Theater Berlin, the newspaper even prophesizes that the play will be a box office success, without using the term in any derogatory sense. 36 Second, the reviews to some degree support Gentikow’s conclusion that the social criticism of the play is neutralized. The review of the production in Hannover in the Hannoverscher Courier illustrates this. Clearly well aware of the ambiguities of the play’s ending - that is Bernick’s moral conversion, to all appearances unreserved and trustworthy, though in reality highly cautious and calculating - the critic R. K. states that in the original play ‘Bernick’s rascality goes so far that a rehabilitation of him hardly appears as possible; in the adaptation, as it is presented here, it still remains difficult, but nonetheless possible, to believe in the salvation of the sinner’. 37 Fritz Mauthner pinpoints the same problematic point in his review in Deutsches Montags-Blatt , but contrary to James McFarlane (1965-66, 35-50), who would later interpret the play’s ending as an intentional use of dramatic irony on the part of 36 ‘To judge by the success at this place, the play promises to become a box office draw’ (“Das Stück verspricht, seinem Erfolge an dieser Stelle nach, Kassenstück zu werdenˮ). Berliner Tageblatt , 27 January 1878. 37 “Im Originale kommt Bernick in der Schurkerei so weit, daß eine Rehabilitation desselben kaum mehr möglich erscheint, in der Bearbeitung, wie sie hier gegeben wird, ist es immer noch schwer, aber doch möglich, an die Besserung des Sünders zu glauben.ˮ R. K., Hannoverscher Courier , 17 September 1878. 42 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society Ibsen, Mauthner maintains a position invoking the basic views of the aesthetic idealism by stating that the theatrical effect of the final scene is nice, but that it suffers from the very same basic evil, that is the lie, that Ibsen sets out to castigate […]; thus, [Bernick’s] atonement is untruthful, his moral appearance in the end is a theatre coup, which might prove able to rehabilitate him in the eyes of his provincial friends, but not in our eyes. 38 According to Mauthner, Ibsen is ‘a witty, jocular and skilful playwright, but not a poet like Bjørnson’. The flaws of Pillars of Society derive from the fact that Ibsen does not possess ‘a great poet’s disposition’. 39 My third main observation relates to Dingstad’s hypothesis about Pillars of Society as a pièce bien faite . By its name, neither the genre nor its two most prominent exponents, Scribe and Sardou, are explicitly referred to in any of the reviews. The most frequently recurring genre label is the Tendenzstück . 40 Several critics, however, emphasize Ibsen’s technical skills as a dramatist and the play’s formal qualities. The Wiener Abendpost ’s critic writes that the play is ‘well done, cleverly conceived and efficiently accomplished’ and lauds its ‘wellsketched characters, felicitous, cutting words, exciting entanglements, and entirely satisfying solution’. 41 Oscar Blumenthal points out Ibsen’s ‘ingenuity and compositional art’ and adds that the plot of Pillars of Society is ‘spellbinding up to the last scene and full of surprises, all of which are, however, well prepared and hence remain trustworthy’. 42 Though somewhat vaguely, this is reminiscent of Scribe’s focus on the “technique of catching and holding an audience” by means of a “well-told story” (Taylor 1967, 11). 43 38 “Die Scene ist von schöner theatralischer Wirkung, doch leidet sie an demselben Grundübel, das Ibsen geißeln zu wollen vorgab, an der Lüge […]; so ist seine Sühne unwahr, sein moralisches Auftreten zum Schlusse ist ein Theatercoup, der ihn wohl in den Augen seiner kleinstädtischen Freunde, nicht aber in den unsrigen zu rehabilitiren vermag.ˮ Fritz Mauthner, Deutsches Montags-Blatt , 28 January 1878. 39 “Ibsen ist ein geistvoller, witzig und theaterkundiger Autor, doch er ist kein Dichter wie Björnson. Der Fehler seines Stückes lassen sich daraus herleiten, daß er kein großes Dichtergemüth besitztˮ. Ibid. 40 Cf. e.g. Wiener Abendpost, 23 February 1878; Hannoverscher Courier , 17 September 1878; Kieler Zeitung , 15 October 1878. 41 “[E]s ist […] sehr gut gemacht, sinnreich erdacht, wirksam ausgeführt. Es enthält eine große Anzahl gut gezeichneter Figuren, glückliche, scharfe Worte, spannende Verwicklungen und eine alle Theile befriedigende Lösung.ˮ Wiener Abendpost , 23 February 1878. 42 “[…] Erfindungsgabe und Kompositionskunstˮ; “Die Handlung in den ‘Stützen der Gesellschaft’ ist bis zur letzten Szene spannend und reich an Ueberraschungen, die aber alle wohlvorbereitet sind und in Folge dessen glaubwürdig bleiben.ˮ Oscar Blumenthal, Berliner Tageblatt , 5 February 1878. 43 Note also that the German Tendenzstück derived from the French pièce à thèse which in turn was generally considered to be a variant of the pièce bien faite . J.L. Styan claims that 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 43 My fourth observation surveying the reviews concerns Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s impact as a trailblazer. Nine critics mention Bjørnson and his play A Bankruptcy . 44 In the very same review referred to above, Fritz Mauthner observes that the Nordic countries had recently offered the German public ‘quite a few priceless poetic gifts’. He further reasons that, most probably, it is ‘thanks to the extraordinary success of Bjørnson’s works that enterprising translators and theatre managers now dare to approach other Norwegian poets’, adding that Pillars of Society ‘reminds us of Bjørnson’s A Bankruptcy also irrespective of this kinship’. 45 According to the Viennese Morgen-Post ’s critic, the production of Pillars of Society at the Stadttheater Wien might have been occasioned by ‘the favourable reception which […] A Bankruptcy enjoyed in its day’. 46 As a result of Bjørnson’s declining status in the modern age - once lined up at the forefront of the Modern Breakthrough as a matter of course (Brandes 1883), today increasingly marginalized - we tend to forget his historical importance (cf. Hanssen 2013, 381-394). To Ibsen’s most important biographer, Halvdan Koht, the case was clear: it was A Bankruptcy that had “cleared a path for Ibsen’s plays in Germany, although in German opinion, Pillars of Society did not measure up to Bjørnson’s play and for a time Ibsen was overshadowed by his countryman” (Koht 1971, 309-310). Conversely, though Dingstad does make occasional references to Bjørnson in Den smilende Ibsen , throughout the chapter on Ibsen’s German breakthrough he symptomatically neglects Bjørnson as an explanatory factor (2013, 133-180). As a case study in theatre historiography we face not just one problem here, the problem of historical oblivion, but also a second one. Stage productions of the dramas of Émile Augier and Dumas fils “added a new dimension to [the pièce bien faite ] by using the formula to make a moral point. This was the beginning of the play of ideas, or la pièce à thèse .” Styan 1981, 4, italics in original. 44 Deutsches Montags-Blatt , 28 January 1878; Berliner Tageblatt , 5 February 1878; Neue Freie Presse , 23 February 1878; Wiener Abendpost , 23 February 1878; Die Presse , 23 February 1878; Morgen-Post , 23 February 1878; Hamburger Nachrichten , 8 March 1878; Hannoverscher Courier , 17 September 1878; Kieler Zeitung , 15 October 1878. 45 “Der Norden hat uns in den letzten Jahren manche köstliche poetische Gabe geschenkt und vielleicht haben wir es dem außerordentlichen Erfolge von Björnsons Werken zu danken, daß unternehmende Uebersetzer und Direktoren sich nun auch an andere norwegische Dichter wagen. Ibsens Schauspiel würde auch ohne eine solche Stammverwandtschaft an Björnsons ‘Fallissement’ erinnern.ˮ Fritz Mauthner, Deutsches Montags-Blatt , 28 January 1878. 46 “Die günstige Aufnahme, welche das schwedische Drama ‘Das Fallissement’ seiner Zeit fand, mag Veranlassung gegeben haben, daß wir gestern wieder die Bekanntschaft mit einem schwedischen Familienstücke machten, mit dem vieractigen Schauspiele: ‘Die Stützen der Gesellschaft’ von Henrik Ibsen.ˮ ‘W-n’, Morgen-Post , 23 February 1878. Bjørnson’s A Bankruptcy premiered at the Stadttheater Wien on 6 October 1875 (cf. Wiener Zeitung , 6 October 1875). 44 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society Bjørnson’s plays are not systematically mapped and recorded. Knowledge is scarce regarding Bjørnson’s international impact as a playwright and the global dissemination of his dramatic works. Only limited data are at our disposal to support the knowledge about Bjørnson’s impact. Consequently, the process of oblivion and neglect escalates accordingly. All the more reason for me, once again, to cast a glance beyond the IbsenStage dataset, given that adequate and reliable sources are traceable. The Bjørnson chapter of J.B. Halvorsen’s Norsk Forfatter-Lexikon 1814-1880 relates that Bjørnson was introduced to the German stage long before Ibsen, on 3 March 1867, to be precise, as Bjørnson’s Between the Battles was presented at the Herzogliches Hoftheater in Meiningen, that is at the very same venue where Ibsen’s The Pretenders was staged nine years later (Halvorsen 1885, 297). Focusing on the German productions of Bjørnson in the 1860s and 1870s referred to by Halvorsen, the production numbers are as follows: Between the Battles (4), Lame Hulda (2), Sigurd Slembe (1), Mary Stuart in Scotland (1), The Newly Married (10), The Editor (2), A Bankruptcy (6), Leonarda (7), and The New System (3) (Halvorsen 1885, 297-321). Halvorsen himself implies that these figures are incomplete. The history of Bjørnson scholarship indicates that A Bankruptcy was Bjørnson’s European breakthrough and that it came as a consequence of the play’s tremendous success on the German stage (Amdam 1993, 412). In order to get a clearer sense of the scope of Bjørnson’s standing on the German stage, measured in production numbers, I examined five volumes (1877 through 1881) of Albert Entsch’s Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach . The volumes contain references to 113 productions overall of five different plays by Bjørnson. 1875 / 76 1876 / 77 1877 / 78 1878 / 79 1879 / 80 Total no. of productions A Bankruptcy 50 18 2 1 0 71 The Newly Married 10 14 3 4 1 32 The Editor 1 1 0 0 0 2 The New System 0 0 0 3 0 3 Leonarda 0 0 0 1 4 5 Total 61 33 5 9 5 113 Table 2.3: Productions of Bjørnson on the German stage 1875-1880. 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 45 Converting the number of events of plays by Ibsen recorded in IbsenStage during the years 1876-1881, that is approximately the same period of time, I end up with seventy-seven productions - markedly below Bjørnson’s tally. Bjørnson had established himself earlier, and his success with A Bankruptcy exceeded Ibsen’s later success with Pillars of Society . The theatre critics who compare the two plays unanimously confirm this. According to Fritz Mauthner, Pillars of Society is ‘not on a par with’ A Bankruptcy . 47 The same critic from the Morgen-Post as quoted above states that A Bankruptcy is more ‘effective’ and more ‘clear-cut and pithily conceived’ and that it ‘captures family life more faithfully and truthfully’ than Pillars of Society . 48 A second Viennese critic maintains that Ibsen’s play ‘falls short of the strong spiritual power and vigorous characteristics’ of A Bankruptcy . 49 Moreover, juxtaposing the list of theatre venues that presented A Bankruptcy with the list of theatre venues that later staged Pillars of Society , a striking pattern emerges: a total of twenty-five theatres in the Bjørnson list re-emerge in the Ibsen list. 50 Thus, Bjørnson paved the way for Ibsen in a more concrete sense than previously known, as many of the theatres that produced Ibsen’s play most probably did so as a follow-up to the success of A Bankruptcy . They provided the theatre audience with something they were familiar with, something the theatre managers had every reason to believe would draw a crowd. Let me now return to IbsenStage and Dingstad’s hypotheses 4 (the lack of copyright protection) and 6 (Emil J. Jonas’ adaptation). Earning their living as independent authors, Bjørnson and Ibsen necessarily had to take measures to secure their income. Due to the lack of international agreements on author copyright protection, that was anything but easy, as illustrated by Bjørnson’s and 47 “Die ‘Stützen der Gesellschaft’ stehen freilich neben dem ‘Fallissement’ nicht ebenbürtig da.ˮ Fritz Mauthner, Deutsches Montags-Blatt , 28 January 1878. 48 “So wirksam wie das ‘Fallissement’ erwies sich diese Novität nicht; denn sie ist nicht so scharf und prägnant gefaßt wie jene und greift auch nicht so treu und wahr in das Familienleben ein.ˮ ‘W-n’, Morgen-Post , 23 February 1878. 49 “‘Die Stützen der Gesellschaft’ […] ist in der unmittelbaren Nachbarschaft von Björnson’s Schauspiel ‘Ein Fallissement’ entstanden, steht aber hinter der eindringlichen, geistigen Kraft und energischen Charakteristik des letzteren eine gute Strecke zurück.ˮ J.B., Die Presse , 23 February 1878. 50 The following theatres presented both plays: Belle-Alliance-Theater Berlin, Vereinigte Stadttheater Barmen und Elberfeld, Herzogliches Hoftheater Braunschweig, Königliche Schauspiele Cassel, Stadttheater Chemnitz, Stadttheater Frankfurt am Main, Stadttheater Frankfurt an der Oder, Stadttheater Görlitz, Königliche Schauspiele Hannover, Großherzogliches Hoftheater Karlsruhe, Stadttheater Liegnitz, Viktoria-Theater Lübeck, Stadttheater Magdeburg, Stadttheater Mainz, Stadttheater Milwaukee, Großherzogliches Hoftheater Oldenburg, Königliches Hoftheater Stuttgart, Großherzogliches Hoftheater Weimar, Königliches Theater Wiesbaden, Stadttheater Zwickau, Stadttheater Guben, Vereinigte Stadttheater Marienwerder, Marienburg, Braunsberg und Graudenz, Großherzoglich subventionirtes Theater Neustrelitz, Kaiserliches Hoftheater St. Petersburg, and Stadttheater Bielefeld. 46 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society Ibsen’s German success with A Bankruptcy and Pillars of Society , respectively. In 1875, an authorized German edition of A Bankruptcy appeared at Bjørnson’s own expense, published by Theodor Ackermann in Munich. In 1876, Reclam published an unauthorized edition, translated by Wilhelm Lange (Hanssen 2013, 384). Bjørnson had no legal rights to prevent Reclam’s edition, which gave him no income at all and had a competitive advantage as it was sold on the book market at a much lower price. In 1877, Ibsen followed the same strategy as Bjørnson, with an authorized German edition translated by Emma Klingenfeld and published by the same Ackermann in Munich (Ibsen 1878a) - that Ibsen covered the expenses of translating, printing and publishing this edition is evident from his letter to H.B. Berner on 18 February 1882 (HIS 14, 121). Shortly after, two competing German translations by Wilhelm Lange and Emil J. Jonas were published, without Ibsen being able to take legal measures against them. 51 Out of sixty-seven events of Pillars of Society recorded in IbsenStage during the years 1878-1880, sixteen events are recorded with Wilhelm Lange as the translator, fourteen events used Emil J. Jonas’ adaptation, and six events used Emma Klingenfeld’s translation (the authorized edition). 52 Unfortunately, the rest of the productions are in want of reliable data as to which translation was used. The data confirm that Ibsen lost the competition on which he was forced to embark against Jonas’ and Lange’s unauthorized translations. On the other hand, the dataset does not (for the time being) support Dingstad’s hypothesis 6 about Emil J. Jonas’ adaptation being the most widespread version. That being said, however, there are reasons to assume that that was the case. According to a letter by Jonas himself, thirty-two German theatres had by then acquired 51 Wilhelm Lange’s translation (Ibsen 1877) was published by Reclam in Leipzig in December 1877; Emil Jonas’ adaptation (Ibsen 1878b) was published by Janke in Berlin in January 1878 (cf. HIS 7k, 35-36). 52 Stages using Lange’s translation: Belle-Alliance-Theater Berlin, Reuniontheater Berlin, Ostend-Theater Berlin, Stadttheater Chemnitz, Stadttheater Wien, Thalia-Theater Hamburg, Victoria-Theater Lübeck, Königliche Schauspiele Hannover, Landschaftliches Theater Graz, Landschaftliches Theater Linz, Stadttheater Frankfurt, Herzogliches Hoftheater Dessau, Königliches städtisches Theater Olmütz, Stadttheater Ulm, Deutsches königliches Landestheater Praha, Stadttheater Brünn. Stages using Jonas’ adaptation: Stadttheater Berlin, Reuniontheater Berlin, Stadttheater Barmen, Stadttheater Magdeburg, Herzogliches Interims-Hoftheater Braunschweig, Aktientheater Osnabrück, Tivoli-Theater Bremen, Stadttheater Mainz, Stadttheater Frankfurt an der Oder, Wilhelm-Theater Hamburg, Großherzogliches Theater Oldenburg, Stadttheater Kiel, Stadttheater Milwaukee, Stadttheater Konstanz. Stages using Klingenfeld’s translation: Nationaltheater Berlin, Königliches Residenztheater München, Großherzogliches Hoftheater Weimar, Königliche Schauspiele Wiesbaden, Großherzogliches Hoftheater Karlsruhe, Königliches Hoftheater Stuttgart. 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 47 performance rights to produce his adaptation of Pillars of Society . 53 The very first performance of Jonas’ adaptation was presented at the Stadttheater Berlin on 2 February 1878. Shortly before the opening night there was a brief exchange of letters between Jonas and Ibsen in which the latter characterized Jonas’ version as a ‘botched piece of work’ (“makværk”). He sarcastically suggested that the Stadttheater’s posters should be printed with the words ‘mutilated by Emil Jonas’ (“verstümmelt von Emil Jonas”) (HIS 13, 421). Much to Ibsen’s irritation, the Stadttheater Berlin’s production became a great success measured in number of repetitions and performance run, spanning a period of twenty-eight evenings in a row. 54 To his defense, Jonas claimed that ‘to win acclaim, a dramatic work must be in harmony with the taste and ideas of the nation in which it is to be produced. This and nothing else have I done’. 55 2.2.3 The role of the theatre agencies The authorized and unauthorized translations were distributed to the German stages according to the same system of distribution, the theatre agencies. The significance of the theatre agencies as a branch of the German theatre industry grew steadily from the 1830s and onwards in step with the growing number of stages, increasing commercialization, the star system, and the establishment of touring theatre companies (Watzka 2006, 15). They were indispensable to dramatic authors, theatre managers, and stage artists alike and exerted a level of influence hitherto not properly accounted for in theatre studies. 53 Karl Warburg, “‘Samfundets Stötter’ och hr. E. Jonasˮ, Göteborgs Handelsoch Sjöfartstidning , 12 March 1878. 54 According to the theatre columns of the Berliner Tageblatt , the performance figures of the five Berlin productions were as follow: Stage No. of performances Performance run period Belle-Alliance-Theater Berlin 7 25 January-8 February 1878 Stadttheater Berlin 28 2 February-1 March 1878 Nationaltheater Berlin 10 3-21 February 1878 Ostend-Theater Berlin 4 6-13 February 1878 Reuniontheater Berlin 2 23-24 February 1878 As far as the documentation goes, none of the early productions outside Berlin is registered with a production run exceeding seven performances. 55 “Skall ett skaldestykke slå an måste det bringas i samklang med det lands smak och idéer där det skall uppföras. Detta har jag gjort och intet annat.” Karl Warburg, “‘Samfundets Stötter’ och hr. E. Jonasˮ, Göteborgs Handelsoch Sjöfartstidning , 12 March 1878. 48 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society As Bjørnson and Ibsen were introduced to the German stage in the 1870s, they took similar steps to protect their legal and economic rights in accordance with this system. In 1874, Bjørnson applied for membership in the German Society of Dramatists and Composers (Deutsche Genossenschaft dramatischer Autoren und Componisten), established a few years earlier in 1871 on the initiative of Paul Heyse and Ernst Wichert. Ibsen did the same in March 1876 (HIS 13k, 107-109). One of the main purposes of the society was to protect ‘the members’ rights concerning public performances of their works’, and a key means to achieve this was to set up an agency ‘to facilitate and safeguard the members’ business transactions’. 56 The agency was run by the managing director of the society, who in the second half of the 1870s was Günther von der Groeben. Yet, as there were competing translations, there were competing theatre agencies too. On behalf of the members of the German Society of Dramatists and Composers, among them Bjørnson and Ibsen, von der Groeben was in charge of the distribution of the authorized translations of A Bankruptcy and Pillars of Society . Lange’s translation and Jonas’ adaptation of Pillars of Society , however, were both distributed by a private theatre agency in Berlin, the Theateragentur Entsch, arguably one of the most prominent German theatre agencies in the second half the nineteenth century. Albert Entsch began his career as an employee at the agency of A. Heinrich in the 1850s. In 1861, as Heinrich passed away, Entsch took over the business and ran it until 1882, when he himself died. The agency then passed on to his son, Theodor, who operated it until 1908 (Watzka 2006, 35, 64). The Agentur Entsch had four areas of operation: engagement agency, distribution of dramatic works, publication of the trade newspaper Der Theater-Diener , and publication of the periodical Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach . By looking into volumes 43-45 of the latter, it is evident that Entsch’s agency took care of both Lange’s and Jonas’ versions of Pillars of Society . 57 Comparing the outcome, it is obvious that Entsch was more successful at his job than von der Groeben. In Ibsen’s letter to the Society of 8 December 1877, he requests the announcement of the play in the Society’s journal Neue Zeit and the ‘exclusive distribution of the play’ to German stages except for the Munich Court 56 “[…] die […] Wahrnehmung der Rechte aller Mitglieder bezüglich der öffentlichen Aufführungen ihrer Werke”; “die Erleichterung und Sicherung des Geschäftsverkehrs der Mitglieder durch die von dem Director der Genossenschaft betriebene Genossenschaftsagentur”. Kürschner 1879, 127-128. 57 The relevant volumes of Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach are available online at http: / / catalog. hathitrust.org/ Record/ 002135883. Titles printed in bold letters indicate that Entsch handled the distribution, cf. e.g. the production at the Stadttheater Heidelberg listed here: http: / / hdl.handle.net/ 2027/ uva.x030709382? urlappend=%3Bseq=355 (accessed 16 February 2016). 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 49 Theatre, ‘already contracted to produce the play’. 58 Attached to the letter is a list of stages that had already received a copy of the play directly from Ibsen - he obviously did not fully rely on the Society. The list includes the court theatres in Vienna, Altenburg, Coburg, Darmstadt, Dessau, Dresden, Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Meiningen, Munich, Oldenburg, Schwerin, Stuttgart, and Weimar, the royal theatres in Hannover and Berlin (Schauspielhaus), and the municipal theatres in Danzig, Hamburg, Königsberg, Leipzig, and Stettin, altogether twenty-one theatres. 59 Out of these, four court theatres did eventually produce Pillars of Society (Karlsruhe, Munich, Stuttgart, Weimar), while three stages discarded Ibsen’s offer deliberately and produced the play later on using either Lange’s translation (Königliche Schauspiele Hannover and Herzogliches Hoftheater Dessau) or Jonas’ adaptation (Großherzogliches Theater Oldenburg). The reliability of the Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach taken for granted, Albert Entsch acted as theatre agent for twenty-six out of the thirty-three productions in want of translation data in IbsenStage, which means however that they were based on either Lange’s or Jonas’ version of the play. Summarizing, sixteen stages used Lange, fourteen used Jonas, and twenty-five used either Lange or Jonas, whereas only six used Klingenfeld’s authorized translation. Unfortunately, not much is known about the Theateragentur Entsch nor about any details about Entsch’s involvement in distributing Ibsen’s play. Because of that, certain reservations need to be made regarding the following considerations. Yet, first of all, Bjørnson and Ibsen both resigned from the German Society of Dramatists and Composers in 1884. In 1899, the society was dissolved. Much indicates that it never managed to satisfy the expectations of its members and that they were outmanoeuvred by private agencies like the Agentur Entsch. Second, using Lange’s or Jonas’ version was in all probability a cheaper option for the theatres than using the authorized translation, as author royalties could be left out of the equation. As a result, Ibsen inevitably suffered loss of income, as fifty-five theatres performed his play without paying any royalties to him, whereas Lange, Jonas, and, not least, Entsch profited. 60 Third, when comparing the lists it is striking that only royal and court theatres used Klingenfeld’s translation, while the two unauthorized versions were 58 “[…] den ausschliesslichen Vertrieb des Stückes […], nur mit alleiniger Ausnahme der Münchener Hofbühne, wo es schon angenommen ist.ˮ HIS 15, 561-562. 59 The handwriting of the attachment is clearly not Ibsen’s, hence, it has not been included in HIS, but the attachment is available online (http: / / museum.zib.de/ sgml_internet/ sgml. php? seite=5&fld_0=z0047191, accessed 16 February 2016). 60 Bjørnson in fact profited more from his success with A Bankruptcy than Ibsen with Pillars of Society , simply because Reclam’s unauthorized edition of A Bankruptcy appeared a year later than the authorized edition. By June 1876, as Reclam published Lange’s translation, Bjørnson’s own edition had already circulated among fifty German theatres (cf. Hanssen 2016, 40). 50 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society predominantly used by municipal theatres and private theatres. Although the German court theatres had lost their privileged, hegemonic position as a consequence of the Trade Law of 1869, they were still highly esteemed and respected. Most of them operated under favourable financial terms that the municipal and private theatres could only dream of (Daniel 1995). Hence, the theatres that used the authorized translation were theatres that could afford it and that may have accumulated symbolic profits (in a Bourdieusian sense) by doing so. Conversely, the theatres that chose an unauthorized translation may have felt compelled to do so out of financial considerations. As mentioned above, the theatre belongs to the commercial pole in Bourdieu’s model of the field of cultural production, economically highly profitable (especially for successful plays like Pillars of Society ), from the ‘art for art’s sake’ perspective though at the ‘lowest’ level, since directly exposed to the sanction of the public. Considered as economic enterprises, many factors have to be regarded in order to assess whether the German productions of Pillars of Society were successful or not, such as the price of the investment (royalties, production costs), audience numbers, and the length of the performance run (cf. Bourdieu 1996, 114-115). Next to these aspects of economic profitability, theatre performances must be considered as symbolic goods (Bourdieu 1996, 141-173). What level of symbolic profitability could the German theatres that produced Pillars of Society reckon to gain? The answer, at this stage in the history of Ibsen on the German stage, is hardly a high one. 2.2.4 The spatial distribution of Pillars of Society on the German stage J.B. Halvorsen implied that Ibsen’s initial breakthrough with Pillars of Society on the German stage was limited to Germany and Austria (cf. 2.2.1), but in fact, it was not. The maps in the figures 1.3 above and 2.4 below, the latter of which displays the geographical spread of Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878 through 1881, illustrate the extent to which the German dissemination exceeded the national borders of the German Empire and the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary. My choice of selecting a set of data according to language and not nation ultimately gives rise to a narrative that differs from those provided by previous scholars (e.g. Stein 1901; Eller 1918; Dzulko 1952; George 1968; Friese 1976; Bernhardt 1989). In what follows, I will look into the transnational entanglements as well as the international side effects of Ibsen’s German success with Pillars of Society . But first of all, as the success story of the play started off in the theatre metropolis of Berlin and then spread out into the provinces, I will examine the geographical spread from the perspective of the centre/ periphery model. 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 51 Figure 2.4: Map of Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878-1881. 2.2.4.1 Pillars of Society in Central Europe The field of cultural production is strongly connected but not limited to metropolitan life. The subfield of theatrical production is marked by the distinction between centre and periphery. In sociology, the centre-periphery model is a spatial metaphor which describes and attempts to explain the structural relationship between the advanced or metropolitan ‘centre’ and a less developed ‘periphery’, either within a particular country, or (more commonly) as applied to the relationship between capitalist and developing societies. 61 The dominance of the centre over the periphery is usually explained with reference to economy, demography, labour supply, market size, and market forces. In general, the same kind of asymmetry and inequality is to be assumed within the world of theatre: Stages in densely populated, central areas can count on greater public attendance, greater media attention, and broader critical interest than stages in the periphery. The market is larger and more diversified, and the supply of human, material, and economic resources is better for theatre enterprises in the centre than in the periphery. History, however - the history of Germany in particular - teaches us that the centre-periphery model does not apply to every matter, or that it applies in other ways than expected. A nation’s capital city is normally that nation’s 61 Oxford Dictionary of Sociology , quoted from www.encyclopedia.com/ doc/ 1O88-centreperipherymodel.html, accessed 22 December 2015. 52 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society political centre, and in many cases also its economic centre, but not necessarily its cultural and intellectual centre. The history of Germany is full of examples of peripheral places turning into centres. The small town of Weimar in provincial Saxony was the centre of intellectual life in Germany for many decades due to the work of Goethe and Schiller who among other things turned Weimar’s court theatre into a leading stage in Germany. Later on, the court theatre of Meiningen (even smaller than Weimar) set new standards for European theatre. Germany became unified as a state in 1871, that is only a few years before Ibsen’s plays gained entrance into the German theatre market. The political unity of Germany was relatively weak throughout the imperial period, not least compared to France and England. The German Empire consisted of twenty-seven constituent territories which included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, six duchies (five after 1876), seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. The spread of Pillars of Society on the German stage at the end of the 1870s was marked by the distinction between centre and periphery. The map in figure 2.5 below attempts to capture the time-space dynamism of Ibsen’s growing success by plotting the spread of the first twenty-five performances of the play numbered according to the chronology of their premiere dates. These twenty-five productions all premiered in the course of the spring and summer seasons of 1878 and took place at venues in Central Europe. 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 53 Figure 2.5: Map of German Pillars of Society events in the spring and summer seasons of 1878. The numbers 1-25 refer to the chronological order of the premiere dates. By the end of February 1878, Pillars of Society had been presented at twelve stages in eight cities, two imperial capitals (Berlin and Vienna), a regional capital (Munich), and five smaller cities (Chemnitz, Barmen, Bremen, Magdeburg, and Braunschweig). At the time, both Berlin and Vienna had a population size of approximately one million, Munich 200,000 and Bremen 105,000, whereas the population size of Chemnitz, Barmen, and Magdeburg was 90,000 and Braunschweig 70,000. 62 The chronology of the premiere dates pinpoints the decisive importance of Berlin. Events nos. 1-3, 5, and 8 all took place at venues in Berlin (premiere dates in brackets): the Belle-Alliance-Theater Berlin (25 January), the Stadttheater Berlin (2 February), the Nationaltheater Berlin (3 February), the Ostend-Theater Berlin (6 February), the Reuniontheater Berlin (23 February). Mu- 62 All figures are rounded off, cf. https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung_von_ Berlin, https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Demografie_Wiens, https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung_von_M%C3%BCnchen, https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Bremen, https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung_von_ Chemnitz, https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Barmen#Bev.C3.B6lkerungsentwicklung, https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Magdeburg, https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Braunschweig, accessed 5 January 2016. 54 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society nich’s leading stage, the Königliches Residenztheater München, produced the play as the fourth stage (5 February), the Stadttheater in Vienna as the seventh stage (22 February), whereas the Stadttheater Chemnitz (7 February), the Stadttheater Barmen (23 February), the Tivoli-Theater Bremen (25 February), the Stadttheater Magdeburg (25 February) and the Herzogliches Hoftheater Braunschweig (25 February) presented events nos. 6, 9, 10, 11, and 12, respectively. During March-July 1878, events took place at venues in Hamburg (nos. 14 and 17), Nuremberg (no. 19), Mainz (no. 15), and Karlsruhe (no. 24), the population size of which at the time was approximately 275,000, 95,000, 58,000, and 50,000, respectively. 63 The majority of the events, however, took place at venues in smaller cities and towns of less than 50,000 inhabitants: Osnabrück (no. 13), Frankfurt an der Oder (no. 16), Weimar (no. 18), Helgoland (no. 20), Wiesbaden (no. 21), Oldenburg (no. 22), and Lübeck (nos. 23 and 25). In fact, more than half of the events in the calendar year 1878, thirty out of fifty-one, took place at venues in towns of less than 50,000 inhabitants. Characteristic of Ibsen’s German success with Pillars of Society in 1878, considered from the viewpoint of the geographical dissemination of the events, is thus, first of all, the directedness: The stage success of the play started off at venues in central, metropolitan, densely populated areas, first and foremost Berlin. The fact that the play was presented simultaneously at five different stages of Berlin was in itself regarded as a sensation which sparked off empire-wide interest. Within six weeks, the play was presented at venues in the four cities generally considered to be of the greatest importance to the German stage: Berlin, Vienna, Munich, and Hamburg. From the central areas, the play then disseminated into the periphery, criss-crossing the German and the Austro-Hungarian Empires. Second, the provincial dimension of Ibsen’s success with the play was very strong. Quantitatively, measured by event numbers, the peripheral events outnumbered the central events. 64 The play’s grand round trip throughout the provinces of Central Europe covered great distances and lasted a relatively long time. Third, the German dissemination of Pillars of Society was characterized by a strong degree of geographical spread, effected first and foremost by the large quantity of provincial stages presenting the play. Most illustrative in this regard is the transatlantic spread of the play to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1879. 63 https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Hamburg, https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Nürnberg, https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Mainz, https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Karlsruhe, accessed 6 January 2016. 64 The German success of Pillars of Society may also be measured quantitatively by way of two other parameters, the number of individual performances and audience numbers, neither of which, however, has been systematically recorded due to lack of documentation. 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 55 The German spread of Pillars of Society is reminiscent of the way Ibsen’s historical plays were distributed in the Nordic countries in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s. Initially, Ibsen’s plays were produced by the central stages in Scandinavia, the Christiania Theater, Bergen’s Det Norske Theater, the Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern in Stockholm, and - later on - Copenhagen’s Det Kongelige Teater. From the end of the 1850s and onwards, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish touring companies began to take interest in Ibsen’s plays and presented The Vikings at Helgeland , The Feast at Solhoug , and Lady Inger at provincial stages in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. The early stage history of Ibsen’s plays on the British and French stages, on the other hand, does not bear similar features. As Ibsen started to achieve success with his plays in the capitals of England and France, central events in London and Paris, respectively, were not - or only to a small degree - complemented by Ibsen events in the peripheries. 2.2.4.2 Pillars of Society in Milwaukee and Saint Petersburg In the sixth impression (issued in 1908) of Emil Reich’s popular book Henrik Ibsens Dramen , Reich claims that Ibsen’s success with Pillars of Society was ‘tremendous from day one and has persisted now for thirty years’, and that the play ‘established Ibsen’s international reputation’. 65 A cursory glance at IbsenStage might seem to support Reich’s assertion. Alone the astonishing fact that the success with Pillars of Society paved the way for Ibsen both westwards across the Atlantic to North America and eastwards into the Russian Empire speaks volumes. The westernmost German performance of Pillars of Society took place at the Stadttheater Milwaukee in 1879. 66 The play was not produced by a German touring company travelling overseas, but by a local community theatre presenting theatre performances in German on a regular basis. Between 1816 and 1914 about 5.5 million Germans migrated to the United States, the expanding US economy and labour market being the chief magnet (Manz 2014, 26). After the 1832 Black Hawk War, the state of Wisconsin opened up for settlement, offering land at low prices and adopting a very liberal immigration policy. European migration followed immediately and increased rapidly over the following decades, German settlers being by far the most dominant group. In 1850, Milwaukee had a population of 20,000 people, some 40 % of whom were German. In 1880, that is a year after Pillars of Society was performed there, the city’s population had increased to a total of 115,587, 27 % (31,483) of whom were Germans (Kaiser 1954, 65 “Der Erfolg war vom ersten Tag an ein ungeheurer und blieb es nun schon dreißig Jahre. ‘Die Stützen der Gesellschaft’ begründeten den Weltruf Ibsens.ˮ Reich 1908, 193. 66 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 78050, accessed 15 December 2015. 56 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society 17; Olson 1980). The history of German-speaking theatre in Milwaukee dates back to 1850, when theatre performances were produced on an amateur basis. The city was dubbed Deutsch-Athen , or the German Athens, due to “its neoclassical appearance and its plethora of German institutions, associations, and cultural life” (Manz 2014, 28). In 1868, Milwaukee’s leading theatre entrepreneur, Heinrich Kurz, built a new theatre on North Third Street, the 1,000-capacity Stadttheater (Kaiser 1954, 45-46). Unfortunately, not much is known about the performance of Pillars of Society . The premiere date was probably late January or early February 1879, as a short notice about the performance was printed in the Norwegian-language weekly Budstikken in Minneapolis on 5 February 1879, stating that the theatre had used Emil J. Jonas’ adaptation of the play. 67 Apart from that we know for a fact that the performance was the very first staging of a play by Ibsen on the American continent (Egan 1972, 28). In November 1878, Pillars of Society was presented by the Deutsches Hoftheater in Saint Petersburg. 68 Eastward migration of German-speaking people preceded transatlantic migration by several centuries and can be traced back to the ninth century. By the end of the Middle Ages, “an arc of German-speaking settlements had formed between the Baltic seaboard and the Adriatic Sea” (Manz 2014, 21). When Peter the Great founded Saint Petersburg in 1703, the city immediately developed into a cosmopolitan city. The German settlement was considerable from the outset, coming from Moscow and other Russian cities, the Baltic provinces, and Northern Germany. Shortly after the performance of Pillars of Society , in 1881, the German population in Saint Petersburg counted 48,700 (Keller 1995, 59). The history of German theatre in Saint Petersburg is as old as the city itself. At first, performances were given by German touring companies. In 1745, the first permanent stage housing a German theatre company was built. The Russian imperial court supported German theatre periodically throughout the eighteenth century, and on a regular basis from 1807 to 1890 (Keller 1995, 27, 61). Thus, Pillars of Society in Saint Petersburg was presented by a well-established and privileged theatre. According to Georg Malkowsky, the 1860s and the 1870s represented the heyday of the Deutsches Hoftheater in Saint Petersburg (1907, 181). In the period from August 1878 to May 1879, the theatre presented approx- 67 Budstikken , 5 February 1879. 68 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 87486. According to the theatre columns of the St. Petersburger Zeitung , the play was performed at the Alexandrinsky Theatre on 18 November and at the Mikhailovsky Theatre on 20 November 1878. Cf. also Malkowsky 1907, 182, and Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach 44 (1880), 301 (http: / / hdl.handle.net/ 2027/ uva.x030709383? urlappend=%3Bseq=517, accessed 15 December 2015). 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 57 imately 130 performances. Some of the plays are recognizable from the list of box-office draws of the German stage at the end of the 1870s presented above (cf. 2.2.2), such as Julius Rosen’s Größenwahn and Elise Henle’s Durch die Intendanz . The performances were held at three different stages - the Mikhailovsky Theatre, the Alexandrinsky Theatre, and the Mariinsky Theatre 69 - that also presented plays in Russian as well as French, unlike in Milwaukee, where German performances were held on a separate stage. The productions in Milwaukee and Saint Petersburg illustrate well the transnational entanglements of the initial wave of German performances of Pillars of Society . They are peripheral in relation to the great bulk of performances within the borders of the German Empire, yet there is no reason to view them separately. They are not side effects, but integral parts of Ibsen’s success with Pillars of Society on the German stage. The theatre agency that furnished the Stadttheater Milwaukee and the Deutsches Hoftheater in Saint Petersburg alike with the playscript and the rights to produce it was the very same that dominated the market in Central Europe, the Theateragentur Entsch. 70 The performances in Milwaukee and Saint Petersburg introduced Ibsen to theatre audiences in North America and Russia respectively. It is, however, important not to exaggerate the significance of these two events. Their impact was very limited. Prior to 1889, as the number of American events slowly started to increase due to Ibsen performances in the city of New York, only six Ibsen events in the whole of the United States are recorded in IbsenStage: three German, one Dano-Norwegian, and two English, three of which took place in Milwaukee. 71 At irregular intervals, German Ibsen performances continued to be presented until World War I at venues in cities like Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, and San Francisco. 72 The Deutsches Hoftheater in Saint Petersburg did not stage any other play by Ibsen until the company was disbanded in 1890. In the 1880s, only two Saint Petersburg Ibsen events are recorded in IbsenStage: a Polish performance of A Doll’s House at the Teatr Kononowa in 1883 and a Russian performance of the same play at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in 1884. 69 Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach 44 (1880), 302, cf. http: / / babel.hathitrust.org/ cgi/ pt? id=uva. x030709383; view=1up; seq=518, accessed 10 December 2015. 70 Cf. Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach 44 (1880), 301 (http: / / hdl.handle.net/ 2027/ uva. x030709383? urlappend=%3Bseq=517, accessed 15 December 2015). 71 Besides Pillars of Society at the Stadttheater, two Ibsen performances were presented at the Grand Opera House: in June 1882 an adaptation of A Doll’s House under the title “The Child Wife”, (cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 77189, accessed 10 December 2015) and in 1886 a German performance of Ghosts , produced by Thalia Verein (Kaiser 1954, 82-83). 72 In total, the number of German events at venues located in the United States in the period 1879-1918 is 54. Source: https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no, accessed 8 February 2017. 58 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society 2.2.4.3 International side effects of Ibsen’s German breakthrough with Pillars of Society The timeline implemented into the map interface of IbsenStage allows us to the study the geographical spread of Ibsen’s plays as a function of time. If we investigate the spread of Pillars of Society delimited to the years 1878 through 1881, the events may be grouped in three according to language: the Scandinavian (Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish) events, the German events, and a minor group of events to be described in what follows. The Scandinavian events took place in the Nordic countries exclusively. The German events covered much greater geographical areas, but ‘faded away’ into a three-year long period of silence (1882 through 1884). The map in figure 2.6 below shows the events in the third group, namely five productions of Pillars of Society in five different languages: a Czech production which premiered in Prague in April 1878, a Serbian production in Belgrade in May 1878, a Hungarian production in the city of Arad (in today’s Romania) in January 1879, a Dutch production in Amsterdam in October 1880, and an adapted English production, titled Quicksands , in London in December 1880. 73 Figure 2.6: Non-German and non-Scandinavian performances of Pillars of Society 1878-1881. 73 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 78027, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 78033, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 85964, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 78070, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 78073, accessed 17 February 2016. 2.2 Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878—1880 59 Out of these five events, the first four have a direct connection to the German dissemination, whereas the latter one, the performance of Quicksands at the Gaiety Theatre in London, points back to the Norwegian Ibsen tradition. Needless to say, much could be said about these performances. Given the framework of my thesis, I will restrict myself to the following remarks. First of all, they were all introductory performances, presenting for the very first time a play by Ibsen on the Czech, Serbian, Hungarian, Dutch, and English stages, respectively. Second, demonstrating the extent to which Ibsen’s German success led to the international spread of Pillars of Society , all but the English production used translations made on the basis of German versions of Ibsen’s play. Within translation studies, this practice is known as ‘indirect translation’ or more recently ‘relay translation’. 74 Ibsen’s works had already undergone such relay translation a few years earlier, when Wawrzyńiec Engeström (1875) translated a number of poems by Ibsen into Polish using Adolf Strodtmann’s German translations as source texts. From Pillars of Society and onwards, however, relay translation became the rule rather than the exception. Ibsen started to conquer new languages by way of intermediate texts rather than his original texts. In this process, as will be accounted for in greater detail in chapter 5 (cf. 5.6), the impact of Ibsen’s German translations was immense. My third remark regarding the non-Scandinavian and non-German performances of Pillars of Society concerns their lack of resonance. Quite contrary to the play’s far-reaching success on the German stage, the catalytic effect of the five performances was next to nil. After the Czech performance, no Ibsen play was presented on stage in the Czech language for over seven years. After the Serbian performance, almost eleven years passed until Ibsen was reintroduced on the Serbian stage, while Hungarian theatre audiences had to wait ten years for the next Ibsen performance. The 1880s saw only four Dutch Ibsen events: besides Pillars of Society in 1880, An Enemy of the People was presented in Rotterdam in 1884, and A Doll’s House and The Wild Duck in Amsterdam in 1889. Prior to the staging of A Doll’s House at the Novelty Theatre in 1889, featuring Janet Achurch as Nora, only three Ibsen events are recorded on the London stage, all of which are generally considered to be of minor significance and impact: Quicksands in 1880, Breaking a Butterfly (adapted from A Doll’s House ) in 1884, and an amateur production of A Doll’s House in 1885. Quicksands , William Archer’s adaptation of Pillars of Society from Ibsen’s original text, was given as a single matinee performance, which according to Charles Archer was “inevitably scrambling and ineffective” and “fell perfectly flat” (quoted in OxI 5, 433). 74 “Relay translation refers to a chain of (at least) three texts, ending with a translation made from another translation”. Ringmar 2012, 141. 60 Chapter 2: The first major success on the German stage: Pillars of Society Clearly, the handful of drops displayed in figure 2.6 above by no means indicate an international wave of performances of Pillars of Society in the wake of the play’s German success, quite the contrary: the international side effects of the play’s German success add up to nothing but minor ripples. Thus, Reich’s assertion that Pillars of Society established Ibsen’s international reputation does not hold true in the face of the evidence represented by IbsenStage. 2.3 Conclusion Ibsen was introduced to the German stage as a writer of historical plays, but achieved his first major success with a contemporary play, Pillars of Society , which was produced more than twice as much as previously assumed. However remarkable in terms of event numbers, there was in fact nothing extraordinary about the success, which must rather be considered against the backdrop of a commercialized theatre industry. Pillars of Society was presented as part of a repertoire of comedies, farces, and light operas - plays that pleased the taste of the public at large. The wider context suggested that there was a link to Bjørnson’s preceding success with A Bankruptcy . Bjørnson’s play is a frequently recurring point of reference in the critical reception of Pillars of Society . Ibsen’s play did not quite measure up to A Bankruptcy in terms of critical appraisal and performance figures, the most striking finding, however, was that Bjørnson paved the way for Ibsen in a more concrete sense than previously known, illustrated by the fact that twenty-five of the German stages that produced A Bankruptcy later presented Ibsen’s play. Pillars of Society was distributed to the German theatres in three versions. The authorized translation, prepared by Klingenfeld, was adopted only by a small group of court stages. The great majority of the stages based their productions on unauthorized versions. Although the dataset for the time being is not conclusive regarding the question of which version was most frequently used - Lange’s translation or the adaptation prepared by Jonas - there are sources indicating that the latter version was preferred by most of the stages. Ibsen characterized this adaptation as a ‘mutilation’ of his play. Jonas defended himself by claiming that he had only adapted the play to the taste of German theatre-goers. Pillars of Society became a box-office draw, although those who derived the greatest profit from it were not Ibsen but Jonas, Lange, their theatre agency Agentur Entsch, and the theatre managers. The stage success of the play started off at venues in densely populated, central areas like Berlin and then disseminated into the periphery. The analysis of the geographical dissemination revealed a strong regional distribution. In the 2.3 Conclusion 61 longer run, peripheral events outnumbered central events. German events of Pillars of Society also paved the way for Ibsen westwards across the Atlantic and eastwards into the Russian Empire. A small body of events in other languages than German shows that Ibsen’s German success had international side effects. Yet to claim that Pillars of Society established the playwright’s international reputation would be to stretch the argument too far. The chapter demonstrated how digital humanities methodologies produce results that nuance conventional assumptions about the initial success of Pillars of Society on the German stage: after having established the scope of the success, the sheer volume of events prompted me to cross-check performance data for other contemporary plays. The procedure revealed that Pillars of Society owed its success to the fact that it was perceived as a commercial play and that A Bankruptcy was instrumental in paving the way for Ibsen’s play on the German stage. Data that specify the distribution of the three competing German versions of Pillars of Society led to the examination of the role of the theatre agencies. The map interface of IbsenStage proved to be a useful tool to study the geographical distribution of the German events from the perspective of the centre-periphery dichotomy, and the map visualizations exposed the extent to which German performances of Pillars of Society transcended the borders of the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 In retrospect, the further course of events truly seems paradoxical. Following the resounding success of Pillars of Society on the German stage, A Doll’s House -- today by far the most frequently performed play by Ibsen, and in some parts of the world a play more famous than its author - entered the German stage, but only to be produced a mere thirteen times over a period of twenty months. In IbsenStage, these productions amount to sixteen events. Three of these events occurred in the theatre season 1879/ 80, ten in 1880/ 81, and three in 1881/ 82. In the middle of the autumn season of 1881, Ibsen vanished from the repertoire of the German stage. No German Ibsen performance is recorded in IbsenStage in the period from October 1881 until December 1884. A Doll’s House caused as much stir among Scandinavian critics, readers, and spectators as in Germany (HIS 7k, 223-264), but the play did not bring the Scandinavian Ibsen tradition to a halt. So what caused the play to fail initially on the German stage? One particular episode in the early phase of the German stage history of A Doll’s House has come to be seen as the epitome of the initial failure of the play: the case known in the history of Ibsen scholarship as ‘the German ending’ of A Doll’s House , and - related to that - Hedwig Niemann- Raabe’s performance of Nora using this ending (Eller 1918, 36-40; Dzulko 1952, 51-52; Janss 2017). Though I will return to this below, I will first approach the matter from a different angle. The ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 throws a retrospective light on the events of the preceding years. Pillars of Society was a major success but strictly speaking not a breakthrough, as it did not have a lasting impact. Moreover, the Ibsen events of the years 1876-1881 constitute a period of its own in Ibsen’s German stage history that begs to be studied separately from later periods. The initial German performances of A Doll’s House are most appropriately studied in this context and not in the light of posterity. As suggested by my discussion in the previous chapter, the success of Pillars of Society was driven by those who had direct commercial interests in it: the playwright, the translators, the theatre agencies, and the theatre managers. In what follows, I will examine the role of the body of individuals actually responsible for rehearsing and performing Ibsen’s plays on stage: the stage artists. Using the IbsenStage contributors dataset as my point of departure, I will apply network analysis to determine the level of connectedness among the stage artists involved in producing Ibsen on stage 1876-1881. On that 64 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 basis I will proceed to investigate the earliest A Doll’s House performances in closer detail and the ensuing ‘silence’ of the years 1882-1884. 3.1 The network of German stage artists producing Ibsen 1876-1881 As a collaborative art form, theatre is a platform for social networking: the process of creating, rehearsing, and presenting a performance draws together a company of artists working together over time. There are at least two ways to analyse the theatrical event as a social network: from the perspective of the event or from the perspective of the artist. The former perspective entails examining how events structure the network, the latter perspective means focusing on the relations between the artists. In what follows, I will apply the events perspective and analyse the social body of German artists involved in producing Ibsen on stage with the point of departure in event-contributor network graphs. 75 Figures 3.1 and 3.2 below represent opposite ends of a continuum. Figure 3.1 visualizes the network formed by the contributors who took part in the very first Ibsen event in the history of the German stage, the 1876 performance of The Pretenders at the Herzogliches Hoftheater Meiningen: forty-two actors, Max Brückner the designer, Ibsen the playwright, and Adolf Strodtmann, the writer of the adaptation which was used in the performance. In network studies, this type of network is called a star network, as the nodes form a graph with the topology of a star. Every node is connected to a central hub. In figure 3.1, the event, which is labelled according to the event number assigned to the event in IbsenStage, signifies the hub, whereas the forty-five incident nodes signify the contributors that participated in the event. 76 75 Contributor-contributor network graphs will be introduced in chapter 6 (cf. 6.5.2). 76 Event number 77958: Die Kronprätendenten , Herzogliches Hoftheater Meiningen, 30 January 1876, cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 77958, accessed 22 June 2017. I have used MySQL Workbench to execute queries and Visone (www.visone.info/ ) to analyse the data and create network visualizations. 3.1 The network of German stage artists producing Ibsen 1876-1881 65 Figure 3.1: Event-contributor network of the 1876 performance of The Pretenders at the Herzogliches Hoftheater Meiningen. In figure 3.2 below, the nodes are arranged in the exact same way, only this graph displays the event-contributor network of the entire period under scrutiny in this thesis (1876-1918), that is the graph includes 6,372 contributor nodes clustered around 2,035 event nodes. The topology of the network is strongly affected by the large number of event nodes that share contributors. The network is fully integrated, there are no disconnected cluster of nodes, and everything seems to be connected to everything else, but the combination of a large number of nodes with a large number of interconnecting links - there are a total of 22,943 links - makes the graph difficult to read. 66 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 Figure 3.2: Event-contributor network for contributors involved in German Ibsen events 1876-1918. In what follows, I will work with a ‘trimmed down’ version of the contributors dataset. Since my prime concern in the present section is to analyse the network of the initial years, I extracted data only for the period 1876-1881. The subset of German events during these five years counts 531 distinct contributors distributed across ninety-four events. The body of contributors comprises 512 actors, fifteen directors, three designers, four translators, three adapters, two composers, and one playwright. 77 However, in order to focus my attention on the contributors directly involved in the rehearsal process - the actors, directors, and designers - I decided to exclude contributors normally not present in the rehearsal rooms from the dataset. Using the chosen software tool (Visone) to rank the nodes in graph 3.2 according to the number of incidental links reveals that the graph contains a relatively small number of so-called high-degree 77 Note that some contributors are associated with more than one function. 3.1 The network of German stage artists producing Ibsen 1876-1881 67 nodes, that is nodes with an extraordinarily large number of links. These nodes are critical in holding the network together. Needless the say, the playwright himself - Ibsen - is the major hub in the network, but apart from him his German translators and adapters, and the composers of incidental music used in the performances are also instrumental in holding the network together. Disregarding Ibsen, the translators and adapters Emil J. Jonas, Emma Klingenfeld, Wilhelm Lange, Albert Lindner, and Adolf Strodtmann, and the composers Alois Schmitt and Julius Sulzer, the dataset leaves us with a subset of 524 individuals. Figure 3.3 below displays the links that exist between the artists and the events they were engaged in. Figure 3.3: Stage artists linked by German events 1876-1881 68 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 Contributors who collaborate on multiple events over time create connected networks. The upper part of figure 3.3 shows a group of intertwined event clusters. 78 Figure 3.4 below, which displays a close-up of a detail of figure 3.3, visualizes three event clusters that are linked together by Hedwig Niemann-Raabe. 79 Her performance ties together three star patterns that would otherwise have remained disconnected. Figure 3.4: Event clusters connected by Hedwig Niemann-Raabe (close-up of figure 3.3) As visualized in figure 3.3, the artistic network is characterized by a fairly low level of connectedness; the majority of the event clusters - fifty-one of ninety-four - are unconnected. 80 The upper part of the graph is dominated 78 By event cluster I mean the combination of an event node and its connected contributor nodes. 79 Niemann-Raabe appeared as Nora in A Doll’s House at the Thalia-Theater Hamburg in September 1880 (event number 77612), at the Residenztheater Hannover in October 1880 (event number 78069), and at the Residenztheater Berlin in November 1880 (event number 76548). Cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 77612, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 78069, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 76548, accessed 25 April 2017. 80 Reservations need to be made regarding the incompleteness of the contributors dataset. Among the ninety-four German events 1876-1881, forty-five events are recorded with a full cast list, sixteen with a partial cast list, and thirty-three without a cast list. Despite 3.1 The network of German stage artists producing Ibsen 1876-1881 69 by a constellation of eighteen connected event clusters (1) and, below that, a constellation of ten connected event clusters to the left (2), a constellation of nine connected event clusters in the middle (3), and a constellation of two connected event clusters to the right (4). In most cases, clusters that are connected are linked together only by a single node, which means that the existing links are weak. In other words, the group of artists engaged in more than one Ibsen event during 1876-1881 was relatively small. The contributors were predominantly connected on the level of single events, with only a few of them linking together multiple events. As will be demonstrated in chapter 5 (cf. 5.2), the level of connectedness among German artists engaged in Ibsen events increased markedly during the late 1880s and 1890s. This means that the network does not automatically disintegrate when Ibsen and his translators are excluded from the dataset. After the three-year-long period of ‘silence’, the stage artists established tight network connections irrespective of Ibsen and his translators. Pre- 1885, by contrast, such connections were few and limited, and the shape of the network is indicative of a lack of persistent commitment towards Ibsen’s plays from the side of the German stage artists. Although the stage artists were the ones quite literally embodying the success of Pillars of Society in the eyes of the theatre-going public, figure 3.3 indicates otherwise, suggesting rather that the stage artists had not yet begun to claim ‘ownership’ of Ibsen. Pillars of Society was not included in touring programmes, neither by touring companies nor by artists touring solo (with the sole exception of Ernst von Possart). The play was the object of dissemination only within distinct bodies of artists, within the borders of each individual ensemble, and not in between artists originating from different ensembles. Events associated with The Pretenders , The Vikings at Helgeland , Lady Inger , and A Doll’s House conform to the same pattern. Zooming in on various parts of the network to analyse event clusters that are connected, I find three types of network connection sources: 1) reopenings, 2) ensemble shifts, that is contributors featured in multiple events as part of different ensembles, and 3) solo guest performances. The Vikings at Helgeland at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater München ran across four consecutive seasons (1875/ 76 through 1878/ 79) with several cast replacements. In addition to the record of the premiere performance in April 1876, each of the following three seasonal reopenings are recorded as separate records in IbsenStage. 81 In comprehensive research, information about provincial performances of Pillars of Society in particular has proven difficult to trace. This means that there might be artistic connections not yet captured by IbsenStage. 81 Cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 77961, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 77962, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 77963, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio. 70 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 figure 3.3 they appear as four tightly knit event clusters. 82 Instances of contributors shifting from one ensemble to another are Helene Schneider, who portrayed Nora in the very first German performance of A Doll’s House in Flensburg in February 1880 and who appeared in the same role opposite new cast members in Bromberg the following season, and Eugen Stägemann who played Johan Tönnesen in Pillars of Society in Hamburg in 1877/ 78 and Torvald Helmer in A Doll’s House in Frankfurt in 1880/ 81. 83 There are only three instances of solo guest performances: Ernst von Possart, Hedwig Niemann-Raabe, and Theodora Fiedler von Wurzbach. 84 The three types of connections affect the network differently. Reopenings only strengthen connections that are already established. Though on a small scale, cast replacements expand the network. In the example above, all the replacements were recruited from the artistic staff of the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater München, which was a resident theatre company. Thus, the reopenings only expanded the network within the limits of a body of artists already connected to each other as members of the same company. Network connections established as a consequence of ensemble shifts are a reflection of the fact that stage artists had to move frequently to find new jobs. Employee turnover was generally high (Schmitt 1990, 190-194); more often than not an actor would switch from a resident theatre company in one city at the end of the theatre season to a summer theatre company or a touring theatre company based in a second city and then join a company in a third city the following autumn season. Only artists affiliated with the most privileged court theatres could hope for more permanent employment. In the examples given above, Schneider and Stägemann appear as bridges that tie together artistic networks in Flensburg and Bromberg (Schneider) and Hamburg and Frankfurt (Stägemann). Compared to reopenings, ensemble shifts cause greater network expansion. Moreover, they establish connections that demonstrate the social implications of an individual leaving one network and joining another. In an industry that encourages shortterm engagements and high staff turnover, individuals accumulate network connections accordingly. However, it was the need to find new engagement that brought Schneider to Bromberg and Stägemann to Frankfurt, and their prior Ibsen performances most probably had little or no bearing on the matter. no/ pages/ event/ 77964, accessed 11 April 2017. 82 They are located in event cluster (3) in the graph. 83 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 432999 (Schneider), https: / / ibsenstage. hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 433373 (Stägemann), accessed 11 April 2017. 84 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 435450 (Possart), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio. no/ pages/ contributor/ 431956 (Niemann-Raabe), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 439892 (Fiedler von Wurzbach), accessed 28 June 2017. 3.1 The network of German stage artists producing Ibsen 1876-1881 71 The star system was founded on exclusivity, and only the biggest stars could base a career on touring solo. It would seem only logical, then, that Possart, Niemann-Raabe, and Fiedler von Wurzbach are the only exponents in the early network. Niemann-Raabe made her Nora performance at a time in her career in which she operated as an independent artist. 85 During this period, the theatre venues where she performed changed on a regular basis, and so did the ensemble casts against which she performed. As a consequence, she constantly made new network connections. Thus, the system of solo guest performances had strong social implications as the solo artists established ties between segments of a network that would otherwise have remained unconnected. By implication, Niemann-Raabe’s professional network was many times larger than the average artist who remained affiliated with resident theatre companies throughout her or his career. Yet, as is evident from figure 3.4, Niemann-Raabe’s Ibsen network was small. She does not appear as a hub in the early network. The prospects of being included into the star system were promising in terms of media attention, critical recognition, and economic profit. On 15 February 1878, after having attended Pillars of Society at the Residenztheater München, Ibsen sent a letter to Possart in which he praised his performance of the leading male part and added - not without reason - that it was his greatest wish that Possart would ‘include the play in his repertoire of guest performances’. 86 Possart’s solo guest performance as Consul Bernick in Nuremberg a mere two weeks later (cf. 2.2.2) seems to have answered Ibsen’s prayers immediately, but after that Possart let go of the part in his repertoire of solo guest performances, and also he does not appear as a hub in the network visualized in figure 3.3. 87 Thedora Fiedler von Wurzbach made a solo guest performance in the leading female part in Lady Inger at the Nationaltheater Berlin in December 1878. She had personally acquired the rights to perform the play on the German stage. The theatre critic of the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung strongly doubted that her investment would prove profitable - especially not in Germany. 88 If not Fiedler von 85 Her career as an independent artist spanned the years from 1868 to 1883 (Eisenberg 1903, 727). 86 “Sie werden es […] begreiflich finden, wenn mein sehnlichster Wunsch dahingeht, Sie möchten die ‘Stützen der Gesellschaft’ in Ihr Gastspiel-Repertoire aufnehmen, um künftigen Darstellern des ‘Consul’ innerhalb und ausserhalb Deutschlands ein geradezu massgebendes Vorbild aufzustellen.ˮ HIS 13, 424. 87 Unlike Niemann-Raabe, Possart resumed his career as an interpreter of Ibsen parts in the late 1880s, but only on a limited scale. He made a final appearance as Consul Bernick in a performance of Pillars of Society in New York in 1889. In IbsenStage, Possart is recorded as a contributor in seven events - three Pillars of Society events and four A Doll’s House events - during a period of eleven years (1878-1889). 88 “Frau Fiedler von Wurzbach , welche dieses Stück erworben hat, wird mit dem Ibsen’schen Drama wenigstens in Deutschland kein gutes Geschäft machenˮ. Berliner Börsen-Zeitung , 72 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 Wurzbach’s performance as such, the play was panned by the German critics and put aside for the rest of Fiedler von Wurzbach’s career. 89 Possart, Fiedler von Wurzbach, and Niemann-Raabe were responsible for the very first attempts to introduce Ibsen into the lucrative star system, however, as is clear from the records of IbsenStage, they did not manage to secure Ibsen a place within this system - that came later. Moreover, it must be taken into account that the three of them established themselves as stars of the German stage before Ibsen did. Niemann-Raabe distinguished herself as a leading actress in comedies by dramatists such as Scribe, Sardou, Meilhac and Halévy ( Frou-Frou ), and Lessing ( Minna von Barnhelm ) in the 1860s and 1870s (Eisenberg 1903, 727). After her last Nora performance in Berlin in November 1880, Niemann-Raabe dropped Ibsen from her repertoire for the rest of her career, without diminishing her status as a star. She continued to give solo guest performances as an independent artist or on leave from a resident theatre company. 90 Possart came to the fore as a distinguished character actor in classical roles by dramatists such as Shakespeare, Schiller, and Goethe in the 1860s. When Possart’s whole career is taken into consideration, his Ibsen achievements seem rather marginal. In fact, looking back at his own career, Possart published a memoir in 1916 in which he made no mention of Ibsen whatsoever (Possart 1916), while Eisenberg’s biographical account of Possart’s career does not feature a single Ibsen role among twenty-two highlighted role portrayals (Eisenberg 1903, 788-790). Fiedler von Wurzbach’s career is poorly documented, but to judge by Eisenberg’s account, she was most likely attracted to Lady Inger because the leading female part represented two role types of her speciality within the system of stock characters, that of the heroine and that of the mother (ibid., 258). 14 December 1878, italics in original. Cf. also Fritz Mauthner’s review of the performance in the Deutsches Montags-Blatt , 16 December 1878. 89 After the performance of Lady Inger in Berlin, Fielder von Wurzbach joined the ensemble of the Deutsches Königliches Landestheater in Prague, where she took part in a performance of Pillars of Society in November 1879, but disappears from the annals of the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays after that. 90 Niemann-Raabe belonged to Adolph L’Arronge’s ensemble at the Deutsches Theater 1883-1887 and the Berliner Theater 1887-1890. From then on she resumed as an independent artist for the rest of her career (Eisenberg, 1903, 727). She died in 1905. 3.2 A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881 73 3.2 A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881 Ibsen repeatedly said that A Doll’s House was written on account of the final scene. 91 At the same time, he was willing to alter the ending, as is evident from the case known in the history of Ibsen scholarship as ‘the German ending’. In what follows, I will investigate the relatively small body of German performances of A Doll’s House 1880-1881 from three perspectives. First, I will examine the theatrical distribution of the play. Second, I will study the critical reception of the theatre performances. The third perspective, which concerns the alternative German ending, will intersect with the other two as I am particularly interested in determining whether this ending might have had a bearing on the initial failure of the play. 3.2.1 The two variants of Nora To Ibsen, the two unauthorized versions of Pillars of Society were understandably a source of annoyance. With A Doll’s House , problems connected to the lack of legal protection took new forms. Ibsen for a period of time managed to rid himself of the problem of unauthorized translations. Clearly persuaded by Wilhelm Lange’s merits as a translator and - probably most important of all - the winning strategy of Reclam’s pricing and sales policy, Ibsen decided to seek an alliance with them. In December 1879, simultaneously with the original edition in Copenhagen, Lange’s German translation of A Doll’s House was published by Reclam in Leipzig under the title Nora , as what it billed as the only authorized German edition (Ibsen 1879). Up until 1890, when Marie von Borch’s translation was published by S. Fischer in Berlin, Lange’s translation was the only one available and was used for all German productions of the play for more than a decade. Lange translated the play at his own expense. The terms of the agreement between him and Ibsen, which were not particularly lucrative for the latter, are known from Ibsen’s letter to H.E. Berner on 18 February 1882. All earnings of book sales went to Lange exclusively, while the theatre royalties were split evenly between the two of them (HIS 14, 122; cf. also HIS 7k, 225). To judge by the sales numbers, Lange’s investment in translating the play paid off handsomely. According to Gert Imbeck, Reclam had by 1890 printed eight editions and sold 91 Cf. his letter to Günther von der Groeben on 21 March 1880 in which he stated that ‘I wrote the play precisely because of its ending’ (“grade dieses Schlusses wegen habe ich das ganze Stück gedichtet” [HIS 14, 31]), and to Moritz Prozor on 23 January 1891 in which Ibsen claimed that “I might almost say that it is precisely on account of the final scene that the whole play was written” (quoted in OxI 5, 455). 74 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 all in all 44,000 copies of the book (Imbeck 1988, 41). Lange acted as Ibsen’s theatrical agent as well. A note printed at the back of the title page in the first edition stated that ‘the right to perform the play is acquired solely through the translator W. Lange in Berlin’. 92 Ibsen’s account books corroborate the agreement. Nearly all entries regarding theatre royalties for German performances of A Doll’s House bear Lange’s name and specify the fifty-fifty split between him and Ibsen. There are only two exceptions, royalties from performances of the play at the Königliches Residenztheater in Munich - Ibsen negotiated directly with this theatre throughout his career - and from the performances at the Stadttheater in Vienna in September 1881, which Ibsen received through the German Society of Dramatists and Composers. 93 Thus, in fact, three parties were involved in distributing Nora to the theatres: the translator, the playwright, and the theatrical agency of the German Society of Dramatists and Composers. Ibsen was probably content that this arrangement prevented people like Emil J. Jonas from creating and promoting their own ‘mutilated’ versions of his new play. But then again, he had to be willing to commit an ‘outrage’ against the play himself. The case of the German ending of A Doll’s House is often cited as evidence of the extent that Ibsen was willing to compromise at the expense of his artistic integrity. The episode illustrates the conditions that Ibsen faced in trying to protect his rights and secure his income, as is evident from his letter to the Danish newspaper Nationaltidende on 17 February 1880 in which he gives an account of the writing of the alternative ending: Dear Sir, I see from a report from Flensburg, in your issue no. 1360, that A Doll’s House ( Nora in German) was produced there, and that at the performance the ending was altered - allegedly on instructions from me. This last item is wholly incorrect. Soon after Nora had been published, I received a report from my translator and theatrical agent for North Germany, Wilhelm Lange of Berlin, saying that there were grounds for supposing that another ‘translation’ or ‘adaptation’ of the play might appear with a different ending, and that this might very easily be preferred by a considerable number of North German theatres. To prevent any such possibility, I sent him - for use in an emergency - the draft of an altered ending, by which Nora does not leave the house but instead 92 “Das Aufführungsrecht ist einzig und allein durch den Übersetzer W. Lange in Berlin zu erwerben.ˮ Ibsen 1879, 2. 93 Cf. account book entry dated 18 January 1882, www.dokpro.uio.no/ litteratur/ ibsen/ ms/ varia.html, accessed 27 April 2016. 3.2 A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881 75 is forced by Helmer across to the door to the children’s bedroom; a few lines of dialogue follow, Nora sinks down at the door, and the curtain falls. I myself described this alteration to my translator as a ‘barbaric outrage’ against the play. If it is used, it is therefore completely against my wishes; but I cherish the hope that it will not be used in very many German theatres. As long as there is no literary convention in force between Germany and the Scandinavian countries, we Scandinavian authors are completely powerless down here, just as German authors are with us. Our dramatic works are therefore constantly exposed to violent treatment at the hands of translators and of theatre managements, of producers and of actors in the minor theatres. If any such threat seems impending in my case, I prefer - having learnt from earlier experience - to commit the outrage myself, instead of handing over my works for treatment and ‘adaptation’ to less careful and less competent hands. (Ibsen, quoted in OxI 5, 454-455) Bourdieu defines the literary and artistic field by a set of phrases, all of which highlight the relational nature of the field, as a space of positions, a space of position-takings, a field of forces, and a field of struggles. Every position-taking is defined “in relation to the space of possibles” (Bourdieu 1993, 30). What, then, was Ibsen’s space of possibles, given his fully understandable and legitimate desire to find means to protect his rights and secure his income as a non-German playwright asserting himself in the German theatre market? Legally, he was ‘completely powerless’. Raising awareness of this fact and seeking compensation for the resultant loss of royalties was one of the struggles Ibsen participated in throughout his career. His choice of writing the alternative German ending is in my opinion more appropriately interpreted as an act of position-taking in Bourdieu’s sense of the term. Ibsen wanted to position himself against people like Jonas. What role has the alternative ending of A Doll’s House played in the history of Ibsen in performance? During 1880-1881, the play was presented on fourteen German stages. Eight stages used the alternative ending, either throughout or in parts of the performance run. For five of the stages, I have not been able to determine which ending was chosen. The Königliches Residenztheater München is the only verified case of a stage that presented the play with the original ending throughout the performance run. 94 Hence, apparently, there was a market and a 94 The following eight stages presented the play with the alternative ending: Stadttheater Flensburg, Stadttheater Kiel, Thalia-Theater Hamburg, Stadttheater Bromberg, Residenztheater Hannover, Stadttheater Frankfurt am Main, Residenztheater Berlin, and Stadttheater Wien. It is not known which ending was chosen by the following five stages: 76 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 demand for the alternative ending, as the majority of the theatres chose to use it. The key significance of the episode in the long run lies in the fact that the dramatist paved the way for the option of presenting A Doll’s House with a conciliatory ending. Regardless of Ibsen’s mixed feelings, the fact that he himself wrote the ending inevitably legitimized its use. Throughout history, there have been productions of the play that introduce some sort of conciliatory ending. I have tried to ascertain how many times Ibsen’s alternative ending has been used, but have faced categorizing problems as there are multiple interpretative variants: Ibsen’s conciliatory ending, adaptations based on Ibsen’s conciliatory ending, and conciliatory endings scripted irrespective of Ibsen. 95 The case of the alternative ending has ramifications beyond the field of theatre performance. The two variants of Nora concern book history as well as stage history, given that the alternative ending was printed as a variant in the second printing of Reclam’s edition ( Janss 2017). The note printed at the back of the title page indicates that the edition was distributed to book shops and theatres alike. In the copy held by the National Library of Norway, the original ending is found on page ninety, whereas the alternative ending follows on the subsequent page. The latter comprises sixteen lines replacing the last eight lines of the original ending (Ibsen 1879, 90-91). 96 Looking at the matter from the perspective of literary studies, Reclam’s edition demonstrates that, in essence, a literary work is a non-fixed entity. The question is how to consider these lines in relation to A Doll’s House as a dramatic work. Undeniably, they are a part of the work’s history, but over time they have been either overlooked or marginalized. A second edition of Lange’s translation of A Doll’s House was printed in the first volume of Reclam’s edition of Henrik Ibsen’s Gesammelte Werke , published in 1889 (HIGW 1, 1-90). In this edition, the alternative ending is tacitly removed. The sixth volume of Fischer’s Henrik Ibsens Sämtliche Werke in deutscher Sprache , edited by Georg Brandes, Julius Elias, and Paul Schlenther, includes not Lange’s but K. k. und Nationaltheater Innsbruck, Fürstliches Hoftheater Sigmaringen, Thalia-Theater Breslau, Landschaftliches Theater Linz, and Kaiserlich-königliches Theater Salzburg. 95 I owe a debt of thanks to Christian Janss for our exchange of research findings related to the German ending of A Doll’s House . In a recent article of his in Ibsen Studies , Janss refers to a previous version of the present thesis with references to productions using (some version of) the conciliatory ending in South Africa in 1929 (Hauptfleisch and van Lill 2011, 24, 32) and Sweden in 1956 (Donald V. Mehus, “‘Et dukkehjem’ in the Spotlight: The Scandinavian Ibsen Controversy of 1956”, Western Viking , 25 April 2003). Janss refers to productions in Milwaukee in 1882, Louisville in 1883, and Paris in 1903 ( Janss 2017). Cf. also, in addition to these, a production presented in St Louis in 1896, directed by Richard Stolte, whom critics praised for his courage to “change the detestable ending of Ibsen’s play” (Padberg 2015, 244). 96 Cf. the digital facsimiles of the edition at the National Library of Norway: http: / / urn. nb.no/ URN: NBN: no-nb_digibok_2010031812003, accessed on 3 May 2017. 3.2 A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881 77 Marie von Borch’s translation of A Doll’s House . Schlenther accounts for the alternative ending in his introduction and renders it at full length, yet only as paratext (ISW 6, xxiv). The Henrik Ibsens skrifter renders the alternative ending only because it is attached to Ibsen’s letter of 18 February 1880 to Heinrich Laube (HIS 14, 26-27). Thus, the lines are not acknowledged as a part of Ibsen’s fictional works but marginalized as an extratextual element stemming from Ibsen’s epistolary works. The text is placed outside the Dano-Norwegian core of Ibsen’s oeuvre. 97 The early stage history of A Doll’s House on the German stage is a story of two competing performance scripts. At two stages they were played out against each other over consecutive evenings at the same venue. The productions in Berlin and Vienna switched endings in the course of the performance run. 98 The play was given thirteen times at the Residenztheater Berlin, opening on 20 November and closing on 12 December 1880. As far as I can gather from the coverage in the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung , the company switched from the alternative conciliatory ending to the original ending on 4 December and used it for the final five performances of the run. 99 At the Stadttheater Wien, the opening performance used Ibsen’s original ending, whereas the following two performances presented the play with the alternative ending. 100 In its perplexing complexity, the case necessitates clarification of key concepts. Typically, a theatre production consists of a series of performances of a play, presented at a venue by a company of stage artists to an audience over a given period of time. In this case, the play as such was a non-fixed entity. Two alternative scripts were circulating. The performances changed accordingly, which means that there was no fixed mise-en-scène either. In a recent article discussing data models for collecting information about theatre performances, Jonathan Bollen asks “how many changes can a production absorb and still remain the same? ” Normally, he claims, spectators are accustomed to negotiate a question like this “with ease”, and that “[w]hen the focus is on what distinguishes a production, differences among performances are subsumed” (Bollen 2016, 626). Considering the productions in Berlin and Vienna from the perspective of the public relations material produced by the theatres (playbills, advertisements in the local press, etc.), no distinctions were made - all performances were announced in the same way, regardless of ending. On the same account, the thirteen performances of A Doll’s House at the Residenztheater Berlin are regis- 97 The alternative ending is also printed in HU 8, 476, and in OxI 5, 287-288. 98 That was also the case in the 1929 touring production in South Africa (Hauptfleisch and van Lill 2011, 24). 99 Cf. Berliner Börsen-Zeitung , 5 December 1880. 100 Cf. the newspapers Die Presse and Wiener Zeitung of 10 September 1881. 78 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 tered in one discrete event record in IbsenStage - as are the three performances of the play at the Stadttheater Wien. As an ephemeral art form, no performance is repeatable, so the performance run in Berlin and Vienna represents the rule rather than an exceptional case. Still, the alternative endings pose a challenge to theatre historiography. A complicating variable is introduced when assessing the critical reception of A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881. To the extent that critics discussed the ending - they did, as will be shown below - knowledge is required regarding which specific performance the critic attended and which specific ending was adopted on the night of attendance. Ibsen’s own characterization of the altered ending as a ‘barbaric outrage’ against the play has, without a doubt, strongly influenced the valuation of the ending. Yet performances that used it are just as legitimate a part of the stage history of A Doll’s House as ‘faithful’ performances using the original ending. In view of this, concepts such as ‘work’, ‘production’, and ‘performance’ must be defined and applied in a generic and not an essentialist manner. 3.2.2 The critical reception of A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881 I will now examine the critical reception of A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881. My angle of approach will be to determine in what way the case of the German ending influenced the fate of the play. But before looking directly into the theatre reviews, I will once again turn to Barbara Gentikow. Studying the broad outlines of the critical reception of A Doll’s House in German journals in the period from 1880 up until 1914, she singles out three distinctive phases: The initial phase is restricted to the years 1880 and 1881. Following Gentikow, the keywords were A Doll’s House as ‘box-office hit and psychological drama, as case of forgery and sentimental novel’. The formal and thematic innovations of the play were ‘to a large extent not accepted’; the topic was ‘discounted, dismissed and reinterpreted’. 101 A second phase followed around 1890; the key words were Nora as ‘feminist, tragic fate of the individual and female Zarathustra’. 102 Quantitatively, this phase was much stronger than the initial one, when the play, though relatively much read and debated, was produced on stage 101 “‘Nora’ als Kassenmagnet und Seelendrama, als Fall von Urkundenfälschung und als sentimentaler Roman […] Die erste Phase der Rezeption […] war gekennzeichnet durch eine weitgehende Verweigerung der formalen und thematischen Innovationen des Dramas. Diese äußerte sich, auf den thematischen Aspekt gezogen, in Form von Ignorierung expliziter Ablehnung und Umdeutung des Inhalts von ‘Nora’.ˮ Gentikow 1978, 108. 102 “Nora als Frauenrechtlerin, tragisches Einzelschicksal und weiblicher Zarathustraˮ. Ibid., 122. 3.2 A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881 79 only to a small degree. Positive statements were predominant, and the issue of women’s rights was more prominently on the agenda, although the reception of A Doll’s House did not resonate well with the background of the naturalism or the neo-romanticism of the 1890s (Gentikow 1978, 129). The third phase follows around 1900, the keywords of which were A Doll’s House ‘in the light of reconciliation, as timeless, harmless (because outdated), but still setting a bad example: Nora’s sins against her maternal duties’. 103 This very brief, schematic outline of Gentikow’s findings testifies to the fact that A Doll’s House - in German-speaking countries no less than in Scandinavia-- was regarded as a highly controversial play, a play which stirred up critics as well as audiences, but that the issues of dispute changed over time. There is a strong diachronic dimension to the matter which must be taken into account. I have gathered a total of twenty-seven documents of the critical reception of A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881, concerning the productions at the following seven venues: Stadttheater Flensburg, Stadttheater Kiel, Thalia-Theater Hamburg, Königliches Residenztheater München, Stadttheater Bromberg, Stadttheater Frankfurt am Main, Residenztheater Berlin, and Stadttheater Wien. For the productions in Flensburg, Berlin, and Vienna, documents have been traced covering the whole performance run period, providing a picture more comprehensive than single reviews are capable of. Gentikow’s keywords pertaining to the initial phase of the critical reception of A Doll’s House all reverberate in the documents. But in an even stronger sense than with Pillars of Society , theatre reviews need to be differentiated from literary reviews, as they tell different, more complex stories. The critics in both Flensburg and Kiel hail the play as a ‘box-office hit’, seemingly taking for granted that it would go on to become one. The critic of the Flensburger Nachrichten is likewise ‘firmly convinced that Nora will become a first-rate box-office draw’, 104 while a colleague of his/ hers from the Flensburger Norddeutsche Zeitung expects the play to ‘circulate at the most distinguished stages’ 105 ; according to the critic of the Kieler Zeitung , the play will ‘conquer the world, no need to worry about that’. 106 Viewed in retrospect, history has proven 103 “‘Nora’ in versöhnendem Licht, als zeitlos, harmlos (weil veraltet); aber immer noch auch als schlimmes Beispiel: Nora als Frevlerin an der Mutterpflicht.ˮ Ibid., 143. 104 “Der Direktion gratuliren wir zu dem gestrigen Erfolg, da wir fest überzeugt sind, daß ‘Nora’ ein Kassamagnet ersten Ranges für sie sein wird.ˮ Flensburger Nachrichten , 8 February 1880. 105 “[…] daß ‘Nora’ über alle irgendwie namhaften Bühnen die Runde machen wird.ˮ Flensburger Norddeutsche Zeitung , 15 February 1880. 106 “Das Stück wird seinen erobernden Weltgang machen, darum braucht man nicht bange zu seinˮ. Kieler Zeitung , 25 February 1880. 80 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 them right, but in the shorter perspective the critics were wrong: A Doll’s House was in many ways an outright failure on the German stage in 1880 and 1881. These reviews form a stark contrast to the hostile critical reception the respective productions received in Berlin and Vienna, where critics were also more reflective and analytic. Though the latter is hardly surprising, a consequence of this is that the functional distinction between the artist and the critic-- the basic principles of division of labour between the theatre management and the press-- seems more blurry in the provincial towns of Flensburg and Kiel. A strong sense of pride is noticeable when the critic of the Flensburger Norddeutsche Zeitung stated that Flensburg is the very first German city to host a performance of the brand new play, and this priority is due to the self-sacrificing pursuit of Mr [Stanislaus von] Glotz, who was the first of all the theatre managers to acquire the play, despite the economic situation so unfavourable and antagonistic to theatre, so that from now on all the court stages and the stages in the major cities will line up in succession. 107 The Flensburger Nachrichten published brief reports from the production in the issues of 8, 10, and 15 February 1880, the first of which characterized the production as a resounding success. The numerous assembled spectators attended the performance with the greatest excitement and attention and expressed their complete content with the work as well as the performance by way of rapturous applause at the end of every act. The whole cast was immersed in their difficult tasks and gave their best to show off the magnificent play to its best advantage, above all Mrs [Helene] Schneider, who played the difficult and extremely exhausting part of Nora with subtle characterization and unusual endurance. 108 107 “Flensburg ist die erste deutsche Stadt, wo die Novität zur Aufführung gelangt, und wir verdanken diese Priorität dem opfermuthigen Streben des Herrn v. Glotz, der ungeachtet zahlloser ungünstiger und theaterfeindlicher Conjuncturen unter allen Directoren das Stück zuerst zu erwerben wußte, so daß nunmehr sämmtliche Hof- und Großstadt-Bühnen die Nachfolge haben werden.ˮ Flensburger Norddeutsche Zeitung , 15 February 1880. 108 “Die gestrige erste Aufführung […] erzielte einen durchschlagenden Erfolg. Das zahlreich versammelte Publikum folgte der Aufführung mit der größten Spannung und Aufmerksamkeit und bekundete seine volle Zufriedenheit mit der Dichtung, sowie mit der Darstellung durch stürmischen Beifall bei jedem Aktschluß. Sämmtliche Mitwirkenden waren von der Schwere ihrer Aufgabe durchdrungen und setzten ihr Bestes ein, um das prachtvolle Schauspiel zur vollen Geltung zu bringen, obenan Frl. Schneider , die die schwierige und äußerst anstrengende Rolle der Nora mit feiner Charakterisirung und seltener Ausdauer gab.ˮ Flensburger Nachrichten , 8 February 1880. 3.2 A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881 81 The fact that the play was performed with an alternative ending remains overshadowed by the success stories presented by the Flensburger Nachrichten and the Flensburger Norddeutsche Zeitung . 109 Only the readers of the latter newspaper could, if they paid close attention to a small addendum to the theatre advertisements in the issue of 7 February 1880, in which the theatre manager, Stanislaus von Glotz, for the sake of theatregoers familiar with the original play, declared that ‘the altered ending of the play has been written by the poet himself and was sent to me by Mr W. Lange shortly before the opening performance, implicitly instructing us to use it’. 110 Whatever the reasons may have been, a strongly sympathetic attitude is noticeable among the critics towards the productions both in Flensburg and Kiel, as if they served the same cause as the theatres. Looking at the advertisements of the Flensburg newspapers, we learn that four performances were planned, but that an additional fifth performance was given, ‘by popular demand’ ( auf vielseitiges Verlangen ), on 27 February. This indicates that the production was a success, measured in terms of audience numbers. The claims of a corresponding critical success, however, are not beyond all doubt. The Berlinese and Viennese critics are conspicuously unbalanced, though more well-informed and displaying a higher level of critical reflection, and they demonstrate the impossibility of forming a moderate opinion about A Doll’s House . Almost without exception, they are judgmental towards the play, towards the spectators, or towards the production. Their chief objection concerns the third act. ‘Why’, the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung ’s critic asks, does not Ibsen simply let the ‘miracle’, that Nora expects, happen? […] Would not that be the logical implication of the theme’s premise, that Nora comes to realize her character’s flaws and, upon the occurrence of the much longed-for ‘miracle’, arises entirely to the husband’s level? 111 Reviewing the Stadttheater Wien’s production, the Wiener Abendpost ’s critic states that the play ends ‘on a discordant note’ and that Ibsen is ‘more like a doctor than a dramatist’. The critic dislikes that ‘the stage is about to turn into an anatomic lecture room, that the spectator has to reason: yes, this might all be true […], but 109 The Danish newspaper Flensborg Avis , on the contrary, accounted for this in their issue of 8 February 1880. 110 “[…] daß der veränderte Schluß des Stückes vom Dichter selbst verfaßt und mir durch Herrn W. Lange kurz vor der ersten Aufführung zugeschickt worden ist, mit der Weisung, denselben unbedingt zu benutzen.ˮ Flensburger Norddeutsche Zeitung , 7 February 1880. 111 “Warum läßt Ibsen das ‘Wunderbare’, das ‘Nora’ erwartet, nicht einfach eintreten. […] Wäre es nicht die logische Folgerung der Voraussetzungen des Sujets, daß Nora zur Einsicht in die Fehler ihres Wesens käme und durch den heißersehnten Eintritt des ‘Wunderbaren’ ganz zur Höhe des Mannes erhoben würde? ˮ Berliner Börsen-Zeitung , 24 November 1880. 82 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 it is not beautiful, hence it is not good’. 112 According to another Viennese critic, the play ‘suffers from some very unbeautiful and violating details and, towards the end, from the lack of the harmonic conclusion of a so-called “satisfactory” ending or a tragic convulsion’. 113 Critics like these were all invariably influenced by the tenets of aesthetic idealism. Their objections go more or less along the same lines as the negative side of the critical reception in Scandinavia (HIS 7k, 227-232, 250-264) and in Great Britain and France, among other places, later on. Georg Brandes and Fritz Mauthner, the two critics falling in the second category of those who strongly criticized the audience’s response, were both reviewing the Residenztheater Berlin’s production with Hedwig Niemann-Raabe starring as Nora. 114 Brandes maintains that ‘it was Niemann-Raabe, not Ibsen, that drew the audiences, and Niemann-Raabe, not Ibsen, who was the object of the applause’. ‘How is it’, he asks, ‘that A Doll’s House , a masterpiece in the eyes of many competent critics, is so poorly received by the same audiences that applauded the much, much weaker Pillars of Society at six theatres at the same time in one and the same city? ’ 115 According to Brandes, there are two reasons, of which the first is the aesthetic depravity of the theatre audiences of Berlin: The audience of the Residenztheater is ‘corrupted by Sardou, they want to spend their money amusing themselves’, they have developed ‘a distaste for every serious matter. Ibsen’s play is all about that’. 116 The second reason is the performance and the adaptation. The spectators gave themselves away as ‘stu- 112 “[…] mit einer Dissonanz endete. […] Wir sehen in dem Drama mehr den Arzt, den Doktor Ibsen als den Dramatiker walten. […] Es ist aber nicht gut, wenn das Theater zum anatomischen Hörsaale wird, wenn das Publicum sich sagt: das Alles kann wahr sein, ist wahr, es ist jedoch nicht schön, also ist es nicht gut.ˮ Wiener Abendpost , 9 September 1881. 113 “Das Schauspiel […] leidet aber an einigen sehr unschönen und verletzenden Einzelheiten und gegen das Ende an dem Mangel eines sogenannten ‘befriedigenden’ Abschlusses eines harmonischen Ausklingens oder einer tragischen Erschütterung.ˮ Das Vaterland , 10 September 1881. 114 Niemann-Raabe was allegedly at the centre of the events that brought about the alternative German ending. According to Ibsen’s letter of 18 February 1880 to Heinrich Laube, the head of the Stadttheater Wien, it was written at her request (HIS 14, 25-26). She is supposed to have said that ‘I would never leave my children’ (cf. “Der Schluß von Ibsens ‘Nora’: Eine Aufklärung”, Das litterarische Echo 2 (1899/ 1900): 970). 115 “Det var dog ikke Ibsen, men Fru Niemann, som havde lokket Hus, og det blev ikke Ibsen, men Fru Niemann, hvem det Bifald, der skænkedes, gjaldt. […] Hvorpaa beror det nu, at dette Drama, der efter de fleste Kyndiges Mening er et Mesterværk, er bleven saa slet modtaget af det samme Publikum, for hvilket det saa langt, langt svagere ‘Samfundets Støtter’ spiltes under Bifald samtidigt paa sex Theatre i en og samme By? ” Brandes 1885, 357. 116 “Residenztheatrets [Publikum] […] er korrumperet af Sardou, vil for sine Penge more sig i Ordets bogstaveligste Forstand, og det er det samme Publikum, hvilket Posse’rne i Wallnertheatret ved deres golde Lystighed og de moderne Dramer i Schauspielhaus ved deres intetsigende Pathos have givet Afsmag for Alt, hvad der er Alvor. Og Ibsens Stykke er kun Alvor.” Ibid., 357-358. 3.2 A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881 83 pid, heartless, blasé, without the slightest sense of real poetry’. At every point in the play in which ‘something truthful, a moment of bitter truth, occurred’, the spectators would ‘cry out and protest loudly’. 117 Brandes attended the Residenztheater’s performance together with Otto Brahm. On leaving the auditorium, the latter later reported Brandes uttering the words that ‘Ibsen will never be understood in Germany’. 118 The somewhat sweeping statements of the Danish critic have the air of a know-it-all attitude, as if he possesses a privileged understanding of A Doll’s House which the Berlinese audiences lack. But also the Deutsches Montags-Blatt ’s critic, Fritz Mauthner, goes a long way towards reproaching the audience’s ‘absentminded behaviour’, as the spectators ‘fell pell-mell into laughter and cries, not knowing whether they were moved by Niemann[-Raabe] or the play’. 119 Brandes fits into the third category as well, as he explains the failure of A Doll’s House at the Residenztheater by referring to the performance and the adaptation. He rebukes the fact that the play has been ‘Germanized’ (e.g. the substitution of Norwegian names by German names), and he blames the cast for ‘losing courage face to face with the audience’s coldness’. The third act ‘fell entirely through’, not least because of ‘the dreadful re-working of the ending’. 120 Brandes is by no means alone in identifying the third act as a problem - as a matter of fact all the critics of the productions in Berlin and Vienna do - but the problem is described in different ways, and mutually opposite conclusions are drawn on the basis of the analysis of the problem. Brandes is the only critic who engages in a kind of moralizing polemics, complaining about the disrespect shown to Ibsen: ‘The respect paid to Nordic literature at German stages equals that towards things in this world that you get free of charge, things which you only have to bend down to pick up’. 121 Hence, a theatre producing a French play by, say, Alexandre Dumas (Brandes’ example), would pay disparately much more reverence (and royalties) to the dramatist. More than is generally acknowledged, Brandes argues, the acquisition of the rights to produce a play are based upon the level of confidence in 117 “[…] viste sig dumt, hjærteløst, blaseret, uden ringeste Sans for virkelig Poesi. Det var betegnende, at overalt hvor der i Stykket forekom noget sandt, noget skærende sandt, der skreg man op og protesterede.” Ibid., 361-362. 118 “Niemals wird Ibsen in Deutschland verstanden werden.” Brahm 1915, 449. 119 “[D]as verehrte Publikum [benahm] sich der ‘Nora’ gegenüber etwas zerstreut […]. Die Leute lachten und weinten durcheinander, sie wußten selbst nicht, ob die Niemann oder das Stück sie derart ergriff.ˮ Fritz Mauthner, Deutsches Montags-Blatt , 22 November 1880. 120 “Og saa tabte [Skuespillerne] Modet overfor Publikums Kulde. Tredje Akt gik rent i Skuddermudder […]; saa brød Mishaget - og denne Gang med fuld Ret - atter ud over den af Laube fordrede skrækkelige Omredaktion af Slutningen.” Brandes 1885, 358. 121 “Respekten for nordisk Literatur ved tyske Theatre er den, som man i denne Verden har for det, man faar gratis, det man kun behøver at bukke sig for at tage op.” Ibid., 358-359. 84 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 the dramatist’s name. Devoid of this, the Berlinese spectators encounter Ibsen’s peculiarities with reluctance (Brandes 1885, 359-361). All the other critics tend to put the blame on the play and, accordingly, on the playwright. Interestingly however, regardless of which ending was given, the problem more or less stays the same. In the issue of 5 December, the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung ’s critic reports from the switching of endings: ‘As the audience as well as the critics were dissatisfied with the ending of this gloomy comedy, the management came up with the idea to sacrifice the otherwise generally accepted “conciliatory ending”’. This ending was considered to represent ‘an impossibility, only capable of creating resentment instead of satisfaction. After having seen yesterday evening’s performance, we are still incapable of stating that the ending satisfies’. The play has, so the critic concludes, failed all tests: ‘[N]o dramaturge will succeed in bringing this very interesting, intellectually stimulating play to a happy end’. 122 3.3 The ‘silence’ of the years 1882 through 1884 During the years 1882, 1883, and 1884, Ibsen’s plays were left untouched by the German stage out of commercial considerations. The risks were considered too high, the prospects of economic gain too low. To put this absence of performances into perspective, however, I will, in what follows, briefly mention other occurrences. The fact that not a single Ibsen performance was given by a German stage during these years does not mean that Ibsen was entirely absent from the cultural field. Second, I will juxtapose the German events data with other subsets of the IbsenStage database in order to sketch out the international context. Ibsen’s following two plays, Ghosts and An Enemy of the People , were both published by Reclam, though, reflecting the fact that Ibsen had lost some of his immediate market appeal, not simultaneously with the original editions in Copenhagen. The order of the works was reversed, too, as Wilhelm Lange’s translation of An Enemy of the People was published in 1883, while Marie von Borch’s translation of Ghosts came the year after, the latter of which was, among others, reviewed by Otto 122 “Publicum und mehr noch die Kritik waren bekanntlich mit dem Ausgang dieser trüben Komödie so unzufrieden, daß die Direction auf den Einfall gerieth, den sonst ziemlich allgemein goutirten ‘versöhnenden Schluß’ zu opfern […]. Man hat aber gleichzeitig gefunden, daß der versöhnende Schluß eine Unmöglichkeit ist, daß er nicht befriedigen, sondern nur verstimmen kann. Nachdem wir nun gestern den ursprünglichen Schluß dargestellt sahen, vermögen wir aber ebenso wenig zu constatiren, daß derselbe befriedigt hätte. […] An ‘Nora’ sind […] keine Versuche mehr zu wagen, […] keinem Dramaturgen wird es gelingen, das hochinteressante, geistvolle Schauspiel einem glücklichen Ende zuzuführen.ˮ Berliner Börsen-Zeitung , 5 December 1880. 3.3 The ‘silence’ of the years 1882 through 1884 85 Brahm who would eventually become the perhaps strongest promoter of Ibsen in the German context (Brahm 1915, 73-81). Critical appraisals appeared, of which the most substantial were Ludwig Passarge’s 310-page monograph Henrik Ibsen: Ein Beitrag zur neuesten Geschichte der norwegischen Nationallitteratur (Leipzig 1883) and Georg Brandes‘ essay “Henrik Ibsen”, printed in Nord und Süd 27 in 1883. To remain within the field of Ibsen in performance, the discontinuity of the German event curve inevitably provokes questions about the international context. The bar chart in figure 3.5 below displays German Ibsen events in black as a proportion of the total amount of global Ibsen events from 1876 up until the turn of the century. Figure 3.5: Subset of German events (in black) in proportion to the total set of global events 1876-1900. Save for 1878 when the German events (53) constitute the majority of the global events (85), the relationship between the global and German values is proportionate during the initial six years. The German event figures then drop to zero, whereas the global figures fluctate between relative decrease and increase over the subsequent three years. During the German ‘pause’, altogether 102 events are recorded (19 in 1882, 49 in 1883, and 34 in 1884). These events display the following works associations (number of events in brackets): Ghosts (39), A Doll’s House (14), An Enemy of the People (9), League of Youth (9), Pillars of Society (9), Lady Inger (7), Vikings at Helgeland (5), Love’s Comedy (4), The Pretenders (4), Brand (2). The events were presented at venues in the following countries (borders as of today): Norway (39), Denmark (18), Sweden (18), Finland (8), Poland (7), the United States (3), Germany (2), Russia (2), Ukraine (2), England (1), the Netherlands (1), Romania (1). The performance language of the events 86 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 were as follows: Swedish (29), Danish (28), Norwegian (25), Polish (10), Finnish (4), English (3), Russian (1), Dutch (1). Looking at the works associations, one gets the impression of a great variety, ten different plays by Ibsen were performed. Considered from the perspective of geographical dissemination, however, the picture changes. Out of 102 events, eighty-three, i.e. 81 %, took place at venues in the Nordic countries. Moreover, three of the events presented at venues outside the Nordic countries, Ghosts in Germany (Flensburg and Hamburg) and the United States (Chicago) respectively, were given in a Nordic language. 123 Regarded from the perspective of performance language, 84 % of the events during these three years were presented in a Nordic language. Hence, the effect of the German ‘pause’ becomes clear: the power balance, so to speak, tips entirely in favour of the Nordic countries, and the Nordic Ibsen tradition regained its supremacy. Apart from 1878, as the German productions of Pillars of Society outnumbered everything else, the Nordic countries remained the dominant region of Ibsen in performance all the way up until the end of the 1880s. Disregarding both the German-speaking and the Nordic countries, the international distribution of Ibsen’s plays was, up until then, negligible. Until 1876, when Ibsen was introduced on the German stage by the Meininger company, productions of his plays were restricted to the Nordic countries, and the annual number of events was only moderate. On an average, there were in fact less than three Ibsen events annually during the period 1850-1875 according to IbsenStage. In figure 3.6 below, the annual distribution of Nordic events from 1850 until 1895 are displayed in black, whereas the German events appear in grey, and the chart reveals that there were four years - 1851, 1852, 1860, and 1865 - with no events. The process of introducing Ibsen on stage followed the same pattern in most languages areas. Thus, the German ‘pause’ during 1882-1884 represents the normal sequence of events rather than something odd and exceptional. Even in Ibsen’s Scandinavian home market, it was only from 1866 that Ibsen gained a permanent foothold. 123 Ghosts in Flensburg and Hamburg was a Danish touring performance by the company of Daniel Züberlein, cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 84634 and https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 78104; Ghosts in Chicago was a Dano-Norwegian production performed by a cast of Danish and Norwegian immigrants, cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio. no/ pages/ event/ 78077, accessed 20 June 2018. 3.4 Conclusion 87 Figure 3.6: Ibsen events 1850-1895; Nordic events in black, German events in grey. The peculiarity of the introduction of Ibsen to the German stage is not the fact that it was characterized by discontinuity, but that the event numbers fluctuate so strongly. The volume of Nordic events remains at a stable level throughout the 1850s, the 1860s, and the first half of the 1870s. The German event numbers, by contrast, rise intensely over a relatively short period of time, then ebbs just as abruptly. Precisely this aspect of the introduction of Ibsen to the German stage is unparalleled. 3.4 Conclusion The years 1876-1881 constitute the prologue to the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays. The three-year-long period of ‘silence’ that followed throws a retrospective light on the events of these years. After the resounding success of Pillars of Society came the failure of A Doll’s House . The aim of this chapter was to try to account for this failure. Focusing on the body of German stage artists-- actors, directors, and designers - involved in putting Ibsen on stage from 1876 to 1881, I found that the level of social connectedness was low, suggesting that the stage artists had not yet begun to claim ‘ownership’ of Ibsen. There were unsuccessful attempts at trying to introduce Pillars of Society (Possart), Lady Inger (Fiedler von Wurzbach) as well as A Doll’s House (Niemann-Raabe) into the artist-driven star system. During the initial years, Ibsen was first and foremost an object of speculation among his German translators, the theatre agencies, and the theatre managers. At the moment when the commercial success of his plays came to a halt, the German stage lost interest in Ibsen. Since there were no ‘Ibsenites’ among them, the stage artists made no difference in this regard. 88 Chapter 3: The failure of A Doll’s House and the ‘silence’ of 1882-1884 I then proceeded to investigate the distribution of the playscript of A Doll’s House to the German theatres. As is well known, circumstances impelled Ibsen to write an alternative ending of the play. Thus, the playscript circulated in two variants. My research revealed that the version that adopted the alternative, conciliatory ending was preferred by the majority of the stages - which in turn implies that there was a market and a demand for the changed ending. On the surface of it, Ibsen managed to rid himself of the problem of unauthorized translations by means of his new alliance with the translator Lange and Reclam. But the case of the German ending demonstrates that there was no escape from the issue of copyright. Problems connected to the lack of protection only took new forms. A Doll’s House triggered a strongly polarized debate in Germany as well as in Scandinavia. The critical reception of the initial German performances of the play runs along different lines of demarcation. My examination shows that performances on provincial stages like Flensburg and Kiel were favourably received, whereas performances at venues in the major cities were subjected to strong disapproval. The reports from provincial newspapers are characterized by a perceived lack of critical integrity and professionalism. The leading critics and intellectuals in Berlin and Vienna are conspicuously unbalanced, using harsh words to express their opinions, though their objections point in opposite directions. Critics informed by the tenets of aesthetic idealism disapproved of the play, the third act in particular. In defence of Ibsen and his play, Mauthner and Brandes strongly criticized the response of the audience instead. The latter took the Residenztheater’s performance as a point of departure for engaging in a moralizing polemics. In the light of the playwright’s own manoeuvres, Brandes’ critical position represents an alternative take on the issue of copyright. Ibsen’s approach was pragmatic, and his choice of writing the alternative ending was dictated by a desire to prevent people like Jonas from issuing ‘mutilated’ versions of his play. Brandes, on the other hand, assumes the approach of the raging critic, bringing charges against a stage not paying Ibsen due reverence and condemning a performance that adopted ‘the dreadful re-edition of the ending’ against the playwright’s wishes. There is no denying that the alternative ending influenced the introduction of A Doll’s House on the German stage. But my survey of the critical reception of the performances raises more questions than it answers. The reports on the switching of endings in Berlin and Vienna bear witness to a process of entering into negotiations with the public regarding a crucial aspect of Ibsen’s play. Whether the stages tried to please the critics, the spectators, or both, the negotiations did not succeed, and the press reports suggest that the performances were poorly received regardless of ending. This means that my initial hypothesis related to the alternative ending remains unsubstantiated: its use was not a 3.4 Conclusion 89 significant factor that accounts for the lack of success of A Doll’s House on the German stage during 1880-1881. There is also no evidence to support the assertion that Hedwig Niemann-Raabe ‘ruined’ the introduction of the play to the German stage. Although unable to secure Ibsen a place within the star system, her Nora performance was not the main target of criticism. The ‘silence’ that followed after the failure of A Doll’s House signifies that the German stage lost interest in Ibsen the moment his plays no longer guaranteed economic profit. According to data from IbsenStage, the effect of the German ‘pause’ was that the Nordic Ibsen tradition regained its supremacy, as 83 % of the events during 1882-1884 were presented in a Nordic language. Disregarding the German-speaking parts of Central Europe and the Nordic countries, IbsenStage tells us that the international distribution of Ibsen’s plays was negligible up until the end of the 1880s. The chapter as a whole demonstrated the difficulties involved in moving back and forth between quantitative and qualitative research methods. The dataset establishes a stark contrast between Pillars of Society and A Doll’s House , which raised the question: why did A Doll’s House initially fail to follow up the widespread success of Pillars of Society on the German stage? By interrogating the subset of German A Doll’s House events during 1880-1881 from a quantitative point of view, the fact that the majority of the stages adopted the alternative ending prompted me to source reviews from the productions. My qualitative survey of the critical reception, however, failed to give a clear answer. What ultimately caused the initial failure of A Doll’s House on the German stage remains unresolved. 3.4 Conclusion 91 Chapter 4: Ibsen’s real breakthrough On 11 January 1885, as The Vikings at Helgeland premiered at the Großherzogliches Theater Oldenburg, Ibsen was in effect reintroduced to the German stage. The production was performed three times, but remained the only German Ibsen event that year. In 1886, four events are recorded ( A Doll’s House and Ghosts in Meiningen, Ghosts in Augsburg, and Pillars of Society in Darmstadt). The figures then increase to sixteen in 1888 and - forming a new peak - forty-four in 1889. Eleven years had passed since the initial success with Pillars of Society , and much had changed. What are the main differences between the 1878 peak and the 1889 peak? First of all, the 1878 peak is higher - in fact, event figures would not outnumber 1878 until 1898. Second, the long-term effects of the two peaks are diametrically opposite. The 1878 peak was caused by a major success that had no lasting effect, given the subsequent three-year-long period of silence. The 1889 peak, by contrast, is succeeded by yet higher peaks. From 1885 onwards, the German curve is continuous up until this very day. Prolonging the x axis until 1945 in the graph below (fig. 4.1), we notice that the 1889 peak is the starting point of a period of constant increase in the number of events which reaches its peak around 1910 and then decreases gradually - with 1928, the centennial of Ibsen’s birth, making an exception - all the way until 1945. Hence, it would seem that Ibsen did not become a fixture on the German stage until the end of the 1880s. Figure 4.1: German Ibsen events 1876-1945. Third, the international context was different. In 1878, all (seventy-four) but two events - a Czech and a Serbian performance of Pillars of Society in Prague and Belgrade, respectively - took place in either the Nordic countries or the 92 Chapter 4: Ibsen’s real breakthrough German-speaking areas of Central Europe. A decade later, by contrast, Ibsen was about to become an international playwright, and during 1888 and 1889 he was performed on stage in thirteen languages in twenty-one countries (per today’s borders). 124 The events presented in the Nordic countries had by then sunk to 34 % (46 out of 135). Fourth, a larger palette of Ibsen’s works had been ‘activated’. While 1878 was all about one play, Pillars of Society , the 1889 peak is the accumulated effect of performances of eight different plays by Ibsen, with A Doll’s House representing the lion’s share and seven other plays more evenly distributed (see fig. 4.2). Figure 4.2: German Ibsen events according to play 1889. In addition to these four major differences, Ibsen’s status as a playwright on the German stage went through a significant change in the latter half of the 1880s. Throughout his success with Pillars of Society , Ibsen remained relatively unknown as a playwright. A decade later, he turned into a major figure, a playwright whose works gained significance because they served specific purposes in the development of the German stage. Ibsen’s Ghosts plays a major role in this regard, but not because the play was a major success on the German stage measured in terms of production numbers and box-office income - in fact, the exact opposite is closer to the truth. Ghosts was embraced by a relatively marginal group of people circulating among three different but linked movements that were emerging at the time: the modernists, the naturalists, and the independent theatre movement. These processes are adeptly described and accounted for 124 The thirteen languages were German, Norwegian, Swedish, Hungarian, English, Finnish, Dutch, Serbian, Polish, Czech, French, Italian, and Latvian. The distribution of events according to nation was as follows: Germany (41), Norway (25), Sweden (9), Switzerland (8), Finland (7), the United States (7), Denmark (5), Hungary (5), Poland (5), Czech Republic (3), England (3), Romania (3), Serbia (3), Australia (2), Austria (2), the Netherlands (2), Belgium (1), Italy (1), Latvia (1), Slovak Republic (1), and Ukraine (1). 4.1 Ghosts and the independent theatre movement 93 within the major strands of Ibsen scholarship. But this is just one part of the picture: In the late 1880s and early 1890s, a process of differentiation and diversification develops in terms of how, by whom, and where Ibsen’s plays are produced on the German stage. Parallel to the advent of the independent theatre companies and their appropriation of Ibsen, his plays begin to re-emerge, at first slowly and then ever more noticeably from 1889 onwards, at ‘regular’ theatre venues (i.e. court, municipal, and private theatres). In what follows, I will first describe how Ghosts was introduced on the German stage in the latter half of the 1880s and give an account of the role this particular drama and its author came to play within the independent theatre movement. Then I will reconsider the matter from the perspective of the IbsenStage dataset and sketch out a process which, in effect, amounted to a resumption and continuation of the trajectory launched a decade earlier by Pillars of Society (henceforth Pillars trajectory), only this time with another play functioning as its projectile, namely A Doll’s House . 4.1 Ghosts and the independent theatre movement Prior to 1890, nine German events of Ghosts are recorded in IbsenStage. Four of these - the performances at the Stadttheater Augsburg, Herzogliches Hoftheater Meiningen, Residenztheater Berlin, and by the Freie Bühne at Lessingtheater Berlin (especially the latter two) - are considered to be landmark productions in the stage history of Ibsen’s plays. The other five - the performances by the Berliner Dramatische Gesellschaft at the Architektenhaus in Berlin, Stadttheater Bern, Stadttheater Basel, Stadttheater Frankfurt, and a German-speaking performance in Chicago - have largely been neglected by Ibsen scholarship. Let me briefly go through the four landmark productions. The very first German production of Ghosts took place at the Stadttheater Augsburg on 14 April 1886. The performance was announced as a ‘dress rehearsal’ (“General-Probe”) 125 for invited guests only, i.e. it was a private, non-public performance. The Stadttheater’s manager, August Grosse, had, according to the Augsburger Abendzeitung ’s critic, invited ‘a number of literati and theatre connoisseurs’ from Augsburg and Munich, Ibsen himself among them. 126 The performance was the result of an initiative of Felix Philippi, a theatre critic and playwright who called on Ibsen in Munich to acquire the performance rights. Two colleagues of his, Max Bernstein and Ludwig Fulda, were also involved in the efforts that led to 125 Cf. the facsimile of the original playbill in Boettcher 1989, 163. 126 “[…] eine Anzahl von Schriftstellern und ernsten Theaterfreunden aus Augsburg und München zu einer Vorstellung seltener Art eingeladen hatte.ˮ Augsburger Abendzeitung , 16 April 1886. 94 Chapter 4: Ibsen’s real breakthrough the performance (Boettcher 1989, 50-51). The production divided the minds of the spectators, as witnessed by the reviews examined by Marc Boettcher, who nevertheless refers to the performance ‘as the greatest theatre event ever in Augsburg’. 127 Some eight months later, on 21 December 1886, Ghosts was performed at the renowned Herzogliches Hoftheater Meiningen. Censorship was not an issue in Meiningen, as the supreme governmental authority and the theatre manager was one and the same person, the liberal-minded Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. But regular theatre-goers decided to stay away nonetheless, because they, according to an amusing account of Max Grube, who played Pastor Manders, held the play to be “most indecent and immoral”. Therefore, a determined protest was raised. That all the ladies would remain at home was certainly taken for granted; the subscription holders plotted a scandal; and that part of the public not holding subscriptions determined to show its disapproval and to display its courage by staying away. Therefore, almost no tickets were bought. This was unfortunate; the performance was to be given in Ibsen’s presence, and the outstanding Berlin newspaper people were invited: Lindau, Landau, and Weisstein. It was necessary to take immediate measures to counteract these schemes. […] The Duke […] arranged to have the theatre seats given away. Anyone who would go to the office of the court marshal received tickets; and, in addition, all the court employees and court officials were ordered with friendly hints to be on hand in the theatre to applaud. […] The performance had a peaceful outcome; to be sure, the applause was bestowed only by the claque, the leader of whom was no less than His Highness, the Duke himself. (Grube 1970, 109-110) Georg II planned to include the play in the company’s touring repertoire but met with problems of censorship in other parts of the German Empire. A series of performances was planned in Dresden, but after the premiere on 17 December 1887, additional performances were prohibited by the local police authorities (Boettcher 1989, 61-62). After the company presented the play in Copenhagen on 17 May 1889, the play disappeared from its repertoire. The third landmark production of Ghosts premiered on 9 January 1887 at the Residenztheater Berlin. Technically, it was a public performance, i.e. J.B. Halvorsen, Philipp Stein, Halvdan Koht and others who refer to the event as a private performance are in fact wrong; 128 it was, however, a single, Sunday matinee charity performance starting at noon, and permission to perform the 127 “[…] gilt heute als das größte Ereignis des gesamten Augsburger Schauspiels.ˮ Boettcher 1989, 51. 128 Pace J.B. Halvorsen 1892, 73; Stein 1901, 16; Koht 1971, 404. 4.1 Ghosts and the independent theatre movement 95 play was most probably granted only on the condition that it was a non-recurring, singular matinee performance. When the theatre’s manager, Anton Anno, applied for permission to present additional performances, the Prussian board of censors refused, stating that the play’s content was inappropriate for staging (“für die Aufführung nicht geeignet”), thereby issuing a ban against the play which would, de facto, apply until 1894 (Boettcher 1989, 65-66, 98), but only within the borders of the Kingdom of Prussia. The performance has acquired the status of a watershed event in the German history of Ibsen in performance. In 1905, Alfred Kerr referred to the performance as ‘the most important European theatre date of the past quarter century’, 129 while Paul Schlenther recollected how his friend Julius Hoffory, pacing around the buffet room during the premiere, had declared in a paraphrase of Goethe that ‘here and today begins a new era in the history of literature, and you can all say that you were present at its birth’. 130 More recently, Günther Rühle has laconically concurred with Hoffory’s summary: ‘He was correct. […] A chasm opened up. The eras separated.’ 131 In Rühle’s account, the Residenztheater’s performance of Ghosts marks the very birth of modern German theatre. The findings of Erika Fischer-Lichte and Marc Boettcher, who examine contemporary theatre reviews in greater detail, go along the same lines. But Fischer-Lichte uses a different keyword: “It was not only a new epoch of German literature that began here”, she argues, “but also a new epoch of German theatre. It was Ibsen’s Ghosts that established naturalistic theatre in Germany - naturalistic plays, as well as a new realistic acting style, also to be termed ‘naturalistic’” (Fischer-Lichte 2007, 63; cf. also Boettcher 1989, 63-74). At the same time, it was clear that the actors at the Residenztheater were, as Fischer-Lichte puts it (2007, 64), “not quite up to the task. For from the few lines devoted to the acting in the otherwise lengthy reviews, we can conclude that they played in a rather conventional style of declamation and poses”. It would seem that the historical significance of the Residenztheater’s performance consists in pointing towards the necessity of a new acting style more than in suggesting and achieving its potential. 129 “[…] das belangvollste europäische Theaterdatum des letzten Jahrhundertviertelsˮ. Kerr 1905, 31. 130 “Julius Hoffory […] ging während der Vorstellung hocherhobenen Hauptes und strahlenden Angesichts […] im Büfettraum hin und her und verkündete frei nach Goethe ein über das andere Mal: ‘Von hier und heute fängt eine neue Epoche der Literaturgeschichte an, und ihr dürft sagen, ihr seid dabei gewesen’.ˮ Schlenther 1930, 80. Hoffory’s statement is a paraphrase of Goethe’s famous words on the occasion of the Battle of Valmy in 1792: “From this place, and from this day forth begins a new era in the history of the world, and you can all say that you were present at its birth.” Quoted in Bell 2007, 131. 131 “Er hatte Recht. […] Eine Kluft tat sich auf. Es schieden sich die Epochen.ˮ Rühle 2007, 20-21. 96 Chapter 4: Ibsen’s real breakthrough This leads us to the Freie Bühne’s fabled performance of Ghosts at the Lessingtheater on 29 September 1889. Anything but modest on his own behalf, considering that he was the head of the society, Otto Brahm would later proclaim that 1889 was the year of the German theatre revolution, just as 1789 was the year of the revolution of humanity; it constitutes the most decisive point in the development of the modern stage, but it was preceded by another ‘revolution of the human spirit’-- the phrase stems from Ibsen […]; the Freie Bühne movement worshipped Ibsen as its progenitor. It was his work Ghosts that introduced the new era of the German theatre. 132 Ibsen as a revolutionary father, then, by virtue of Ghosts . Inspired by Théâtre Libre, established by André Antoine in Paris in 1887, the theatre society Freie Bühne was founded on 5 April 1889 with the intention of establishing an independent stage in Berlin, ‘irrespective of censorship and commercial interests, independent of the business of the existing theatres and without competing against them’. 133 The constituting assembly, led by Brahm who was appointed chairman of the society, 134 furthermore declared the intention of putting on ten productions of modern dramas of exceptional interest in one of the leading playhouses of Berlin per theatre year, commencing in the autumn of 1889 […]. The aims of a living art, turned away from clichés and virtuosity, will be strived for, both in the selection of dramatic works and in their theatrical enactment. 135 Brahm chose Ghosts to be the inaugural performance of the Freie Bühne. It must have been an obvious choice for many reasons. Apart from Brahm’s personal 132 “1889 ist das Jahr der deutschen Theaterrevolution gewesen, gleichwie 1789 das Jahr der Revolution der Menschheit war; es bezeichnet den stärksten Einschnitt in der Entwicklung der modernen Bühne, aber vorausgegangen war ihm eine andere ‘Revolutionierung des Menschengeistes’ - das Wort stammt von Ibsen […]; in ihm verehrt die Freie-Bühnen-Bewegung ihren Ahnherrn, und sein Werk auch war es, die ‘Gespenster’, das eine neue Zeit auf dem deutschen Theater einleitete.ˮ Brahm 1915, 462-463. 133 “[…] unabhängig von dem Betriebe der bestehenden Theater und ohne mit diesen in einen Wettkampf einzutreten, eine Bühne zu begründen, welche frei ist von Rücksichten auf Theatercensur und Gelderwerb.ˮ Quoted in Schley 1967, 27. 134 The other founding members were Maximilian Harden, Theodor Wolff, Julius Hart, Heinrich Hart, Paul Schlenther, Julius Elias, Julius Stettenheim, Paul Jonas, and Samuel Fischer. 135 “Es sollen während des Theaterjahres, beginnend vom Herbst 1889, in einem der ersten Berliner Schauspielhäuser etwa zehn Aufführungen moderner Dramen von hervorragendem Interesse stattfinden […]. Sowohl in der Auswahl der dramatischen Werke, als auch in ihrer schauspielerischen Darstellung sollen die Ziele einer der Schablone und dem Virtuosenthum abgewandten, lebendigen Kunst angestrebt werden.ˮ Ibid. 4.1 Ghosts and the independent theatre movement 97 affinities for the play, 136 Ghosts was, first of all, a distinctive modern play depicting conflicts and problems of contemporary life. Second, it was a play highly suitable for the purpose of developing a new acting style. If we were to follow Fischer-Lichte, it would seem that the Freie Bühne largely succeeded. According to her, the production established naturalistic theatre in Berlin and realized to the full a new concept of theatre, which served as a forum for public discussions of the social problems actually confronting spectators in an impressive and effective manner by means of particular artistic strategies in playwriting and acting. (Fischer-Lichte 2007, 66) Third, Ghosts was still banned by the censorship authorities. In order to present the play on stage, the only possibility was a private performance in front of a closed group of spectators within the organizational frame of a theatre society. Yet despite this, as the performance very soon turned into a public event in the sense that it was both discussed and commented upon prior to the performance and reviewed afterwards in many newspapers (Boettcher 1989, 74-90), the event might very well be interpreted as a fierce protest against - or even a subtle victory over - the Prussian board of censors. Fourth, because public performances of the play were prohibited, the Freie Bühne could present it without in any way threatening the interests of the established theatres. And fifth, however controversial in public opinion, Ghosts was still a fairly “safe start”, as Horst Claus puts it (1981, 35). Performed twice in Berlin already, and available in print since 1884, critics and audiences were well acquainted with the play. Along with a couple of other Ibsen events connected to the independent theatre movement in Europe, first and foremost the Théâtre Libre’s performance of Ghosts in Paris on 30 May 1890 and the Independent Theatre’s performance of the same play in London on 13 March 1891, the Freie Bühne’s performance of Ghosts is a key scene in the narrative of how Ibsen came to be regarded as the founding father of modern drama. 137 That this narrative is in need of revision 136 In his review of Reclam’s edition of Marie von Borch’s translation of the play in the newspaper Vossische Zeitung of 2 February 1884, he ranked Ghosts among ‘the most brilliant works of art in recent years’ (“zu den hervorragendsten Kunstwerken der letzten Jahre” [Brahm 1915, 73]). 137 Cf. in this regard Fletcher and McFarlane (1991, 500) who claim that “[w]hen the choice of the new wave of ‘independent theatres’ fell upon Ghosts as that work which both best served their theatrical aspirations and at the same time most evidently expressed the spirit of the age, they succeeded in transforming Ibsen from a dramatic author of modest Scandinavian dimensions into one of imposing European proportions. By their productions of this play between 1889 and 1891, the Freie Bühne of Berlin, the Théâtre Libre of Paris and the Independent Theatre of London created what is probably the first example ever of a phenomenon which in recent years has grown increasingly common: the concerted launching in a whole range of the cultural capitals of Europe of a single 98 Chapter 4: Ibsen’s real breakthrough is one of the main premises of my thesis, not because the Ibsen events of the independent theatre movement are less important than previously presumed, but because they have come to overshadow other types of Ibsen events that have mattered just as much or even more to the stage history of Ibsen’s plays. From a quantitative point of view, measured both in number of events and audience numbers, the Ibsen events of the independent theatre companies were marginal. Why, then, have they been given so much significance? The independent theatre movement was an international trend, and so was the tendency to turn to Ibsen’s contemporary dramas. In addition to the above-mentioned productions of Ghosts , both the Théâtre Libre and the Independent Theatre Society in London presented The Wild Duck . Just to name a few other examples, the Moscow Art Theatre produced Hedda Gabler , An Enemy of the People , The Wild Duck , When We Dead Awaken , and Pillars of Society , while the Hungarian company Thália Társaság presented The Master Builder , A Doll’s House , The Wild Duck , and Ghosts . These were productions that broke new ground in the field of theatre. On a general level, the independent theatres seem to have shared at least three features: a reformist impetus, an anti-commercial spirit, and a striving for autonomy. The will to reform was directed internally and externally. New acting styles were developed, banning the old conventions of static poses and declamatory speech. The principles of the virtuoso star system were discarded to the advantage of the ensemble as a whole. A modern repertoire with new contemporary plays (predominantly realistic, naturalistic, or symbolistic) was preferred. On the external side, the reform efforts sought to recover and reinforce the socio-critical function of the arts - the performing arts in particular. Connected to that, the anti-commercial spirit was a reaction against the tendency to turn theatre performances into mere commodities and prioritize business matters over aesthetic considerations. In the eyes of the fin de siècle avant-garde, theatre was failing to fulfil its essential function as a site of mere pleasure, entertainment, and diversion. Connected to that again, the strategy considered most apt in order to regain the critical function and give artistic and aesthetic considerations priority over commercial ones was to strive for autonomy. 138 According to Bourdieu, Théâtre Libre was “the first enterprise to really defy the economic constraints” of the theatre field, “where until then they had literary or dramatic work. From then until the end of his life, the publication of a new Ibsen play was a distinctly European event.” 138 I should add that the degree to which the theatre companies and productions mentioned above, as well as other theatre enterprises more or less loosely associated with the independent theatre movement, are in accordance with my remarks varies from instance to instance. The independent theatres were not a uniform movement. 4.1 Ghosts and the independent theatre movement 99 reigned undisputedly”. In so doing the 1880s saw the development “at the heart of [the theatre] genre a more autonomous sector - or, if you will, an avant-garde” (Bourdieu 1996, 119-120). In effect, this led to polarization and the formation of two opposed sectors of theatre as a subfield, namely the pole of pure production, where the producers tend to have as clients only other producers (who are also rivals), and where poets, novelists and theatrical people endowed with similar position characteristics find each other, though they may be engaged in relations that may be antagonistic; and the pole of large-scale production, subordinated to the expectations of a wide audience. (Bourdieu 1996, 121) Elsewhere Bourdieu defines the pole of pure production as “the field of restricted production”: The autonomy of a field of restricted production can be measured by its power to define its own criteria for the production and evaluation of its products. This implies translation of all external determinations in conformity with its own principles of functioning. Thus, the more cultural producers form a closed field of competition for cultural legitimacy, the more the internal demarcations appear irreducible to any external factors of economic, political or social differentiation. (Bourdieu 1993, 115) The parallels to Berlin and Freie Bühne are obvious. The striving for autonomy reverberates throughout every single line of the proclamation document of the Freie Bühne Society (Schley 1967, 27; cf. above). Their repertoire was not put together for the public at large. The organizational form chosen for the purpose - a closed, membership-based, private society - not only enabled the Freie Bühne to produce Ghosts irrespective of the moral, political, and/ or social considerations expressed in the ban against the play issued by the Prussian board of censors, it also gave their audiences a distinctive makeup that differed from those attending performances at virtually any other stage in Berlin at the time, or any other German stage anywhere for that matter. The typical Freie Bühne spectator owned a double capacity, as s/ he was both a society member and an audience member. The former presupposed the latter: Without membership in Freie Bühne, you could not become an audience member. S/ he was not a paying spectator using his or her savings on an evening’s entertainment; rather every society member paid a membership fee, in return for which s/ he was given access to all ten performances planned for the season (Schley 1967, 15). This financial model virtually turned all society members into co-producers of the performances they were attending. Thus, in Bourdieu’s model, the Freie Bühne is firmly positioned in the pole of pure or restricted production. What was at stake for this company of producers? What came instead of the pursuit of economic profit, instead of the propensity to give the consum- 100 Chapter 4: Ibsen’s real breakthrough ing bourgeoisie what they wanted? According to Bourdieu, the literary field is “universally the site of a struggle over the definition of writer” (1996, 224). We may paraphrase him to the extent that the field of (performing) arts is the site of a struggle over the definition of the (performing) artist. Brahm and his Freie Bühne accomplices turned this into a battle over aesthetics. Economics and the concerns of the general public had nothing to add. The basic elements of this aesthetics were exploration of contemporary reality, truth, and artistic freedom. Art, Brahm proclaimed, shall be the object of our strivings - the new art, which fixes its attention on reality and contemporary existence. […] The banner slogan of the new art, written up in golden letters by the leading spirits, is the single word Truth; and Truth it is, Truth on every path of life, which we too strive for and demand. […] No other programme do we enter upon in these pages. We disavow every formula, and do not presume to chain life and art, which are in eternal motion, to the rigid constraint of rule. (Brahm 1992, 373) In this fight for the new art, the performing artists were the vanguard, the independent stages of Europe its battlefield, and Ibsen’s Ghosts one of the foremost strategic weapons adopted for use. The four landmark performances of Ghosts referred to above have not only outshone more ‘regular’ Ibsen performances, but also other performances of the very same play. On 2 January 1887, exactly a week prior to the performance at the Residenztheater Berlin, a semi-professional production of the play was presented by the Berliner Dramatische Gesellschaft (Berlin Dramatic Society) at the Architektenhaus (Architects House) in Wilhelmstraße 92 in Berlin, a production that was also repeated on 16 January. Little is known about the production, but the role of Osvald was played by Axel Delmar (Berg 1901, 36), a nineteen-yearold actor and later stage director and playwright; the rest of the cast is unknown to us, but were most probably amateurs. The two performances were announced in the theatre columns of at least two Berlinese newspapers, Vossische Zeitung and Berliner Tageblatt . The second performance was given ‘at the request of the numerous new members’. 139 The objective of the Berlin Dramatic Society was, as stated in all three theatre advertisements, ‘to promote national dramatic art’. Whether or not the society submitted an application to the Prussian board of censors for permission to produce the play is not known. 140 I am inclined to think not, since the performances, although publicly announced, were in all 139 “Auf Wunsch der zahlreich beigetretenen neuen Mitgliederˮ Vossische Zeitung , 15 January 1887, cf. also Berliner Tageblatt , 31 December 1886; Berliner Börsen-Zeitung , 6 January 1887. 140 The most comprehensive study on the issue of Ghosts and censorship in Germany, Marc Boettcher’s book Henrik Ibsen: Zur Bühnengeschichte seiner ‘Gespenster’ , does not mention the production. 4.1 Ghosts and the independent theatre movement 101 probability restricted to members of the society, thereby evading censorship the same way as the Freie Bühne would do two and a half years later. However neglected by scholarship, the Berlin Dramatic Society seems to be a forerunner or early instance of the independent theatre movement. Most probably presented to a closed group of spectators at a venue not specifically meant for theatre purposes, 141 the Berlin Dramatic Society’s production of Ghosts displays several common features with Freie Bühne’s production of the same play. It was an alternative to the mainstream, profit-oriented theatre system. Their performance served the overall objective of the society, an objective related to cultural and literary policies instead of commercial interests. Moreover, it is interesting to note that a dramatic work by a non-German playwright was chosen to ‘promote national dramatic art’. In my view, this testifies to the fact that Ibsen’s status in the German field of cultural production had changed. His works began to serve other purposes than securing box-office income. In the account of Marc Boettcher, the initial phase of the German stage history of Ghosts turns into a story of censorship (1989, 50-98). There is no doubt that the issue of censorship is central to the German as well as the British introduction of the play, but it is important to note that German bodies of censorship had in fact restricted jurisdiction. Besides the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen mentioned above, the theatres of Frankfurt am Main, although at the time located in the province of Hesse-Nassau (which was annexed to Prussia), seem to have slipped under the radar of the Prussian board of censors as Ghosts was produced by the Stadttheater Frankfurt in September 1889. Beyond the borders of the German Empire, Ghosts was performed without any intervention from the authorities at the Stadttheater Bern on 26 October 1887, the Stadttheater Basel on 28 October 1887 (repeated two times according to IbsenStage), and at a venue in the city of Chicago in May 1887 in a German-speaking performance featuring the Viennese actor Friedrich Mitterwurzer as Osvald (repeated five times according to IbsenStage). Hence, there is more to Gespenster than censorship, as there is, at the same time, more to Ghosts than the independent theatre movement. 141 The Architects House was a multifunctional venue used for art exhibitions, public lectures, and theatre performances. 102 Chapter 4: Ibsen’s real breakthrough 4.2 German Ibsen events 1885—1889: A Doll’s House and the Pillars trajectory IbsenStage represents a new body of evidence against which the traditional narrative needs to be tested. According to this narrative, Ibsen achieved his international breakthrough sometime around 1890 as a consequence of the conquests of the avant-garde within the independent theatre movement, in which Ghosts played a pivotal part. Lined up in the front row are the narrative’s protagonists, namely Antoine in Paris, Brahm in Berlin, and Grein in London (and later on Nemirovich-Danchenko in Moscow), who managed to change the course of theatre history through aesthetic innovation and theatre reforms, the most important of which was that the performing arts regained its socio-critical function by striving for and achieving autonomy. Needless to say, however, historiographical caution is due, as every historical narrative is a construction put together on the basis of certain focal points, selective use of sources, and underlying explanation models, among other things. A key premise here is that the Ibsen productions of Antoine, Brahm, and Grein were of extraordinary significance and hence of far-reaching impact. The point of the following argument is not to deprive them of this status - they were extraordinary events - but to broaden and enhance our understanding of the events. In IbsenStage, all in all eighty German events are recorded from 1885 through 1889, associated with nine plays. 142 Significantly, no fewer than twenty-five of the events (31 %) were associated with one single play, A Doll’s House , which was staged once in 1886, twice in 1887, at five venues in 1888, and then noticeably stepping up to seventeen events in 1889. Out of these latter seventeen events, the majority (eleven) were performances of A Doll’s House at municipal theatres in smaller cities in the German Empire. 143 Four events refer to performances at private theatre venues in larger cities (Lessingtheater Berlin, Thalia-Theater Hamburg, Amberg Theater New York, and Aktien-Theater Zürich), while the final two events were presented by summer season theatres (Schänzli-Theater Bern and Theater im Curhause zu Wiesbaden). On this basis, I would like to make a twofold argument ex negativo , grounded on an observation of where A Doll’s House was not performed. The play was 142 The distribution of events according to play is as follows: A Doll’s House (25), Ghosts (14), Pillars of Society (12), Enemy of the People (8), Lady from the Sea (6), Wild Duck (6), Rosmersholm (6), Vikings at Helgeland (2), and Lady Inger (1). 143 These eleven performances were presented at the Stadttheater Brünn, Stadttheater Magdeburg, Stadttheater Stettin, Stadttheater Freiberg, Stadttheater Speier, Stadttheater Heidelberg, Stadttheater Mainz, Stadttheater Bromberg, Stadttheater Posen, Stadttheater Regensburg, and Stadttheater Glogau. 4.2 German Ibsen events 1885—1889: A Doll’s House and the Pillars trajectory 103 not produced by the independent theatre companies. Neither was it presented by any of the typical naturalistic stages of the German-speaking areas. If we take the pivotal role attributed to these two groupings in conventional theatre history at face value, it would seem that where experimental and aesthetically innovative theatre was performed, A Doll’s House was not. 144 To Brahm, Ghosts was the very signature of naturalism and the independent theatre - A Doll’s House , by contrast, was bypassed. Considering the set of events associated with A Doll’s House , a comparative analysis with Pillars of Society a decade earlier reveals both striking similarities and significant dissimilarities. First, although the German Empire is the most dominant area, German productions of A Doll’s House can also be found elsewhere, such as Austria-Hungary, Switzerland (which had ignored Pillars of Society ten years earlier), and even New York. The geographical pattern reveals a difference in quantity, as Pillars of Society was produced by considerably more stages than A Doll’s House , but a similarity in form. Second, considering the different theatre types, the municipal theatres dominate the picture, as they did with Pillars of Society as well, whereby they strengthen their position as the foremost tradition carriers when it comes to Ibsen performances. On the other hand, the court theatres, which had a certain share in the success with Pillars of Society , tend to pass on A Doll’s House . Especially court theatres in the peripheries (with the prominent exception of the Herzogliches Hoftheater Meningen, which produced both A Doll’s House and Ghosts in 1886 and An Enemy of the People in 1888) tend to regard Ibsen as a matter for the modernists and naturalists. Coming up in their stead, though with an altogether different profile, were the private theatres. Third, Pillars of Society made its entry in the centre (Berlin), then dispersed into the periphery. A Doll’s House , by contrast, moves around from stage to stage in the German-speaking areas without any specific direction. The reason for this should be clear: Ibsen achieved his international breakthrough at the end of the 1880s, A Doll’s House being this breakthrough’s main engine, so to speak. But Ibsen’s growing success with this play was of an entirely different nature and shape than his success with Pillars of Society . Spatially, it was a disconnected breakthrough, a sum, an accumulative effect of events taking place in many different locations in many countries. The German performances of A Doll’s House in themselves do not add up to a breakthrough. 144 I here restrict myself to the initial phase of the independent theatre movement. For the sake of correctness, I should mention that one of the ‘second generation’ independent theatres in Germany, the Freie Volksbühne Hamburg-Altona, presented A Doll‘s House in Hamburg on 13 September 1896, and that the Independent Theatre Society presented a performance of the play at the Globe Theatre in London on 10 May 1897 (featuring Janet Achurch as Nora). 104 Chapter 4: Ibsen’s real breakthrough The event numbers associated with the play display an increasing tendency, though not due to any central force. But what then accounts for the growing success of A Doll’s House when it comes to the German stage? In order to try to answer this question, I want to pick up again on the Ghosts productions of the independent theatre movement and reconsider the huge impact they have had in theatre history by way of Bourdieu, for symbolic capital seems to have been a key to their success. The fact that the producers at the pole of pure art, as indicated in Bourdieu’s model, tend to define their own criteria for the production and evaluation of their products, does by no means imply a field less competitive than the opposing pole of large-scale production. The field of restricted production is a site of competition for cultural consecration, Bourdieu says. For even though commercial interests and profits are explicitly and emphatically disavowed, there is still a form of economic rationality in that producers of pure art aim at the “accumulation of symbolic capital” (Bourdieu 1993, 75). Yet again directing our attention at the Freie Bühne, several factors could explain why Brahm and his society fellows were able to acquire a substantial amount of symbolic capital by virtue of their performance of Ghosts . The cast was considered first-rate (Marie von Bülow-Schanzer, Emmerich Robert, Arthur Kraußneck, Theodor Lobe, Agnes Sorma). The venue, the Lessingtheater, was indeed one of the main playhouses in Berlin. Leading intellectuals and prominent critics with considerable (symbolic) power were present in the auditorium. And, most importantly, the principles of exclusion (the public at large, commercial considerations) and evasion (the Prussian board of censors’ ban) gave the event an esoteric character, also among the criteria of restricted production mentioned by Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1993, 120). In the competition for cultural consecration, the Freie Bühne producers were extremely well equipped and armed. The German performances of A Doll’s House , on the other hand, do not position themselves at the pole of restricted production. On the contrary, they seem to pick up the thread let go by Pillars of Society in 1880. They thus constitute a resumption and continuation of what I would call the Pillars trajectory. Pillars of Society was first and foremost a commercial success, put on by theatre managers in order to draw large audiences and secure box-office income. The German stages producing A Doll’s House in the second half of the 1880s were not associated with the independent theatre movement, nor with naturalism. We may assume that they were just as preoccupied with the bottom line and net income as any other regular theatre enterprise at the time was inclined to be. Yet that does not mean that Pillars of Society and A Doll’s House alike belong at the pole of large-scale production. For one, even though the commercial character of Ibsen’s initial success with Pillars of Society might tempt us to consider otherwise, 4.2 German Ibsen events 1885—1889: A Doll’s House and the Pillars trajectory 105 the notion of the pole of large-scale production is not entirely applicable. The theatre field was not polarized in the same way at the end of the 1870s as it was a decade later. Bourdieu defines the pole of large-scale production in opposition to the pole of pure production; the latter pole, however, was not yet developed at the time of Ibsen’s initial success with Pillars of Society . Consequently, we should think twice about applying the former notion retrospectively. Moreover, in considering the second half of the 1880s, we need to keep in mind that the field of cultural production in general and the subfield of theatre production in particular should be looked at as a dynamic field in which all positions, whether occupied by individuals, works of art, or events, stand in a relationship of interdependency with each other. Brahm and his production team were most certainly not entirely unaffected by occurrences at the pole of large-scale production. On the other hand, there is no reason to assume that every producer at the pole of large-scale production, eager to meet the expectations of the wider audiences whether because of economical necessity or personal inclination, was blind to what went on at the pole of restricted production. By 1889, the total picture is very complex, and Ibsen’s plays are attached to several positions in the field of cultural production. These positions are entangled in subtle ways both locally and translocally as suggested by the following examples. On 4 March 1889, a play by Ibsen ( Lady from the Sea ) was presented for the first time at Berlin’s leading playhouse, the Königliches Schauspielhaus Berlin. Brahm, at the moment still in his capacity as a theatre critic, interpreted the event as a kind of acid test. One sensed that not only was a specific play but a poetic principle at issue; one sensed that here, in the auditorium [of the Schauspielhaus], a judgment would be pronounced regarding not only the theatrical fate of Lady from the Sea but also Ibsen’s validity for the contemporary German stage. 145 Ibsen was present in the auditorium at the opening night, as he had been also during the dress rehearsal (cf. HIS 14k, 652-653). But he had come from Munich to attend more than just this performance, and in the course of the following week he saw The Wild Duck presented at the Residenztheater and the Lessingtheater’s production of A Doll’s House . 146 The German, Danish, and Norwegian 145 “Man empfand, daß hier nicht nur ein einzelnes Stück in Frage stand, sondern ein poetisches Prinzip, man empfand, daß nicht nur über das Theaterschicksal der ‘Frau vom Meere’, sondern auch über die Geltung Ibsens für die deutsche Bühne der Gegenwart in diesem Saale die Entscheidung fallen könne.ˮ Otto Brahm, “Ibsen im Berliner Hoftheaterˮ, Frankfurter Zeitung , 8 March 1889. 146 These were both revivals. The Wild Duck premiered at the Residenztheater on 4 March 1888 and A Doll’s House at the Lessingtheater on 25 November 1888. 106 Chapter 4: Ibsen’s real breakthrough press turned the occasion into a media event which the newspapers referred to as the Ibsen Week. As such, the festival-like week also comprised banquets given in Ibsen’s honour, bookstores with desks and shelves dominated by Ibsen editions, and parodies of Ibsen’s works in print and on stage. 147 If we read the press clippings and focus our attention not so much on what the critics say about the performances as on how Ibsen’s presence is mediated and appraised, the playwright turns into a feted figure, his days in the German metropolis a weeklong series of triumphs. Hence, when some months later the Freie Bühne Society scheduled their initial programme, Brahm chose an indeed still controversial play to inaugurate their season, a play whose author, however, was celebrated in wide circles (with Brahm himself as a leading celebrant). Ibsen was embraced by distinctly bourgeois theatres (both the Königliches Schauspielhaus and the Residenztheater fall into that category) and, at the same time, by companies carrying out anti-bourgeois, anti-establishment theatre experiments. Far beyond the jurisdiction of German bodies of censorship, in the United States, the initial stage history of Ghosts illustrates the intricacies of commercial and non-commercial considerations as well as the transnational entanglements of the play. As is well-known, the world premiere of Ghosts was a Dano-Norwegian performance in Chicago in May 1882. Five years later, as part of his international tour, the Viennese actor Friedrich Mitterwurzer presented Ghosts in several major Midwestern cities, with posters billing the play as “Forbidden in Germany” (Marker and Marker 1989, 92). 148 Thus, in the American Midwest, the (North) German ban, the circumstance that forced Brahm and his fellows to present the play outside the commercial system of regular theatre enterprise, transforms into a strategic means to make the play work inside the commercial system, the advertising logic obviously being to arouse the local public’s curiosity by invoking the play’s notoriety in Central Europe. As the number of German events associated with A Doll’s House rises at the end of the 1880s, so does the number of global performances of the play - in fact, its exponential increase globally is even more remarkable. This too, as will be accounted for below, influences and boosts the play’s standing in the repertoires of the German stages. Within the German context, the general tendency is that 147 Ove Rode, “Ibsen-Ugen i Berlin”, Politiken , 17 and 18 March 1889; HIS 14k, 654. 148 J.B. Halvorsen’s assertion that Mitterwurzer presented the play in an Anglo-American translation with the title Phantoms, or The Sins of his Father is in all likelihood a misconception (FU 6, xxxi; cf. also HIS 14k, 57). Local sources explicitly state that his performance was given in German, cf. Illinois Staats-Zeitung , 16 May 1887 and The Daily Inter Ocean , 22 May 1887; cf. also one of Clemens Petersen’s letters to Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (Anker 1953, 280-281) - Petersen attended the performance in Chicago. 4.3 Conclusion 107 the theatres presenting A Doll’s House pursue objectives different from the Freie Bühne’s, even as they absorb influence from trends within the theatre field as a whole, including the experiments advanced by people like Antoine and Brahm. Hence, at this stage, A Doll’s House represents a continuation and a resumption of the Pillars trajectory, but adapted to an entirely new context. Leaning towards the pole of large-scale production, commercial considerations are decisive, but putting on any play by Ibsen at the end of the 1880s is a different matter than a decade earlier due to the changes in his status as a dramatist and, on the other hand, field-specific developments in the world of theatre. 4.3 Conclusion Gradually, Ibsen regained momentum towards the end of the 1880s. The frequency graph forms a new peak in 1889, only this time the peak is caused by events associated with multiple plays by Ibsen and not just a single play as in 1878. From 1885 onwards, the German curve is continuous up until this very day, which implies that from then on Ibsen started to have a lasting impact on the German stage. IbsenStage shows that the German performances were part of a growing wave of international Ibsen performances. Within the bigger picture, 1889 stands out as the year of Ibsen’s international breakthrough. Ibsen’s status as a playwright on the German stage went through a significant change in the latter half of the 1880s. The first section of this chapter investigated how one particular play, Ghosts , was embraced by exponents of the emerging independent theatre movement. In scholarship, the 1887 performance at the Residenztheater and the 1889 performance presented by the Freie Bühne in Berlin are considered particularly significant. To the independent theatre movement, Ibsen’s play became a means to serve specific purposes. Driven by the will to reform, anti-commercial spirit, and a striving for autonomy on behalf of the performing arts, the vanguards of the movement set out to develop new acting styles, clear the way for new kinds of plays, and reinforce the socio-critical function of the arts. I proposed to view the movement’s appropriation of Ghosts in light of Bourdieu’s account of the field of cultural production, which in the 1880s tended to organize itself according to the opposition between two poles: the pole of pure production and the pole of large-scale production. Operating in compliance with principles associated with the pole of pure production, the Freie Bühne society accommodated their activities to accumulate symbolic capital (as opposed to economic capital). Three points are important to stress in this connection. First, Ibsen events spread out over the entire spectrum. In March 1889, the playwright was widely 108 Chapter 4: Ibsen’s real breakthrough celebrated in Berlin during the so-called ‘Ibsen Week’, whose events included the first performance of The Lady from the Sea at Berlin’s leading playhouse, the Königliches Schauspielhaus. Brahm and his accomplices were not unaffected by these events, as they just a few months later presented Ghosts as the Freie Bühne’s inaugural performance in the form of a closed, members-only event. Second, the issue of censorship constitutes a central backdrop for the independent theatre movement. Censorship had a decisive impact on the early phase of the German stage history of Ghosts too, but only within the jurisdiction area of the Prussian board of censors. Beyond this area, the play was performed in public without any intervention from the authorities, also at commercial theatres. Third, the conventional narrative according to which Ibsen achieved his international breakthrough following the seminal Ghosts productions staged by three of the independent theatre movement’s leading lights - Antoine in Paris, Brahm in Berlin, and Grein in London - has concealed the significance of the rapidly growing stage success of A Doll’s House . The chapter’s second section examined German performances of A Doll’s House in view of Ibsen’s success with Pillars of Society a decade earlier. Adapted to a new context, A Doll’s House picked up the thread let go by Pillars of Society in 1880. The latter play was first and foremost a commercial success. The German stages producing A Doll’s House in the second half of the 1880s were associated with neither the independent theatre movement nor naturalism. The play was not embraced by the avant-garde like Ghosts , but incorporated into the repertoire of theatres operating within the confines of mainstream culture. In face of the evidence contained in IbsenStage, it becomes clear that events associated with Ghosts form a tiny segment of the records, whereas the event numbers of A Doll’s House begin to increase exponentially, in and outside the German Empire, linked to a wide range of theatres in major cities as well as in the provinces. 4.3 Conclusion 109 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist In 1890, Ibsen was in the process of becoming a world dramatist. From now on, his works found international distribution the like of which Ibsen had never experienced before. His plays were constantly introduced into new markets. In September 1889, Ibsen was presented for the first time at a venue outside the Western hemisphere as the company of Janet Achurch and Charles Charrington performed A Doll’s House in Melbourne, Australia, as part of their world tour which comprised performances in Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon (Colombo), Batavia ( Jakarta), India (Kolkata), Egypt (Cairo), and the United States. But, traveling within the colonial system of the British Empire, this production does not as much mark Ibsen’s entrance into the non-Western world as the beginning of something else: the distribution of Ibsen through the colonial expansion of the Western world. For all intents and purposes, Ibsen remained a Western - first and foremost a European - dramatist throughout the 1890s. Nonetheless, when looking into the last decade of Ibsen’s writing career, some of the same principles and concepts known from the emerging field of world literature studies are noticeable. For one, there is the complete reliance on translation, with translation acting as the gateway to world literature. As Fritz Paul has pointed out, only by means of translations could Ibsen enter international literature and become one of the most significant modern dramatists. […] Ibsen is the singular, indeed paradoxical case of a monolingual author working in a language understood by only a few million people in Norway and Denmark, who came to world-wide success exclusively through translation, so that many more people know him through translations than through the original works. (Paul 1997, 61) To deal with this matter strategically, Ibsen, his publishers and theatre agents developed a set of measures, the keywords of which were: coordinated efforts, parallel processes, and simultaneous release. In step with his growing fame as an author, every time a new drama by Ibsen was imminent his editors at the Gyldendal publishing house in Copenhagen, instructed by the dramatist himself, took great pains in supplying trusted translators with proof sheets parallel to the printing process. Parallel to that again, negotiations were carried out with publishers and theatre agencies to secure the best possible agreements in regard to royalties and distribution as both book and performance text. These measures were taken for the purpose of releasing Ibsen’s new drama simultaneously in 110 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist many language editions. This way, Ibsen secured income, control of the copyright situation, and the synergetic effect of targeting audiences in many places at the same time. 149 Not least in terms of media coverage, the effects were considerable. What is more, Ibsen had achieved a stage in his career in which he in many ways foreshadowed today’s so-called ‘global authors’ addressing a “world-wide audience […] by writing texts calculated to be translated” (Puchner 2013, 29). According to Pascale Casanova, translation is “a process of establishing [literary] value”, a weapon “in the struggle by and for literary capital” (Casanova 2004, 23). She furthermore considers the translation of dominated authors as an act of consecration that gives them access to literary visibility and existence. Writers from languages that are not recognized (or are recognized only to a small degree) as literary are not immediately eligible for consecration. The condition of their works’ being received into the literary world is translation into a major literary language. (Casanova 2004, 135) Ibsen put particular emphasis on the German and English editions of his works. As far as simultaneous release was concerned, the coordination of the Dano-Norwegian, German, and English editions was Ibsen’s prime concern (cf. HIS 9k, 383). Ibsen’s 1890s dramas were issued by Gyldendal in Copenhagen and Kristiania, by S. Fischer in Berlin, and by W. Heinemann in London on the same day or only days apart. 150 It is a well-known fact that Ibsen wanted the book editions of his dramas to precede the theatre performances. The privilege of receiving proof sheets was restricted to a very limited circle of publishers and translators - the theatres had to wait. Yet from 1888 onwards, as uncovered by Giuliano d’Amico, every time Ibsen had a new play coming up, he signed contracts with the Felix Bloch Erben theatrical agency either parallel to the book printing process or immediately after. 151 The agency took care of the process of marketing and distributing the 149 Throughout all of his career, Ibsen had to cope with the fact that his original works were without copyright protection. Denmark did not join the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works until 1903 (legally speaking, Ibsen was a Danish author as his works were published in Copenhagen). But Ibsen more or less outmanoeuvred unauthorized translators by gaining control of the market with the help of prominent publishers. 150 As for the German edition, John Gabriel Borkman marks an exception. Demonstrating his dissatisfaction with S. Fischer’s contractual terms, Ibsen chose the publishing house of Albert Langen in Munich for this drama. The German edition of John Gabriel Borkman , in Sigurd Ibsen’s translation, appeared in Munich, Leipzig, and Paris in December 1896 (HIS 10k, 24). 151 According to d’Amico, contracts were signed regarding Hedda Gabler on 22 December 1890 (simultaneously with the book publication), The Master Builder on 5 December 1892 (a week before the book appeared), Little Eyolf on 27 November 1894 (two weeks before the book appeared), John Gabriel Borkman on 20 December 1896 (a few days after the 5.1 Ibsen’s 1890s plays 111 performance texts to German theatres, with the exception of the Hoftheater in Munich and the Burgtheater in Vienna, which negotiated directly with Ibsen. After the publication in book form, the German premieres of Ibsen’s 1890s plays followed within the matter of a month, in four out of five cases, the German opening nights were world premieres. 152 The present chapter falls in six parts. In the first section I propose to view the frequency of German events in the 1890s in the light of the group of dramas that Ibsen wrote during the last decade of his writing career: Hedda Gabler , The Master Builder , Little Eyolf , John Gabriel Borkman , and When We Dead Awaken . Then follows a section presenting an analysis of the network of stage artists involved in producing Ibsen in the period 1885-1899. This section points back at and must be read in relation to the analysis of the network of the initial years (1876-1881) presented in chapter 3 (cf. 3.1). By far, no play by Ibsen was performed as much during the 1890s as A Doll’s House . The third section examines the rapidly growing stage success of this particular play in view of three interrelated systems, the star system, the system of solo guest performances, and the touring system. Then follow two sections that further develop issues raised in chapter 4 (cf. 4.1). In historical accounts, the independent theatre movement’s appropriation of Ghosts is often seen as the starting point of a process which eventually instituted Ibsen as the father of modern drama. In the fourth section I will investigate Ibsen’s role and function within the movement of self-proclaimed modernists in Berlin, Vienna, and Munich. The fifth section investigates the significance of a movement that grew out of the independent theatre movement, the so-called ‘Volksbühnen’. Returning to considerations introduced above, the chapter closes by inspecting the impact of German as source language in relay translations. As will be evident, the chapter as a whole will alternate between distant vision and close-up analysis. 5.1 Ibsen’s 1890s plays The 1889 peak is, as noted above, the starting point of a period of increase in number of events which reaches its peak around 1910 (cf. figure 1.1). The increase, though, is not marked by a steady upward tendency, but by a characbook edition), When We Dead Awaken on 5 January 1900 (two weeks after the book edition). D’Amico 2016, 103-105. 152 Hedda Gabler at the Residenztheater München on 31 January 1891, The Master Builder at the Lessingtheater Berlin on 19 January 1893, Little Eyolf at the Deutsches Theater Berlin on 12 January 1895, and When We Dead Awaken at the Hoftheater Stuttgart on 26 January 1900. 112 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist teristic fluctuation between increase and relative decrease which on the surface seems to correlate with major events of the last decade of Ibsen’s writing career. Figure 5.1: German Ibsen events 1890-1901. The graph in figure 5.1 above displays the annual distribution of German events throughout the 1890s. Numbered consecutively in the chart, the line forms five peaks and, in between, correlating troughs. Just above the time axis, I have added five acronyms, referring to Ibsen’s five last plays, positioned according to their publication dates: Hedda Gabler in December 1890, The Master Builder in December 1892, Little Eyolf in December 1894, John Gabriel Borkman in December 1896, and When We Dead Awaken in December 1899. On the surface of it, there is a striking logic behind this pattern: The launching of a new play by Ibsen resulted in an immediate increase in the volume of performance events. Mostly reaching the summit only after less than a year, however, the event numbers start to decrease as if pending the publication of the next play. The troughs, then, seem to testify to well known market logic: no new play, less attention, less performances. In the light of the considerable public attention catalyzed by the launching of a new play by Ibsen, it is small wonder to spot a reflection of this in the events statistics. Calculating on the numbers constituting the graph in figure 5.1 above, the figures increase with 14 % from 1890 to 1891, with a remarkable 213 % from 1892 to 1893, with 20 % from 1894 to 1895, with 18 % from 1896 to 1897, and with 172 % from 1899 to 1900. The fluctuation pattern - one year up, the next down - is consistent save for 1898, a break in the pattern which, however, only proves the logic. Ever since Pillars of Society , Ibsen had developed a habit of launching a new play every second year. But after John Gabriel Borkman three years passed until his last play, When We Dead Awaken , was published. The cause for 5.2 The network of German stage artists producing Ibsen 1885—1899 113 this, well accounted for by Ibsen’s biographers, was that the celebrations of his seventieth birthday in March 1898 took too much of his attention. Hence, that year saw no new play by Ibsen, but his birthday, an international media event of major proportions on its own terms, made its mark on the event statistics, with a marked 103 % increase from 1897 to 1898. There seems to be a market logic at work here that supports the argument about the dominance of commercial considerations and conflicts with the traditional view of the independent theatre companies as the leading party of the ongoing battle over Ibsen. Every launching of a new Ibsen play prompted competition. It was important to be among the first stages to present it as there was a demand among the theatre-going public to be met. After a while, once the market was saturated, the attention of the theatre managers as well as the public was pulled away from Ibsen. Below the surface, however, the picture is more complex. By closer scrutiny of the events data, a difference emerges between the early and the late 1890s. Measured in event numbers, When We Dead Awaken is the dominant play of the calendar year 1900 (thirty-nine out of 106 events). Likewise, John Gabriel Borkman is the most dominant play of the calendar year 1897 (fourteen out of thirty-nine events). In 1895, by contrast, the by far most dominant play of the decade as a whole, A Doll’s House , was performed almost as much as Little Eyolf (ten versus twelve events, respectively). Similarly, in 1893, only five events of The Master Builder are recorded, whereas the number of A Doll’s House events amounts to thirty-three. In 1891, only three events of Hedda Gabler are recorded versus twelve A Doll’s House events; consequently, Hedda Gabler plays only a minor part in the formation of peak 1 in figure 5.1 above, and the same goes for The Master Builder ’s part in peak 2. The relative share of John Gabriel Borkman in peak 4, however, is substantial, as is the share of When We Dead Awaken in peak 5. Within the larger frame, there are other forces at work that relativize the role and function of the 1890s plays. 5.2 The network of German stage artists producing Ibsen 1885—1899 Over the years 1876-1899, IbsenStage lists 609 events in German language, featuring 2,411 contributors. The three years of ‘silence’ after the initial failure of A Doll’s House form a divide between the ‘prologue’ and the rest of Ibsen’s German stage history. This section undertakes to analyze the social body of individuals involved in producing Ibsen over the years from 1885 until the turn of the century. Splitting the contributors dataset into two parts, the subset of the initial pe- 114 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist riod (1876-1881) counts 531 distinct contributors distributed across ninety-four events (cf. 3.1), whereas the subset of the later period (1885-1899) encompasses 2,012 distinct contributors distributed across 514 events. The body of German contributors 1885-1899 comprises 1,916 actors, 139 directors, eight designers, sixteen translators, four adapters, six composers, and one playwright. 153 For the purpose of focusing on the stage artists directly involved in the rehearsal process-- actors, directors, and designers - I will, once again, ‘trim down’ the dataset by removing translators, adapters, composers, and Ibsen himself. The remaining dataset counts 1,988 individuals. The network graph below (fig. 5.2) displays the links that exist between the artists and the events they were engaged in. Figure 5.2: Stage artists linked by German events 1885-1899 153 There are, again, some contributors who are associated with more than one function. Note also, as will be accounted for below, that there are overlaps between the two subsets. 5.3 A Doll’s House and the star system 115 The overall shape of the network changes markedly from figure 3.3 (cf. chapter 3) to figure 5.2. The two figures show how the German Ibsen network develops from a low degree of connectedness to a distinctly higher degree of connectedness. In figure 5.2, the portion of unconnected event clusters is small, and the network is dominated by a relatively large cloud of clusters, whereas the early network had no cloud. The shape of the network visualized in figure 3.3 was due to the fact that the group of artists involved in more than one event was relatively small. The graph in figure 5.2, on the other hand, makes clear that the later network consists of stage artists gradually taking stronger ownership of Ibsen’s plays. The number of artists constantly appearing in new roles in new Ibsen plays increased. The fact that there are few artists in the early network involved in more than one or two events implies that the level of overlap between the two networks must be low. Placing the contributors sets of the two networks side by side and charting existing overlaps reveals that 108 out of altogether 524 contributors in the early network re-emerge in the later network. This means that the great majority of the early network contributors, 416 (79 %), vanish from the annals of Ibsen’s stage history. The 108 contributors from the early network add up to only 5 % of the contributors of the later network. Despite the relative shortness of the time gap between the two periods, there are strong contours of a generational shift. As Ibsen’s plays gained momentum again in the second half of the 1880s, it was with a new generation of stage artists. 5.3 A Doll’s House and the star system Altogether 498 events are recorded on the German stage during the 1890s, including the calendar year 1900. These events distribute according to twenty different plays by Ibsen as seen in table 5.3. Play No. of events 1890-1900 A Doll’s House 169 Pillars of Society 42 When We Dead Awaken 39 Ghosts 37 An Enemy of the People 34 Rosmersholm 28 John Gabriel Borkman 24 116 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist The Wild Duck 24 Hedda Gabler 20 Little Eyolf 14 The Lady from the Sea 14 The Vikings at Helgeland 12 The Master Builder 10 The Pretenders 10 The Feast at Solhoug 6 Emperor and Galilean 4 The League of Youth 4 Comedy of Love 4 Brand 2 The Burial Mound 1 Sum 498 Table 5.3: German Ibsen events according to play 1890-1900. There is a great variety of plays circulating during the period. Apart from Catiline and Peer Gynt , all plays by Ibsen available in German translation had been presented on stage. But as 34 %, i.e. more than every third of the events in the table above, are performances of A Doll’s House , the situation is slightly reminiscent of the end of the 1870s when Pillars of Society dominated the picture almost entirely. A Doll’s House by now being the all-dominating force, the play’s trajectory during the 1890s needs to be analysed in order to get a clearer sense of the background of the graph in figure 5.1. On a general level, the 1890s performances of A Doll’s House illustrate and support the argument above about diversification. First of all, geographically, German performances of the play cover vast distances. It was presented on stage across four empires of mainland Europe, namely the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires, and also toured the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece. Overseas, in the United States, Agnes Sorma performed the play in New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, St Louis, and Cincinnati. Second, all kinds of theatre enterprises are represented. The majority, approximately half of the events, took place at municipal theatres in major as well as minor cities. Some thirty court theatres - and approximately the same number of private theatres - produced the play. To a certain extent, A Doll’s 5.3 A Doll’s House and the star system 117 House was also featured in the repertoire of typical summer season theatres. Last but not least, A Doll’s House gained a foothold within the star system and-- connected to that - became a part of the touring circuit system operating both on a regional, national, and international level. As a field of practice deeply rooted in theatre history, the touring system has always been liable to technological and mediological changes. In modern times, the development of new modes of transport like the steamship, railroads, eventually roads for motorized vehicles and aviation, has effected great changes in the touring system - and, needless to say, made touring a lot easier. In step with developments in the area of media and communication, theatre artists could gain fame and turn into stars. This had economic consequences, particularly for the few lucky artists (their salaries soared), but also structural consequences for the theatre field as a whole. Marvin Carlson labels the period from 1830 to 1870 in the history of the German stage ‘the Virtuoso Period’. In his account, this period “provides a generally depressing picture”, particularly on the regional level. Most theatres, he claims, “had no real option but to give way to popular taste”. The smaller provincial houses soon realized that they could make more profit by importing a well-known guest artist to play with even a mediocre company than by maintaining an established ensemble with no outstanding name in it. A fierce competition began for the popular actors, reinforced the personality cults, and encouraged the decline of many of the quite good regional companies which had developed throughout Germany in the early part of the century. […] Guest appearances were brief, actors were expected to perform certain popular parts, and most leading actors would perform perhaps only three roles regularly. Even these few soon became highly mannered virtuoso interpretations, since they would be given with little or no rehearsal time and with a supporting local cast as unfamiliar to the star as it was inferior to him. (Carlson 1972, 91-92) I would like to add three comments to Carlson’s account. First of all, note that virtuosity was precisely one of the ‘evils’ that companies like the Hoftheater Meiningen and, later on, the Freie Bühne wanted to do away with, the general idea being that mannered virtuosity and truthful art are mutually exclusive and that all parts and all cast members are equally important when it comes to produce genuine performing arts. Second, although contested by the advocates of realism and naturalism, virtuosity and the star system did not disappear, far from it, it lingered on as a structural feature of the theatre field throughout the period under scrutiny here, i.e. up until 1918. Third, Carlson’s analysis renders only the negative side of the story. From the perspective of the stars themselves, things inevitably looked entirely different. The stars undeniably assumed powerful positions. Not only did they profit from their star status economically, they also exerted power and profited from 118 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist their symbolic capital in artistic and aesthetic matters. Performance schedules were reorganized on account of the stars. The leading artists of the local company had to surrender the leading parts to the stars. The supporting cast had to tune in their performances to the acting style of the guesting artist. Yet this was no one-way street, and the visiting stars and the local theatre artists influenced each other mutually. The stars’ performances of leading parts given repeatedly changed as a function of time and place: Duse’s Nora was not one and the same, not even over consecutive nights at the same venue. On the German stage, the star was more often than not a stage artist appearing as a solo guest performer. The star system was related to the system of solo guest performances. The latter system, however, was not just restricted for the biggest stars. Paul S. Ulrich differentiates between three main types: ‘virtuoso guest performances’ (“Virtuosengastspiele”), ‘stand-in guest performances’ (“Austauschgastspiele”), and ‘guest performances for recruitment’ (“Gastspiele auf Einstellung”) (Ulrich 2015, 202-205). In stand-in performances a guest would typically take over a part because the local artist initially cast in the role was indisposed. In performances for recruitment purposes, the system functioned as a means to appraise an artist’s merits. If met with satisfaction, the artist was subsequently offered a contract. It follows from this, also, that artists making guest performances not only appeared in leading parts. The spectrum of roles was wide. Going through the dataset of German events 1876-1918, there are instances of solo guest performances in altogether 320 events. The group of artists consists of 112 individuals playing forty-two different parts in sixteen plays by Ibsen. The parts divide evenly between female and male parts, twenty-one each. 154 But looking at the gender of the artists, the distribution tips in favour of the women, sixty-seven female, forty-five male artists. There is a specific reason for this: the overrepresentation of the Nora part. 138 performances (43 % of 320) feature a guest artist appearing as Nora. Isolating these performances, we find a selection of twenty-six actresses, that is approximately one quarter of the total group of 112 artists, making solo guest performances as Nora (number of events in brackets). 155 154 The number of solo guest performances according to roles are as follow: Nora 138, Osvald 21, Hedda 18, Rebecca 17, Hilde Wangel 13, Torvald 12, Mrs Alving 11, Karsten Bernick 10, Dr Stockmann 7, Halvard Solness 7, Hjalmar Ekdal 6, Irene 6, John Gabriel Borkman 5, Regine 5, Hedvig 4, Johannes Rosmer 4, Ellida 3, Peer Gynt 3, Brand 2, Gina Ekdal 2, Gregers Werle 2, Lona Hessel 2, Rita Allmers 2, Alfred Allmers 1, Aline Solness 1, Arnold Rubek 1, Asta Allmers 1, Aune 1, Brack 1, Brand’s mother 1, Dr Rank 1, Frida Foldal 1, Gudmund Alfson 1, Gunhild Borkman 1, Hjördis 1, Juliane Tesman 1, Kroll 1, Lyngstrand 1, Maja Rubek 1, Mrs Linde 1, Peter Mortensgaard 1, Ulrik Brendel 1, Örnulf 1. Source: IbsenStage, accessed 23 March 2018. 155 Note that these numbers only refer to solo guest performances, other kinds of performances are excluded. Source: IbsenStage, accessed 23 March 2018. 5.3 A Doll’s House and the star system 119 • Agnes Sorma (38) • Auguste Flössel (2) • Thessa Klinkhammer (20) • Ida Wüst (2) • Auguste Prasch-Grevenberg (16) • Rosa Albach-Retty (1) • Lilli Petri (13) • Clara Drucker (1) • Irene Triesch (10) • Friederike Gossmann (1) • Else Bassermann (7) • Frida Schöttle (1) • Marie Conrad-Ramlo (4) • Alma Schwarz-Sauermann (1) • Maria Reisenhofer (3) • Louise Grans (1) • Anna Glenk-Keppler (3) • Hedwig Gasny (1) • Hedwig Niemann-Raabe (3) • Elisabeth Hruby (1) • Nina Sandow (2) • Jenny Rauch (1) • Lucy Lindner-Orban (2) • Josefa Stein (1) • Adele Hartwig (2) • Paula Stahl (1) In the course of the 1890s, actresses turning into divas by way of the Nora part came more and more to the fore. The character was not only a career building part which could turn actresses into stars, the play and its heroine soon became icons of the women’s movement and developed into a site of contestation over artistic - as well as domestic and social - matters. A Doll’s House , as documented by Julie Holledge et al., provided a means for actresses and actress-managers to challenge the male dominance of the theatre industry (2016, 64). A brief glance at the careers of the most prominent German Noras is illuminating in many regards. First of all, a distinction needs to be drawn between the first generation of German Noras, above all represented by Niemann-Raabe who failed at introducing Ibsen to the star system, and the following generation that succeeded in this regard: first and foremost Agnes Sorma, Auguste Prasch-Grevenberg, Thessa Klinkhammer, and Lilli Petri. There is only one instance of an actress appearing as Nora during the initial years who reappear in the same role as part of the network of the later period (Marie Conrad-Ramlo). 156 Interestingly, as her younger colleague at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin Sorma substituted 156 Marie Conrad-Ramlo is listed in five Ibsen events under her maiden name Marie Ramlo and twenty Ibsen events as Marie Conrad-Ramlo after marrying Michael Georg Conrad in 1887. She appeared as Nora in twelve events, three during the initial years and nine during the period 1886-1895. Cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 432514 120 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist Niemann-Raabe in several of her roles as the latter left the ensemble in 1887 (Krause 1969, 42-43). So, the appropriation and the significance of the Nora part changed substantially as it was passed from the hands of Niemann-Raabe to those of Sorma. Secondly, to the second generation of German Noras, the part was key in gaining access to three interrelated systems, the star system, the system of solo guest performances, and the touring system. Studying the careers of Sorma, Prasch-Grevenberg, Klinkhammer, and Petri displays the dominance of Ibsen’s most famous female protagonist. Table 5.4 below shows how much greater the frequency of their Nora performances is in relation to performances of other roles. Furthermore, the table makes clear that the great majority of their Nora appearances are solo guest performances. 157 Actress Total no. of events Nora performances Subtotal no. of events Solo guest Touring ensemble Resident ensemble Agnes Sorma 62 55 38 14 3 Auguste Prasch-Grevenberg 30 23 16 6 1 Thessa Klinkhammer 25 20 20 0 0 Lilli Petri 19 17 13 0 4 Table 5.4: Nora performances of Sorma, Prasch-Grevenberg, Klinkhammer, and Petri. The three columns to the right specify the distribution of Nora performances according to three categories. Solo guest performers and touring companies both operate within the touring circuit. In some cases, solo artists appeared as guests in touring companies or put together their own touring companies. For the better part of the 1890s, Sorma made solo guest performances on leave from a resident theatre company (the Berliner Theater 1890-1894, the Deutsches Theater 1894-1898). After leaving the Deutsches Theater to pursue a career as an (Marie Ramlo) and https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 428646 (Marie Conrad-Ramlo), accessed 16 May 2017. 157 Data retrieved from the following contributor pages: https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 427367 (Sorma), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 437638 (Prasch-Grevenberg), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 439040 (Klinkhammer), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 432284 (Petri), accessed 3 January 2018. 5.3 A Doll’s House and the star system 121 independent artist, she became actress-manager of her own company embarking on a major European tour through the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Romania, and Austria-Hungary in the autumn season of 1900. 158 During summer breaks Prasch-Grevenberg appeared as the leading artist of the Süddeutsches Hoftheater-Ensemble directed by her husband, Aloys Prasch, touring the cities of Wiesbaden and Baden-Baden in the summer seasons of 1887, 1888, 1889, and 1894. 159 In 1893, Klinkhammer toured the cities of Rotterdam, Brussels, Amsterdam, and a number of smaller cities of the Rhine Province, the westernmost part of the German Empire, giving solo guest performances as Nora in a production of A Doll’s House presented by a touring company directed by Wilhelm Kupfer. During the summer season of 1893, she made additional solo guest appearances as Nora for a touring company under Julius Fiala’s direction touring the cities of Darmstadt and Dresden. Yet most startling is the imbalance between solo guest performances and resident ensemble performances. The most prominent German Noras prioritized solo guest performances at the expense of ensemble acting within the framework of resident companies. Thus, touring - and particularly the system of solo guest performances which was an integral part of the touring system-- became major components in the growing success of A Doll’s House on the German stage. The majority of the twenty-six German Noras listed above were stars only in a limited sense. Sorma’s Nora performances deserve closer scrutiny as they were indisputably a part of the star system. Sorma stands out because she toured - solo or at the head of her touring company - on a regional, national as well as international level. 160 Her star status gave her competitive advantages. Krause indicates that Sorma was the best paid stage artist in Berlin already during her last season at the Deutsches Theater, but that the prospect of even greater financial gain was part of her motivation to go independent (Krause 1969, 57). More importantly, as a star she challenged the authority of the theatre manager and the stage director by reversing the usual power structure in the field. During her solo tours, the repertoire choice was up to Sorma, not the management of the local theatres. At times they had to rehearse a play for the first time solely for 158 The company presented A Doll’s House in eleven cities during the tour, cf. the organisation page for the Agnes Sorma Ensemble: https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 33210, accessed 18 May 2017. 159 Cf. the organisation page for the Süddeutsches Hoftheater-Ensemble: https: / / ibsenstage. hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 33144, accessed 18 May 2017. 160 Her touring activities covered twelve nations (number of events in brackets): the German Empire (32), the United States (6), Italy (5), Austria-Hungary (2), the Netherlands (1), France (1), Belgium (1), Switzerland (1), Greece (1), Turkey (1), Romania (1), Russia (1), cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 427367, accessed 30 November 2016. 122 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist the purpose of her visit. As a rule, the entire rehearsal process took place without Sorma’s attendance. Even so, at the evening of the performance, she was the indisputable pivot of the show and the main attraction for everyone. A local stage director was always appointed to take charge of the rehearsal process - mostly s/ he was listed on the playbill as director too - but in general this person was actually subordinate to the visiting star. According to Inge Richter-Haaser, Albert Bassermann, the most prominent male counterpart of Sorma, 161 developed a procedure of sending copies of his personal playscripts containing detailed information about movements and positions (of all the characters), cuts, changes of scenery, requisites, to the stages he was scheduled to visit. Clearly, these scripts were indicative rather than prescriptive as the mise-en-scène always had to be adjusted to local circumstances, but Richter-Haase suggests that the local theatres made extensive use of them and that Bassermann was likely to expect them to do so (Richter-Haaser 1964, 47). Paul Linsemann claims that Sorma constituted a kind of ‘shadow cabinet’ or ‘extra management’ (“Nebenregierung”) during her final years at the Deutsches Theater (Linsemann 1897, 37). Her subsequent solo tours enabled her to cultivate and pursue her own artistic ambitions entirely according to her own preferences and ideas. Given the strong emphasis on A Doll’s House and the Nora character, the role in itself was obviously not unaffected by the system of solo guest performances. To the smaller stages in particular, Sorma and her likes meant a relief. As long as they were at hand, the casting directors had no worries regarding the ‘complex’ role of Nora. Being the most prominent of the German Noras, Sorma served as a model. In 1902 the critic Ludwig Ewers stated that ‘[a]nyone who has attended Nora performances on various German stages will have noticed that in many cases she was similar [to Sorma’s], down to every posture and movement, even down to the facial expressions’. 162 It was above all to Sorma’s merit that the Nora part achieved a kind of ‘classic popularity’. 163 The system inevitably implied reduced diversity. There was a relatively small group of artists claiming a particular ownership to the Nora part. Local artists were cast in the supporting roles (Krogstad, Mrs Linde, the nurse Anne Marie, etc.), Nora however was usually not local. 161 Isolating events in the period of the German Empire (his acting career lasted until the beginning of the 1950s), twenty-six solo guest performances by Bassermann are recorded in IbsenStage distributed across six roles (number of events in brackets): Bernick (8), Torvald Helmer (8), Osvald (3), Solness (3), Hjalmar (2), Dr Stockmann (2), cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 427208, accessed 3 January 2018. 162 “Wer die Nora auf verschiedenen deutschen Bühnen gesehen hat, dem muß es aufgefallen sein, daß sie vielfach die gleiche (wie die Agnes Sormas d. V.) war, bis in jede Stellung und Bewegung, ja bis ins Mienenspiel.ˮ Ewers, quoted in Krause 1969, 152. 163 “klassische Volkstümlichkeit” (ibid.). 5.3 A Doll’s House and the star system 123 A low degree of diversity makes it easier to recognize and focus attention on the individual case. Artists touring solo entered a realm of strong competition for attention, recognition, artistic prestige, and economic profit. When Sorma toured internationally, critics would more often than not compare her with her major international rivals: Duse, Achurch, Després, Réjane. 164 When she toured on a regional or national basis, critics would come up with local comparisons. 165 In sum, this created a frame of reference against which to assess Nora performances. Transmitting a theatre production from one place to another is hardly an end in itself. As a basic rule, individual artists and theatre companies tour out of an expectation to meet public interest wherever they go, to seek new and expanded markets for their ‘products’. A relationship of dialectical tension seems to prevail between regular theatrical activity attached to a specific space and the touring system. The spatial component of theatrical touring has a centre-periphery dimension. Tour productions tend to originate in the centre and spread out to the periphery. 166 Emil Meßthaler’s Münchener Ensemble was based in Munich, from which they toured the kingdom of Bavaria. Both Agnes Sorma and Thessa Klinkhammer came to the fore as talented actresses in Berlin before entering their career as touring stars. Provincial towns represented an attractive market for touring companies, especially those towns that were big enough to offer venues, but too small to run local companies. The facilities were there, and there was a market. Herbert Hohenemser emphasizes the strong ties of loyalty and support between the stages of the small and medium-sized towns of the German Empire and their citizens, particularly those towns without a royal or a court theatre. 167 But there was shortage of productions, and the itinerary companies could remedy this shortage. Besides this spatial component, there is a temporal as well as a social component that differentiates the touring system from local theatrical activities. Many touring companies operated only in the summer season which lasted approximately from May to September, a period when most institution theatres were closed. The Süddeutsches Hoftheater-Ensemble and Julius Fiala’s company 164 Cf. f.i. The New York Times , 13 April 1897 and 15 March 1898, Le Figaro , 27 December 1899; Het Nieuws van den Dag , 3 October 1900; L’Indépendance Belge , 15 October 1900; L‘Arte Drammatica , 20 and 27 October 1900. Comparisons with Duse were particularly frequent, “die deutsche Duse” (the German Duse) became one of Sorma’s nicknames. Tellingly, as she planned her major European tour for the season 1900/ 1901, Sorma hired Joseph Schürmann, who had managed tours for both Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse, to act as her impresario (Krause 1969, 19, 61), thereby entering into the same network as them. 165 Cf. f.i. Grazer Tageblatt , 4 November 1900. 166 Obviously, the Hoftheater Meiningen is a prominent example of the opposite. 167 Cf. Herbert Hohenemser’s introduction in Eugen Schöndienst’s Geschichte des Deutschen Bühnenvereins (Schöndienst 1979, 61). 124 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist exemplify this, operating at times where they could use the same facilities and perform in front of the same audiences as the local companies, but without entering into competition with them. The most dominant feature of the touring system, during both Carlson’s Virtuoso Period (1830-1870) and the period of the German Empire (1871-1918), remains its overriding focus on the star. The star’s name was the key element in all advertising, the major focus of all reviews, and the prime focus of the audiences’ attention - they came first and foremost to see a Kainz, a Duse, or a Sorma, not the play in itself or the performance of the ensemble as a whole. The bigger the star, the greater her or his command of the theatre field, and the easier s/ he could manoeuvre in and out of different positions (in a Bourdieusian sense), whether by pursuing a career as a solo performer, or by embarking on a tour with a company, sometimes even in the double capacity of star and manager. The star could always count on public interest, high salaries, and critical attention. Although tour managers and touring artists in the long run could acquire a substantial amount of symbolic capital, the accumulation of economic capital was the chief concern of the touring system as such, that is it leaned towards the pole of large-scale production. The figure of Emil Meßthaler, however, illustrates the dynamic intricacy of the positions occupied by Ibsen’s plays within the field. After bringing the Münchener Ensemble’s tour of A Doll’s House to an end, Meßthaler renamed his company Theater der Modernen and toured Leipzig, Wiesbaden, and Munich with a production of Ghosts , featuring himself as Osvald. These performances earned Meßthaler great respect and esteem among Munich’s naturalist and modernist community ( Jelavich 1985, 116-118). As the name suggests, the company performed only modern plays written by dramatists such as Ibsen, Zola, Hauptmann, and Halbe. Yet, in the opinion of Hermann Sinsheimer, Meßthaler battled for modern drama “more from calculation than conviction”, he was “an entrepreneur experimenting with art”. The playwright Max Halbe, a friend of his, also took note of Meßthaler’s “uncontrolled passion for profit”, although a spark of “an artistic nature glowed in the heart of this stony, ruthless businessman” (quoted in Jelavich 1985, 116). To Meßthaler, Ibsen’s Ghosts was first and foremost an object of speculation. In Leipzig, the company performed the play for two weeks to sold-out houses at the Krystall-Palast, a designated place of entertainment, a success largely due to the massive negative publicity by the local conservative newspapers prior to the performances, as the attacks “unwittingly insured full houses” ( Jelavich 1985, 117). 5.4 Ibsen and the modernist movement 125 5.4 Ibsen and the modernist movement Ibsen and modernism is not the main topic of my study, and weighty volumes of Ibsen scholarship have shed light on that topic already (e.g. Shepherd-Barr 1997; Moi 2006; Rønning 2006). My intention is to question and re-examine the traditional argument by way of which Ibsen came to be regarded as, on the one hand, a leading exponent of literary modernism and the father of modern drama, and, on the other hand, the progenitor, the revolutionary father as it were, of theatrical modernism. As made clear in the introductory chapter, the distinction between the literary (textual) point of view and the theatre perspective is decisive and significant to my approach. My emphasis is on the latter, and Ibsen’s significance as an exponent of literary modernism will be regarded only insofar as it had theatrical implications. Nonetheless, since theatrical modernism is just as much a contested term as any other subcategory of modernism, I will not start off with a fixed notion of what that term signifies, but rather go the other way around and trace the origin of Ibsen’s association with the modernist discourse. In a German language context, the substantivized form of the adjective ‘modern’, die Moderne , started to proliferate in the 1880s (Kiesel 2004, 9). Although the German die Moderne may not have the exact same meaning as English ‘modernism’, Jelavich (1985, viii), among others, contends that this in fact marks the historical moment in which Ibsen’s association with modernism gains momentum. Modernism is tightly connected to metropolitan life, and in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe, the modernist movement originated as a series of self-proclamations in the metropolises of Berlin, Vienna, and Munich. Berlin set the stage. On 1 January 1887, the Allgemeine Deutsche Universitätszeitung in Berlin published ten theses formulated by the Durch! literary society proclaiming that ‘[o]ur highest artistic ideal is no longer the Ancient but the Modern’. 168 “In its nature and content”, they furthermore declared, our literature should be modern […]. Modern literature should portray man truly and mercilessly with his flesh and blood and passions, without overstepping in the process the self-imposed limits of a work of art, but rather to heighten the aesthetic effect through its magnificent truth to nature. Quoted in Davies 2000, 269. This event, the programmatic proclamation of die Moderne , is intricately connected to all three Berlinese productions of Ghosts accounted for above (cf. 4.1). One of the initiators of the Durch! literary society was the writer Leo Berg (cf. 168 “Unser höchstes Kunstideal ist nicht mehr die Antike, sondern die Moderne.ˮ Quoted in Schutte 1987, 187. 126 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist Bradbury 1991, 109). On 2 January 1887, that is the day after the theses were published, Berg attended the Berlin Dramatic Society’s performance of Ghosts and wrote about it in his book Henrik Ibsen: Studien (Berg 1901, 36). A week later Ibsen arrived in Berlin to attend the Residenztheater’s landmark performance of Ghosts on 9 January 1887 - the very birth moment of modern German theatre, according to Günther Rühle, as noted above. When the Freie Bühne society was constituted two years later, many of the same names reappear, as the brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart, Gerhart Hauptmann, Arno Holz, Johannes Schlaf, Wilhelm Bölsche had all been members of Durch! and were now strongly associated with the Freie Bühne (Schley 1967, 14, 19, 22, 68; Bradbury 1991, 109). They were most likely also all present in the auditorium of the Lessingtheater, when the curtain rang up for Ghosts on 29 September 1889. These four events - the proclamation and the three theatrical events - coincided not only in time and space, but also socially, on a personal level. Moreover, they share the same spiritual context, constituting major events in the formation of what has been called the Berliner Moderne (Schutte 1987). Jelavich may be right about that this is naturalism and not (yet) modernism. In the mindset of the central figures of the Berliner Moderne, however, being modern and committing oneself to naturalism was basically the same thing. In Vienna in April 1891, the combination of Ibsen’s physical presence and a festival-like performance series of his plays would, yet again, spur the constitution of an association closely linked to the modernist movement, although this time not in the form of a society. Ibsen was invited to the Austrian capital by Max Burckhard, the director of the Burgtheater. He stayed there for eleven days, attending three performances: the Burgtheater’s productions of The Pretenders on 11 April and An Enemy of the People on 15 April, and the Deutsches Volkstheater’s premiere of The Wild Duck on 16 April, featuring Friedrich Mitterwurzer as Hjalmar Ekdal. For the second time, an ‘Ibsen Week’ took place in a major capital of (German-speaking) Central Europe. As had been the case in Berlin two years earlier, Ibsen’s stay in Vienna turned into a media event. Newspapers brought not only announcements and reviews of the performances, but also reports from the banquets given in Ibsen’s honor and even Ibsen caricatures (HIS 15k, 164). Following the premiere of The Pretenders on 11 April 1891, a banquet was given at the Hotel Kaiserhof at the invitation of Eduard Michael Kafka, Jacques Joachim, the editors of the journal Moderne Dichtung / Moderne Rundschau , and the critic Julius Kulka, who belonged to a circle of persons that from this moment on would be referred to variously as Jung-Österreich, Jung-Wien or Wiener Jüngstdeutschen (Wunberg 1976, lxii-lxiv). Hermann Bahr, Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Beer-Hofmann, and Felix Salten were also associated members of this circle. In the cultural history of Vienna, all these 5.4 Ibsen and the modernist movement 127 names taken together constitute the foundation of the so-called Wiener Moderne (Wunberg 1981, 11-79; Lorenz 1995). To these, Ibsen’s visit in Vienna-- and the banquet at Kaiserhof in particular - had a catalytic effect. It became their cue to step forward in front of the public. On the surface of it, the circumstances were very similar to Berlin: A week filled with Ibsen performances was the starting point. Ibsen was invited and turned up, and a group of young intellectuals united in their admiration of Ibsen and in strongly promoting modern art as well as a modern turn in critical attitude and lifestyle, used the opportunity to assert themselves. Ibsen was the catalyst. In his memoir book, Selbstbildnis , Hermann Bahr would phrase the matter to the extent that the Jung-Österreich was handed over to him by Ibsen. 169 But important distinctions need to be made. The Wiener Moderne was in many ways quite different from the Berliner Moderne, and the effects were not the same in Vienna as in Berlin. Bahr is illustrative of the differences between the Berlinese and the Viennese conceptions of die Moderne , for my topic especially so since he wrote extensively on Ibsen. Already as early as in 1887, in his essay on Ibsen published in the journal Deutsche Worte , Bahr would argue against his Berlinese peers who praised Ibsen as a master of the naturalistic technique. To Bahr, modern art was a matter of synthesizing naturalism and romanticism. To conciliate these opposing forces was the problem of [Ibsen’s] life, at the same time, the problem of modern literature. Ibsen stands, therefore, at the threshold of the new literature; he is, therefore, the champion of the contemporary desire to synthesize romanticism and naturalism. Therein rests his significance. Quoted in Eller 1918, 91. 170 The first issue of the journal Moderne Dichtung , established and published by Eduard Michael Kafka in Brno in January 1890, featured an article by Bahr with the programmatical title “Die Moderne”, in which he declared that ‘we acknowledge no other law than the truth as perceived by the individual’, 171 thereby suggesting that one of his major objections to the Berlinese naturalism was that it was too one-dimensional in its emphasis on truth’s objective reality, too exterior-oriented 169 “Damit war Jungösterreich öffentlich erschienen. Aus den Händen Ibsens übernahm ich es.ˮ Bahr, quoted in Lorenz 1995, 57. 170 Bahr’s essay is rendered in its entirety in Wunberg 1976, 1-17 (the German original of the quote above is found on p. 10). 171 “Wir haben kein anderes Gesetz als die Wahrheit, wie jeder sie empfindet.ˮ Wunberg 1976, 32. No one else was featured with as many contributions (eight articles in all) as Bahr during the first two years of the journal’s existence. In April 1891, shortly before the Ibsen Week and Ibsen’s arrival in Vienna, the editorial office of Moderne Dichtung moved to the Austrian capital, and the journal changed its name to Moderne Rundschau , published under the joint editorship of Kafka and Joachim. 128 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist and materialistic in its grasp of modern existence. Bahr would develop his salient critique of the shortcomings of naturalism even further in his 1891 essay Die Überwindung des Naturalismus , prophesying that naturalism would be overcome ‘by way of a nervous romanticism’ and a ‘mysticism of the nerves’. 172 Most importantly, however, given my approach, is to note the differences not so much between the Berlinese and the Viennese conceptions of die Moderne as between the effects of the events in the two metropolises. It was Berlin that saw the formation of the Freie Bühne. True, in the wake of the Ibsen Week, a Viennese Freie Bühne was established in July 1891 with Ibsen appointed an honorary member on Julius Kulka’s suggestion. Public readings and talks were even organized, but apart from a performance of Maeterlinck’s L’Intruse , produced by Bahr at the Theater an der Josefstadt, the undertaking was a failure and the society was disbanded after less than a year (Lorenz 1995, 92-97). The Viennese stage virtually looked the same, and the tradition of staging Ibsen in Vienna did not change much because of the Ibsen Week. Up until the turn of the century, Ibsen’s plays were presented at only five stages in Vienna: Burgtheater (19 events), Carltheater (13), Deutsches Volkstheater (6), Raimund- Theater (5), Stadttheater (2). 173 The event numbers tended to increase in the 1890s, but first and foremost because of the foundation of the Deutsches Volkstheater, inaugurated in 1889 as a bourgeois counterpart to the imperial Burgtheater. Inasmuch as Ibsen was a site of struggle and competition in Vienna in the 1890s, the Deutsches Volkstheater and the Burgtheater were the main contestants. At the end of the 1890s then, the event numbers proliferated as itinerary companies, especially from Italy and Germany, frequently toured Vienna. Munich saw yet another constellation involving Ibsen, self-proclaimed modernists, and efforts to establish an independent stage. As for the naturalists in Berlin, the designations Realismus , Naturalismus , and die Moderne were interchangeable for Munich’s naturalists too, as Jelavich (1985, 26) points out, but their grasp of naturalism was more in line with the Viennese modernists. At the centre of Munich’s naturalist movement was Michael Georg Conrad. “For us”, he wrote in the major German periodical dedicated to naturalism, Die Gesellschaft , “Ibsen is primarily the great caller-to-arms in the battle against the artistic dissoluteness and moral degeneration of the stage” (quoted in Jelavich 1985, 31). Following the constitution of a literary-artistic association called the Gesellschaft für modernes Leben in December 1890, Conrad, Otto Julius Bierbaum, Oskar Panizza, Julius Schaumberger, and Friedrich Rosenthal founded 172 “Ich glaube also, daß der Naturalismus überwunden werden wird durch eine nervöse Romantik; noch lieber möchte ich sagen: durch eine Mystik der Nerven.ˮ Wunberg 1976, 157. 173 In Berlin, the population size of which was approximately the same as Vienna, the equivalent number of stages was fourteen, i.e. almost three times higher. 5.4 Ibsen and the modernist movement 129 a Freie Bühne society in Munich on 8 May 1891. A week later, the Munich newspapers printed an announcement according to which the society had chosen Ibsen, “who has lived in Munich for the past fifteen years and has written his outstanding dramas here, to be honorary president. Ibsen has accepted the nomination” (quoted in Jelavich 1985, 46). As it turned out in an ensuing spate of press reports and public letters, however, this was an indiscretion on the part of the society. Ibsen had only tentatively agreed on certain conditions that were not met and did not, in the end, accept the presidency (cf. Jelavich 1985, 46-47). As if doomed to failure already at the outset, save for two evenings of dramatic readings from the plays of Hauptmann, Halbe, and Schlaf on 6 May and 1 July 1892 ( Jelavich 1985, 48), the Freie Bühne society as well as the Gesellschaft für modernes Leben eventually dissolved more or less with unfinished business. More fortunate and with greater impact were the initiatives of two other theatrical enterprises in Munich: the Akademisch-Dramatischer Verein and the Theater der Modernen. The former was a society of university students established for the purpose of producing private performances of controversial contemporary plays, the general idea of which was not unlike any other stage of the independent theatre movement. Left untouched by the established theatres of Munich-- the Königliches Residenztheater did not stage the play until 1910 - the Akademisch-Dramatischer Verein produced Ghosts for the first time in Munich in a private performance at the Orpheum on 8 March 1893 (Hartl 1975, 74-76). Over the following years, the society introduced Rosmersholm (2 July 1894), The Wild Duck (15 June 1895), and The Master Builder (2 March 1898) to Munich’s theatregoers. 174 The performing artists were predominantly students, but professional actors from Munich and elsewhere were from time to time hired to take over major roles. As suggested above, Meßthaler’s touring company Theater der Modernen ventured their luck on controversial modern plays inside the commercial touring circuits, thus breaking with the main strategy of the independent theatres. A Bourdieusian take on the case of Meßthaler would be to say that he expanded the “space of possibles” (cf. Bourdieu 1993, 30; Bourdieu 1996, 119). On 18 June 1894, the Theater der Modernen was the first company to present a public performance of Ghosts in Munich. Following up their success with the play in Leipzig (cf. above), performances were given at the Volkstheater over five consecutive nights. The production was revived in April 1895, as the play was performed in a run with Little Eyolf and Rosmersholm . 175 Coincidentally or not, the Prussian board of censors suspended its ban on Ghosts as of May 1894 (Boettcher 1989, 98). The theatre managers in Berlin and elsewhere were not long in 174 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 33127, accessed 24 May 2017. 175 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 33140, accessed 24 May 2017. 130 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist coming, and in a matter of less than half a year, Ghosts was presented at no less than four stages only in Berlin. 176 Proven viable even in a commercial context by Meßthaler’s company, it is not implausible to assume that Meßthaler’s venture was one of the factors that rendered the ban on Ghosts superfluous. An overall glance at the mutually different conceptions of die Moderne in Berlin, Vienna, and Munich reveals that Ibsen was central to all three as a progenitor (Brahm) or a caller-to-arms (Conrad). Although I am reluctant to make an argument out of the sheer fact of Ibsen’s physical presence in the events described above, it cannot be ruled out that it did matter. More important, however, is to consider the impact these events had, both locally and translocally, in the shorter and longer run, for Ibsen’s position on the German stage. Estimated quantitatively in the light of the IbsenStage dataset, the events in Berlin were marginal, in Vienna negligible, and in Munich somewhere in between. Although they are part of the traditional narrative of how the independent theatre companies and the modernist movement in Europe turned Ibsen into the father of modern drama, IbsenStage reveals a different story. That is not to say that the traditional narrative is entirely wrong: The point is that the events accounted for above gained significance in the longer run, in step with how the European stage gradually evolved and, not least, in step with how critics, intellectuals, and scholars consecrated Ibsen. In the short-term perspective, the events appear rather marginal and seem to have mattered mostly to a limited circle of avant-garde artists and leading intellectuals in the major cities. The degree to which they did matter in the perspective of theatrical matters, the case of the Freie Bühne on the one hand and Meßthaler’s company on the other hand, stand out as the decisive factors. As counterparts, they emphasize the dynamics of the matter. The Freie Bühne in Berlin stated an example that stimulated interest both nationwide and to a certain extent also outside the German Empire and led to the formation of numerous similar undertakings. In Bourdieu’s model, they clearly tend towards the pole of pure production. The case of Meßthaler, much neglected by Ibsen scholarship, illustrates the appropriation of Ibsen’s controversial plays, first and foremost Ghosts , on the commercial stages. Ibsen’s position on these stages was far stronger than communicated hitherto by scholars and critics. Leaning towards the pole of large-scale production, the traditional narrative has cast a shadow over these events, however dominant they appear in the face of IbsenStage. 176 The number of shows also testifies to a considerable public interest. The Berliner Theater presented eleven performances of the play in July 1894. Théâtre Libre gave two guest performances (featuring André Antoine as Osvald) at the Residenztheater in October 1894. In November 1894, the play premiered at the Lessingtheater and the Deutsches Theater on the very same day (27 November); the former production was performed six times, the latter a good twenty times. 5.5 Ibsen and the Volksbühne movement 131 5.5 Ibsen and the Volksbühne movement “No other writer”, says Franco Moretti, “has focused so single-mindedly on the bourgeois world” (2013b, 169). Accordingly, for the better part of his career, Ibsen wrote for the bourgeoisie. And, concomitantly, the people who came to see his plays performed on stage mostly belonged to the middle or upper stratum of the middle class. Yet, the matter may not be as clear-cut as Moretti would have it. The speech that Ibsen gave to a workers’ procession in Trondheim, Norway, on 14 June 1885 suggests otherwise. “An element of nobility must find its way into our public life, […] a nobility of character, of mind and of will. That alone can liberate us”, Ibsen said in the speech. This nobility or aristocracy, he carried on, will come to us from two groups […][,] from our women and from our workers. The transformation of social conditions which is now being undertaken in the rest of Europe is very largely concerned with the future status of the workers and of women. That is what I am hoping and waiting for, that is what I shall work for, all I can. (Quoted in OxI 6, 445-447) What is more, Ibsen placed emphasis on constantly expanding his reading and spectating audiences and reaching new market segments. In the German context, the low-priced Reclam editions of Ibsen’s works were important as regards expanding readership. The theatre industry lagged behind, though the Volksbühne movement came to represent a change in this regard. However influential in a long-term perspective, the Freie Bühne only produced one single Ibsen performance. A somewhat larger body of Ibsen’s dramas came to play a not insignificant role within a movement highly stimulated by the Freie Bühne, the so-called Volksbühnen (‘people’s stages’). In the German dataset 1876-1918, there are all together thirty-nine events associated with various Volksbühne associations. Being the movement’s principal venue, the majority of the events (twenty-eight) took place in Berlin; the rest of the events took place at venues in Hamburg (eight), Magdeburg, Leipzig, and Kassel (one each). Events associated with fourteen different plays by Ibsen were presented. 177 The Volksbühne movement meant an expansion of Ibsen’s spectatorship. The lifespan of the independent theatre movement was relatively short. The Freie Bühne was an avant-garde project, the Volksbühne movement, on the other hand, turned into a mass movement. The Freie Volksbühne Berlin exists to this 177 The distribution of events according to play were as follows (number of events in brackets): Pillars of Society (5), A Doll’s House (5), An Enemy of the People (5), The Wild Duck (5), Rosmersholm (3), The Lady from the Sea (3), The League of Youth (2), Ghosts (2), Hedda Gabler (2), John Gabriel Borkman (2), The Master Builder (2), Little Eyolf (1), Brand (1), Love’s Comedy (1). Source: https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ , accessed 5 April 2017. 132 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist very day and has had a huge impact in the history of modern German theatre (cf. Pforte 1990). Figure 5.5 below visualizes the development of membership numbers for the two Berlin associations, the Freie Volksbühne and the Neue Freie Volksbühne, over the years 1890-1912 which suggests the significance of the movement in terms of expanded audience exposure. 178 Figure 5.5: Membership statistics Freie Volksbühne and Neue Freie Volksbühne 1890- 1912 (source: Nestriepke 1930). The first in its kind, the Freie Volksbühne Berlin, founded in July 1890 at a meeting attended by over 2,000 people (Bonnell 2005, 127), presented Pillars of Society as their inaugural performance at the Ostend-Theater on 19 October 1890. During the first two seasons of its existence, that is during the chairmanship of Bruno Wille, Ibsen was the most frequently presented playwright, featured with five plays. 179 Wille was the driving force behind the formation of the Freie Volksbühne Berlin, yet according to Bonnell the initial impulse came from a Berlin workers’ reading and discussion club called the Alte Tante, whose members took a great interest in the performances presented by the Freie Bühne, but could not afford the subscription prices (Bonnell 2005, 125-126). The society that was constituted some months later had, first of all, a low-cost policy out of consideration for the workers’ low wages (cf. Selo 1930, 31-32). Second, the society explicitly addressed the interests and needs of the working class. In his appeal published in the Berliner Volksblatt on 23 March 1890, Wille stressed that writers like 178 Note the contrast to the Freie Bühne society that had at most one thousand members (Schley 1967). 179 Besides Pillars of Society , the Freie Volksbühne Berlin presented An Enemy of the People in December 1890, The League of Youth in October 1891, A Doll’s House in January 1892, and Ghosts in June 1892. In November 1894, when Franz Mehring had taken over the chairmanship, Pillars of Society was revived (cf. Selo 1930, 201-206). 5.5 Ibsen and the Volksbühne movement 133 Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Zola, Ibsen and Kielland, as well as several German “Realists” have found resonance among the working people of Berlin. This section of the population which has been converted to good taste has the need, not merely to read plays of their choice, but to see them performed. (Wille, quoted in Bonnell 2005, 126) Third, Wille stated in the appeal’s opening line that the theatre “should be a source of high enjoyment of art, moral uplift and a powerful stimulus to thought on the great issues of the day” (ibid.), a rhetoric reminiscent of Schiller, suggesting the need for aesthetic and moral education of the working class. Fourth, apart from these distinct features, the Freie Volksbühne was obviously modeled after the Freie Bühne as a closed, membership-based society which enabled them to present performances regardless of censorship. The subscription system followed, more or less, identical principles. To the same extent as the Freie Bühne, the Freie Volksbühne was driven by an anti-commercial spirit of mind, at the same time opposing the capitalist system (since it was corrupting the theatre industry) and deliberately refraining from competition against the commercial theatres. The same preference for naturalistic plays prevailed, at least during the initial years of its existence. Besides Ibsen, Hauptmann’s Before Sunrise , Sudermann’s Honour , and a stage version of Zola’s Therese Raquin were presented. In its potential, naturalism was, around 1890, identified as the art form of the working class (Selo 1930, 37). There were overlaps on a personal level, too, between the Freie Bühne and the Freie Volksbühne. For example, Otto Brahm and Heinrich Hart, both among the founders of the Freie Bühne, were members of the Freie Volksbühne’s executive committee in 1890/ 91. On Brahm’s suggestion, the Freie Bühne’s stage director, Cord Hachmann, also served as the Freie Volksbühne’s stage director for two years, trained by Brahm to direct according to the principles of a naturalistic acting style (Selo 1930, 130). By giving Ibsen a prominent position in their repertoire, the Freie Volksbühne Berlin was taking a share in his authorship. Ibsen became a matter of the growing Social Democratic labour movement, and he was associated with the socialist cause. The timing was not coincidental. In 1890, German socialists emerged, as Bonnell points out, “undefeated from twelve years of illegality, following the failure of Bismarck’s anti-socialist legislation” (Bonnell 2005, 121). For Ibsen’s plays, this implied interpretative shifts. According to Bonnell, the Freie Volksbühne’s choice of Pillars of Society as their inaugural performance, seemed doubly appropriate for the occasion, embodying both the aesthetic programme of the association’s leadership and the social criticism which was to appeal to the socialist members. The 1878 Berlin première of Pillars of Society had been Ibsen’s first big success on the Berlin stage, and it was therefore a key work in the history of the development of Naturalism in Berlin. (Bonnell 2005, 135) 134 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist Pillars of Society , however, came to mean something different in 1890 than the case had been in 1878. In fact, implying that the play was a key work in the history of naturalism is an act of revisionism. As accounted for above, Pillars of Society was in 1878 a part of the commercial theatre industry. The play never suffered any intervention from censorship authorities. Social criticism of the play was largely neutralized, and elements pointing in the direction of the French pièce bien faite were emphasized. For the convenience of the socialist and an updated modernist interpretation of Pillars of Society , these historical conditions were stripped away in 1890. What was left was a play that could fulfill a similar function as Ghosts had fulfilled for the Freie Bühne a year earlier. An interpretative shift of this kind is nothing unusual. But the case of Pillars of Society illustrates well how history is written (or rewritten) by the victors. Present in the auditorium of one of the Stadttheater Berlin’s performances of Pillars of Society in February 1878 were Otto Brahm and Paul Schlenther, who were students at the time. They both wrote about it, but not until more than twenty years later, Schlenther in his introduction to the sixth volume of Henrik Ibsens Sämtliche Werke in deutscher Sprache , published in 1900 (ISW 6, xvii-xix), Brahm in a recollection published in the newspaper Neue Freie Presse in Vienna on 10 May 1904 (reprinted in Brahm 1915, 447-455). “In that moment,” Brahm recollects, we discovered the idea of a new poetic world; for the first time we felt that we were confronted with people of our own time … and from this all encompassing social criticism of the present we saw the emergence of the ideals of freedom and truth … From then on, we were devoted to this new reality art, and our aesthetic life had received its content. 180 Inevitably written in the light of posterity, Brahm’s memoir piece is a creation myth. Given his dominant position as a critic and theatre manager across three decades - his impact on the German history of Ibsen in performance is equalled by no one - Brahm’s account is mostly taken at face value, disregarding the gulf between ‘then’ and ‘now’. Like Bonnell, John Osborne (1971, 2) too, with reference to the first German performance of Pillars of Society , gathers that “the Naturalist movement in German literature might reasonably be said to have begun in the year 1878”. Ibsen’s biographers and Ibsen scholars alike have quoted either Brahm or Schlenther more or less to the same end (cf. Koht 1971, 310; Meyer 1971, 435-436; Figueiredo 2007, 178; HU 8, 27; HIS 7k, 65-66) to the extent that Pillars of Society comes on a par with Ibsen’s other socio-critical dramas as they were embraced by naturalists and (self-proclaimed) modernists. 180 Brahm, quoted in Fischer-Lichte 2007, 61-62, italics in original (Fischer-Lichte erroneously attributes the quote to Schlenther). 5.5 Ibsen and the Volksbühne movement 135 The distinction between the 1878 version of Pillars of Society and the 1889 version of Ghosts is wiped out, and the former converges smoothly into naturalism (or full-blown modernism). In step with Ibsen’s growing reputation in Europe, North America, and gradually elsewhere, a continuously ongoing battle over Ibsen regarding, among other things, interpretation and critical understanding, performance, acting styles, cultural policy and ideology made itself felt, of which the above is illustrative. As an association grounded on political ideology and class interests, the Freie Volksbühne Berlin was certainly not without internal conflicts. Serving as chairman until October 1892, Bruno Wille was sympathetic to socialism but resisted party discipline, and he was more preoccupied with Bildung , theatre arts as an educational means, than with the Social Democratic Party’s interests (Selo 1939, 53-54). In December 1890, as An Enemy of the People was presented as the society’s third performance, there was a clash of interpretation on the basis of political ideology, pre-configuring the conflict that would eventually, in October 1892, lead to a split. Demonstrating a strong degree of identification with Dr Stockmann, Wille gave a lecture about the play, underlining its main headline, “the majority is always wrong, and the minority alone is always right” (quoted in Bonnell 2005, 137). To this conclusion, Julius Türk objected that it was an unacceptable generalization and that for him the real lesson of the play was “the need to maintain freedom of speech” (ibid.). Two years later, Türk, a loyal member of the Social Democratic Party, was Wille’s main opponent in the incidents that forced Wille to resign from the chairmanship. Suggesting one of the main reasons why he earned enemies among the Social Democrats, he later said, “I have never made any secret at all of my undemocratic cast of mind even in the political field” (quoted in Bonnell 2005, 131). Shortly after, Wille and his associates founded the Neue Freie Volksbühne. 181 The two societies existed side by side until they merged in 1920 (Davies 2000, 101). In step with the increase in memberships, the movement gained power and began to exert influence on the repertoire policy of the established stages. Having no own stage at their disposal for the first two decades of their existence, both societies had to lease venues from existing theatres. 182 In 1905/ 1906, the 181 An Enemy of the People was included in the Neue Freie Volksbühne’s repertoire too (Osborne 1971, 175). 182 The Theater am Bülowplatz, today known as the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, was built in 1913 and inaugurated a year later. However the first permanent stage of the Volksbühne movement was acquired in 1910 as the Neue Freie Volksbühne took over the Theater in der Köpenicker Strasse. The theatre was renamed the Neues Volkstheater and opened on 1 September 1910 with a production of Pillars of Society as a gesture commemorating the event that inaugurated the Volksbühne movement twenty years earlier (Davies 2000, 87). 136 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist Neue Freie Volksbühne presented performances for their members at five stages simultaneously: Deutsches Theater, Neues Theater, Schiller-Theater Ost, Schiller-Theater Nord, Schiller-Theater Charlottenburg. In 1907/ 1908 a sixth was added: Lortzing-Theater (Nestriepke 1930, 266; Davies 2000, 79). These performances were not produced by the Neue Freie Volksbühne, but by the theatres themselves. Yet, more so than ever before, the theatres began to produce plays at the choice of the Neue Freie Volksbühne. 183 As a reflection of the fact that the social democratic movement was nowhere as strong as in Berlin, the city was at the centre of events of the Volksbühne movement. But gradually similar undertakings emerged all over Germany, inspired by the setup in Berlin. In Hamburg, the Freie Volksbühne Hamburg-Altona presented a number of Ibsen plays during the 1890s. 184 In the autumn of 1894, Volksbühne associations were established in Kiel and Hannover. According to Cecil Davies, theatre performances of plays by, among others, Ibsen, Halbe, and Hauptmann, were presented in Kiel in the season 1894/ 1895. Julius Türk pulled out of the Freie Volksbühne in Berlin in 1895, founded a touring company and visited the cities of Leipzig, Halle, Magdeburg, and Kassel in the summer of 1895 with, among other plays, A Doll’s House and An Enemy of the People . 185 In 1905, a Freie Volksbühne was established in Bielefeld, the only association outside Berlin to survive World War I as well as World War II (Davies 2000, 61-64). 5.6 German as source language in relay translations To become a world dramatist, Ibsen had to cross multiple borders - cultural, political, and linguistic. In order to do this, he was heavily dependent on the work of others. The translators were key persons in this regard. The first systematic attempt to draw a world map of the transmission of Ibsen texts through translation was made by Fritz Paul (Paul 1997; cf. also Paul 2011). He singles out two main currents which are “largely independent of one another”: 183 Cf. Nestriepke’s list of eighteen plays produced by the theatres at the request of the Neue Freie Volksbühne over the years 1905-1908. Some of these were subsequently transferred to the regular evening repertoire of the theatres, f.i. Wilhelm Schmidtbonn’s Mutter Landstraße that became a box-office draw at Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater (Nestriepke 1930, 269-270). 184 Performance dates in brackets: Ghosts (27 May 1894), Pillars of Society (20 January 1895), Rosmersholm (31 March 1895), The Wild Duck (17 November 1895), An Enemy of the People (19 July 1896), A Doll’s House (13 September 1896), John Gabriel Borkman (14 February 1897), and The Lady from the Sea (20 March 1898). 185 Cf. the organisation page of the Berliner Volksbühnen-Ensemble: https: / / ibsenstage. hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 32944, accessed 5 April 2017. 5.6 German as source language in relay translations 137 The oldest and at first strongest consists of the German translations, Ibsen’s gate to world literature and the basis for countless secondary translations, especially into all Eastern European languages, but also into Italian and Japanese. […] The second, later, and at first smaller translation current flowed to England and America. It has long since become the strongest one and is the basis for secondary translations into ‘exotic’ languages, among them languages spoken by millions, such as Chinese and Japanese. (Paul 1997, 66) Paul’s main line of argument is convincing and still rings true. He acknowledges that his brief study is just a rough sketch, however, writing that the “main currents and tributaries flowing on this globe are only hinted at, and many of the backwaters and connecting channels […] have had to be left out” (ibid., 81). The graphic below represents an attempt at filling out some of the bits and pieces missing from Paul’s picture which are of particular relevance to my approach. Figure 5.6: Language flow graphic outlining the transmission of Ibsen’s works through translation by 1900. The graphic must be taken for what it is: an abstract model representing complex subject matter, a distant glance at the transmission of Ibsen’s plays across 138 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist the languages of the world, highlighting certain pieces of information at the expense of others in order to get a clearer sense of the overall pattern. The graphic is drawn according to a specific set of criteria. First of all, it is a snapshot rendering the situation at the very end of Ibsen’s career, in 1900. Second, in the process of drawing the graphic, I have focused on the initial performances of Ibsen’s plays on stage. Third, the connecting lines are drawn according to the source language of the translations used in these initial performances. The graphic reveals the dominance of German as a source language for indirect translation throughout the period of Ibsen’s career. As far as I can gather, Ibsen had by 1900 been translated into twenty-seven languages, twenty-three of which are included in the graphic above. 186 Twelve of these used German Ibsen translations as their source texts, whereas only six originated directly from the Dano-Norwegian sources. Today, Ibsen’s works circulate in at least seventy-eight languages (Hanssen 2010). A language flow graphic rendering the translation currents after Ibsen’s death would look quite different, displaying, as Paul implies, the increasing dominance of English, in particular as a source language for translations into a great number of Asian languages. The initial performances are but one out of at least three prisms through which to examine Ibsen’s introduction into new language markets. The other two would be to look into critical introductions and the initial translations of his works in print. These three channels did not necessarily run parallel. Ibsen’s Russian introduction may serve as an illustration of the complexity of the matter. As early as in 1873, the journal Iskra printed a Russian translation of the English critic Edmund Gosse’s article “Ibsen, the Norwegian Satirist”, originally published in the Fortnightly Review in January 1873 (Nilsson 1958, 163). The initial performances in Russia, all of which took place in Saint Petersburg, were not presented in Russian: Pillars of Society was first presented in German in November 1878 (cf. 2.2.4.2), while A Doll’s House was staged in Finnish in December 1882 in a guest performance from Helsinki featuring Ida Aalberg as Nora (Byckling 2006), and then in Polish in January 1883 in a guest performance featuring Gabriela Zapolska. Marina Savina, a leading actress of the 186 The four languages not included are Armenian, Georgian, Ukrainian, and Low German. According to Emil Reich, Ghosts was performed in Armenian in Tbilisi in 1891 (Reich 1908, 243). Nothing is known about either the performance or the translation. A Doll’s House was performed in Georgian in Kutaisi in 1898 (Loria 2015, 465). In all likelihood, the translation was done via Russian, but this needs verification. In 1899, a Ukrainian translation of An Enemy of the People and a translation of Peer Gynt into Low German were published in book form, but no stage productions are recorded using these translations. Japanese is put in brackets in figure 5.6 because the first translations (of An Enemy of the People and A Doll’s House ), prepared via English by Takayasu Gekko in 1893, were only partial and did not lead to stage performances (Sato 1966, 11; Eide 1983, 95). 5.6 German as source language in relay translations 139 Russian stage, saw Zapolska’s performance in Saint Petersburg, was fascinated by the Nora character and asked writer and journalist Petr Vejnberg to provide a Russian translation of Ibsen’s play. As he had no knowledge of Norwegian, he translated from German (Nilsson 1958, 36-37). Parallel to this, A Doll’s House appeared in another Russian translation prepared by P.V. Garvin who also translated from German, and published by Smidt in Saint Petersburg. 187 Thus, as the play finally, in February 1884, was performed at a Russian theatre venue in the Russian language, it was the result of an ongoing, infinitely complex process of cultural exchanges. What does the graphic above tell us that we did not know in advance? On the one hand it stimulates new lines of enquiry in regard to how we should account for the global recognition of Ibsen’s works. On the other hand it invites scrutiny of the impact of the German language in the relay chain of translations. The graphic is a visualization of how Ibsen during the course of his career turned into an all-European phenomenon. An updated language flow graphic, the design of which I will leave to others, displaying how English translations led to Ibsen being introduced later on into languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, and Arabic would visualize the global leap. Taken together, the two graphics would show not only the contours of Ibsen the world dramatist, but also the specific steps in the process that brought this about. The graphic is drawn in the form of a tree structure. As a knowledge model, the tree accentuates the principle of divergence: A phylogenetic tree typically displays how various biological species diverge, and a language family tree shows how languages related through descent from a common ancestor branch off from each other. The language flow graphic above depicts how Ibsen’s works diverge into different linguistic forms, with every branch signifying that Ibsen had crossed the threshold of a new language and thereby evolved into a new and different playwright. This, of course, is true not only for Ibsen but every author we associate with world literature, which is why Martin Puchner claims that world literature “traffics not in sameness but in difference” (2013, 35). Another way to put it would be to say, with Moretti, that world literature is simultaneously one and unequal, that there is “one world literary system (of inter-related literatures); but a system which is different from what Goethe and Marx had hoped for, because it’s profoundly unequal” (2013, 46). My graphic presumes a core entity constituted by Ibsen’s dramatic works (here considered as an abstract and not a fixed entity). This presumed entity divides, but not in equal parts. The Swedish, Finnish, and Icelandic branches are ‘terminal nodes’, 187 Digital facsimiles of the book edition are available online at http: / / urn.nb.no/ URN: NBN: no-nb_digibok_2010031912003. 140 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist whereas the German, French, and English branches shoot off additional branches. The former group of languages are dominated languages, endowed with little literary capital and low international recognition, whereas the latter group are dominant languages possessing large amounts of literary capital. However, the crucial question is, what is the specific impact of the German Ibsen translations? In what follows, I will study this matter first by looking at the tradition of domesticating names and titles in Ibsen’s plays and then by examining the role of the German theatre agencies in marketing Ibsen’s plays outside of the German language area. 5.6.1 The tradition of domesticating names and titles in Ibsen’s plays Ibsen’s dramatic works are almost exclusively set in Norway, and their characters go by Norwegian names. The history of Ibsen in translation is also the history of how these names have been altered and adapted to fit into different cultural and linguistic contexts. According to Brigitte Schultze, there are five different modes of rendering personal names in drama translation: direct transfer, adaptation, substitution, semantic translation, transfer of an artistic device (Schultze 1991, 91). There are examples of each kind in Ibsen: Nora and Hedda mostly go by these names all over the world (direct transfer); Osvald’s name is spelled with w in a number of languages, among them German and English (adaptation); in English, the first names of Jørgen Tesman and Johannes Rosmer are normally rendered with their equivalent names George and John respectively (substitution); Dagfinn Bonde in The Pretenders goes in English by the name of Dagfinn the Peasant (semantic translation); and in the case of Bøjgen, Christian Morgenstern transferred or imitated the artistic device according to which Ibsen coined this figure by rendering him as Der Krumme (‘the Bent One’) in his German translation of Peer Gynt (transfer of an artistic device [ISW 4, 261]). Looking at the historical development of the German Ibsen translations, 1898 marks a shift, as it was then that Fischer’s ten-volume edition of Henrik Ibsens Sämtliche Werke in deutscher Sprache (1898-1904) instituted direct transfer as its chief principle. Prior to that, translations tended to eschew direct transfer in favour of the other four principles, above all adaptation and substitution. In other words, in the early phase, as Ibsen strived to establish his name in the German book and theatre market, his translators tended to domesticate the names of his characters. The team of editors and translators behind Fischer’s edition, on the other hand, made a virtue of restoring the ‘original’ Ibsen. At the moment of its publication, however, Ibsen’s works were already introduced all over Europe, first and foremost due to Pillars of Society and A Doll’s House . 5.6 German as source language in relay translations 141 The former caused the first, smaller, wave, the latter a second and many times bigger international wave. Table 5.7 below shows in detail how Ibsen’s names and titles in Pillars of Society were Germanized. Particularly interesting is that Klingenfeld, Lange, and Jonas each chose a different first name for Consul Bernick, none of them directly transferred from Ibsen’s original. Notice also the variation in how Adjunkt Rørlund (both the name and the title), Dina Dorf, and Aune are rendered in the German translations (Ibsen 1877; Ibsen 1878a; Ibsen 1878b). Bearing in mind that Klingenfeld’s translation was authorized by Ibsen, it is striking that her translation does not stand out as closer to the Dano-Norwegian original-- measured by level of domestication, Jonas’ adaptation is in fact closer. In other words, as far as the rendering of names was concerned, Germanization was something Ibsen not only tacitly accepted, he himself seems to have encouraged it without further ado. Ibsen Klingenfeld Lange Jonas Konsul (Karsten) Bernick Gustav Bernick Consul (Richard) Bernick Consul (Karl) Bernick Fru Bernick Frau Bernick Betty Betty Olaf Oskar Olaf Olaf Frøken Bernick Fräulein Bernick Fräulein Bernick Martha Bernick Johan Tønnesen Johann Tönnsen Johann Tönnesen Johann Tönnesen Frøken Hessel Fräulein Hessel Fräulein Hessel Lona Hessel Hilmar Tønnesen Hilmar Tönnsen Hilmar Tönnesen Hilmar Tönnesen Adjunkt Rørlund Oberlehrer Lundt Hilfsprediger Rohrland Oberlehrer Rörlund Grosserer Rummel Großhändler Rummel Kaufmann Rummel Rummel Købmand Vigeland Kaufmann Wigland Kaufmann Wiegeland Wiegeland Købmand Sandstad Kaufmann Sandstadt Kaufmann Altstedt Sandstadt Dina Dorf Dina Torp Dina Dorff Dina Dorf Fuldmægtig Krap Prokurist Krapp Procurist Krapp Krap, Disponent 142 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist Skibsbygger Aune Schiffsbaumeister Auner Schiffsbauer Auler Aune, Schiffsbaumeister Grosserer Rummels frue Frau Rummel Frau Rummel Postmester Holts frue Frau Holt Frau Postmeister Holt Doktor Lynges frue Frau Lange Frau Doktor Lingen Frøken Rummel Fräulein Rummel Fräulein Rummel Frøken Holt Fräulein Holt Fräulein Holt Table 5.7: Rendering of names in Pillars of Society in three contemporary German translations (Ibsen 1877; Ibsen 1878a; Ibsen 1878b). How then were these names and titles rendered as Pillars of Society were introduced on the non-German stages of continental Europe? Table 5.8 below displays the list of characters in the Czech, Serbian, Hungarian and Dutch productions mentioned in 2.2.4.3 above. Czech Serbian Hungarian Dutch Gustav Bernik Bernik Bernick Gusztáv Gustaaf Bernick Betty Beti Betty Mw. Bernick Olaf Oskar Oszkár Oskar Marta Bernikova G-đica Bernikova Jufvr. Bernick Jan Tönnsen Jovan Tenzen Tönnsen János John Tönissen Lona Hesslova G-đica Hesel Hessel Lóna Jufvr. Hessel Hilma Tönnsen Hilmar Tenzen Tönnsen Hilmár Herman Tönissen Lundt, učitel a pomocný kazatel Roland, propovednik Lundt, fȍtanitó Lundt, hoofdonderwijzer Velkoobchodník Rummel Rumel, trgovac Rummel, nagykereskedȍ Rummel, groothandelaar Wigland Vigland Vigland Wigland Sandstedt Sandštat Sanstadt Sandstadt Dina Torpova Dina Torp Torp Dina Dina Torp 5.6 German as source language in relay translations 143 Kuapp Krap Krapp Auner Auner Auner Auner Pí. Rummlová G-đica Rumelova Rummel asszony Mevr. Rummel Pí. Holtová G-đa poštarka Holt Holt asszony Mevr. Holt Pí. Singerová G-đa doktorka Lange Lange asszony Mevr. De Lange Sl. Holtova Sl. Rumlova Table 5.8: Rendering of names in Pillars of Society in four contemporary non-German translations. 188 Out of these translations, we know for a fact that Aleksandar Jovičić prepared his Serbian translation on the basis of Wilhelm Lange’s German translation. 189 No surviving documents reveal the source text of the other three translations, but name forms and titles almost unanimously seem to point out Klingenfeld’s translation: The names of Dina Dorf and Aune are spelled in accordance with her rendering (Dina Torp and Auner), Vigeland and Sandstad appear with names slightly adapted from her translation, and the three translations are in keeping with Klingenfeld’s rebaptizing of the protagonist and his son as Gustav and Oskar. 190 In translating Rørlund’s and Rummel’s titles ( adjunkt and grosserer , respectively) Klingenfeld came close, but her choices ( Oberlehrer and Großhändler ) do not carry the exact same denotative meaning as Ibsen’s original titles, and they are adaptations or approximations. In Antal Dereký’s Hungarian translation ( fȍtanitó and nagykereskedȍ ) and the anonymous Dutch translation ( hoofdonderwijzer and groothandelaar ), the titles are direct transfers from Klingenfeld’s translation and are thus adaptations in relation to Ibsen’s titles. Moreover, the playbills of the Czech and Dutch performances respectively have one thing in common: The title of the play in Ibsen’s original spelling ( Samfundets stötter ) is given below the Czech and Dutch production titles ( Podpory společnosti and Steunpilaren der maatsschappij , respectively). Not surprisingly, 188 The four lists of characters are extracted from the playbills, available in Stehlíková 2006, 20 (facsimile); Srpske novine of 20 May 1878 (theatre ad); Enyedi 2014, 52 f. (facsimile); and in the production database of Theater Instituut Nederland (http: / / tin.nl/ ) (digital facsimile). Thanks to Sofija Christensen for transcribing names and titles in Serbian Cyrillic into Latin script. 189 Cf. the theatre ad for the premiere performance in Srpske novine , 20 May 1878. 190 But notice that the son appears with his original name in the Czech translation which might indicate that the Czech translator, Richard Veselý, also had the Dano-Norwegian text at hand. 144 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist this has led scholars to assume that the translations were done directly from Dano-Norwegian. I believe this is wrong and that scholars, among them Alex Bolckmans (1962, 61), who have collated translations with Ibsen’s original text have overlooked an essential aspect: the context of the copyright issue. Klingenfeld’s translation was printed, marketed, and distributed to the theatres as an original play. As accounted for above, this did not preclude unauthorized translations, but in the process of marketing the translation outside the German Empire, the lack of copyright agreement between Denmark/ Norway and the German Empire was a matter of no concern. From the viewpoint of the translators and stage companies in Prague, Arad and Amsterdam respectively, the drama they had acquired the rights to translate and produce was a German work of art, protected by bilateral agreements between the German Empire and the respective state authorities (i.e. Austria-Hungary and the Netherlands). In the printed edition, below the title and genre label, the title page of Klingenfeld’s translation read Unter Mitwirkung von Emma Klingenfeld veranstaltete deutsche Original-Ausgabe der “Samfundets stötter” (‘German original edition of “Samfundets stötter”, prepared in collaboration with Emma Klingenfeld’). Notice that the Czech and Dutch playbills render what is supposed to appear as Ibsen’s original Norwegian title with the German ö instead of the Norwegian ø , i.e. the exact same spelling as in the book edition of Klingenfeld’s translation. Along with the name forms and titles, this corroborates my assumption. In other words, Bolckmans, and others with him, have collated the translations against the wrong original. It is rather Klingenfeld’s translation, printed and marketed as an original work of art from Ibsen’s hand, that is the missing link. Early relay translations via German are inevitably far easier to determine in the case of A Doll’s House because Lange’s translation was the only available German translation up until 1890. In Ibsen scholarship, Lange is held responsible - and often reproached - for changing the title of the play to Nora , thereby initiating a practice which persists to this very day. Rudolf Denk and Fritz Paul, among others, imply that he did so on his own volition (Paul 1997, 71; Denk 2009, 129). But Lange’s translation was published and marketed as the only authorized German edition ( Einzig autorisirte deutsche Ausgabe , cf. title page in Ibsen 1879). Thus, whoever came up with the idea first, Ibsen tacitly approved of the changed title by way of his authorization, and he must also have approved of the Germanized names of the characters which Lange as usual came up with (cf. table 5.9). 5.6 German as source language in relay translations 145 Ibsen Lange Advokat (Torvald) Helmer Robert Helmer, Advocat Nora, hans hustru Nora, seine Frau Doktor Rank Doctor Rank Fru (Kristine) Linde Frau (Christine) Linden Sagfører (Nils) Krogstad (Heinrich) Günther Helmers tre små børn (Ivar, Bob, Emmy) Ihre drei kleinen Kinder (Erwin, Bob, Emmy) Anne-Marie, barnepige hos Helmers Marianne, Kinderfrau bei Helmer Stuepigen (Helene) sammesteds Helene, Hausmädchen bei Helmer Et bybud Ein Bote Table 5.9: Rendering of names in A Doll’s House in Lange’s German translation (Ibsen 1879). Lange made two conspicuous choices, for in rendering the names of Helmer and Krogstad he followed a principle not contained in Schultze’s fivefold scheme above: replacement. 191 Torvald originates from the Old Norse name Þórvaldr , which combines the name of the Norse god Þór (‘Thor’) and valdr (‘ruler’, HIS 7k, 319). The denotative meaning of Lange’s Robert bears no equivalence to this at all, as the name originates from the Germanic name Hrodebert which means ‘bright fame’. 192 The Norwegian family name Krogstad is derived from the Old Norse name Krókr (‘hook’) and stad (‘farm [with cultivated soil]’, HIS 7k, 311). Lange’s replacement, Günther , is a name of Germanic origin, Gundahar , which derives from gund (‘war’) and hari (‘army, warrior’). 193 These changed names clearly created other connotations than the original names, but again my prime concern is what happened to these names in secondary translations and in performances using them. Below is a list of early performances of A Doll’s House on non-German stages in which the names of the characters were in accordance with Lange’s translation (I have only checked initial performances of the play in the twelve languages sharing German as their ‘parental node’ in the language flow graphic above): 191 Coincidentally, replacement is one of six modes of rendering titles in Schultze’s account, the other five being omission, addition, direct transfer, adaptation, and semantic translation, cf. Schultze 1991, 92. 192 www.behindthename.com/ name/ robert, accessed 19 April 2016. 193 www.behindthename.com/ name/ gu12nther, accessed 19 April 2016. Note that Günther is mostly used as a first name, whereas Lange applies it as a surname. 146 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist • Russian: Bol’šoj Teatr, Saint Petersburg, 8 February 1884 (Nilsson 1958, 37) • Serbian: Narodno pozorište u Beogradu, Belgrade, 28 January 1889 (Paul 2011, 2554) • Czech: Národni divadlo, Prague, 3 May 1889 (http: / / archiv.narodni-divadlo. cz/ , accessed 19 April 2016) • Hungarian: Nemzeti Színház, Budapest, 4 October 1889 (Enyedi 2014, 56 f.) • Slovenian: Dramatično društvo Ljubljana, Ljubljana, 27 March 1892 (theatre review in Laibacher Zeitung of 28 March 1892) • Croatian: Narodno zemaljsko kazalište, Zagreb, 10 March 1894 (theatre ad in Agramer Zeitung of 10 March 1894) • Latvian: Rīgas Latviešu teātris, Riga, 8 October 1897 (Burima 2006, 43) • Bulgarian: Dramatitscheski teatar Rosa Popova, Russe, October 1897 (Ruskova 2008, 69) Besides these, it is documented that also Pietro Galletti’s Italian translation of A Doll’s House , performed by a company led by Vittorio Pieri and his wife Emilia Aliprandi in Turin on 15 February 1889 as the first-ever Italian Ibsen performance, was based on Lange’s authorized German edition (D’Amico 2013, 66-72; HIS 14, 486; HIS 14k, 606). The same goes for Cyryl Danielewski’s Polish translation staged by a company featuring Helena Modrzejewska (later known as Helena Modjeska) at Teatr Wielki in Warsaw on 10 March 1882 (Kłańska 2006). To judge by the printed edition of Galletti’s translation, published as the Traduzione autorizzata (‘authorized translation’) in Milan in 1894, Galletti restored Krogstad’s name and spelled the first name of Nora’s husband Torvaldo . 194 In the book edition of Danielewski’s Polish translation, published in Warsaw in 1882, Helmer’s first name is spelled Torwald , whereas Krogstad’s full name is Henryk Krogstad . 195 Galletti’s translation is a telling case of how the issue of copyright affected Ibsen. By the time Galletti made the translation, Ibsen’s original version of A Doll’s House ( Et dukkehjem ) was without protection in Italy, as Denmark had not joined the Berne convention of 1886. By contrast, Nora , that is the German edition, was in fact protected in Italy as a German work of art, since both Germany and Italy were signatories to the convention, hence the status of Galletti’s Nora o la casa della bambola as an authorized translation. The legal transactions were not carried out behind Ibsen’s back, quite the contrary. The set-up was initiated 194 Cf. digital facsimiles of the book at http: / / urn.nb.no/ URN: NBN: no-nb_digibok_201003 1712002, accessed 20 April 2016. 195 Cf. digital facsimiles of the book at http: / / urn.nb.no/ URN: NBN: no-nb_digibok_201003 1712003, accessed 20 April 2016. 5.6 German as source language in relay translations 147 by him as a means of securing his rights and protecting his works within the existing copyright regime. 196 Apart from Giuliano D’Amico’s book Domesticating Ibsen for Italy (2013) as well as Narve Fulsås’ introductions to the epistolary volumes of Henrik Ibsens skrifter (HIS 13k, 11-112; HIS 14k, 11-90; HIS 15k, 11-56), very little scholarship has been done on the issue of Ibsen and international copyright. This is unfortunate, first of all because it makes it difficult to set the record straight of how Ibsen crossed national and linguistic borders. Puzzled by the renaming of Helmer and Krogstad in Vejnberg’s Russian translation, for example, Nils Åke Nilsson concluded that the ‘Norwegian names obviously seemed all too alien’. 197 The Norwegian names, however, were most probably never even considered, as Vejnberg transferred the names Robert and Günther directly from his source text which was Lange’s German translation. Studies mechanically collating Ibsen translations against the Dano-Norwegian originals without being informed about extratextual factors like copyright issues, intermediaries and international translation currents, tend to produce false assumptions and confusing arguments. The language flow graphic above is a model which takes these extratextual factors into account. Once drawn, it represents a call for caution not only for Ibsen scholars doing translation studies. As demonstrated in my discussion, the very notion of ‘original’ is problematized. The originals do not only reside in the trunk of the tree structure. Klingenfeld’s Stützen der Gesellschaft and Lange’s Nora are no less original than Samfundets støtter and Et dukkehjem . The tree model prompts us to reconsider a more generic understanding of the term, in line with Bourdieu’s critique of the “ideology of the inexhaustible work of art” (1996, 171). 5.6.2 German theatre agencies marketing Ibsen abroad Less visible than the translators, but just as indispensable, the German theatre agencies played a key role in marketing Ibsen’s plays abroad. In step with the growing internationalization of the theatre industry, the theatre agencies were not slow to seize the opportunity of expanding their market. They were involved in business transactions both ways. On the one hand, they were op- 196 Cf. Ibsen’s letter to Anne Charlotte Leffler on 4 October 1888 (HIS 14, 486). Allegedly, Galletti never paid any royalties to Ibsen for the performances in Turin. According to d‘Amico, Ibsen (unaware of the performances) withdrew Galletti’s authorization in 1891 and gave it instead to Luigi Capuana, who prepared a translation using Prozor’s authorized French translation as source text (D’Amico 2013, 71, 75-83). The legal status of Galletti’s translation in 1889 is, however, not affected by this. 197 “Offenbar wirkten die norwegischen Namen allzu fremd.ˮ Nilsson 1958, 37. 148 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist erating as impresarios for German stage artists touring abroad and foreign artists touring German cities, while on the other hand, they were both exporting and importing dramatic works (Watzka 2006, 100). Parallel to the success that (certain) Ibsen plays earned on the German stage, they became attractive for international trade. There were at least three German agencies trading in Ibsen, partly in competition with each other: the German Society of Dramatists and Composers, the Theateragentur Entsch (cf. 2.2.3), and Felix Bloch Erben. The Felix Bloch Erben agency (henceforth FBE) came relatively late, but at a decisive moment in Ibsen’s career. The first appearance of a play by Ibsen ( Ghosts ) in the agency’s catalogue was in January 1887 (D’Amico 2013, 57). A year later, performance royalties from FBE started to appear in Ibsen’s account books, the first entries dated 1 April 1888 (49 kroner, unspecified) and 1 July 1888 (195 kroner for The Wild Duck at the Residenztheater Berlin). 198 D’Amico has uncovered eight contracts between Ibsen and FBE covering a period of eleven years from 1889 to 1900. 199 Worth noticing is that the contracts concerning Ibsen’s five final plays ( Hedda Gabler through When We Dead Awaken ) authorized FBE not only to market the plays and negotiate public performances on German stages in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia, but also to negotiate translations of the plays into other languages. 200 Thus, as D’Amico points out, FBE “became one of the most important intermediaries for the dissemination of Ibsen’s works in Europe” (2013, 57), not least because they controlled so much of the international distribution of Ibsen’s plays by way of relay translations using German source texts. In two of the contracts, however, the terms concerning translations was crossed out, and FBE was not authorized to negotiate translations of The Vikings at Helgeland , Lady Inger , The Pretenders , and Pillars of Society . Notice also the 198 www.dokpro.uio.no/ litteratur/ ibsen/ ms/ varia.html, accessed 22 April 2016. 199 These contracts (contract dates in brackets) concerned the marketing of Pillars of Society (20 March 1889), The Vikings at Helgeland , Lady Inger , and Pillars of Society (9 November 1889), Hedda Gabler (22 December 1890), The Pretenders (8 March 1891), The Master Builder (5 December 1892), Little Eyolf (27 November 1894), John Gabriel Borkman (20 December 1896), and When We Dead Awaken (5 January 1900), cf. D’Amico 2016. Contracts must have existed regarding The Wild Duck , Rosmersholm , and Lady from the Sea too, since Ibsen’s account books list royalties from FBE from performances of these plays (cf. www.dokpro.uio.no/ litteratur/ ibsen/ ms/ varia.html, accessed 22 April 2016). 200 Cf. e.g. the Master Builder contract in which Ibsen commissions FBE „zum alleinigen und ausschließlichen Vertrieb an sämmtliche Bühnen des In- und Auslandes und überträgt somit alle ihm als Autor zustehenden Rechte insbesondere das […] ausschließlich zustehende Recht der öffentlichen Aufführung des genannten Werkes wie auch die Uebersetzungen in fremde Sprachen.ˮ Quoted in D’Amico 2016, 111. 5.6 German as source language in relay translations 149 late arrival of A Doll’s House in FBE’s catalogue. 201 There is an obvious reason for this: the existence of previous contracts and agreements with other agents. At the end of the 1870s, Pillars of Society was the object of a fierce competition between Ibsen, Klingenfeld, and the playwright’s first German theatre agent, Günther von der Groeben, managing director of the Deutsche Genossenschaft dramatischer Autoren und Componisten (henceforth GdA), on the one hand, and Jonas, Lange, and the Theateragentur Entsch on the other hand. As accounted for above (2.2.3), Ibsen/ Klingenfeld/ von der Groeben suffered a loss. Yet, there is more to GdA’s involvement in Ibsen’s plays than that. First of all, contracted to market and distribute Klingenfeld’s translation of the play, I believe that GdA was involved in the business transactions that led to Pillars of Society being performed in Dutch in Amsterdam, Czech in Prague, and Hungarian in Arad. GdA had a representative in Vienna, Ignaz Kugel, who took care of the agency’s business in Austria-Hungary (Kürschner 1979, 130). 202 Second, although Ibsen resigned his GdA membership in 1884, the society in fact continued to market Ibsen plays at least for another five years. In 1889, as Reclam began to publish their four-volume edition of Henrik Ibsen’s Gesammelte Werke , the first volume of which contained Lange’s translation of A Doll’s House , a notice was printed signed by Lange declaring that ‘the right to perform the play is acquired through the agency of the German Society of Dramatists and Composers in Leipzig’. 203 Thus, on paper, GdA was responsible for marketing the play script of Nora for at least ten years. Yet in reality, the matter was more complicated. GdA’s assignment was more or less pro forma, whereas the real job was done by Lange and Ibsen himself. The terms of the agreement between the two of them is known from Ibsen’s letter to H.E. Berner on 18 February 1882. All earnings of book sales went to Lange, who translated the play at his own expense, and the theatre royalties were split evenly (HIS 14, 122). In Ibsen’s famous letter to the Danish newspaper Nationaltidende two years earlier concerning the so-called German ending of A Doll’s House , he refers to Lange as his translator and “theatrical 201 No contract for A Doll’s House has been found, but Lange’s Nora was included in a list of translations authorized by Ibsen which was attached to a letter he distributed to German theatre managers on 20 August 1894. The letter requested the managers to use the authorized translations and to purchase them through FBE (Anker 1979, 351; HIS 15, 256-257). 202 By the same token, the Theateragentur Entsch may have been involved in the Serbian performance of Pillars of Society in Belgrade, based on a translation using Lange’s version of the play (which was in Entsch’ catalogue) as source text. According to Watzka, the Theateragentur Entsch had foreign representatives in Vienna, Riga, Stockholm, and New York (2006, 108). 203 “Das Aufführungsrecht ist von der Agentur der deutschen Genossenschaft dramatischer Autoren und Componisten in Leipzig zu erwerbenˮ, cf. digitized facsimiles at http: / / urn. nb.no/ URN: NBN: no-nb_digibok_2010031212003, accessed 25 April 2016. 150 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist agent for North Germany” (cf. 3.1). Ibsen’s account books corroborate the agreement. Nearly all entries regarding theatre royalties for German performances of A Doll’s House bear Lange’s name and specify the fifty-fifty split between the two of them. There are only two exceptions: royalties from performances of the play at the Königliches Residenztheater in Munich - Ibsen negotiated directly with this theatre (and the Burgtheater in Vienna) throughout his career - and from the performances at the Stadttheater in Vienna in September 1881 which Ibsen received through GdA. 204 The account books’ last entry marked with GdA’s name occurs on 1 July 1883. The fact that GdA remained in the business of marketing Nora until 1889, at least on paper, is explained by Lange’s role as intermediary. Ibsen left the society, but as long as Lange was still a member he maintained his copyright of the translation as such and continued to use GdA as an ally in marketing his version of the play. At some point, Ibsen decided to break with Lange. His increasing distrust in him is indicated in several letters. In November 1887 he refers to Lange’s ‘abnormal state of mind’ (“abnorm sindstilstand”, HIS 14, 422), in January 1891 he calls him a ‘notorious literary thief’ (“berygtet literær røver”, HIS 15, 87), and in August 1894 a ‘mean guy’ and a ‘big scoundrel’ (“gemen karl, - ret en stor slyngel”, HIS 15, 256). Exactly what triggered this is not clear, but we would hardly go wrong in assuming that literary ownership and monetary returns were the seeds of discord. To judge by Ibsen’s account books, he had every reason to be furious. The growing success of A Doll’s House at the very end of the 1880s is not reflected in them. In 1889 alone, sixteen German events of the play are recorded in IbsenStage, but according to the account books, Ibsen received royalties from only one of them (repeat performances at the Königliches Residenztheater in Munich). 205 Neither is Ibsen’s international stage success with A Doll’s House at the end of the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s reflected in the account books, and no entries concerning royalties from non-German performances based on translations using Lange’s Nora as source text exist. At some point, most probably in 1894, Ibsen managed to transfer all plays previously handled by GdA and Lange to FBE. Unfortunately, the distribution of German royalties and international royalties is not specified, as Ibsen only entered quarterly lump sums from FBE. 206 At any rate, given the international dissemination of his plays, Ibsen needed strategic partners in his efforts to safe- 204 Cf. account book entry dated 18 January 1882, www.dokpro.uio.no/ litteratur/ ibsen/ ms/ varia.html, accessed 27 April 2016. 205 The 1889 and 1890 entries have been checked; www.dokpro.uio.no/ litteratur/ ibsen/ ms/ varia.html, accessed 28 April 2016. 206 Notice that FBE charged Ibsen a commission of 15 % of the royalties from German performances and 50 % from performances in other languages. Thus, the relative income from 5.7 Conclusion 151 guard his rights and secure his economic interests. The German theatre agencies were key figures in this regard. 5.7 Conclusion During the 1890s, the graph displaying the frequency of Ibsen events shows a characteristic fluctuation between increase and relative decrease which correlates with major events from the last decade of Ibsen’s writing career, notably the publication of his final plays Hedda Gabler , The Master Builder , Little Eyolf , John Gabriel Borkman , and When We Dead Awaken - and the celebration of his seventieth birthday in 1898. In step with Ibsen’s growing European fame, these events assumed great proportions in terms of media attention and public interest. The events statistics reveal that the launching of a new Ibsen play resulted in an immediate growth of theatrical events. Mostly reaching the summit only after less than a year, however, the event numbers started to decrease as if pending the publication of the next play. But Ibsen’s by far most frequently performed play during the decade, A Doll’s House , does not quite conform to this pattern and seems to follow a trajectory of its own. Ibsen was reintroduced to the German stage in the second half of the 1880s by a new generation of stage artists. Despite the relative shortness of the time gap between the initial years (1876-1881) and the period from 1885 onwards, the vast majority of artists of the early network are absent from the network of German stage artists engaged in Ibsen events during the period 1885-1899. By contrasting the networks of the two time periods, we saw how the German Ibsen network develops from a low degree of connectedness to a distinctly higher degree of connectedness, indicating a body of artists who gradually began to take a stronger ownership in Ibsen’s plays. Crucial in this regard were the German Noras, especially a relatively small group of female artists appearing as solo guest performers in the leading part of A Doll’s House on a frequent basis. IbsenStage lists more than three hundred German events featuring solo guest artists during the period under scrutiny here, almost half of which are A Doll’s House events featuring a female guest artist appearing as Nora. To the most prominent of these guest artists - Sorma, Prasch-Grevenberg, Klinkhammer, and Petri - the Nora character became a career-building part that propelled them to stardom on the German stage, or even the international stage in Sorma’s case. From the end of the 1880s onwards, A Doll’s House became successinternational performances covered by Ibsen’s agreement with FBE was lower than his income from German performances (cf. the Master Builder contract, D’Amico 2016, 112). 152 Chapter 5: The making of a world dramatist fully integrated into three interrelated systems: the star system, the system of solo guest performances, and the touring system. In conventional accounts of how Ibsen became consecrated as the father of modern drama, the significance of A Doll’s House is usually toned down in favour of Ghosts , reflecting the fact that it was above all the latter play that was embraced by the independent theatre movement and the modernist movement. The fourth section above traced Ibsen’s major impact on the formation of the Berliner Moderne, the Wiener Moderne, and Munich’s modernist movement. In Berlin, the initial proclamation of die Moderne by the Durch! literary society was intricately connected to all three Berlinese productions of Ghosts accounted for in chapter 4 (cf. 4.1). The events coincided not only in time and space but also on a personal and spiritual level. Both Vienna and Munich sought to establish a counterpart to the Freie Bühne in Berlin but failed to leave a lasting impact on the history of the German stage in this respect. Within the German dataset of IbsenStage, these events occupy only marginal positions - or no position at all. While the Freie Bühne served first and foremost elitist purposes, the Volksbühnen became a mass movement. Initially stimulated by the Freie Bühne, the Volksbühne movement linked Ibsen to the growing Social Democratic labour movement, associating him with the socialist cause. During the first two seasons of the Freie Volksbühne Berlin, Ibsen was the most frequently presented playwright. The movement meant an expansion of Ibsen’s spectatorship. By 1912, the two rival Volksbühne associations of Berlin, the Freie Volksbühne and the Neue Freie Volksbühne, totalled 18,000 and 50,000 members, respectively. In step with the increase in membership, the movement began to influence the repertoire policy of the established stages, to the extent that the theatres began to produce plays chosen by the Volksbühne associations. By 1890, Ibsen was in the process of becoming a world dramatist. His works found international distribution the like of which Ibsen had never experienced before. In the last section of the present chapter, I investigated the impact of German as a source language for indirect translation throughout Ibsen’s career. By 1900, Ibsen had been translated into twenty-seven languages. Twelve of these used German translations as their source texts. My examination of the tradition of domesticating names and titles, with Pillars of Society and A Doll’s House serving as examples, revealed how German source texts influenced the introduction of Ibsen into a number of other European languages. Given the international dissemination of his plays, Ibsen needed strategic partners in his efforts to safeguard his rights and secure his economic interests. German theatre agencies became key figures in this regard. During the 1890s, the Felix Bloch Erben agency became increasingly involved in trading operations both in and outside the German Empire on Ibsen’s behalf. 5.7 Conclusion 153 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage The graph in figure 6.1 below charts the years 1899 through 1918. As accounted for above, the new century was inaugurated by a peak in German Ibsen events that was to a large extent due to When We Dead Awaken . This peak represents the highest annual number of events (106) in the period under scrutiny in this thesis. During the first decade of the century, the average value was higher than ever before, as seen in the overall graph for 1876-1918 (cf. figure 1.1). In fact, except for the first decade of the twenty-first century, no decade saw a larger number of German Ibsen events than the first decade of the twentieth century. If ever he was, it was towards the end of his lifetime that Ibsen seems to have been in command of the German stage. Figure 6.1: German Ibsen events 1899-1918. In what follows, I will attempt to account for this fact by focusing on five factors: the success of When We Dead Awaken , the growing significance of Ibsen’s symbolist plays, the advent of the Ibsen ensembles, the tradition of the Ibsen cycles, and the contributors appearing as ‘hubs’ in the network of German artists involved in producing Ibsen. To fully grasp the significance of the stage success of Ibsen’s ‘dramatic epilogue’, however, we need to take a closer look at the context of this success. 154 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage 6.1 The stage success of When We Dead Awaken 6.1.1 Consecration, canonization, naturalization: Ibsen the German dramatist When his writing career effectively came to a close a few weeks before the turn of the century, Ibsen was at the top of his international fame. His plays were hot property, fought over by both publishing houses and playhouses all over the Western world. In Germany, his standing as a writer and playwright was particularly strong. Perhaps the clearest testimony of the level of consecration that Ibsen had achieved is S. Fischer’s edition of Ibsen’s complete works, Sämtliche Werke in deutscher Sprache , published from 1898 to 1904 in ten volumes (ISW 1-10). In the literary world, complete works editions are generally among the strongest acts of consecration and canonization imaginable: A good deal of prestige and money is invested by the publishing houses and the editors chosen to prepare and produce the editions, and critics and not least scholars tend to confer greater authority on complete works than single editions. Such complete works editions normally represent long-term investments for their publishers. They do not necessarily reach high sales figures in the shorter run, but by virtue of their long life-cycles they more often than not assume a dominating market position in the longer run, as was indeed the case with Ibsen’s collected works both in Germany (S. Fischer), England (Heinemann), and Denmark and Norway (Gyldendal). In book history, the Fischer edition, which also included Ibsen’s juvenilia and minor works, was without parallel in its meticulous presentation of a living foreign-language writer (Paul 1997, 77). The edition canonized Ibsen as a modern classic. According to an advertising leaflet printed by the publishing house, the main objective of the edition was to publish a German text that corresponds to the original Nordic text, that is likewise perfectly formed, linguistically pure, faithful to everything characteristic yet unforced , that may claim to be considered German original literature. Above all things this edition intends to provide the standard for theatrical production. (Quoted in Paul 1997, 77, italics in original) Unlike the early phase, characterized by the convolutedness of competing translations, most of which were unauthorized, 207 the translations of the Fischer edition smothered virtually all other translations and reigned supreme for five decades (cf. Paul 1997, 78-79). IbsenStage confirms that the edition, in line with 207 Besides the three competing translations of Pillars of Society , five competing German translations of A Doll’s House existed by 1904 (Imbeck 1988). 6.1 The stage success of When We Dead Awaken 155 the intention, also managed to become the standard for theatrical production. Yet how could the publishing house expect the edition, collecting texts of a foreign author in translation, to be considered ‘German original literature’? Klingenfeld’s translation of Pillars of Society in 1878 inaugurated the tradition of giving authorized editions of Ibsen’s works in German translation the label ‘original’ (cf. 5.5.1 above). Fischer’s claim must be understood within the framework of this tradition. Here, ‘original’ had a technical and legal meaning and was used to pursue a twofold purpose, primarily to preclude unauthorized editions, and secondarily, as this was not always possible to achieve, to separate authorized translations from unauthorized ones. Because of historical developments, however, ‘original’ had wider connotations in 1898 than in 1878: Ibsen’s position as an author was infinitely stronger, and his publishers were stronger too, accordingly. The crucial question is, to what extent was Fischer justified in claiming that Ibsen belonged to German literature? Most canonical dramatists thrive on the interaction between book consumption and theatre consumption. From 1886/ 87, Paul asserts, Ibsen’s theatrical success on the German stage promoted the sale of books (2011, 2543). 208 From a different angle of approach, summing up Ibsen’s impact on the development of the German drama, yet with reference to the exact same moment in history, the theatre critic Alfred Kerr claimed that the Ghosts performance at the Residenztheater in Berlin in January 1887 marked the beginning of a ‘period of naturalization’, 209 and, furthermore, that the Freie Bühne’s performance of the same play two years later represented a preliminary completion of ‘Ibsen’s German mission’. 210 As shown above, Ibsen translations in the initial phase tended to domesticate names and titles, whereas the Fischer edition made a virtue of restoring the ‘original’ Ibsen. Domestication and naturalization are not opposites, however, but instances of a continuum. Once the process of domestication has run long enough, it transforms into a process of naturalization. If Kerr is right, Ibsen was in the final stage of this process already in 1889. My prime concern here is not to determine this, but to apply naturalization as a conceptual category to understand and shed light on the events of 1898 (the publication of the first volumes of the Fischer edition) and 1900 (the stage success of When We Dead Awaken ). To an aspiring publisher like Fischer, Ibsen was not only an author with a profound impact on both German literature and the German stage, he was so intricately inter- 208 Paul refers here to Reclam’s four-volume Henrik Ibsen’s Gesammelte Werke (1889-1893) and S. Fischer’s three-volume Henrik Ibsen’s Werke: Moderne Dramen (1890). 209 “Jetzt begann die Epoche der Einbürgerung. Sie reichte von einer Gespensteraufführung bis zu einer Gespensteraufführung.ˮ Kerr 1976, 120. 210 “Damit […] war Ibsens deutsche Sendung vorläufig zu Ende.ˮ Ibid., 121. 156 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage woven into the literary and theatrical parts of the German field of cultural production that he for all practical purposes could be considered a German playwright. 6.1.2 Publication in book form and theatrical distribution of When We Dead Awaken The backdrop against which the publication of When We Dead Awaken in December 1899 should be most appropriately studied is intricate. Two complete works editions, Fischer’s Sämtliche Werke in deutscher Sprache and Gyldendal’s Samlede værker (FU 1-10) and three separate editions (the first editions in Dano-Norwegian, German and English) should be considered. The Dano-Norwegian separate edition appeared simultaneously on 19 December 1899 in Kristiania, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, and, in a mini-edition of twelve copies, London (HIS 10k, 198-199). Since Denmark still had not ratified the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, particular measures were taken in London and Berlin to secure copyright in England and Germany respectively. Heinemann’s set-up in London was well established, and he published Dano-Norwegian mini-editions and organized so-called copyright performances (staged readings) of all the 1890s dramas by Ibsen from Hedda Gabler onwards (HIS 15k, 44-48). When the German-language edition appeared in Berlin on 22 December 1899, Fischer followed another strategy, the set-up of which was entirely new and unparalleled in the history of Ibsen editions, with the title page stating the names of both the German and the Danish publishing houses (S. Fischer and Gyldendal, respectively); strikingly, the same was the case for the Gyldendal edition. 211 The procedure was a suggestion by Fischer (HIS 10k, 199), and Ibsen gave his consent in a letter to Jacob Hegel on 27 November 1899 (HIS 15, 493). Placing side by side the title pages of the separate German edition and the volume of the complete works edition containing Wenn wir Toten erwachen (ISW 9), which most probably were issued simultaneously, we notice that the name of the translator, Christian Morgenstern, is not credited in either edition. The latter case is in line with the editorial policy chosen by Georg Brandes, Julius Elias and Paul Schlenther, the editors of Sämtliche Werke in deutscher Sprache . Here, none of Ibsen’s final ten contemporary plays from Ghosts onwards contain translation credits, as older existing translations were subject 211 Cf. the editions digitized by the National Library of Norway: http: / / urn.nb.no/ URN: NB- N: no-nb_digibok_2013121124007 (German) and http: / / urn.nb.no/ URN: NBN: no-nb_digibok_2013050224075 (Dano-Norwegian), accessed 12 August 2016. 6.1 The stage success of When We Dead Awaken 157 to revision involving contributions and suggestions given by the whole team of translators, editors, and Ibsen himself (ISW 1, xvi-xviii). But in the process of translating When We Dead Awaken , time was a critical factor. Morgenstern’s version was prepared in a hurry and in all probability not subjected to any kind of peer review - the translation was thus his alone. Why, then, the lack of credits? Moreover, compared to the complete works which specify in its main title that the edition collects Ibsen’s works ‘in the German language’ (“in deutscher Sprache”), Fischer’s separate edition is devoid of any reference to its status as a literary work mediated from one language to another. Thus, the readers of the first editions of When We Dead Awaken in Dano-Norwegian and German, respectively, were told that the play was co-published by two publishing houses, Gyldendal in Copenhagen and S. Fischer in Berlin. The fact that the former was a printed version of a text composed of Ibsen’s original phrases and the latter a text shaped by Morgenstern’s translator choices - and hence, ultimately, his phrases - was concealed. From their appearances, there was no difference between the two, with both appearing as original editions. Copyright protection remained a prime concern, but I believe that the set-up of the German edition was guided by another strong consideration that has yet to be properly acknowledged: the marketing and branding of Ibsen as a German dramatist. For more than two decades, German publishing houses had sold Ibsen books either with or without the writer’s authorization, and obtaining Ibsen’s authorization was clearly an asset used in marketing. By 1899, however, the German naturalization of Ibsen had come full circle. Fischer’s edition, technically a translation authorized by Ibsen, was presented to the reading public as an original work of dramatic art, blurring out the distinction between the Dano-Norwegian and the German editions. The distribution of When We Dead Awaken to German stages is a mirror of this set-up. Ibsen signed a contract with the Felix Bloch Erben theatrical agency regarding the distribution to German-speaking stages in the German Empire and abroad on 5 January 1900. The contract credits Morgenstern as the translator (D’Amico 2016, 117). On the playbill of the world premiere of the play at the Königliches Hoftheater Stuttgart on 26 January 1900, however, Morgenstern’s name was left out. In the period under scrutiny in this thesis, that is up until 1918, his translation was the scriptural basis of ninety-five events of When We Dead Awaken , yet his name is found nowhere in the material documenting these events. 212 The book distribution and the theatrical distribution, then, follow the 212 As far as I have been able to gather, Morgenstern has only been credited as translator twice throughout the German stage history of the play: first in the production at the Rheinisches Landestheater Neuss as late as in 1982, and then at the Thalia-Theater Hamburg 158 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage same logic: Morgenstern’s translation job turned into a negligible factor. The play was presented in a similar fashion, as if Wenn wir Toten erwachen was an original piece of work stemming directly from Ibsen’s hand. More than anything else, the case shows that Ibsen was fully naturalized and integrated into the German field of cultural production. 6.1.3 The spatial distribution of When We Dead Awaken in 1900 Measured by event density, When We Dead Awaken was in fact Ibsen’s second largest stage success. Thirty-nine German events associated with the play are recorded in the calendar year 1900, thirty-five of which took place in the spring and summer season, and four in the autumn season. Besides Pillars of Society , no other play by Ibsen was performed that much within such a short period of time. In the map in figure 6.2 below, the thirty-nine events are displayed with numbers according to the chronology of the premiere dates. Figure 6.2: Map of German When We Dead Awaken events in the calendar year 1900, numbered by premiere date. in 1990. Note that Morgenstern’s translation was the only available German translation until a new translation by Hans Egon Gerlach appeared in 1965. 6.1 The stage success of When We Dead Awaken 159 The map in figure 6.2 shows a similar degree of geographical spread as for Pillars of Society , and the provincial aspect of the stage presence of When We Dead Awaken seems to be as strong as that indicated by the map in figure 2.4, but the distribution flow of Ibsen’s ultimate play did not have the same kind of directedness - from the centre to the periphery - as Pillars of Society . The many provincial stages presenting When We Dead Awaken were not prompted by successful productions at central stages. By the turn of the century, Ibsen’s command of the German stage was extraordinarily strong. Stages in the major cities as well as in the provinces were all competing vigorously to perform his plays. No one waited for others to lead the way and justify the investment of acquiring performance rights and producing When We Dead Awaken on stage. Hence, the thirty-nine German stages that presented the play in 1900 constitute a compound mix of venues in cities and towns of every size. The very first staging of When We Dead Awaken took place at the Königliches Hoftheater Stuttgart on 26 January 1900 (event 1 in fig. 6.2). At the time, the city had a population of 166,699. 213 The following night, the play premiered at the Stadttheater Stettin (today’s Szczecin in Poland, event 2) in a production by Dr Heine-Ensemble, the first of two touring companies presenting multiple performances of the play at venues in smaller cities. Besides Stettin, the company toured the cities of Magdeburg (event 4), Lübeck (9), Erfurt (10), Hannover (15), Bonn (16), Rotterdam (31), Amsterdam (32), and Groningen (33). In April and May, the Ibsen-Ensemble originating from the Stadttheater Hannover toured the cities of Herford (17), Nordhausen (19), Detmold (20), Osnabrück (21), Hameln (22), Mühlhausen (23), Quedlinburg (24), Eisleben (27), Arnstadt (28), and Rudolstadt (29). After the opening night of the Deutsches Theater’s production of When We Dead Awaken in Berlin on 17 March 1900 (event 12), seven weeks after the Stuttgart premiere, several critics called attention to the lateness of the Berlin stages. 214 According to the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung ’s critic, The capital of the Reich is no longer Germany’s leading theatre city in the sense that all outstanding stage works or such works that make it to the headlines are presented here first. The smaller and larger cities compete to demonstrate the higher causes of their artistic right to exist by way of premieres. 215 213 https: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Stuttgart, accessed 7 January 2016. 214 Stümcke 1900, 605; Fritz Mauthner’s review in Berliner Tageblatt , 18 March 1900; G-n’s review in Berliner Börsen-Zeitung , 18 March 1900. 215 “Die Reichshauptstadt ist nicht mehr die Theaterstadt Deutschlands in dem Sinne, daß alle hervorragenden Bühnenwerke oder solche, die von sich reden machen, hier zuerst aufgeführt werden. Kleinere und größere Städte wetteifern darum, ihrerseits durch 160 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage In Austria, the play was produced in Graz (event 14), but not in Vienna. 216 A side glance at the global events of When We Dead Awaken reveals that the German dissemination is different from any other in a number of respects, notably the volume of events, geographical spread, and strong provincial distribution. In the calendar year 1900, fifty-five global events of the play are recorded in IbsenStage. The thirty-nine German events make up a considerable 71 % of these. In the Nordic countries, the play was presented in Copenhagen, Helsinki, Kristiania, Stockholm, and Gothenburg, but not by any travelling company touring the provinces. The play was presented by a Hungarian company in Budapest in April and in a production directed by Nemirovič-Dančenko at the Moscow Art Theatre in November 1900. Alfredo de Sanctis’ Italian company is the only case of a non-German company touring on a regional level, presenting the play at venues in middle-sized and small cities of Northern Italy in 1900 and 1901. 217 6.1.4 The theatrical context of When We Dead Awaken on the German stage in 1900 The success of When We Dead Awaken remains to be contextualized by looking at what other plays were performed on the German stage in the theatre season 1899/ 1900. Volume 12 of the Neuer Theater-Almanach , listing plays performed at German-speaking stages all over the Western world (including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia) from October 1899 to October 1900, has been used as a reference source. 218 First, I wanted to figure out which plays dominated in terms of the number of productions, representing the season’s box-office draws (henceforth ‘the commercial list’, see table 6.3). Second, I conducted a more focused search for productions of plays connected to When We Dead Awaken and its author by way of association. The twelve most frequently performed plays according to the Neuer Theater-Almanach were as follows: Erstaufführungen ihre höhere künstlerische Daseinsberechtigung zu documentiren.ˮ G-n, Berliner Börsen-Zeitung , 18 March 1900. 216 The first production of When We Dead Awaken in Vienna took place only in March 1904 at the Deutsches Volkstheater. 217 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 33276, accessed 14 January 2016. Cf. D’Amico 2013, 283-284. 218 Neuer Theater-Almanach. Theatergeschichtliches Jahr- und Adressen-Buch , vol. 12 (Berlin: Genossenschaft Deutscher Bühnen-Angehöriger, 1901). Digital fascimilies available at https: / / archive.org/ details/ deutschesbhnen1901genouoft, accessed 16 August 2016. 6.1 The stage success of When We Dead Awaken 161 Play Playwright No. of productions Jugend von heute , Komödie Otto Ernst 119 Probekandidat , Drama Max Dreyer 119 Als ich wiederkam , Schwank O. Blumenthal and G. Kadelburg 99 Die strengen Herren , Lustspiel O. Blumenthal and G. Kadelburg 98 Dame von Maxim , Schwank Georges Feydeau 88 Johannisfeuer , Schauspiel Hermann Sudermann 76 Die Herren Söhne , Volksstück Oscar Walther and Leo Stein 70 Der Tugendhof , Lustspiel Richard Skowronnek 57 Der Großkaufmann , Lustspiel Oscar Walther and Leo Stein 39 Wenn wir Toten erwachen , Dramatischer Epilog Henrik Ibsen 39 Über unsere Kraft , Schauspiel Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson 37 Der Hochzeitstag , Schwank W. Wolters and F.v. Koenigsbrun-Schaup 32 Table 6.3: Twelve most performed plays on German-speaking stages in the theatre season 1899/ 1900. Viewing table 6.3 in the light of the list of the most frequently performed plays in 1877/ 78 (cf. table 2.2), and granted that the two tables are indicative of the development of the German stage in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, one can observe that two features remain the same: Comedies still dominate (then 6 out of 10, now 7 out of 12 plays), and Ibsen still prevails as a commercially viable playwright (then Pillars of Society , now When We Dead Awaken ). But two other aspects have changed. First, French drama’s once so dominant position over the German stage gradually decreased in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the two tables reflect that (then 3 out of 10, i.e. 30 %, now 1 out of 12, i.e. 8,3%). 219 Second, to judge by table 6.3, French plays had been pushed aside by German plays, as the proportion of ‘home-bred’ dramas is stronger (9 out of 12 plays). Interestingly, Bjørnson’s play Beyond Human Power I is featured in table 6.3. In the 1870s, Bjørnson was the pioneer, but the tables had turned completely by 219 Die Dame von Maxim ( La Dame de chez Maxim ) was written by the French playwright Georges Feydeau. 162 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage the turn of the century: When We Dead Awaken was a brand new play by one of Europe’s leading dramatists, Beyond Human Power was a seventeen-year-old play by a ‘forgotten avant-gardist’. 220 Why the sudden interest in Bjørnson’s play? When We Dead Awaken does not seem to have had a direct impact. Ibsen’s play did not pave the way for Beyond Human Power , as A Bankruptcy once did for Pillars of Society (cf. 2.2.2). Yet given the longstanding association between the two Norwegian dramatists, connections were made by the critics. The Berlin premieres of When We Dead Awaken and Beyond Human Power were only one week apart - the former on 17 March 1900 at the Deutsches Theater, the latter on 24 March 1900 at the Berliner Theater. Fritz Mauthner, the Berliner Tageblatt ’s critic, saw both performances. ‘Hardly more than a respectable achievement’, was his lukewarm verdict of Ibsen’s play. Despite the ‘careful’ and mostly ‘handsome’ staging, the evening left the impression of a playwright ‘too much preoccupied with his thoughts and too little with the spiritual conditions of his characters’. 221 A week later, Mauthner left the auditorium of the Berliner Theater after having attended the premiere of Beyond Human Power , ‘moved at heart, roused and awakened by the power of a mighty poet’. 222 For decades, Mauthner’s review proceeds, Ibsen had pushed Bjørnson into the background; Ibsen is ‘more ruthless, clearer, therefore a more suitable leader’, but as a poet, Bjørnson is ‘warmer’, something that the production of Beyond Human Power had again made clear. 223 Indeed, three years later, the ‘warm-blooded’, passionate and idealistic Bjørnson was preferred over Ibsen for the Nobel prize in literature (cf. Moi 2006, 98). In two regards, however, the two Berlin premieres need to be separated from each other. When We Dead Awaken was an evening performance, Beyond Human Power a matinee. Bjørnson’s play was well received and for that reason transferred to the evening repertoire at the Berliner Theater. 224 But unlike When We Dead Awaken , Beyond Human Power had to prove its viability first. Bjørnson’s play 220 “Björnstjerne Björnson - ein vergessener Avantgardistˮ (Pasche 1979, 289). Beyond Human Power I was published in Copenhagen in 1883 and performed for the first time in Stockholm in 1886. The first German translation of the play appeared in Leipzig in 1886 (Pasche 1979, 87). 221 “[D]ie Dichtung […] brachte es nicht über einen Achtungserfolg heraus. […] Der Eindruck war nicht stark genug, […] weil der Dichter trotz einer sorgsamen, in der Hauptsache schönen Aufführung zu sehr mit seinen Gedanken, zu wenig mit dem Stimmungsinhalt seiner Gestalten gegenwärtig warˮ. Fritz Mauthner, Berliner Tageblatt , 18 March 1900. 222 “[I]m Innersten ergriffen, aufgerüttelt und erweckt von einer gewaltigen Dichterkraft, verließen wir das Berliner Theaterˮ. Fritz Mauthner, Berliner Tageblatt , 25 March 1900. 223 “Ibsen ist rücksichtsloser, klarer, darum besser zum Führer geeignet, aber Björnson ist der wärmere Dichter. Das wurde gestern wieder recht deutlichˮ. Ibid. 224 By the end of the spring season 1900, it was performed twenty-one times (Pasche 1979, 89-90). 6.1 The stage success of When We Dead Awaken 163 was in need of a try-out, Ibsen’s was not. Second, Beyond Human Power became a box-office draw only after the success at the Berliner Theater. Stimulated by the overwhelmingly positive response from critics and public alike in Berlin, stages all over Central Europe produced the play (Pasche 1979, 90). 225 The geographical dissemination of the play on the German stage displays the same kind of directedness - from centre to periphery - as Pillars of Society did in 1878 (cf. 2.2.4.1). The dissemination of When We Dead Awaken lacks this directedness. Sifting through the repertoire lists of the Neuer Theater-Almanach once more, I decided to take a closer look at the stages producing When We Dead Awaken . What other plays were presented at the same venues? Not surprisingly, several plays on the commercial list from table 6.3 resurfaced. But to discover that When We Dead Awaken frequently co-occurred with Otto Ernst’s Jugend von heute and Max Dreyer’s Probekandidat does not tell us much, as that was the case for a great number of plays presented that season. Six stages producing Ibsen’s play presented Bjørnson’s Beyond Human Power as well. 226 However, that number seems too low to speak of a clear pattern of co-occurrence, all the more compared to the twenty-five stages presenting both A Bankruptcy and Pillars of Society in the second half of the 1870s (cf. 2.2.2). Disregarding the box-office plays, I was left with a still fairly long list of plays. It was only when I added author names that I discovered a recognizable pattern. The name of a particular dramatist kept reappearing: Gerhart Hauptmann. Glancing over the repertoire lists of the thirty-nine stages producing When We Dead Awaken , a total of nine plays written by Hauptmann were featured there twenty-five times. These productions were associated with the following plays (number of productions in brackets): Colleague Crampton (5), The Sunken Bell (4), The Beaver Coat (3), Lonely People (3), The Assumption of Hannele (3), Schluck and Jau (3), Drayman Henschel (2), The Reconciliation (1), The Weavers (1). 227 I proceeded to search for connections between Hauptmann plays 225 According to the Neuer Theater-Almanach (cf. note 12 above), venues in the following cities produced the play: Ansbach, Augsburg, Basel, Berlin, Bern, Breslau, Bromberg, Koblenz, Detmold, Eisenach, Forst, Frankfurt an der Oder, Gelsenkirchen, Gießen, Görlitz, Halle, Hamburg, Hannover, Heidelberg, Kiel, Konstanz, Libau, Liegnitz, Lübeck, Munich, New York, Quedlinburg, Rostock, Rudolstadt, Schweinfurt, Stettin, Stralsund, Teplitz, Ulm, Wiesbaden, Würzburg, and Zittau. 226 Stadttheater Breslau, Stadttheater Gießen, Stadttheater Hamburg, Stadttheater Teplitz-Schönau, Residenztheater Wiesbaden, Stadttheater Würzburg ( Neuer Theater-Almanach. Theatergeschichtliches Jahr- und Adressen-Buch . 12 (1901), 279, 349, 364, 521, 557, 563). 227 Note that there is a small discrepancy between the When We Dead Awaken number of events recorded in IbsenStage and the number of productions listed in the Neuer Theater-Almanach . All the figures of the commercial list and the list of plays by Hauptmann are according to the Neuer Theater-Almanach . There are two possible sources of error: Neuer Theater-Almanach has been checked manually, and I may have overlooked things, or else Neuer Theater-Almanach may not be faultless. 164 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage and other plays by Ibsen. Disregarding When We Dead Awaken , I found virtually the same pattern of co-occurrence. Out of the season’s sixty productions of other plays by Ibsen ( When We Dead Awaken excluded), twenty-eight were presented on stages that also performed a play by Hauptmann that season. What is the significance of this pattern of association? Hauptmann and Ibsen seem to be closely connected with each other, but there is nothing groundbreaking in pointing that out, quite the contrary: In Ibsen scholarship, there is a strong tradition for researching patterns of influence between Ibsen and the subsequent generations of dramatists. Georg Brandes may well have inaugurated the German branch of this tradition in an article published in 1890, tracing Ibsen’s influence on plays by seven German dramatists. 228 After Brandes, numerous studies have been published investigating Ibsen’s impact on the German drama (see George 1968). Here, however, I propose a different approach. Comparative literature studies guided by the concept of influence seem to have fallen somewhat out of fashion for at least two reasons. First of all, the concept implies a one-sidedness, or more precisely a uni-directedness, as if the world of literature is dominated by one-way streets, though it most certainly is not. Second, most studies of this kind tend to focus on the contents exclusively by comparing how various dramatists employ literary devices, construct plots, or develope their characters. But there are also numerous extratextual factors that affect the creation, production, dissemination, and reception of a dramatic work. In my analysis here, I therefore deliberately choose the term ‘association’ instead of ‘influence’. ‘Association’ connotes reciprocity and multi-directedness and is a more abstract and objective term. It may apply equally to human agents and to non-human objects and phenomena, such as literary works, theatres, events, and movements. Instead of looking at traces of influence on a textual level between Ibsen’s and Hauptmann’s plays, I am indexing performances of their plays in a specific season and examining to what extent these performances form relations with each other. In a sense, Ibsen’s and Hauptmann’s dramatic characters are related to each other over consecutive nights in performances in a large number of identical theatre venues. But how were they brought together in the first place? To account for this, one has to look back at events at the end of the 1880s. Theatres select dramatic works for performance according to their profile. The plays chosen by the Freie Bühne society in 1889 must be understood within the framework of the society’s antagonistic and programmatic objectives (as accounted for in the preceding chapter). After the inaugural performance of 228 Cf. Brandes 1890 (in Danish) and Brandes 1976 (in German). Brandes examines plays by Richard Voss, Hermann Bahr, Wolfgang Kirchbach, Gerhart Hauptmann, Arno Holz, Johannes Schlaf, and Hans von Basedow. 6.1 The stage success of When We Dead Awaken 165 Ghosts , Hauptmann’s Before Sunrise was presented on 20 October 1889, causing an even bigger stir than Ghosts . In the history of the German stage, these two performances go hand in hand. In his review of Freie Bühne’s performance, Theodor Fontane characterized Hauptmann as the ‘fulfilment of Ibsen’. 229 To Alfred Kerr, Hauptmann’s play appeared as the ‘sunrise’ of the new German drama, delivered by the hands of Ibsen (1976, 121). On the biographical level, the history of Hauptmann’s association with Ibsen dates back to 1887. Two years prior to his debut as a dramatist, Hauptmann saw Ghosts at the Residenztheater in Berlin, a performance which, to him, signified the revival of the theatre and released the dramatist in him, as he later confided to his diary. 230 Clearly, the fact that Ibsen’s name is brought up in a dialogue between two of the leading characters in Before Sunrise , Helene and Loth, hardly weakens the argument (cf. Hauptmann 1963, 93-94). The main point, however, is the long-term pattern of association between Ibsen and Hauptmann. The Freie Bühne society established and displayed the connection, and from now on the dramatic works of Ibsen and Hauptmann began to occupy homologous positions within the field of cultural production, yet the performances in 1889 signify only the very beginning of this. To return to the repertoire data from 1899/ 1900, it is important to stress that the premise of the argument rests on an analysis of relations: It is the weight of the relations between performances of Ibsen’s and Hauptmann’s plays that lends force to the argument, and these relations form a clear pattern. I also cross-checked plays by Frank Wedekind, Arthur Schnitzler, Hermann Sudermann, August Strindberg, and Maurice Maeterlinck, but these do not display similar patterns. For example, although there are eleven co-occurrences between When We Dead Awaken and Sudermann’s Johannisfeuer , a play that also features on the commercial list, no deeper-level pattern of association between Ibsen and Sudermann has been discovered. 231 Note also that even though no play by Hauptmann is found among the box-office plays, he was a considerable force on the German stage also in terms of volume of performances. Indexing all 1899/ 1900 productions of plays by Hauptmann listed in the Neuer Theater-Almanach , regardless of their links to Ibsen plays, resulted in a list of 115 productions. Figure 6.4 below displays their distribution according to play and reveals a moderate average, but a relatively high total sum due to the circulation of many plays. 229 “Er erschien mir […] als die Erfüllung Ibsens.ˮ Fontane 1905, 304. 230 “Die Vorstellung von ‘Gespenster’ im Residenztheater zeigte mir das wiedererstandene Theater. Von da ab fühlte ich meinen Beruf, unendliche Möglichkeiten tauchten mir auf, und ich spürte Kraft und Liebe, ihrer einige durch mein Leben zu entwickeln.ˮ Hauptmann 1963, 196. 231 For studies investigating Ibsen’s influence on Sudermann, see Jürgensen 1903; and Bocksthaler 1932. 166 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage Figure 6.4: German productions of Hauptmann plays 1899-1900. Figure 6.5 below displaying the distribution of German Ibsen events according to play in the 1899/ 1900 season shows that Ibsen too was present with a wide range of dramatic works. Though Ibsen’s plays on average were slightly less performed than Hauptmann’s at the time, the two graphs leave the impression of a strong comparability between the two dramatists. Figure 6.5: German Ibsen events according to play 1899-1900. 6.2 Ibsen’s symbolist dramas 167 6.2 Ibsen’s symbolist dramas In the history of the German stage, Ghosts and Before Sunrise epitomize the advent of naturalism. During the 1890s, however, the dramas of Ibsen and Hauptmann took new directions, transcending the conceptual and aesthetic framework of naturalism. In Ibsen’s case, the body of plays commonly referred to as his symbolist plays began to assert themselves also in terms of event numbers, a trend that continued in the first decade of the twentieth century. The table below displays all German events 1900-1909 according to works association. Play No. of events 1900-1909 A Doll’s House 105 Hedda Gabler 92 Rosmersholm 90 Ghosts 75 When We Dead Awaken 75 Pillars of Society 49 The Lady from the Sea 44 The Wild Duck 44 An Enemy of the People 31 John Gabriel Borkman 27 The Master Builder 27 Little Eyolf 12 Brand 10 The Feast at Solhoug 9 The League of Youth 8 The Pretenders 8 The Vikings at Helgeland 8 Love’s Comedy 7 Peer Gynt 4 Lady Inger 2 168 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage The Burial Mound 2 Catiline 1 Sum 730 Table 6.6: German Ibsen events 1900-1909 according to play. A comparison with the event figures presented in the preceding chapter makes clear that the volume of events of the initial decade of the new century are 88 % higher than in the closing decade of the old century. 232 Yet the Doll figures have sunk by 23 %. A Doll’s House is still Ibsen’s most frequently performed play, but no way near as dominating as in the 1890s. The increase in event numbers is due to the fact that more of his plays, specifically his contemporary plays from Pillars of Society on, were performed more frequently than ever before. And it is the symbolist dramas that account for the largest increase: The event figures associated with Rosmersholm , Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder have multiplied more than three times, and Lady from the Sea and The Wild Duck more than two times. If we focus our attention on Rosmersholm , we notice the same kind of diversity and diversification witnessed in the 1890s. The play was presented at municipal theatres in Würzburg, Basel, Leipzig, Riga, Vyborg, Graz, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Tallinn, and Erfurt, at court theatres in Oldenburg, Braunschweig, Schwerin, Darmstadt, Munich, and Detmold, and at both regional and provincial theatres. Private theatres of different sizes performed the play, the most prominent of which were Dumont-Lindemann’s Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, Brahm’s Lessingtheater Berlin, Reinhardt’s Neues Theater Berlin, Thalia-Theater Hamburg, and Alfred von Berger’s Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg. Diaspora stages in New York and London are represented, as well as itinerary companies playing venues as far away as Saint Petersburg and Helsinki. A new practice surfaced, not witnessed in the 1890s, as German touring companies began criss-crossing the Baltic Sea. In 1902, for example, Gustav Lindemann’s Ibsen-Theater from Berlin toured Riga, Tallinn, Saint Petersburg, Helsinki, Vyborg, Åbo, and Stockholm with Rosmersholm , Hedda Gabler , and Ghosts . 233 In 1904, a German company directed by the leading Finnish actress Ida Aalberg - trained as an actress in Dresden, she performed in German as well as in Finnish and Swedish - toured Helsinki, Oslo, Riga, and Copenhagen with Rosmersholm , Hedda Gabler , and A Doll’s House . 234 232 Note that table 5.3 in chapter 5 charted event numbers from a period of eleven years, including the calendar year 1900. The 1900 event figures have been subtracted from the total sum rendered at the bottom of that table for the accuracy of the calculations made in this paragraph. 233 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 33212, accessed 7 October 2015. 234 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 33310, accessed 7 October 2015. 6.3 The advent of the Ibsen ensembles 169 6.3 The advent of the Ibsen ensembles The German tradition of performing Ibsen had long ago developed into a site of contestation over different matters, whether economic profit, symbolic capital, literary considerations, theatre aesthetics, theatre reforms, acting styles, the modern breakthrough, or cultural policy. The state of such contests changed constantly as a function of time and place. Brahm (cf. 5.4) may be interpreted to the extent that Pillars of Society in Berlin in 1878 represented the same breakthrough, the same revolution, as Ghosts in Berlin eleven years later, but his account proves untenable in the light of the source material. The German premiere of Pillars of Society did not possess the revolutionary potential that Brahm in hindsight accrues to the event. ‘Modern’ did not signify the same in 1878 as a decade later. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Ibsen was identified as a dramatist whose plays could be utilized to promote naturalism, whether die Moderne in general and/ or the modern drama in particular. Ibsen was the common denominator, but his plays were interpreted in different ways for different purposes, depending on the local circumstances and the mindset of the people involved. Around the turn of the century, moreover, a new tradition emerged, as a group of German touring companies named after Ibsen began touring large parts of Europe in the period 1898-1914. There were at least five of them: Dr Carl Heine’s Ibsen-Theater, Gustav Lindemann’s Ibsen-Theater, Maria Rehoff’s Ibsen-Theater, Ludwig Stärk’s Ibsen-Ensemble, and the Stadttheater Hannover’s Ibsen-Ensemble. In IbsenStage, these five companies account for 214 events, 235 a considerable body of performances largely neglected by Ibsen scholarship. Except for a few marginalia about the companies of Heine and Lindemann, little is known by way of details about the companies and their performances. There is one obvious reason for this: The companies performed mostly outside the larger cities, so that on a core/ periphery axis the events were peripheral. Thus, they have escaped scholarly attention, as the history of Ibsen in performance written so far has largely been the story of Ibsen events in the centres. That being said, the companies were in fact based in such centres - Heine in Leipzig and Berlin, Lindemann and Rehoff in Berlin - and distributing Ibsen productions from the centre to the periphery was their business model. 235 This figure is most likely too low, as a number of Ibsen performances by these companies are not recorded in IbsenStage for lack of documentation. For the sake of accountability, however, I will stick to the recorded events. 170 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage As detailed in IbsenStage, the Ibsen performances of the five companies took place at eighty-one different venues in seventy-one different cities and towns - most of them of medium or small size - across Europe. As may be gathered from the map in figures 6.7 below, which visualize the geographical distribution of their events, the central areas of their touring activities covered Central Europe, including Belgium and the Netherlands, and the Baltic region. Figure 6.7: Map of Ibsen events presented by the five Ibsen ensembles, 1898-1914. The Ibsen ensembles represented a shift of emphasis away from the realist core of Ibsen’s oeuvre to his late symbolist plays - indeed, they were probably this shift’s strongest advocates. Table 6.8 below surveys the 214 events of the five ensembles as distributed according to works association. Heine Lindemann Rehoff Stärk ST Hannover Sum When We Dead 12 8 12 1 10 43 Rosmersholm 7 16 9 1 0 33 Hedda Gabler 6 16 9 1 0 32 Ghosts 9 15 4 1 0 29 Lady f t Sea 8 0 14 0 0 22 Master Builder 0 0 15 0 0 15 6.3 The advent of the Ibsen ensembles 171 J G Borkman 5 0 9 0 0 14 A Doll’s House 4 2 5 1 0 12 Enemy o t P 6 0 0 0 0 6 Little Eyolf 1 4 0 0 0 5 Wild Duck 3 0 0 0 0 3 Sum 61 61 77 5 10 214 Table 6.8: German Ibsen events for Ibsen ensembles according to works association, 1898-1914. For more than two decades, the German history of Ibsen in performance had been centred on three plays: Pillars of Society , A Doll’s House , and Ghosts . The Ibsen ensembles dropped Pillars of Society entirely and favoured three dramas from Ibsen’s late phase, namely When We Dead Awaken , Rosmersholm and Hedda Gabler , over A Doll’s House and Ghosts . Tellingly, the Ibsen ensembles performed all other eleven dramas from Ibsen’s so-called cycle of contemporary plays, but circumvented the drama that inaugurated the cycle and introduced Ibsen’s name to the German stage in the first place. As will be investigated in greater detail below (cf. 6.5.1), the Ibsen ensembles formed a relatively tight-knit social network, but due to split-ups over both personal and artistic matters, they need to be assessed individually. The fact that they all named their companies after Ibsen does by no means imply that they developed a consistent Ibsen style. Carl Heine was the pioneer. Like Brahm, Heine started off as a man of letters, but turned into a man of the theatre. In 1895-1898 he was the head of the Litterarische Gesellschaft in Leipzig (Leipzig Literary Society). Inspired by the Freie Bühne as well as the Freie Volksbühne in Berlin, the society presented theatre performances directed by Heine himself, including Rosmersholm , which premiered at the Carola-Theater on 12 January 1896. 236 A year and a half later, as Heine was in the process of establishing a touring company, he contacted Ibsen - he had made his acquaintance in Munich in the 1880s - and asked for permission to name the company after him, to which Ibsen consented (Heine 1925/ 1926, 423-428). Seven Ibsen plays were rehearsed: Hedda Gabler , Rosmersholm , Lady from the Sea , A Doll’s House , Ghosts , The Wild Duck , and An Enemy of the People . Initially the plays were presented at the Krystall-Palast in Leipzig in February and March 1898, after which the company embarked on a tour to 236 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 78721, accessed 9 October 2015. 172 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage Halle an der Saale, Magdeburg, Braunschweig, Hamburg, Hannover, Lübeck, Lüneburg, Stettin (Szczecin), Breslau (Wrocław), and Vienna. 237 After this initial tour, Heine moved to Hamburg to become director of the Carl-Schultze-Theater and the company dissolved, but only for a period. In January 1900, this time in Berlin, Heine put together a new ensemble under the company name Dr Heine-Ensemble, partly based on his original crew. Ibsen’s latest play, When We Dead Awaken , was rehearsed, premiering at the Stadttheater Stettin on 27 January 1900, and performed extensively on tour in Germany and abroad. 238 Over the following two and half years, the company toured Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands with When We Dead Awaken , John Gabriel Borkman , Little Eyolf, Rosmersholm , The Lady from the Sea , and Ghosts . 239 To assess Heine’s position in the German history of Ibsen in performance, we may compare him with Meßthaler and Brahm. Like Meßthaler, he based his repertoire on contemporary plays and did not shy away from controversial playwrights. Besides Ibsen, he presented plays by Frank Wedekind (who in 1898 was a company member too), Maurice Maeterlinck, and Otto Erich Hartleben. Touring internationally, Heine’s company covered greater distances than Meßthaler’s, yet both played mainly outside the larger cities, profiting from provincial theatre audiences’ interest in the latest development of contemporary theatre arts. His artistic approach to Ibsen was nourished by dissatisfaction with the naturalistic - by then the conventional - way of staging Ibsen and conceptualized in clear opposition to Brahm. Employing a rhetoric reminiscent of Hermann Bahr, Heine considered Ibsen to be a romanticist. He revolutionized the art of theatre by dismissing and eventually entirely crushing the stock character system, 240 but remained a romanticist also throughout his socio-critical contemporary plays. Naturalism merely wanted to portray life in bits and pieces, only acknowledged the world of external appearances as a poetic norm, only wanted to deconstruct. Ibsen wanted to put together, to proclaim a self-contained, well-balanced world; he carried in himself the reflection of an idealistic world view, he wanted to create a new world 237 Neuer Theater-Almanach 10 (1899), 408, cf. https: / / archive.org/ stream/ deutschesbhnen- 1899genouoft#page/ 408/ , accessed 9 October 2015. 238 Twenty-five years later, Heine would claim that his company performed When We Dead Awaken a hundred times (cf. Heine 1925/ 1926, 427), though only 11 events are recorded in IbsenStage. 239 According to the Neuer Theater-Almanach , Heine’s company toured Scandinavia and Russia as well, but this has not been verified. Neuer Theater-Almanach 12 (1901), 262, cf. https: / / archive.org/ stream/ deutschesbhnen1901genouoft#page/ 262/ , accessed 12 October 2015. 240 Ibsen “war der erste, der über die Rollenfächer unbekümmert hinwegschritt und sie nach und nach vollkommen zerschlug.ˮ Heine 1925/ 1926, 423. 6.3 The advent of the Ibsen ensembles 173 that strives for freedom in the name of truth and in which all lies grounded in unsound moral standards in society are torn to pieces. 241 Promoting an Ibsen approach in the spirit of neo-romanticism, Heine at the same time stressed that every Ibsen drama demanded a particular acting style and that inventing a consistent style for all was out of the question. To his company, Ibsen was a laboratory for artistic experimentation. For a short time a member of his ensemble, Gustav Lindemann was inspired by Heine to form his own Ibsen-Theater in 1900 (Linke 1969, 20). Under three slightly different company names, 242 Lindemann presented performances of six plays by Ibsen (cf. table above) in small and medium-size cities in today’s Germany, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Romania, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Latvia, Russia, and Scandinavia. The geographical range of his tours expanded over time, as was the case for Heine’s tours too. Strong artistic ambitions, discontent with the established order of things in the world of theatre, and an intent of revitalizing the performing arts and elaborating new acting styles on the basis of Ibsen’s plays seem to have been what primarily motivated Lindemann’s venture. Although slightly less antagonistic than Heine, Lindemann as well positioned himself in opposition to Brahm. He was a source of inspiration and a model to learn from in Lindemann’s formative years - he never denied that-- yet, like many others of the younger generation of stage artists, Lindemann identified a major problem of Brahm’s Ibsen approach, namely that he, to put it in the words of the critic Siegfried Jacobsohn, ‘applied the naturalistic acting style on Ibsen the symbolist without the slightest modification’. 243 The dramas of Ibsen demanded an acting style and a mode of speaking that did justice to the spirit of his works, Lindemann claimed, and an unbalanced naturalistic style would prove just as inadequate as the old-school declamatory style (Linke 1969, 21-22). To be sure, as a stage director Lindemann strived for naturalness, but, as Manfred Linke points out, a naturalness without naturalism. 244 241 “Der Naturalismus wollte lediglich Ausschnitte des Lebens geben, wollte nur die äußere Erscheinungswelt als Maßstab seiner Dichtungen gelten lassen, wollte nur zerlegen. Ibsen wollte sammeln, eine in sich abgeschlossene, in sich ruhende Welt verkünden; er trug das Spiegelbild eines idealistischen Weltbildes in sich, wollte eine neue Welt schaffen, die sich auf Grund der Wahrheit zur Freiheit durchringt und alle Lügen einer morsch gewordenen Gesellschaftsmoral zertrümmert.ˮ Ibid. 242 1900/ 1901: Gustav Lindemanns Ibsen-Theater (https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 33211); 1901/ 1902: das Ibsen-Theater aus Berlin (https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 33212); 1902/ 1903 and 1903/ 1904: die internationale Tournée Gustav Lindemann (https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 33215, accessed 14 October 2015). 243 “[Er] übertrug […] ohne die geringste Modifikation den naturalistischen Darstellungsstil auf den symbolistischen Ibsen.ˮ Jacobsohn, quoted in Linke 1969, 20. 244 “Lindemanns Regie erstrebte die Natürlichkeit ohne Naturalismus.ˮ Linke 1969, 22. 174 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage The leading actress of Lindemann’s company, taking on the roles as Hedda, Irene, Rebecca West, and Helene Alving, was Maria Rehoff. She was also his wife, but their marriage ended in divorce in 1903, the effect of which was a split-up in a double sense. Rehoff left Lindemann’s ensemble, or Lindemann left what was either already or on the verge of becoming Rehoff’s ensemble, depending on how the source material is interpreted. Lindemann found his exwife’s successor in Louise Dumont who not only replaced Rehoff as the leading actress, but eventually became Lindemann’s second wife (Liese 1971, 221-234). Rehoff for her part picked up the company name from two seasons back, Das Ibsen-Theater aus Berlin, and carried on as before, but from now as her own manager with her own ensemble. 245 The Nora character was, as noted above, a career-building part by means of which certain actresses turned into divas in the 1890s. To Heine, Lindemann and Rehoff, Ibsen’s entire universe of characters, plots, and conflicts - or to be more precise, his cycle of contemporary plays (minus Pillars of Society ) - was career-building artistic material. Yet their careers developed differently. Heine moved back to Hamburg in 1901 to assume a position as Oberregisseur (chief stage director) at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, where he stayed until 1906 - he is recorded as the director of five Ibsen productions during these years. 246 He then moved on to Frankfurt am Main, where he entered a similar position at the Frankfurter Schauspielhaus until 1913. After that he most probably worked as an independent stage director. He died in 1927 at the age of sixty-six. Apart from pioneering the phenomena of the Ibsen ensembles, Heine did not leave a lasting mark on the history of the German stage. The same goes for Rehoff: The longest lasting manager of the Ibsen ensembles, she kept on touring at least until 1914 - the latest record in IbsenStage refers to a performance of The Lady from the Sea in Libau (Liepaja in today’s Latvia) in January 1914. 247 The only source material we possess about her tours, announcements and theatre reviews in local newspapers along the touring route leaves an impression of an actress-manager and a company that were successful at what they were doing. Yet Rehoff’s achievements have attracted no attention whatsoever from theatre historians or Ibsen scholars. 245 Her tours as such were mostly announced as the ‘Internationale Tournee Maria Rehoff’, next to the company name, cf. e.g. the theatre columns in the Linzer Volksblatt of 12 May 1904 (http: / / anno.onb.ac.at/ cgi-content/ anno? aid=lvb&datum=19040512&seite=6&zoom=33, accessed 16 October 2015). 246 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 441975, accessed 16 October 2015. 247 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 33220. She also made a solo guest performance as Ellida Wangel in Hamburg in 1915, cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 79601, accessed 16 October 2015. 6.3 The advent of the Ibsen ensembles 175 This is in stark contrast to Lindemann and his new partner Dumont. When Lindemann approached her in July 1903, Dumont was a feted stage artist of European fame. Her years at the Deutsches Theater Berlin under Brahm’s management - he employed her in 1898 - turned her into the Ibsen performer par excellence (Liese 1971, 172). Yet in the long run she grew discontented under Brahm’s artistic rule and became an outsider in the ensemble due to her non-naturalistic acting style (ibid., 168). In 1903, she turned down Brahm’s offer to prolong her contract with the Deutsches Theater. At this stage, she also contemplated a continuation of her collaboration with another, ‘non-streamlined’ member of Brahm’s ensemble, Max Reinhardt. She supported financially the 1901 establishment of the literary cabaret Schall und Rauch (ibid., 205-213), on the basis of which Reinhardt eventually built up his theatre empire. Dumont, however, chose Lindemann over Brahm and Reinhardt. After a year of joint touring, Dumont and Lindemann founded the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf in 1904, a private theatre which they operated for close to three decades, thereby proving that it was possible to form a prominent, artistically ambitious, and internationally renowned stage in the periphery, remote from the theatre metropolis Berlin. In Düsseldorf, they continued with unabated strength to profile their artistic activities through Ibsen, locally as well as on tours in Germany and abroad. In IbsenStage, Dumont is listed in 107 records (74 of which are during her years in Düsseldorf), and Lindemann in 228 (169 of which are from his Düsseldorf years). 248 Three cases, then, displaying three different career trajectories: To Lindemann and Dumont, the itinerary Ibsen ensemble was a prelude to their life’s joint mission, the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf. To Rehoff’s career, running an Ibsen ensemble was all there ever was. Heine, it would seem, was at the peak of his career as the Ibsen-Theater’s manager. In the main, all three companies performed to favourable reviews (if not always to sold-out houses). Next to nothing is known about the financial side of their enterprises, yet touring was generally a lucrative business, and there are no indications of any economic mismanagement. Lindemann and Dumont maintained a certain level of touring during their years in Düsseldorf, and there is reason to believe that earnings from touring supported local activities, as the finances of the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf were from time to time troublesome (Linke 1969). Ludwig Stärk’s Ibsen-Ensemble and the Stadttheater Hannover’s Ibsen-Ensemble occupy only marginal positions. Stärk’s company visited Linz in June 1902, presenting performances of Ghosts , Rosmersholm , A Doll’s House , Hedda 248 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 428943 (Dumont) and https: / / ibsenstage. hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 431157 (Lindemann), accessed 3 April 2018. 176 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage Gabler , and When We Dead Awaken at the Landschaftliches Theater Linz. 249 In April and May 1900, a company of actors originating from the Stadttheater Hannover - which was under liquidation and torn down shortly after - toured minor cities in the western and central parts of Prussia with a production of When We Dead Awaken . 250 As is most certainly also the case for the companies of Heine, Lindemann, and Rehoff, Ibsen performances by these two companies that are not recorded in IbsenStage cannot be ruled out, but their lifespan was most probably short. If nothing else, however, they illustrate the level of personal connectedness: The 1900 production of When We Dead Awaken was directed by Paul Birnbaum. A year later, he joined Lindemann’s ensemble. In 1901, Ludwig Stärk was a member of Lindemann’s company too, but left it in order to establish his own Ibsen ensemble in 1902. 6.4 The Ibsen cycles The Ibsen ensembles were clearly established in the spirit of theatrical entrepreneurship coupled with artistic ambitions and a strong need for independence. The latter implied existing outside the realm of the institutional theatres. Yet, the activities of the independent Ibsen ensembles had a counterpart among the institutional theatres: the tradition of the Ibsen cycles. The tradition dates back to the end of the 1880s and continues into the 1920s, but I would argue that the first decade of the twentieth century constitutes the golden days of the Ibsen cycles and that the very fact that they proliferated during these years testifies to Ibsen’s strong command of the German stage. What is an Ibsen cycle? Let me first stress the obvious fact that Ibsen did not write a cycle. In the history of the arts, cyclic works, understood as a series of works (such as plays or songs) pertaining to a common theme and deliberately composed as a sequential unit, have been created since ancient times, with Wagner’s four-opera Ring of the Nibelung being a well-known modern example. In the strict sense of the term, there is no equivalent among Ibsen’s works. Despite this, there is, on the one hand, a strong tradition in Ibsen scholarship to consider that everything Ibsen wrote forms a coherent whole, or at least that certain sequential parts do so. On the other hand, parallel to this, a tradition developed of stringing Ibsen’s plays together in performance cycles. These two perspectives, the interpretative approach of critics and scholars and the performative 249 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 35106, accessed 20 October 2015. 250 The company toured the cities of Herford, Nordhausen, Detmold, Osnabrück, Hameln, Mühlhausen, Quedlinburg, Eisleben, Arnstadt, and Rudolstadt, cf. https: / / ibsenstage. hf.uio.no/ pages/ organisation/ 34131, accessed 20 October 2015. 6.4 The Ibsen cycles 177 approach of stage artists and theatre practitioners, are interrelated, and it is not easy to determine which came first. At any rate, Ibsen added fuel to the fire when, in a preface to the first volume of his collected works published by Gyldendal in Copenhagen in 1898, he stressed the “mutual connections” between his plays and emphasized that “[o]nly by grasping and comprehending my entire production as a continuous and coherent whole will the reader be able to receive the precise impression I sought to convey in the individual parts of it” (Ibsen 1965, 330). 251 Brian Johnston takes these words at face value and premises his entire approach to Ibsen on them. To this it must be said that, rather than establishing Ibsen’s words as an interpretative norm, I would suggest applying a critical perspective and assess them in their proper context. Gyldendal was in the process of publishing Ibsen’s complete works in chronological order. Disguised as a friendly appeal to his readers, Ibsen’s words may be interpreted as a clever appeal to subscribe to the edition. What is more, if we were to take Ibsen’s point here literally, we would have to consider his plays from Catiline to When We Dead Awaken as a continuous and coherent whole, but that is not what Johnston does. His premise is that the twelve realistic plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken “form a cycle, with mutual connections between the plays” ( Johnston 1975, 2; 1989, 10). Thus, Johnston does not view Ibsen’s later works in the light of his earlier ones, as Ibsen requests (Ibsen 1965, 330), but (mis)adapts Ibsen’s words to fit in with the scope and prime concern of his study. The halting premise put aside, Johnston is part of a relatively strong scholarly tradition of considering Ibsen’s twelve contemporary plays as a cycle, more recent examples of which include Moretti (2013b, 169) and Sandberg (2015, 23). This interpretative approach has had a particularly strong appeal in Anglo-American Ibsen research. 252 The concept’s analogue in the performance history of Ibsen’s plays, on the other hand, has played a significant role in the German Ibsen tradition, but only had marginal impact in other language areas. Displaying its early roots, the general idea of the coherence of Ibsen’s works was formulated by Brahm - in his initial capacity as critic - as early as in 1886. In his first major essay on Ibsen, Brahm pointed out that his plays were characterized by an “abundance of interlocking issues”. Ibsen strives for a “complete descrip- 251 Facsimiles of Ibsen’s handwritten preface were printed on the first pages of the so-called Folkeutgaven (FU 1), but also translated to German and included in the first volume of Henrik Ibsens Sämtliche Werke in deutscher Sprache (ISW 1, 511-512). 252 By canonizing the works of the second half at the expense of the works of the first half of Ibsen’s authorship, cornerstones of the Anglo-American editorial tradition, from William Archer’s The Prose Dramas of Henrik Ibsen (1889-1890) to Rolf Fjelde’s Henrik Ibsen. The Complete Major Prose Plays (1978), have certainly had their share in this regard. 178 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage tion of reality”. Whenever a motif is “unable to find its complete expression in a work, it is taken up again in the next: connecting threads are thus running from The League of Youth to A Doll’s House , and from A Doll’s House to Ghosts ” (Brahm 1886, 212). Brahm goes on to lament the fact that the German stage had let go of Ibsen (cf. the years of ‘silence’ accounted for above) and that no one had fulfilled the obligation of “introducing the audience at large coherently to the train of [Ibsen’s] thoughts and making German theatregoers susceptible to Ibsen through a presentation of his modern plays, from The League of Youth onwards” (ibid., 219-220). The general idea of stringing together Ibsen’s (contemporary) plays in performance cycles was thereby put forward. The gauntlet was thrown down, and Brahm himself would pick it up some twenty years later, when he managed the Lessingtheater’s Ibsen cycle. Yet although it was the most prominent and greatest (in terms of performance numbers) in its kind, Brahm’s Ibsen cycle was but one out of many, and it was not the first one either. As far as I have been able to gather, the first performance cycle that went by the name of Ibsen cycle (“Ibsen-Zyklus”) took place at the Königliches Hoftheater Stuttgart in May 1897. In the course of ten days, performances were presented of six Ibsen plays: The Vikings at Helgeland , Pillars of Society , A Doll’s House , Rosmersholm , The Wild Duck , and The Lady from the Sea . But the Ibsen cycles came in different forms. I would trace the origin of the tradition back to the Swiss city of Bern in 1889. At the Schänzli-Theater, a series of six consecutively numbered Ibsen evenings (“Ibsen-Abende”) were presented, as A Doll’s House , Rosmersholm , and The Lady from the Sea were performed two times each in the period from 1 June to 22 August 1889. Thereafter, a tentative minimum of at least thirty-nine Ibsen cycles were presented at seventeen different venues in the period up until 1922, by which time the tradition fades away. 253 Figure 6.9 below shows the geographical distribution of these venues. 253 The following German Ibsen cycles have been uncovered: 1) Schänzli-Theater Bern (six Ibsen Evenings), 3 plays, 1 June-22 August 1889; 2) Königliches Hoftheater Stuttgart, 6 plays, 19-29 May 1897; 3) Leipziger Stadttheater (Ibsen Evenings), 5 plays, 3 June-24 July 1905; 4) Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, 6 plays, 28 February-4 April 1906; 5) Stadttheater Zürich, 9 plays, 12 October 1906-11 January 1907; 6) Deutsches Theater Thorn, Toruń, 4 plays, October 1906-February 1907; 7) Fürstliches Theater Detmold (Ibsen Evenings), 8 plays, across six seasons 1906-1911; 8) Neues Deutsches Theater, Prague, 7 plays, 18 March-11 April 1908; 9) Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, 3 plays, 24-27 May 1908; 10) Lessingtheater Berlin, 13 plays, 22 January-1 March 1909; 11) Lessingtheater Berlin, 13 plays, 12 March-17 April 1909; 12) Lessingtheater Berlin, 13 plays, 19 April-13 May 1909; 13) Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, 11 plays, 1 May-12 June 1909; 14) Johann Strauß-Theater, Vienna (guest performances by the Lessingtheater), 13 plays, 17 May-14 June 1909; 15) Lessingtheater Berlin, 13 plays, 17 August-22 September 1909; 16) Lessingtheater Berlin, 13 plays, 22 April-31 May 1910; 17) Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, 4 plays, 22 May-3 June 1910; 18) Carl-Schultze-Theater, Hamburg (guest performances by the Lessingtheater), 7 plays, 1-7 June 1910; 19) Bremer 6.4 The Ibsen cycles 179 Figure 6.9: German Ibsen cycles 1889-1922 Broken down to single performances, these thirty-nine cycles amount to 299 shows. Table 6.10 below charts that number as a function of place and play in order to see more clearly the geographical distribution and the representation of the different plays. Schauspielhaus, Bremen, 10 plays, November 1910-April 1912; 20) Königliches Hoftheater Stuttgart, 10 plays, November 1910-May 1911; 21) Lessingtheater Berlin, 13 plays, 7 November 1910-6 January 1911; 22) Königliches Hoftheater Stuttgart, 12 plays, 7 October 1911-3 June 1912; 23) Residenztheater Wiesbaden, 8 plays, 4 November 1911-30 May 1912; 24) Lessingtheater Berlin, 13 plays, 23 February-19 April 1912; 25) Großherzogliches Hoftheater Darmstadt, 4 plays, 31 March-21 April 1913; 26) Großherzogliches Hoftheater Darmstadt, 4 plays, 26 February-17 March 1914; 27) Altonaer Stadttheater, Hamburg, 8 plays, 3 March-26 April 1915; 28) Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, 6 plays, 8 July-5 August 1915; 29) Großherzogliches Hoftheater Darmstadt, 4 plays, 6-21 January 1916; 30) Großherzogliches Hoftheater Darmstadt, 4 plays, 10 February-1 March 1916; 31) Lessingtheater Berlin, 6 plays, 9-21 May 1916; 32) Altonaer Stadttheater, Hamburg, 8 plays, 4 April-25 May 1918; 33) Altonaer Stadttheater, Hamburg, 8 plays, 25 April-22 May 1918; 34) Altonaer Stadttheater, Hamburg, 8 plays, 27 September-4 November 1918; 35) Altonaer Stadttheater, Hamburg, 8 plays, 6 November-6 December 1918; 36) Großherzogliches Theater Oldenburg (Ibsen-Aufführungsring), 3 plays, 19 October-30 November 1918; 37) Stadttheater Magdeburg, 8 plays, 26 October 1919-28 March 1920; 38) Landestheater Linz, 5 plays, 19 November 1919-19 June 1920; 39) Thalia-Theater Hamburg, 6 plays, 5 September-9 October 1922. The list does not claim completeness, as the tradition of the Ibsen cycles is almost entirely unexplored (for some preliminary notes, cf. Hanssen 2015, 263-270). 180 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage Berlin Hamb. Düsseld. Stuttg. Darmst. Vienna Bremen Misc.* Sum Rosm 7 6 4 3 2 1 1 6 30 Doll 8 7 2 3 2 1 1 6 30 Ghosts 8 7 3 2 2 1 1 4 28 Wild D 7 6 2 3 2 1 1 6 28 Hedda 7 4 3 2 2 1 1 5 25 Enemy 8 5 2 1 1 1 1 5 24 Pillars 7 4 2 3 2 1 1 3 23 When We 7 2 3 2 0 1 1 2 18 League 7 0 1 2 0 1 1 4 16 Master 8 1 0 2 1 1 0 2 15 Lady f S 7 1 0 1 0 1 0 4 14 J G Bork 7 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 12 L Eyolf 7 0 1 2 0 1 0 1 12 Peer G 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 1 5 Love’s C 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 1 4 Brand 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 3 Pretend 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 3 Vikings a H 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 3 Feast 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 Lady Ing 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 Catiline 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 Burial M 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 Emp&G 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 Sum 97 46 30 28 16 13 10 51 299 Table 6.10: Plays performed during 39 German Ibsen cycles 1889-1922, by location. *Misc. includes Bern, Detmold, Leipzig, Linz, Magdeburg, Oldenburg, Prague, Toruń, Wiesbaden, and Zurich. 6.4 The Ibsen cycles 181 Considering the tradition of the German Ibsen cycles as manifested in the thirty-nine verified cycles, I have four general remarks, the first one of which regards the distribution of plays. Although, clearly, his thirteen contemporary dramas represent the main bulk of performances, all twenty-three single plays by Ibsen available in German translation were performed as part of the cycles. 254 To Brahm, the man behind the Lessingtheater’s monumental Ibsen cycle as repeated seven times across four seasons, Ibsen’s thirteen contemporary plays were the crux of the matter, and his other plays were entirely disregarded. Yet in essence, an Ibsen cycle is a non-fixed set of plays. Note the difference to Wagner’s Ring cycle which is a defined set of four operas ( The Rhinegold , The Valkyrie , Siegfried , and Twilight of the Gods ) established by the composer himself and intended by him to be performed sequentially. Ibsen’s occasional request to read his plays in sequence does not amount to the same thing. The basic and sole selection criterion of the plays performed in Ibsen cycles was their shared authorship. As long as the author function of the scripts constituting the textual basis of the performance cycle refers to his name, an Ibsen cycle could contain just about anything. In each individual case, the set-up was not Ibsen’s but the work of a manager, a director, or an ensemble. In most cases, if not all, the selection of plays and the sequence in which they were performed followed the principle of chronology. Seemingly most rigidly, the Lessingtheater performed Ibsen’s thirteen contemporary plays in the order in which they were written, Brahm’s intention clearly being to display the “connecting threads” and the interrelatedness of Ibsen’s works (Buth 1965, 65-66). But note that Brahm took the liberty of letting Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder switch places because he wanted the latter to follow The Lady from the Sea since the character of Hilde Wangel connects the two plays (cf. Hanssen 2015, 267). The Stadttheater Zürich followed the same principle for Ibsen’s earlier works, as they during the season 1906/ 1907 presented Ibsen’s debut drama Catiline alongside his second play, The Burial Mound , as the inaugural night of a cycle which continued with The Feast at Solhoug , Love’s Comedy , The Pretenders , and finally The League of Youth . On the other hand, the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf devised their Ibsen cycles regardless of the principle of chronology. Alongside the cycles performed in Prague, Darmstadt, Hamburg, Detmold, and elsewhere, the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf also challenged the image of a canon- 254 These are (listed in the same sequence as in table 6.10 above): Rosmersholm, A Doll’s House, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, An Enemy of the People, Pillars of Society, When We Dead Awaken, League of Youth, The Master Builder, The Lady from the Sea, John Gabriel Borkman, Little Eyolf, Peer Gynt, Love’s Comedy, Brand, The Pretenders, The Vikings at Helgeland, The Feast at Solhoug, Lady Inger, Catiline, The Burial Mound , and Emperor and Galilean . 182 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage ized, capital-C Ibsen Cycle, understood as his twelve or thirteen ( The League of Youth included) contemporary plays, by including marginalized works or even fragments of works. 255 My second remark concerns the geographical distribution, which reveals that Ibsen cycles were presented in a total of seventeen cities, twelve of them within the borders of the German Empire, three in Austria-Hungary (Vienna, Prague, and Linz), and two in Switzerland (Bern and Zurich). The measures of the cycles seem to stand in proportion to the size of the cities: Stages in the smaller cities present cycles of smaller scope, while stages in the larger cities stand for the large-scale cycles, with nearly half of the total bulk of cycle performances being presented in the cities of Berlin and Hamburg (32 % and 15 % respectively). As the cycles at the Johann Strauß-Theater in Vienna and at the Carl-Schultze- Theater in Hamburg were guest performances by the Lessingtheater, altogether 117 (39 %) of the performances originated in Berlin. Hence, whereas the Ibsen ensembles described in the previous section operated in the provinces, the tradition of the Ibsen cycles mainly belonged to the central cities. As is evident from map 6.9, all major cities of the German-speaking parts of Central Europe-- with the exception of Munich - had their share in the tradition of presenting Ibsen cycles. Third, after analysing the Ibsen cycles in terms of their significance, I would argue that they attest to a not inconsiderable level of consecration and canonization. As of the 1890s, certain German stages gradually developed an ‘Ibsen cult’ by admitting his plays a prominent position in their repertoire and performing multiple Ibsen plays at short intervals. The Deutsches Theater and the Lessingtheater under Brahm’s management are the foremost exponents. During Brahm’s ten years at the Deutsches Theater (1894-1904), nineteen events of ten Ibsen plays are recorded in IbsenStage. During his eight years at the Lessingtheater (1904-1912), a considerable eighty-five events of thirteen Ibsen plays are recorded, that is an annual average of more than ten. Brahm turned the theatre into a festival venue for Ibsen, a Festspielhaus , as Claus rightly points out (1981, 119). When the Lessingtheater launched their first Ibsen cycle in January 1909, the Ibsen cult was already established. This may lead us to ask, was there a difference between performing multiple Ibsen plays at short intervals before and after that moment? And what is the significance of stringing Ibsen plays together in performance cycles? For one, such cycles opened up possibilities for enhanced marketing. In addition to announcing and marketing each individual 255 As part of the May Festival of the Ibsen Association (“Mai-Festspiele der Ibsen-Vereinigung”) in 1910, the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf presented an Ibsen cycle inaugurated by a staged recitation of the so-called Epic Brand (OxI 3, 35-71), a precursor written in the form of an epic poem of what would eventually turn into the dramatic poem Brand . 6.4 The Ibsen cycles 183 performance, the whole cycle of thirteen performances was marketed as such and used to capture public attention. What is more, stringing together plays in performance cycles establishes a connection which transcends the perspective of the individual play. In itself, this represents a break of normal seasonal planning procedure in the theatre industry, according to which the theatre management selects a series of dramatic texts, divides them evenly across the season, and runs the season accordingly. If the selection criterion is a particular playwright (which is not always the case), 256 this entails a strong element of recognition and acknowledgement. Ibsen belonged to an exclusive group of dramatists and composers whose works were strung together in performance cycle, such as Shakespeare, Schiller, and Mozart - and among Ibsen’s contemporaries Wagner, Hebbel, and infrequently, in the wake of the Ibsen cycles, Hauptmann and Wedekind. 257 Thus, more than exhibiting the body of Ibsen’s dramas as a continuous and coherent whole, the tradition of the Ibsen cycles is clear evidence that Ibsen was a playwright who was well in the process of being canonized as a modern classic. My fourth remark regards the impact of the Ibsen cycles, which quantitatively form a significant part of the mass of German Ibsen performances especially during the years following Ibsen’s death in 1906. The area chart below (fig. 6.11) displays the quantity of cycle performances (black area) in relation to the total performance events (grey area) from 1904 up until 1918. 258 256 Other criteria are period, genre, and national origin, or combinations of these, e.g. cycles of ancient tragedies, modern dramas, and Italian operas. 257 The first major performance cycle in the history of the German stage was Franz von Dingelstedt’s productions of Shakespeare’s eight Wars of the Roses plays at the Weimar Hoftheater in 1864 as part of the celebrations of the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth. Dingelstedt treated the plays “as a single, artistically unified work, with political, contemporary relevance” (Hampton-Reeves 2002, 232). 258 Note that the Ibsen cycles as such are not recorded in IbsenStage. Data from performances constituting a cycle are distributed over multiple records according to event. All records, however, referring to events containing one or more performances that were part of an Ibsen cycle include relevant information about this. Out of this reason, the graph in figure 6.11 strictly speaking displays the relation between two types of events: events comprising one or more performances that were part of an Ibsen cycle, and events with no relation to any Ibsen cycle. 184 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage Figure 6.11: Cycle performances (black area) in relation to the total performance events (grey area), 1904-1918. It was particularly in three years that cycle events contributed significantly to the total number of recorded Ibsen events: 1909 (51 of 95 events), 1910 (42 of 80 events), and 1918 (41 of 70 events). It goes without saying that the decisive factor in 1909 and 1910 was Brahm’s Lessingtheater. Never before or since has a single theatre ensemble presented so many performances of multiple plays by Ibsen in such a short amount of time as the case was with the Lessingtheater’s repeated Ibsen cycles during these two years. Similarly, the 1918 figures were heavily influenced by the fourfold Ibsen cycle at the Altonaer Stadttheater in Hamburg (cf. the list above). Viewed quantitatively, the Ibsen cycles created frequency and density. Performances of his plays were recurring at short intervals, and the theatre-going public were exposed to Ibsen as a dense presence in the repertoires of the German stages. 6.5 The German hubs 185 6.5 The German hubs 6.5.1 Ensemble clusters As demonstrated in chapter 3 (cf. 3.1), the artistic network of the initial years of Ibsen’s German stage history was virtually devoid of hubs. In the later network of the years 1885-1899, however, this had changed, as a new generation of stage artists had begun to take a stronger ownership in Ibsen by constantly reappearing in new roles in new Ibsen plays (cf. 5.2). The artistic network of the entire period from 1876 to 1918 as contained in the IbsenStage contributors dataset is characteristic of a group of networks known in network science as “scale-free networks”, that is networks whose degree distribution follows a power law predicting that most nodes have only a few links, while a small number of highly connected hubs are instrumental in keeping the network from falling apart (Barabási 2002; Barabási and Bonabeau 2003). In the following I will seek to identify the major hubs in the network, that is nodes with a significantly larger number of links in comparison with other nodes in the network. As suggested above, there are at least two ways for a contributor to acquire network connections: by being connected to events and/ or by being connected to other contributors. I will first precede on the basis of the former perspective, whereas the last section will examine hubs from the perspective of contributor-contributor relations. I will focus my attention on relations between artists instead of on individual artists, leaving aside the conventional bias towards the most prominent artists affiliated with distinguished theatres in the major cities. The point of departure of my analysis is strictly quantitative, that is I start with all artists as equally prominent. Computer-aided analysis of the dataset will guide and inform my arguments, the question being, what patterns emerge? Interrogating the German dataset for contributors recorded in forty events or more in the period 1876-1918, the query returns the following list (the figures in brackets indicate the contributors’ number of links to events). • Gustav Lindemann (206) • Leopold Jessner (57) • Emil Lessing (131) • Helene Riechers (55) • Maria Rehoff (121) • Arthur Waldemar (55) • Albert Bassermann (107) • Carl Heine (53) • Louise Dumont (100) • Gustav Rickelt (51) • Irene Triesch (94) • Arthur Wehrlin (51) 186 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage • Hans Marr (85) • Otto Stoeckel (49) • Emanuel Reicher (80) • Bruno Ziener (48) • Fritz Wolter (79) • August Ellmenreich (46) • Kurt Stieler (77) • Helene Rietz (46) • Oskar Fuchs (72) • Paul Birnbaum (45) • Mathilde Sussin (69) • Max Reinhardt (44) • Karl Forest (65) • Otto Eppens (43) • Agnes Sorma (62) • Josefa Stein (41) • Else Lehmann (59) • Franz Everth (40) Seen from a strictly quantitative point of view, these thirty contributors form the leading figures of the new generation of stage artists that came to dominate the German Ibsen tradition from around 1890. 259 Going briefly over the stage career of each contributor, one recognizes that there are relatively strong ties between almost all of them. The diagram below (fig. 6.12) depicts how they cluster in three groups. I am labelling them according to whom I regard as their founders. The largest group is connected to Otto Brahm, the second-largest to Carl Heine, and the smallest to the husband-and-wife duo Louise Dumont and Gustav Lindemann. 259 Strikingly, all but two of these contributors (Emanuel Reicher and Emil Lessing) made their Ibsen debut in the period 1890-1910. Reicher and Lessing both appeared in their first Ibsen roles at the Residenztheater Berlin in the second half of the 1880s. 6.5 The German hubs 187 Figure 6.12: Most connected contributors: patterns of artistic collaboration. Fifteen contributors (Bassermann, Dumont, Forest, Fuchs, Lehmann, Lessing, Marr, Reicher, Reinhardt, Rickelt, Sorma, Stieler, Sussin, Triesch, and Ziener) form the largest network by being connected to a particular theatre manager, Otto Brahm, and to three particular stages under his management, all three of which were located in Berlin: the Freie Bühne, the Deutsches Theater, and the Lessingtheater. The chief principle governing the activities of this group is artistic work within the framework of a resident theatre company. Although, occasionally, a member of Brahm’s ensembles would break out of the network to pursue a career as an independent artist or switch to another ensemble (as Sorma, Reinhardt, and Bassermann did in 1898, 1902, and 1909, respectively, as indicated by the outward pointing arrows in figure 6.12), the majority of the artists remained loyal to Brahm over relatively long periods of time. Five of the artists employed by Brahm during his years at the Deutsches Theater (Lehmann, Lessing, Reicher, Triesch, and Ziener) followed him as he moved on to the Lessingtheater and remained part of his ensemble until his death in 1912. Brahm was a vigorous advocate of a major lesson learned from Duke George II and his Meiningen company, namely that the individual performance was absolutely 188 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage subordinate to the artistic coherency and the performance of the ensemble as a whole. To achieve this, he strived to create a strong spirit of collegiality and togetherness and maintained “an egalitarian and democratic approach to ensemble work in which every task was equally important” (Schor 2016, 36; cf. also Henze 1930, 18; Buth 1965, 167). The fact that these artists were involved in multiple Ibsen productions as part of a relatively stable core of artists collaborating over time forms the very basis for their inclusion in the group. The clearest expression and the most prominent manifestation of the group’s Ibsen engagement are Brahm’s Ibsen cycles. Carl Heine’s network consists of artists associated with the five touring companies named after Ibsen, accounted for above (cf. 6.3). They shared Brahm’s passion for Ibsen and also realized that his plays demanded thorough ensemble work, but they employed a different business model. While the Ibsen activities of Brahm’s network were ensemble-based and venue-specific, those of the Heine network were also ensemble-based but not venue-specific. The spatial coordinates of the Heine network are everywhere but in Berlin. Their Ibsen events (214 in sum according to IbsenStage) were presented at eighty-one different venues in seventy-one different cities and towns - most of them of medium or small size - across Europe. Most touring companies operated outside the big cities due to contractual reasons. Unfortunately, no documentation exists regarding the contractual agreements of the activities of the Ibsen ensembles. Performance rights were in all likelihood acquired from Felix Bloch Erben’s agency, the contracts most likely specified that they applied to venues outside Berlin only. 260 Moving from city to city on a weekly basis - on some tours even on a daily basis - the audience attending the performances of the Ibsen ensembles changed constantly. Increased media attention was to be reckoned with as well, even though, normally, critical expertise in the province was scarce compared to the bigger cities. The shape of Brahm’s and Heine’s networks, however, are very similar. From the point of view of the ensemble, appearing on the same stage every night or performing on tour does not make much of a difference. Still, Heine’s network is more open in its structure because its artists collaborated on shorter terms compared to Brahm’s ensemble of artists. Jessner, Lindemann, Riechers, and Waldemar belonged to Heine’s original company, though Jessner and Lindemann only for a short time. Jessner switched to Lindemann when the latter established his own Gustav Lindemanns Ibsen-Theater in 1900, and Paul Birnbaum, who was stage director of When We Dead Awaken presented by 260 Cf. Ibsen’s correspondence with Scandinavian touring theatre managers like August Lindberg and Olaus Olsen in cases where he acted as his own theatre agent. They were explicitly given performance rights only for provincial stages (HIS 14, 182, 192, 206; HIS 15, 294, 301). 6.5 The German hubs 189 Stadttheater Hannover’s Ibsen-Ensemble in April and May 1900, came along. After divorcing Lindemann, Maria Rehoff was the only one who was capable of keeping up for more than a few seasons. She operated her touring theatre company at least until 1914 and continued to appear in the leading female roles while Fritz Wolter took on the leading male parts. The Dumont/ Lindemann network is connected to Düsseldorf and consists of artists affiliated with the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf. Featuring in multiple plays by Ibsen on a frequent basis, Everth, Rietz, Stein, and Stoeckel were long-term members of the Düsseldorf ensemble. 261 Both Dumont and Lindemann are transitional figures, Dumont by tying together all three networks, Lindemann by being a link between the Heine network and his own Düsseldorf network. Their joint touring venture was inspired by Heine, their Ibsen cycles in Düsseldorf were a regional equivalent to Brahm’s Ibsen cycles in Berlin. 262 Figure 6.12 has only three nodes that are not connected to any cluster. The Ibsen records of Ellmenreich, Wehrlin, and Eppens show that all three of them appeared in Ibsen performances as part of resident theatre companies and, more notably, all three of them were heavily engaged in Ibsen cycles. Ellmenreich was employed by the Königliches Hoftheater in Stuttgart in 1890 and stayed there throughout his career (Eisenberg 1903, 227-228). He contributed to three Ibsen cycles in Stuttgart, the first one presented in May 1897, then two cycles given over two consecutive seasons from 1910 to 1912. Wehrlin and Eppens both belonged to the team of stage directors at the Altonaer Stadttheater in Hamburg where they appeared as actors as well. They were involved in a series of Ibsen cycles in 1915 and 1918. 263 If we group the thirty artists according to the activities they were engaged in, two main types seem to prevail (with a certain overlap between the two groups): artists who were part of resident companies and who were involved in presenting Ibsen’s plays in performance cycles (22 of 30 artists); and artists who created a niche for themselves by developing a touring theatre concept 261 The arrow connecting Rietz to Sorma is due to the fact that Rietz was a member of the Agnes Sorma Ensemble, touring cities in the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Romania, and Austria-Hungary in the autumn season of 1900. 262 Interestingly, the performances of the touring Ibsen ensembles were never announced as cycles. The source material indicates that the label ‘cycle’ was restricted to the resident theatre companies. It came into the public relations vocabulary of Dumont and Lindemann only when they had established the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf. 263 Cf. the contributor pages https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 441119 (Ellmenreich), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 437526 (Wehrlin) and https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 437538 (Eppens), accessed 26 January 2017. Note that Eppens’ career as an interpreter of Ibsen roles started at the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna. He was employed by the Altonaer Stadttheater in 1903. 190 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage specifically on the basis of Ibsen’s plays which they presented on tour both in and outside the borders of the German Empire (11 of 30 artists). 264 However, this way of grouping the artists implies a bias towards ensemble work. Flipping the perspective and focusing on the small but all the more prominent group of contributors who operated on their own as independent artists, a third group emerges: artists who made solo guest performances in Ibsen productions. 6.5.2 Solo versus ensemble acting: social implications Considering these three dominant fields of practice within the German Ibsen tradition - the resident ensemble artists, the touring ensemble artists, and the solo guest performers - from a gender perspective, a striking pattern becomes visible. The Ibsen cycles were predominantly conceived and presented by male directors, such as Otto Brahm in Berlin, Joachim Gans zu Putlitz in Stuttgart (Krauß 1908, 307), Hans Loewenfeld in Hamburg, and Paul Eger in Darmstadt, which reflects the fact that the majority of the resident theatre companies were managed by men. The artists touring solo, on the other hand, were mainly women, who, in so doing, challenged the male dominance of the theatre industry. The touring Ibsen ensembles assume an intermediate position. Heine was the pioneer, Lindemann his successor, but they were both strongly dependent on their leading actresses, Riechers, Rehoff, and Dumont. The married couple Lindemann and Dumont, equally responsible for artistic as well as economic considerations, epitomize the spirit of the Ibsen ensembles. Solo artists create other kinds of networks, distinctly different from those constituted by artists who prefer to operate within the framework of resident theatre companies. To grasp the significance of this body of artists from a network perspective, we need to switch from contributor-event networks to contributor-contributor networks. Figure 6.13 below displays a network of altogether 402 individuals connected to two artists whose contrasting career choices are illuminating in terms of social cohesion: Agnes Sorma and Emil Lessing. 264 The former group includes Bassermann, Dumont, Ellmenreich, Eppens, Everth, Forest, Fuchs, Jessner, Lehmann, Lessing, Lindemann, Marr, Reicher, Rickelt, Rietz, Stein, Stieler, Stoeckel, Sussin, Triesch, Wehrlin, and Ziener; the latter group comprises Birnbaum, Dumont, Heine, Jessner, Lindemann, Rehoff, Reinhardt, Riechers, Rietz, Waldemar, and Wolter. 6.5 The German hubs 191 Figure 6.13: Contributor-contributor relations: Sorma vs. Lessing Contributor-contributor networks display contributor nodes clustered around themselves and highlight relations among the contributors. In figure 6.13, the size of the nodes is correlated to node degree, that is the number of edges (lines) incident to the node. The number of connecting lines between the nodes depends on the number of contributor relations. The number of contributor relations in turn is correlated to the number of event relations: If you take part in one event as a member of an ensemble of ten artists, you gain only one event relation, but nine contributor relations; if the same ensemble presents multiple events, your number of contributor relations remains unchanged, yet the size of your node increases relative to the number of events. Lessing’s connections occupy the right part of the image which is dominated by larger nodes, while Sorma’s connections occupy the left part and have distinctly smaller nodes. Sorma is in fact linked to a larger number of contributors than Lessing (286 vs. Lessing’s 158), but Lessing’s node is larger because his links are based on a larger number of events (131 vs. Sorma’s 62). Lessing’s contributor relations constitute a high-density network characterized by strong cohesion; Sorma’s, on the other hand, a low-density network based on weak ties. Lessing joined Brahm’s ensemble at the Deutsches Theater in 1896, 192 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage became one of his most trusted employees and collaborated closely with him until Brahm’s death in 1912. Lessing’s contributor connections are exclusively made up of colleagues of his at the Deutsches Theater and the Lessingtheater and refer to artistic connections based on long-term collaboration and strong ties. By contrast, the majority of Sorma’s links refer to artists with whom she performed only for shorter terms in the course of her touring career as an independent solo artist. Inevitably, artists’ professional networks are affected by their career choices. Examining the role of ties in social systems, the sociologist Mark Granovetter (1983) has claimed that weak ties are instrumental in linking together otherwise separate segments of a network and hence allowing innovations to spread across distinct social groups. Individuals with few weak ties will hence be cut off from receiving fresh input from people outside their closest circle of friends, while social systems with few weak ties will, as a whole, be “fragmented and incoherent” and late to the game in regard to new ideas and scientific breakthroughs (Granovetter 1983, 202). Sorma went independent in order to operate within the framework of the star system, which in theatre historiography has been subjected to fierce criticism, the main objection being that it had a deteriorating effect on ensemble playing (Ulrich 2015, 213). Lessing goes clear of this criticism since his career choice is associated with idolized principles and ideas developed and put forward by the Meiningen company and adopted by directors like Antoine, Brahm, J. T. Grein, and Stanislavski. However, Granovetter’s argument about the strength of weak ties provides a conceptual model for analysing the system of solo guest performances beyond the normative framework of this criticism. According to IbsenStage, Sorma appeared as Nora in fifty-five events, of which thirty-eight (more than two-thirds) were solo guest performances. It was first and foremost these appearances that made her network relations increase exponentially and it is exactly these relations that appear as the smallest nodes, i.e. the weakest ties, in figure 6.13. Think away Sorma and imagine that she was substituted for local artists in all these events. They would then have constituted unconnected network segments. Now instead the ensembles form a cohesive social network due to the links established by Sorma. Thus, paradoxically, solo guest performers, associated with a system emphasizing the interests of the individual artist above those of the ensemble as a whole, created large-scale social coherence. The major international success of A Doll’s House is closely related to the star system. Indeed, after analysing the global touring trajectories of twenty-two early Noras, Holledge et al. claim that their activities were highly instrumen- 6.5 The German hubs 193 tal to the play’s worldwide success (2016, 29). 265 Challenging the conventional historical account of Ibsen’s first international breakthrough, usually attributed to the efforts of Ibsen’s famous (male) advocates - Lange, Archer, Prozor, Brandes, Shaw, Brahm, Antoine, Lugné-Poë, and Grein - their study maintains that it was rather the early Noras from Western Europe, Russia, and Japan who secured this breakthrough (ibid., 32). These artists had in common that they performed Nora across vast geographical distances and that the part became their entrance ticket to the international theatre circuit, but only a few of them operated according to the system of solo guest performances. Examining the network connections of three of them - Sorma, Achurch and Réjane - reveals some illuminating differences. Réjane played Nora in Paris, Brussels, London, Dublin, Copenhagen, Berlin, Bucharest, New York, and New Orleans, though always as the leading star of a company of actors from the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris. 266 Thus, her connections constitute a high-density network based on strong ties just like in the case of Lessing. For her part, Achurch, by creating a web of links between artists across the entire British Empire and North America, enjoyed exceptionally wide-ranging network connections. Together with her husband Charles Charrington and with Herbert Flemming, who had played Krogstad in the Novelty Theatre production of A Doll’s House in London in June 1889, Achurch presented A Doll’s House (and Hedda Gabler ) on the very first major international tour in the stage history of Ibsen’s plays, recruiting local artists for supporting roles. 267 Thus, Achurch accumulated far more contributor connections than Réjane, but her network is characterized by a peculiar combination of strong and weak ties. Her contributor page shows that over a period of twenty-two years (1889-1911) she was involved in fifty-four events, forty-four of which are A Doll’s House events in which she portrayed Nora. 268 Yet she only played against four different Torvalds: Herbert Waring, Charles Charrington, William Harcourt, and Courtenay Thorpe. Apart from Harcourt, with whom she played only in New York, her Torvalds were exclusively close connections of hers. Sorma’s network, on the other hand, has a clear overweight of weak ties. The body of actors playing Torvald against Sorma counted thirty-two different 265 Their sample contains five German Noras: Agnes Sorma, Thessa Klinkhammer, Irene Triesch, Auguste Prasch-Grevenberg, and Lilli Petri (Holledge et al. 2016, 35). 266 Cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 432582, accessed 1 March 2017. 267 The tour extended over three years (1889-1892) and encompassed Australia, New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka, and Egypt. Achurch made a guest performance as Nora in New York in 1895, becoming the first stage artist to present Ibsen on five continents (Holledge et al. 2016, 35-42). 268 Cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 427547, accessed 1 March 2017. 194 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage actors. 269 Neither the French nor the English stage had a similar system of solo guest performances, and on the German stage this system gave individual artists like Sorma considerable market advantages. The Nora character was not only the leading part in a play of great topicality, it was also a means to gain control and power in the theatre field as a whole. 6.6 Conclusion By the turn of the century, Ibsen was at the height of his international fame, and the frequency graph shows that the new century was inaugurated by a peak representing the highest annual number of German events in the period under scrutiny in this thesis. Above all owing to the success of When We Dead Awaken , the contextual circumstances surrounding the publication in book form and the ensuing theatrical distribution of his final play demonstrate not only that Ibsen was a dramatist well in the process of being consecrated and canonized, but also that the German naturalization of Ibsen had come full circle, to the extent that the German edition of When We Dead Awaken was marketed and distributed as an ‘original’ work of dramatic art. As was the case with A Bankruptcy and Pillars of Society in the 1870s, Bjørnson and Ibsen again featured on the list of the most frequently produced playwrights in the theatre season 1899/ 1900, suggesting the commercial viability of Beyond Human Power and When We Dead Awaken , respectively. Yet seen from the perspective of geographical dissemination, the distribution flow of Ibsen’s ultimate play did not have the same direction - from the centre to the periphery - as Pillars of Society , or for that matter Beyond Human Power . By now, stages in the provinces did not need stages in the major cities to ‘lead the way’ in performing Ibsen. A search for patterns of association revealed a strong connection between Ibsen and Hauptmann, established by the fact that Ibsen’s plays, When We Dead Awaken in particular, more often than not co-occurred with plays by Hauptmann in the repertoires of the German theatres. During the initial decade of the twentieth century, Ibsen was in command of the German stage like never before. A Doll’s House was still his most frequently performed play, but not as dominating as in the 1890s; it is the body of plays 269 Arthur Bauer, Hugo Bauer, Eduard Derzbach, Franz Döring, Karl Emerich, Tom Farecht, Hans Godeck, Edmund Hansen, Egon Hedeberg, Hugo Höcker, Fritz Kiedaisch, Josef Klein, Arthur Kraußneck, Aenderly Lebius, Alexander Lipowitz, Richard Manz, Robert Nhil, Hermann Nissen, Mathieu Pfeil, Julius Rasch, Otto Reimann, Egmont Richter, Alfred Rittig, Eugen Schady, Fritz Schwemer, Franz Stury, Bernhard Vorwerk, Robert Waldemar, Max Wegner, Otto Werther, Erich Ziegel, and Toni Zimmerer; cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 427367, accessed 2 March 2017. 6.6 Conclusion 195 commonly referred to as Ibsen’s symbolist dramas that account for the largest increase in event numbers. The strongest advocates for the shift of emphasis away from the realist core of Ibsen’s oeuvre to his late symbolist plays were a group of German touring companies, named after Ibsen, criss-crossing large parts of Europe and presenting touring performances of his plays in the period 1898-1914. Pioneered by Carl Heine, the Ibsen ensembles formed a relatively tight-knit social network whose leading personalities seem to have been united in dissatisfaction with the prevalently naturalistic approach to Ibsen, as represented by Otto Brahm, but that does not imply that the Ibsen ensembles developed a consistent style. Operating outside the realm of the institutional theatres, the Ibsen ensembles toured mostly outside the major cities, yet their activities had a counterpart among institutional theatre companies, namely the tradition of stringing Ibsen’s plays together in performance cycles. The tradition dates back to the end of the 1880s and continued into the 1920s but proliferated particularly from around the time of Ibsen’s death onwards. Although he was not the first to present such a performance cycle, Brahm was arguably the first to suggest that sequential parts of Ibsen’s complete works could be presented on stage in chronological order over consecutive evenings. Some twenty years after he made the suggestion, the Ibsen cult that Brahm developed during his periods as artistic director of the Deutsches Theater and the Lessingtheater culminated in the series of Ibsen cycles presented at the latter stage. The tradition of the performance cycles was especially strong in the major cities and was restricted to the most prominent dramatists only. The last section of this chapter identified the hubs in the German network of stage artists who presented Ibsen on stage in the period 1876-1918. The thirty most connected contributors clustered in three groups: the largest one consisted of artists affiliated with Brahm’s Ibsen activities at the Freie Bühne, Deutsches Theater, and Lessingtheater, respectively; the artists of the second-largest group were connected to the Ibsen ensembles pioneered by Heine; and the centre of the smallest group comprised the Ibsen activities directed by Dumont and Lindemann in Düsseldorf. The chief principle governing the activities of these three groups was ensemble work, either in the form of a resident theatre company or a touring theatre company. By switching from contributor-event networks to contributor-contributor networks, the significance of the relatively small but prominent group of independent artists touring solo came to the fore. The Ibsen career of Agnes Sorma was dominated by solo guest performances that made her acquire a substantial amount of ‘weak ties’. Exactly these network connections turned her into one of the greatest ‘connectors’ of the German contributors dataset. 196 Chapter 6: In command of the German stage The data-driven approach has uncovered new knowledge about the German stage success of When We Dead Awaken , the activities of the Ibsen ensembles, and the German Ibsen cycles. The maps showed that the Ibsen ensembles were instrumental in distributing Ibsen’s symbolist plays - above all When We Dead Awaken - to provincial stages, whereas the Ibsen cycles were mainly presented at venues in the major cities. Network analysis revealed that artists engaged in the touring activities of the Ibsen ensembles and the Ibsen cycles, respectively, appear as network hubs. Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage 1910 represents a turning point in the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays. The event numbers show a declining tendency, and the year marks the start of a gradual decrease extending over more than thirty years (cf. fig. 4.1). Little by little, Ibsen’s plays seem to lose their former appeal. Yet one particular play ran counter to the trend. Conspicuously belated, Peer Gynt entered the German stage and suddenly turned into one of Ibsen’s most popular stage plays. 270 In the first section of this chapter I will interrogate IbsenStage in search of key factors that account for the growing stage success of the play. The point of departure in the second section, Otto Brahm’s death in 1912, may seem to have little to do with the advent of Peer Gynt the stage play. However, as will be shown by examining generational differences, the play was the main line of demarcation between Brahm’s generation and the subsequent generation of theatre managers and stage directors, here represented by Max Reinhardt and four contemporaries of his, Victor Barnowsky, Leopold Jessner, Gustav Lindemann, and Reinhard Bruck. Reinhardt and his contemporaries presented an Ibsen different from Brahm’s; critics began at the same time to question the dominant image of Ibsen as the writer of social problem plays only. The third section draws upon a selection of studies in the critical reception of Ibsen in Germany in search of conceptual models to stimulate further interrogation of my dataset. Last but not least, the event numbers of the final years of the German Empire cannot be properly assessed without taking into consideration the ramifications of World War I. As will be accounted for towards the end of the chapter, the event numbers in the 1910s in fact drop less than one would expect. 7.1 Peer Gynt’s late arrival To judge by the intentions and expectations of its creator, the success of Peer Gynt is the story of a dramatic work that became an international theatrical hit against all odds. As we know, the work was not written for the stage, and Ibsen 270 Ibsen’s five most frequently performed plays on the German stage in 1910-1918, measured in event numbers, were A Doll’s House (69), Hedda Gabler (65), Ghosts (60), Peer Gynt (58), and Rosmersholm (53). 198 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage was also in great doubt about the work’s translatability. “Of all my works”, he famously wrote in a letter to Ludwig Passarge, “I consider Peer Gynt the least likely to be understood outside Scandinavia” (Ibsen 1965, 185). But history proved him wrong, with the play having been translated into at least forty-five languages to date. It was Passarge who made the very first translation, published by Bernhard Schlicke in Leipzig in 1881. In 1887, a second revised edition appeared in Reclam’s Universal-Bibliothek series, and the work went on to sell well in Germany for decades. 271 However, Peer Gynt was not presented on stage in the German language until 1902. For the record, Peer Gynt was late everywhere, not just on the German stage. On the European mainland, only the Théâtre de l'Œuvre’s production, which premiered in Paris in November 1896, preceded the first German performance. In the Nordic countries, the play was produced with great success by Ludvig Josephson and Bjørn Bjørnson in Kristiania, by Theodor Andersen in Copenhagen, and by August Lindberg in Gothenburg, Helsinki, Åbo and Malmö, among other places (Midbøe 1978; Lagerroth 2005). In face of the event numbers of other plays by Ibsen, however, these events were in fact marginal. IbsenStage tells us that Peer Gynt remained a rarely performed play throughout Ibsen’s lifetime. The stage history of Peer Gynt began with Josephson’s production at the Christiania Theater in 1876. Ibsen himself took the initiative, acted as his own adapter and commissioned Edvard Grieg to compose incidental music, the idea being to adapt Peer Gynt into “a musical drama”, as Ibsen noted in a letter to Josephson on 6 February 1874 (Ibsen 1970, 272). Ibsen’s letter to Grieg on 23 January 1874 signifies the moment that Peer Gynt the stage play was born, and Ibsen’s own abridged text version and Grieg’s score are both in their own right inscribed into it (Ibsen 1970, 269-271). Several composers have composed music to the play, and Grieg was not even the first to do so, 272 but the performance history up until World War II is entirely dominated by a preference for Grieg’s music, to the extent that Peer Gynt the stage play is almost inconceivable without it. In Central Europe, amateurs had to lead the way: Only three productions of Peer Gynt were presented on the German stage before 1910, all of which were initiated by amateur theatre societies. The very first German-language production was presented by the society Akademischer Verein für Kunst und Literatur at the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna, and the opening on 9 May 1902 was a 271 Reclam published altogether nineteen works by Ibsen, of which the three bestselling editions as of 1942 were, according to Annemarie Meiner (1942, 124), Peer Gynt (719,000 copies), Nora (584,000 copies), and Gespenster (544,000 copies). 272 The Swedish composer August Söderman wrote incidental music to Peer Gynt in 1870, but it has never been performed (Midbøe 1978, 27-31). 7.1 Peer Gynt’s late arrival 199 matinee performance which lasted from 2 to 6 p.m. 273 The cast was semi-professional, featuring Paul Wiecke from the Hoftheater Dresden, who made a guest performance in the title role. In November 1903, the Lessing-Gesellschaft presented the play at the Theater des Westens in Berlin, featuring Eduard von Winterstein in the leading role. In November 1905, Paul Wiecke reappeared as Peer Gynt in a performance organized by the Münchener Dramatische Gesellschaft. The opening show was given at the Prinz-Regenten-Theater, and in March 1906 the production was transferred and presented with an almost identical cast at the Königliches Hoftheater in Munich. None of these performances won critical acclaim. Though the Vienna performance was a test of the drama’s ‘theatrical effectiveness’, the outcome was ‘not exactly favourable’, the Deutsches Volksblatt ’s critic concluded. 274 Siegfried Jacobsohn characterized the Berlin performance as a ‘grotesque disfigurement of the work’, 275 while in Munich the performance was panned by critics as ‘stiff’ and ‘unimaginative’. 276 It was in 1910 that a shift occurred. Professional stages came along, and a new, fairly young generation of aspiring stage directors began to take an interest in the play: Leopold Jessner in Hamburg, Gustav Lindemann in Düsseldorf, Reinhard Bruck in Düsseldorf/ Berlin, and Victor Barnowsky in Berlin. German performances of Peer Gynt started to proliferate. Fifty-eight events are recorded in IbsenStage during the years 1910-1918. Between 1913/ 14 and 1924, the play was reportedly performed a thousand times only in Berlin (Pasche 1979, 201) and was the most frequently performed play on the German stage in 1922 (Friese 1976, xix). Thus, why the play arrived so late on the German stage is really the wrong question - instead we should ask, why did this nearly half-century-old poem-cum-play suddenly become so enormously popular on the German stage from the 1910s onwards? Heiko Uecker investigates precisely this question on the basis of more than three hundred German theatre reviews of performances up until World War II. Mainly focusing on audience response as it was mediated by critics, he points out four key factors: Grieg’s music, Peer Gynt as a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, Dietrich Eckart’s adaptation, and the drama’s consoling spirit in times of war (Uecker 1985, 171). In what follows, I will interrogate the IbsenStage dataset in view of Uecker’s arguments related to factors 1 and 3 - the contributions by Grieg and Eckart. 273 Cf. Neues Wiener Journal , 10 May 1902, 10. 274 “[D]ie gestrige Probe auf die Bühnenwirksamkeit des Dramas [ist] nicht gerade günstig ausgefallenˮ, Deutsches Volksblatt , 10 May 1902, 9. 275 “[…] groteske Verunstaltung des Dichterwerkesˮ. Jacobsohn, quoted in Uecker 1985, 175. 276 “[…] steifˮ and “phantasielosˮ. Quoted in ibid., 176. 200 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage Grieg is listed as composer in sixty-one of the sixty-two German Peer Gynt events recorded in IbsenStage over the years 1902-1918. 277 Grieg’s music quickly became a guarantee for success, as Ibsen might have anticipated. From his years of theatre practice he was well acquainted with the popularity of genres combining music and drama, and he most probably knew what he was doing when he commissioned Grieg, at the time Norway’s leading composer, known for his use of Norwegian folklore and - through his collaboration with Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson - not unfamiliar to the world of drama. Nevertheless, the relationship between Ibsen’s drama and Grieg’s music was never a straightforward one. Grieg struggled with the task and had mixed feelings, as he confessed in a letter to his friend Frants Beyer (quoted in Benestad 1988, 17): It is a terribly difficult play for which to write music. […] I have also written something for the scene in the hall of the Mountain King - something that I literally can’t stand to listen to because it absolutely reeks of cow pies, exaggerated Norwegian nationalism, and trollish self-sufficiency! Unlike in Scandinavia, leading critics in Germany were negative, the objection being that Grieg’s music drew attention at the expense of the drama and distorted it. After having attended the Lessingtheater’s performance in September 1913, Julius Hart complained that he did not recognize the performed work, ‘for it was a mixture of concert, cinema, paintings collection, opera, drama, tragedy, comedy and pantomime’. 278 In his review of the same performance, Siegfried Jacobsohn declared that ‘[i]t was utterly wrong to let a grand and noticeable orchestra play Grieg’s entire score’, as the music became ‘an end in itself’ and ‘ruined the atmosphere of the performance’ instead of enhancing it. 279 A few months later, another production of Peer Gynt premiered over two nights at the Königliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin, and Jacobsohn was even harsher: Ibsen’s ‘craggy’, ‘biting’, and ‘deeply ambiguous’ masterpiece has turned into a ‘gentle’, ‘flat and dull’, ‘musically bloated fairy folk play’. 280 This alleged lack of 277 The Pfauentheater in Zurich presented the play in the form of a recitation without Grieg’s music in March 1913. 278 “[…] denn es habe sich um eine Mischung aus Konzert, Kino, Gemäldesammlung, Oper, Schauspiel, Tragödie, Komödie und Pantomime gehandelt.ˮ Hart, quoted in Uecker 1985, 163. 279 “Es war schon grundfalsch, Griegs Musik […] vollständig und von einem reichlichen und sichtbaren Orchester spielen zu lassen. Was die Stimmung gehoben hätte, wenn es auf ein paar Töne beschränkt und im Hinter- und Nebengrund gehalten worden wäre, das zerstörte sie als Selbstzweck und im Vordergrund immer wieder.ˮ Jacobsohn 1913, 916. 280 “Aus Ibsens schroffem, zerklüftetem, beißendem, abgründig vieldeutigem, blutendem und blutig reißendem Höhenwerk ist ein sanftes, zuckriges, überdeutliches, glatt und plattes, musikalisch aufgeschwemmtes Märchenvolksstück in Knallbonbonreimen geworden.ˮ Jacobsohn 1914, 241. 7.1 Peer Gynt’s late arrival 201 coherence between the drama and the music - so aptly summarized by a Danish critic who lamented in 1944 that “Grieg makes Peer Gynt romantic - but Peer Gynt is an anti-romantic work! ” (quoted in Marker 1989, 24) - quickly became a commonplace in Ibsen criticism. In Central Europe it was present from the very start of the play’s performance history. At the same time, these critically derided performances were met with strong approval from the public at large. The aforementioned productions at the Lessingtheater and the Königliches Schauspielhaus are illustrative examples: The former was repeated numerous times until the end of Barnowsky’s period as artistic director in 1924, while the latter was performed until May 1930 and may well have been the biggest-ever box-office draw of an Ibsen play throughout history. 281 Thus, critics and audience members parted way in their appraisals, as Uecker convincingly documents (1985, 154-179). Grieg’s music, roundly faulted by many critics but strongly applauded by the audience, was a crucial factor in this regard. But Uecker is most likely wrong in claiming that Peer Gynt ’s path to German success went through the theatre and not through reading. 282 By the end of World War I, Peer Gynt led three lives: in print, on stage, and in concert halls. The synergy between the three versions has never been systematically investigated. Yet it is naïve to think that the play’s stage life was unaffected by the impressive sales figures of Reclam’s edition of Peer Gynt in Passarge’s translation. In addition comes the distribution of Fischer’s edition containing Christian Morgenstern’s translation, Dietrich Eckart’s adaptation published in Berlin in 1912 and in a revised second edition in Munich in 1917, and the edition of Ludwig Fulda’s translation published in Stuttgart in 1916. Moreover, the distribution of Grieg’s orchestral suites must be drawn into consideration. Besides the incidental music to the stage play (Op. 23), Grieg prepared two orchestral suites, the first of which was published by C.F. Peters in Leipzig on 18 January 1888 (Op. 46), while the second suite (Op. 55) was printed in 1893. In 1888 and 1889, Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 was played in concert halls in cities such as Leipzig, Berlin, London, Paris, and New York, and in 1891 the publisher told Grieg that the suite was being performed in Asia, Africa, and Australia (Benestad 1988, 182). In other words, Grieg’s Peer Gynt became a global success long before Peer Gynt the stage play. It is not unlikely to suppose that some segments of the public were in fact introduced to Peer Gynt by way of Grieg and not by Ibsen. Other audience members, equally familiar to Peer Gynt the book and Grieg’s music, may have entered the theatre halls in the 1910s to experience the best of two worlds, so to speak. 281 Cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 79562 and https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 79572, accessed 28 September 2016. 282 “Der Weg zum Stammplatz beim deutschen Publikum ging über das Theater und nicht über die Lektüre.ˮ Uecker 1985, 155. 202 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage The lifespan of the various translations and adaptations of Ibsen’s works varies greatly. Despite his ‘horrible German’, IbsenStage documents that Lange’s translation of Pillars of Society 283 was still in use as late as 1982, whereas Emil J. Jonas’ adaptation of the play or, for that matter, the conciliatory version of A Doll’s House were in circulation only for a few years. By 1916, Peer Gynt was available in four German translations, all of which were used by theatres. Two of them, Morgenstern’s translation and Eckart’s adaptation, stand out. Of all German Peer Gynt events recorded in IbsenStage 1902-1945, either Morgenstern or Eckart was used in no less than 95 % of them. 284 But after World War II, Eckart disappears entirely whereas Morgenstern continues to be listed as a translator up until the present day. Uecker emphasizes Eckart’s adaptation as a key success factor, and IbsenStage seems to substantiate this argument. Thus, Eckart’s version of Peer Gynt played a significant role in the German history of Ibsen in performance, but only for a specific period of time, from World War I to World War II. The reason for this is indicated by Uecker and examined in greater detail by Uwe Englert. Although Eckart died nine years before Hitler came to power, he is strongly associated with the history of National Socialism. He was imprisoned for participating in Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923, and the second volume of Mein Kampf is in fact dedicated to Eckart. From 1933 onwards, he was posthumously celebrated as a pioneer of the Third Reich and as Germany’s first National Socialist (Englert 2001, 43). How is this reflected in his adaptation? Englert claims that Eckart followed a twofold strategy of ideologization and sentimentalization. In opposition to Georg Brandes’ view, according to whom Ibsen had written a satirical play, Eckart interpreted Peer Gynt as a metaphysical drama of redemption, peaking in the final scene in which Peer at the return to Solveig finds salvation and elevation to his Higher Self. His adaptation is pervaded by an Aryan Christian spirit and transforms Ibsen’s drama into a Germanophile Tendenzstück (‘tendentious play’). Sentimentalization is achieved by highlighting the lyrical parts at the expense of the parts that are intellectually burdensome, by a deliberate use of simple rhymes, and by emphasizing Grieg’s music, explicitly praised by Eckart (Englert 2001, 43-90). Given the form of Eckart’s adaptation and the Eckart cult that developed during the Third Reich, it is no surprise that his version of Peer Gynt dominated 283 “[…] tagüber lasen wir in Wilhelm Langes scheußlichem Deutsch das Stückˮ, Paul Schlenther in his introduction to the play in ISW 6, xvii. 284 Whenever it seems relevant, I will extend the time perspective beyond 1918 in this chapter: During 1902-1945, 215 Peer Gynt events (58 %) used Eckart’s adaptation, 138 (37 %) used Morgenstern’s translation, 12 (3 %) used Passarge, and 7 (2 %) used Fulda. 7.1 Peer Gynt’s late arrival 203 greatly during the twelve years of Nazi dictatorship. 285 But before 1933, German Peer Gynt events divide in two equally sized camps of those preferring either Morgenstern or Eckart. The two versions are distinctly different from each other. Morgenstern’s translation is faithful to the original and was originally published as part of Fischer’s canonizing edition of Ibsen’s complete works, while Eckart’s ideologically permeated version was specifically written for the German stage and published at Eckart’s own expense as a ‘free adaptation’. 286 Morgenstern’s version was a decade older and used in five productions before Eckart’s was even published. But apart from that, there are striking similarities when it comes to distribution across time and space. Both versions were used at stages throughout the German Empire, but spread out to the provinces only after successful productions in the larger cities. The frequency of performances, measured in event numbers, increases markedly as an effect of the extremely popular performances at the Lessingtheater (using Morgenstern) and the Königliches Schauspielhaus (using Eckart) in the 1913/ 1914 season. Uecker characterizes the latter as the most decisive performance with regard to the play’s popularity among the public, 287 but the Lessingtheater’s Morgenstern-based performance must be mentioned in the same breath. Figure 7.1 below visualizes the geographical spread of events using the two versions during the period from 1902 until the end of World War I and shows that Morgenstern’s translation was used at venues in fifteen cities, whereas Eckart’s adaptation in the same period of time was used in sixteen cities. 288 285 Among 130 German Peer Gynt events recorded in IbsenStage during the years 1933-1945, 104 (80 %) used Eckart, 25 (19 %) used Morgenstern, and 1 (1 %) used Passarge. 286 Cf. the full title, Peer Gynt. In freier Uebertragung für die deutsche Bühne gestaltet. Eckart’s publishing house Herold Verlag was established by himself (Englert 2001, 52). 287 “[…] die wohl für die Beliebtheit des Stückes beim Publikum entscheidendste Aufführung.ˮ Uecker 1985, 163. 288 Morgenstern’s translation was used in Munich, Berlin, Zurich, Prague, Vienna, Breslau, Düsseldorf, Königsberg, Bremen, Leipzig, Lübeck, Frankfurt am Main, Budapest, Braunschweig, and Metz. Eckart’s adaptation was used in Berlin, Kiel, Hannover, Magdeburg, Strasbourg, Darmstadt, Chemnitz, Munich, Rostock, Krefeld, Dresden, Hamburg, Oldenburg, Bamberg, Liegnitz, and Bautzen. 204 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage Figure 7.1: Map of German Peer Gynt events 1902-1918: black dots representing events using Morgenstern’s translation; white dots representing events using Eckart’s adaptation. The battle for favour between the two versions illustrates the extent to which Ibsen was still an object of fierce contestation over aesthetic, ideological, and economic matters. In 1914, Eckart took this battle out into the open in the pamphlet Ibsen, Peer Gynt, der große Krumme und ich , in which he attacked Morgenstern’s translation on the one hand and critics who had condemned the performance at the Königliches Schauspielhaus on the other hand. 289 Five thousand copies of this pamphlet were sent to German editors and publishers by Eckart personally for them to get their own impression of the ‘perhaps best interpretation of Peer Gynt ’, as he said with reference to his adaptation without the slightest hint of modesty (quoted in Englert 2001, 55). Moreover, he made copies of the director’s notes ( Regiebuch ) of Reinhard Bruck, who directed the performance at the Königliches Schauspielhaus and sent them to provincial stages (cf. ibid.). Note also the amount of paratext that Eckart produced for the three book editions of 289 Many of the critics left no doubt that they preferred Morgenstern. Jacobsohn (1914, 240), for example, referred to his version as ‘exemplary’ ( vorbildlich ) in stark contrast to the ‘insipid chattiness’ ( marklose Schwatzhaftigkeit ) of Eckart’s adaptation. 7.1 Peer Gynt’s late arrival 205 his adaptation: The 1912 edition contained an epilogue and fifteen pages of side notes ( Randbemerkungen ) (Ibsen 1912), the 1917 edition contained a preface, fifty-one pages of guidelines ( Richtlinien ), and nine pictures of the scenery (Ibsen 1917), and the 1922 edition contained a preface and an introduction (Ibsen 1922), clearly intended to facilitate access to the work not only for readers but also theatre managers and stage directors. For his part, Morgenstern does not seem to have interfered in any way with the theatrical distribution of his translation. He died on 31 March 1914, some months before Eckart’s attack on him was published. In a sense, there was no need for him to promote his version of Peer Gynt as Eckart had to. Morgenstern had strong allies in Fischer, Felix Bloch Erben, and Barnowsky’s Lessingtheater. In the shadows of the open fight that Eckart launched against Morgenstern, there was another competition going on between two competing theatre agencies on the one hand and two competing stages on the other hand. After Ibsen’s death, his son Sigurd Ibsen signed a contract with the agency Felix Bloch Erben regarding the marketing of his father’s plays in Germany (D’Amico 2016, 105). The agency was in charge of the theatrical distribution of all Fischer editions of Ibsen’s works, including Morgenstern’s Peer Gynt translation. Since the early 1890s, the agency had dominated the market of Ibsen performances almost entirely, but the case of Eckart demonstrates the extent to which it was still possible to get hold of Ibsen shares beyond the hegemony of Felix Bloch Erben. Eckart for his part joined forces with Albert Entsch, a representative of an agency with more than thirty years of experience in marketing unauthorized versions of Ibsen’s plays. 290 Next to Hugo Lachmanski, Entsch was the head of the agency of the Association of German Playwrights (Vertriebsstelle des Verbandes Deutscher Bühnenschriftsteller), and until his death in 1921 he was in charge of marketing and distributing Eckart’s Peer Gynt adaptation. 291 The terms were different for the two competing stages as well. The Königliches Schauspielhaus was supported by the monarchy, 292 while Barnowsky had to manage the Lessingtheater without subsidies. However, if Ibsen represented symbolic capital, the Königliches Schauspielhaus had next to none - prior to 290 He was the grandson of Albert Entsch (1828-1882), who acted as the agent for Lange’s translation and Jonas’ adaptation of Pillars of Society at the end of the 1870s, and the son of Theodor Entsch (1853-1913), who was in charge of the A. Entsch agency from 1882 to 1908. 291 Deutsches Bühnen-Jahrbuch 26 (1915), vi, 97, cf. https: / / archive.org/ stream/ deutschesbhnen1915genouoft#page/ n11 and https: / / archive.org/ stream/ deutschesbhnen- 1915genouoft#page/ 96, accessed 4 October 2016. 292 Allegedly, the King and Emperor Wilhelm II attended several performances of Peer Gynt at the Königliches Schauspielhaus and took great delight in the production (Englert 2001, 53). 206 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage Peer Gynt only four productions had been presented by this stage 293 - whereas the Lessingtheater, due to Brahm’s Ibsen legacy, was the leading stage in Germany. Barnowsky seems to have managed his Peer Gynt success slightly differently: Bruck’s production was performed in Berlin only, whereas Barnowsky presented his Lessingtheater production with a full cast on tour in Prague, Vienna and Breslau in May 1914, and in Budapest and Vienna in August 1917. 7.2 The death of a father figure On 28 November 1912, Otto Brahm died at the age of fifty-six due to complications while undergoing surgery for cancer. Brahm’s impact on the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays is without equal. His death marked the end of an era, if not necessarily the beginning of a new one. He exerted great influence on a whole generation of theatre managers and stage directors; yet whereas he once represented the spirit of revolution and innovation as the head of the Freie Bühne and the director of the Deutsches Theater, he would eventually turn into a ‘conservator of a bygone era’ as the director of the Lessingtheater. 294 To some, Brahm became a father figure from whom they strived to break free already in the 1890s. 7.2.1 Brahm’s Ibsen legacy and beyond: a generational perspective In what follows, I will apply a generational perspective on the impact of Brahm’s Ibsen legacy. To do this I will interrogate a particular subgroup of contributors recorded in IbsenStage, the stage directors. Among the German Ibsen events 1876-1918, 334 unique contributors are recorded as directors. Let me for the sake of further argument divide these into three generations and name them after three leading figures of the German stage: Duke Georg II (1826-1914), Otto Brahm (1856-1912), and Max Reinhardt (1873-1943). I consider directors born before 1850 as belonging to the generation of George II, those born in the 1850s and 1860s as belonging to Brahm’s generation, and those born in the 1870s and 1880s as belonging to Reinhardt’s generation. As I am first and foremost interested in directors who made significant contributions to the German Ibsen tradition by directing multiple Ibsen plays over time, I perform a query for contributors 293 Lady from the Sea in 1889, The Pretenders in 1891, A Doll’s House in 1909, and Pillars of Society in 1911, cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ venue/ 13887, accessed 28 March 2017. 294 “Konservator einer vergangenen Epocheˮ (Buth 1965, 178). 7.2 The death of a father figure 207 listed as directors in ten or more records. My query returned twenty-eight names: one from Georg II’s generation (August Bassermann, 1847-1931), nineteen from Brahm’s generation, and eight from Reinhardt’s generation. Brahm’s generation (year of birth and death in brackets): • Theodor Brandt (1855-1939) • Carl Dalmonico (1850-1923) • Hans Gelling (1858-1911) • Carl Grube (1866-? ) • Albert Heine (1867-1949) • Carl Heine (1861-1927) • Heinrich Keppler (1851-1895) • Eugen Kilian (1862-1925) • Gustav Kirchner (1863-1927) • Karl Krause (? -1914) • Sigmund Lautenburg (1852-1918) • Emil Lessing (1857-1921) • Ernst Lewinger (1851-1937) • Max Martersteig (1853-1926) • Hans Meery (1851-1930) • Otto Osmarr (1858-1940) • Carl Ulrichs (1861-1934) • Arthur Wehrlin (1863-1950) • Adolf Winds (1856-1927) 295 295 Cf. the following IbsenStage pages for lists of contributor credits: https: / / ibsenstage. hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 440373 (Brandt), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 439620 (Dalmonico), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 441421 (Gelling), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 462619 (Grube), https: / / ibsenstage. hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 443313 (A. Heine), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 441975 (C. Heine), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 430598 (Keppler), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 443052 (Kilian), https: / / ibsenstage. hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 444643 (Kirchner), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 437933 (Krause), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 440371 (Lautenburg), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 427218 (Lessing), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 443180 (Lewinger), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 439619 (Martersteig), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 440586 (Meery), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 442103 (Osmarr), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 442804 (Ulrichs), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 437526 (Wehrlin), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 439736 (Winds), accessed 2 November 2016. 208 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage Reinhardt’s generation: • Victor Barnowsky (1875-1952) • Paul Birnbaum (? -? ) 296 • Reinhard Bruck (1885-1929) • Leopold Jessner (1878-1945) • Gustav Lindemann (1872-1960) • Paul Linsemann (1871-1913) • Max Montor (1872-1934) • Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) 297 Ibsen was thus introduced to the German stage by Duke Georg II’s generation of stage artists, but as the result of my query shows, the German Ibsen tradition was dominated by Brahm’s and Reinhardt’s generations. Viewed from a generational perspective, the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays 1876-1918 is first and foremost a story of generational contestations and negotiations between Brahm’s and Reinhardt’s peers. Though it would be interesting to examine how these two generations differed in the way they performed Ibsen, IbsenStage does not reveal any details about such matters. Therefore, let me instead approach the question from two other, more quantitative angles: What plays were staged, and by whom? Altogether, the twenty-seven directors from Brahm’s and Reinhardt’s generations are listed in 678 events associated with twenty-three works by Ibsen. To facilitate the analysis, these works may be divided into five groups according to the decade in which they were published: • 1850s plays: Catiline , The Burial Mound , Lady Inger , The Feast at Solhoug , and The Vikings at Helgeland • 1860s plays: Love’s Comedy , The Pretenders , Brand , Peer Gynt , and The League of Youth • 1870s plays: Emperor and Galilean , Pillars of Society , and A Doll’s House 296 Biographical dates for Paul Birnbaum have not been found, but on the basis of entries in the Neuer Theater-Almanach and IbsenStage I assume that he was born in the 1870s or in the early 1880s. 297 Cf. the following IbsenStage pages for lists of contributor credits: https: / / ibsenstage. hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 444813 (Barnowsky), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 443247 (Birnbaum), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 443970 (Bruck), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 443249 ( Jessner), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 431157 (Lindemann), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 443432 (Linsemann), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 431724 (Montor), https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 427222 (Reinhardt), accessed 2 November 2016. 7.2 The death of a father figure 209 • 1880s plays: Ghosts , An Enemy of the People , The Wild Duck , Rosmersholm , and Lady from the Sea • 1890s plays: Hedda Gabler , Master Builder , Little Eyolf , John Gabriel Borkman , and When We Dead Awaken Charting the 678 events according to these five categories and separating the directors according to the two generations, the two pie charts in figure 7.2 below visualize, as it were, the Ibsen legacy of Brahm’s and Reinhardt’s generations, respectively. 298 Brahm’s generation Reinhardt’s generation Figure 7.2: German Ibsen events staged by prolific Ibsen directors from Brahm’s generation (born in the 1850s and 1860s) and Reinhardt’s generation (born in the 1870s and 1880s), per decade of play. The Brahm chart displays a clear dominance of the plays from the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, with events associated with these plays representing 91 % of the total. Given that none of Brahm’s contemporaries staged the first of the 1870s plays, Emperor and Galilean , this means that 91 % of the events presented by his generation were connected to Ibsen’s cycle of contemporary plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken . By contrast, the Reinhardt generation showed 298 Needless to say, both procedures, dividing individual artists of a given historical period into generations and splitting Ibsen’s complete oeuvre into categories, involve making sweeping generalizations, but here I am interested in the bigger picture, not the fine nuances, as a point of departure for further analysis. 210 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage a renewed interest in the 1860s plays and less interest in the 1870s plays, with events associated with plays from the 1860s, 1880s, and 1890s adding up to 89 % of the total. The decline of the 1870s plays is due to markedly fewer productions of Pillars of Society and A Doll’s House ; similarly, the rise of the 1860s plays is preponderantly due to numerous stagings of Peer Gynt . 299 In other words, the main merit of the Reinhardt generation was that they opened up the German stage to Peer Gynt . In what follows, I will investigate in further detail the transmission of the Ibsen legacy between Brahm’s and Reinhardt’s generations. 7.2.2 Brahm vs. Reinhardt Over the final decade of Brahm’s life, the German stage was decisively marked by his rivalry with Reinhardt, which may well serve as a personification of the generational shift among German theatre managers. Reinhardt’s career is intricately interwoven with Brahm’s. It was Brahm who discovered Reinhardt’s talent. Twenty-one years old he was offered a contract with the Deutsches Theater, and in 1894 he moved from Salzburg to Berlin to join Brahm’s ensemble, to which he would remain affiliated until the end of 1902. As an actor, Reinhardt was trained and gained his initial experiences in the realistic vein of dramatic art (Styan 1982, 17). Brahm’s Deutsches Theater must have been the perfect stage to refine and develop his acting skills further. Yet over time he grew discontented for at least two reasons: the narrow confines of Brahm’s naturalism, as he grew tired of “sticking on a beard and eating noodles and sauerkraut on stage every night” (quoted in Styan 1982, 18); and his growing desire to pursue a career of his own as a stage director and theatre manager. In IbsenStage, Reinhardt is listed in a total of forty records, twenty-nine as actor and sixteen as director (and hence five in the double capacity of actor and director). As an actor, he portrayed ten different Ibsen characters and directed five of Ibsen’s plays. 300 Over time, the main bulk of these event records (27) belongs to Reinhardt’s period as a member of Brahm’s ensemble at the Deutsches Theater. Yet during these eight years, not a summer went by without Reinhardt embarking on a tour with colleagues from Berlin as part of an independent tour- 299 The Brahm generation presented 43 events of Pillars of Society (vs. 11 by the Reinhardt generation) and 37 events of A Doll’s House (vs. 12 by the Reinhardt generation). The 23 % share of the 1860s plays in the Reinhardt chart corresponds to 60 events (out of 256): 50 of Peer Gynt , 8 of Love’s Comedy , and 1 of The Pretenders . 300 As actor: Jacob Engstrand, Vilhelm Foldal, Old Ekdal, Judge Brack, Lyngstrand, Peter Mortensgaard, the dean in Brand , Aslaksen in An Enemy of the People , Nils Krogstad, and Nikolas Arnesson. As director: Love’s Comedy , Rosmersholm , Ghosts , Hedda Gabler , and John Gabriel Borkman . Cf. https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 427222, accessed 17 November 2015. 7.2 The death of a father figure 211 ing company: In July each summer from 1895 through 1898, he toured Prague with the Berliner Ensemble; in July 1899, he toured Vienna as Jacob Engstrand alongside Louise Dumont’s Mrs Alving; and in July 1900, he made his debut as a stage director with Ibsen’s Love’s Comedy presented by the Berliner Secessionsbühne in Budapest and Vienna. Brahm had nothing against these touring activities as long as they took place outside the main season. On 23 January 1901, as Reinhardt, Friedrich Kayßler, and Martin Zickel presented their inaugural performance of the Schall und Rauch cabaret at the Künstlerhaus, Brahm sat in the auditorium and applauded his actors (Claus 1981, 90). However, the further course of events seems to have taken Brahm by surprise. Reinhardt and his accomplices found a permanent stage for their Schall und Rauch evenings in Unter den Linden, inaugurated on 9 October 1901. Unable to step forward as stage director and manager of the Schall und Rauch stage due to the terms of his contract with the Deutsches Theater, Reinhardt announced his exit from Brahm’s ensemble (Fiedler 1975, 33-37). As he left at the end of 1902, Brahm inflicted a fine of 14,000 marks on him for breach of contract (Styan 1982, xiii). For his part, Reinhardt developed far-reaching anti-Brahm plans for the production of the classical repertoire. For Reinhardt, the great classical roles were the touchstone for the true art of acting. His goal was to head two theatres simultaneously, a big one for the classics and an intimate one for the chamber art of the moderns. (Claus 1981, 91) Shortly after, Reinhardt was appointed artistic director of the Neues Theater at Schiffbauerdamm. His theatre empire was beginning to take shape. From now on, Brahm and Reinhardt were competing on an equal footing, but they had entirely different approaches to theatrical art. First, Brahm’s academic background was evident in his literary approach to theatre: The dramatic text was the highest purpose, and theatre had to be at the service of literature (Buth 1965, 140). To Reinhardt, a trained and highly skilled actor, the theatre performance was rather the highest purpose, and the dramatic text was only one out of many ‘building blocks’. As a stage director, he claimed full autonomy for theatre as an independent art form. Second, Brahm was never able to let go of naturalism. Reinhardt was “arguably the most versatile director the theatre has seen”, Styan claims; within “the range of styles which embrace simultaneous elements of realism, symbolism and expressionism in their appropriate mixture for each play, Reinhardt stands alone” (1982, 3). For the same reason, Reinhardt’s repertoires were infinitely broader than Brahm’s. Third, although they were both able to find the right balance between economic and artistic considerations, they were acknowledged for their artistic integrity, at the same time as they made good money. Yet Reinhardt was far more expansive than Brahm, and 212 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage he was the greater entrepreneur of the two. These factors taken together, it is small wonder that Reinhardt has outshone Brahm in theatre history. As Brahm took over the Lessingtheater only to proceed along the same path he had trod during his years at the Deutsches Theater, Reinhardt would pioneer new lines of approach to the art of directing and the art of designing performance space, he would forcibly expand the space of possibles within the realm of theatre managing and clear the way for a reconceptualization of the modern stage. 7.2.3 Brahm vs. Barnowsky, Jessner, Lindemann, and Bruck Reinhardt had thus ended up as a strong competitor with Brahm. Victor Barnowsky, for his part, had to find another approach to Brahm’s legacy when he inaugurated his first season as his successor at the Lessingtheater in the autumn of 1913. The larger framework of Barnowsky’s take on the matter is an ongoing process of negotiating the Ibsen legacy of the German stage, a process which seems to be closely connected to the increasing popularity of the play that neither Brahm nor Reinhardt produced, Peer Gynt , and that four of Reinhardt’s contemporary colleagues - Barnowsky, Jessner, Lindemann, and Bruck - did. In three regards, Barnowsky continued where Brahm left off. He presented works of contemporary playwrights, but whereas his predecessor had a strong predilection for naturalist, socio-critical dramas, Barnowsky was one of the directors who promoted expressionism over naturalism by staging plays like Büchner’s Leonce and Lena and Woyzech , Strindberg’s To Damascus , and several of Georg Kaiser’s plays. Second, Barnowsky produced Ibsen plays, but he discovered a different Ibsen. Third, Barnowsky even presented an Ibsen cycle, but realized that he could not copy Brahm’s rigid concept. During Barnowsky’s eleven years at the Lessingtheater (1913-1924), IbsenStage shows that he presented twenty-four events of eight plays by Ibsen. 301 Six of these plays, An Enemy of the People , Master Builder , A Doll’s House , Ghosts , The Wild Duck , and When We Dead Awaken , had previously been produced by his predecessor, with Peer Gynt and Emperor and Galilean being Barnowsky’s two additions. By including these latter two plays in his Ibsen cycle presented in May and June 1916, Barnowsky could present a cycle which paid due respect to Brahm’s Ibsen legacy and, at the same time, signalled a new approach. 302 301 Ibsen events presented by Barnowsky (number of events in brackets): Peer Gynt (10), Master Builder (4), Ghosts (3), An Enemy of the People (2), When We Dead Awaken (2), A Doll’s House (1), Emperor and Galilean (1), and The Wild Duck (1). By comparison, Brahm presented 85 events of thirteen Ibsen plays during his eight years at the Lessingtheater. 302 Barnowsky’s cycle comprised six plays presented in the following sequence: An Enemy of the People , Master Builder , Peer Gynt , Emperor and Galilean , Ghosts , and A Doll’s House . 7.2 The death of a father figure 213 This new approach had been suggested already in September 1913 when Barnowsky let Peer Gynt inaugurate his directorship. The production became his signature work, and it inaugurated virtually every season at the Lessingtheater from 1913 through 1924, creating continuity across the seasonal repertoires of eleven years - on 15 September 1923, that is exactly ten years after the premiere night, the play was given for the 475th time. 303 According to Brahm’s Ibsen legacy the thirteen contemporary plays from The League of Youth to When We Dead Awaken were the very core of Ibsen’s oeuvre, while Barnowsky belonged to a generation of directors claiming otherwise. Peer Gynt was a sign of continuity throughout Leopold Jessner’s career too. Over a period of twenty-one years, he directed four productions of the play at four different venues: Thalia-Theater Hamburg in 1910, Neues Schauspielhaus Königsberg in 1915, Altonaer Stadttheater in Hamburg in 1928, and Schauspielhaus Berlin in 1931. 304 In addition, as the artistic director of the Schauspielhaus Berlin (1919-1930) he was in charge of managing the marvellous box-office success of Reinhard Bruck’s production of Peer Gynt . Jessner was an apprentice of Carl Heine in his touring Ibsen-Theater of 1900/ 1901. At Heine’s funeral in 1927, Jessner emphasized the ‘rare accuracy of his directing methods’ and hailed him as his principal teacher. 305 In 1901/ 1902, as Heine’s ensemble dissolved, Jessner became a part of Gustav Lindemann’s Ibsen-Theater (Heilmann 2005, 19-31). Thus, Jessner was introduced to Ibsen’s dramatic universe through his symbolist plays and not, like most of the directors of Brahm’s generation, through Pillars of Society . Jessner made his debut as a stage director in January 1902 with Rosmersholm , which was presented by Lindemann’s company in Tallin, Saint Petersburg, Helsinki, Åbo, Tampere, Vyborg, and Stockholm. 306 Jessner’s 1910 production at the Thalia-Theater Hamburg was the first fully professional staging of Peer Gynt on the German stage, in an early instance of a theatre production showcasing Ibsen the anti-realist. To Jessner, stage direction was basically a matter of interpretation. Here, the play was interpreted as a depiction of the dream and fantasy world of an unstable human being. The troll king, the Boyg, the button moulder, and the thin man were portrayed by one and 303 Berliner Börsen-Zeitung , 31 August 1923, 2. 304 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 79436, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 91729, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 79935, https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 79945, accessed 19 October 2016. 305 Heine had a “seltene Präzision der Regieführungˮ ( Jessner 1979, 197). 306 Altogether Jessner is recorded as director in 27 events spanning a period of twenty-nine years. He directed eleven plays by Ibsen (number of events in brackets): Rosmersholm (11), Peer Gynt (4), Hedda Gabler (3), An Enemy of the People (2), The Pretenders (1), Little Eyolf (1), Emperor and Galilean (1), Lady from the Sea (1), Love’s Comedy (1), The Wild Duck (1), and John Gabriel Borkman (1). 214 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage the same actor (Albert Bozenhard) as Peer’s alter egos, as subconscious desires and anxieties of his (Heilmann 2005, 57). Besides Grieg’s music, Jessner used coloured stage lights to set the appropriate tone for the different scenes, reminiscent of what Adolphe Appia would later do with Wagner’s operas. According to the critic Alexander Zinn, Jessner divided the play into three basic colours, namely ‘the grey of the Nordic spring landscape, the shining yellow of tropical splendour, and the whites of a lonely winter, with violet and blue as necessary semi-tones’. 307 In theatre history, Jessner is as associated with expressionism as he is with political theatre. In his 1931 production at the Schauspielhaus Berlin, Herr Eberkopf appeared as a Hitler follower, and the madhouse scene emphasized Peer as a colonialist. There had been political undertones to his 1910 production as well, with his preliminary notes to the production invoking Ibsen’s confession to cosmopolitanism, as published at the time by the Hamburger Fremdenblatt (cf. Heilmann 2005, 57). Brahm’s Lessingtheater happened to be touring Hamburg with seven plays of their Ibsen cycle in June 1910, 308 that is in the very same season as Jessner opened up the theatre audience’s eyes to a distinctly different Ibsen. On the other hand, in the German stage history of Peer Gynt , Jessner represents a position radically different from Eckart’s line of approach in two important regards. First, in his own productions, he would not touch Eckart’s adaptation: Jessner’s cosmopolitan Peer stands in sharp contrast to Eckart’s emphasis of the play’s ethnicity-based Volkstümlichkeit (popularity) and his claim that ‘ Peer Gynt belongs, in essence, to the German people’. 309 Second, although Jessner used his scores, Grieg was toned down. To avoid melodrama and the sentimentalization advocated by Eckart, which was largely secured through the use of Grieg’s music, “Solveig’s Song” was dropped entirely in his 1931 production, while the rest of the music, with the exception of “Anitra’s Dance”, was played during the intermissions only (Uecker 1985, 169). In Düsseldorf, Lindemann and Bruck - a former and a future colleague of Jessner, respectively - staged two joint productions of Peer Gynt , the first of which premiered on 3 June 1910, while the premiere of the second was spread over two nights on 16 and 17 June 1912, with Bruck responsible for the adaptation of the play on both occasions (Linke 1969, 93-96). Bruck’s and Lindemann’s 307 “[…] in das Grau der nordischen Frühlingslandschaft, das leuchtende Gelb tropischer Pracht, das Weiß eines einsamen Winters. Notwendige Zwischentöne sind ihm Violett und Blau.ˮ Alexander Zinn, General-Anzeiger für Hamburg-Altona , 26 February 1910, 2. 308 The Wild Duck , Rosmersholm , Ghosts , Hedda Gabler , The Lady from the Sea , The Master Builder , and A Doll’s House were presented at the Carl Schultze Theater. 309 “Der ‘Peer Gynt’ gehört eben seinem innersten Wesen nach zum deutschen Volkˮ, Eckart claims in preface of the 1917 edition of his adaptation (Ibsen 1917, 7, italics in original). 7.2 The death of a father figure 215 long-standing quest for the most appropriate stage version of Peer Gynt illustrates the extent to which the play in itself is a theatrical laboratory for trial and error. The 1910 production consisted of two parts: part one corresponded to the first three acts of Ibsen’s play, while part two skipped the entire fourth act and the first two scenes of the fifth act, beginning instead with the churchyard scene that signified Peer’s return home. In other words, all scenes showing Peer’s wanderings abroad were deleted, and in their stead a voice was heard before the raising of the curtain after the intermission relating these events very briefly in combination with Grieg’s music (ibid., 93-94). There was a disturbing lack of coherence between the two parts, as pointed out by critics and also realized by the two stage directors. Due to this, Bruck and Lindemann presented a new two-evening version of the play in 1912, with all five acts being included this time. On the first evening, the first three acts were performed more or less in the same manner as in 1910, and accordingly Lindemann and Bruck were both credited as directors. The following evening, the fourth and fifth acts were performed almost in their entirety (only the fifth act’s auction scene was left out), and only Bruck was credited as director for this part of the production (ibid., 96). The following year, the collaboration between Bruck and Lindemann came to an end, as Bruck moved to Berlin to join Georg von Hülsen-Haeseler’s team of stage directors at the Königliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin. Lindemann for his part remained head of the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf together with his wife Louise Dumont for the rest of his career. However, for the summer season of 1914 they took over the direction of the Münchner Künstlertheater and transferred their ensemble to Munich, where Lindemann staged Peer Gynt over again, reconceptualizing virtually every aspect: the leading parts were recast, the set and costume design (Knut Ström) - characterized as a cross between Art Nouveau and expressionism (Linke 1969, 98) - was new, and the adaptation was fresh. The final scene was indicative of Lindemann’s new approach. Dissatisfied with the harmonizing closing vision of the 1910 and 1912 productions, he dropped the Pietà image of Peer lying in Solveig’s lap, an image that is suggested by Ibsen in the original text. Instead, Peer lay outstretched, dead, in front of a wall, while Solveig descended from the wall, kneeled, and spread her arms over Peer’s body (ibid., 100-101). The button moulder’s last words, “We shall meet at the last cross-road, Peer; / And then we’ll see whether -; I say no more” (OxI 3, 421), were deleted. In October 1915, Lindemann presented a reopening of Peer Gynt in Düsseldorf. The Munich version remained the basis for this and all subsequent reopenings of the play at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf in 1918, 1921, and 1927. In the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays, Bruck assumes a marginalized position, whereas Lindemann’s name is prominent. Bruck’s 1914 production of Peer Gynt in Eckart’s adaptation at the Königliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin is 216 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage the obvious reason for this, a production which, to use Bourdieu’s terms, clearly moves us as far away from the pole of pure production as we can possibly get. Yet either way the Schauspielhaus production gives rise to several questions: How many provincial stages made use of the director’s notes by Bruck that Eckart distributed? How did the production evolve during the extremely long performance run? It is known that the premiere performance was spread over two nights, but that Eckart’s own abridged version was used to switch to one-night performances after a month. It is likely that Bruck kept an eye on the production as long as he was employed by the Schauspielhaus. 310 To what extent and how did the production affect the Ibsen tradition of the Weimar Republic? While Bruck staged only one other Ibsen play aside from Peer Gynt - namely Lady Inger , which premiered at the Schauspielhaus on 17 January 1917-- Lindemann rivalled Brahm in the number of his Ibsen productions. Spanning a period of thirty-two years (1900-1932), Lindemann is recorded as stage director in 134 events of fourteen plays. 311 Together with his wife, Lindemann turned the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf into a regional equivalent to Brahm’s Lessingtheater by presenting multiple Ibsen performances. What lessons could be drawn from the above about the German stage history of Peer Gynt ? First, there seems to be a connection between the increasing popularity and the strong distribution of the stage play from the 1910s onwards and the gradual decline of Ibsen’s socio-critical plays. But the nature of this connection still remains to be examined further. Second, my survey of selected German Peer Gynt productions, however brief, suggests the multitude of ways to adapt the play. At the transition from closet drama to playscript adaptation is the key. The choice of adaptation in turn affects the staging in a number of ways, concerning for example plot structure, dramaturgy, casting, stage design, and duration. Furthermore, it suggests the multitude of interpretive and conceptual approaches to the play. The play’s ambiguity and openness to a multiplicity of theatrical concepts were manifest already in the initial phase of its stage history. Third, Peer Gynt became the pivot of the process of renegotiating the Ibsen legacy of the German stage. The play was an eye-opener to neglected parts of Ibsen’s oeuvre, such as Emperor and Galilean (staged by Barnowsky as well as 310 After Hülsen-Haeseler’s resignation in November 1918, Bruck was appointed interim director of the Schauspielhaus together with Albert Patry. As Leopold Jessner entered as the new director in September 1919, Bruck remained part of his team of stage directors at least until 1923. Bruck committed suicide in 1929. 311 Ibsen events presented by Lindemann (number of events in brackets): Hedda Gabler (28), Ghosts (20), When We Dead Awaken (18), Rosmersholm (16), A Doll’s House (9), Peer Gynt (9), Pillars of Society (8), John Gabriel Borkman (6), Love’s Comedy (5), The Wild Duck (4), Little Eyolf (4), An Enemy of the People (3), The Master Builder (2), and Emperor and Galilean (2). 7.2 The death of a father figure 217 Jessner and Lindemann), Love’s Comedy (produced by Jessner and Lindemann), and Brand (produced by Lindemann at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf in 1914, as directed by Louise Dumont and Paul Henckels). Comparing Brahm with the subsequent generation of directors also demonstrates differences in how they shaped their repertoires. Brahm was extremely one-sided at composing the repertoire of the stages in his charge, while the repertoires of the stages managed by Reinhardt, Barnowsky, Jessner, and Lindemann were far more balanced in their mix of contemporary plays and classical plays (Berstl 1930, 85-104; Linke 1969, 244-250; Styan 1982, 128-156; Heilmann 2005, 420-429). Here, Peer Gynt assumed an intermediate position: Ibsen was no longer a contemporary, but a writer behind modern classics. His cycle of contemporary plays was either associated with other Ibsen plays or with plays by contemporary German dramatists, above all Hauptmann. Peer Gynt on the other hand was first and foremost associated with other classical works featuring memorably off-kilter protagonists, like Goethe’s Faust and Cervantes’ Don Quixote . Yet despite Ibsen having transcended contemporaneity, he was not entirely unconnected to the newest development within German drama: expressionism. Is there a connection between the rise of such expressionism and the early German stage history of Peer Gynt ? By showcasing the life journey of its protagonist from youth to old age, Peer Gynt is a forerunner of a drama type typical of expressionism, the station drama. Discarding Aristotle’s classical unities, so perfectly intact in for example Ghosts , it is the protagonist alone that vouches for the unity of Peer Gynt as a work of art. Every episode and all other characters are subordinate and serve only to elucidate the development of the play’s protagonist in line with another drama type prototypical of expressionism, the protagonist drama (Denkler 1969, 141-152). Hence, including Peer Gynt in repertoire programmes next to plays by Kaiser, Toller, Sternheim, Sorge, Hasenclever, and Bronnen, as Reinhardt, Barnowsky, Jessner, and Lindemann did (Berstl 1930, 85-104; Linke 1969, 244-250; Styan 1982, 128-156; Heilmann 2005, 420-429), was a matter of course. Elements of Jessner’s 1910 production and Lindemann’s 1914 production seem to prefigure theatrical concepts they would later elaborate in productions of expressionist plays. On the other hand, however, the expressionists did emphasize other playwrights than Ibsen, as he was still associated with aesthetic concepts strongly opposed by the expressionists, above all naturalism. The chief sources of inspiration for expressionist theatre were, according to Horst Denkler, the set and lighting designer Adolphe Appia and the English stage designer and theatre director Edward Gordon Craig, the former known for pioneering modern conceptions of the relationship between performance space and lighting on the basis of Wagner’s ‘word-tone drama’, the latter for his advocacy for the non-naturalistic, anti-illusionistic, theatricalized approach to theatre; both were key figures in the 218 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage history of the modern stage in their efforts to claim autonomy for theatre as an independent art form in its own right. Equally antagonistic to the idealistic-pathetic performance style on the one hand and the naturalistic-mimetic style on the other hand, theatre artists committed to expressionism turned to dramatists such as Maeterlinck and Hofmannsthal, Stanisław Przybyszewski, Alfred Jarry, Frank Wedekind and Oskar Panizza, Paul Claudel, and - above all - the late Strindberg (Denkler 1969, 131-132). In the face of the present state of the arts and confronted with the contours of a civilizational crisis that would eventually materialize in World War I, the German expressionists considered the aesthetics of naturalism to be entirely inadequate and inappropriate. As a consequence, Ibsen the naturalist went down the same drain. The German expressionism is indicative of the extent to which naturalism represented an approach to Ibsen that had to be discarded as a thing of the past. 7.3 The ‘other’ Ibsen: changes in the critical perception and reception of Ibsen Parallel to stage artists like Jessner and Barnowsky presenting a different Ibsen, there was a tendency among critics to make similar discoveries. ‘The Ibsen that we had or believed to have before us in the last two decades of the nineteenth century is not the true Ibsen’, Oskar Walzel claimed in 1912. 312 Three years later, Erich Holm (a pseudonym for Mathilde Prager) used the word ‘crisis’ with reference to Ibsen and stated that a shift in the perception of Ibsen had occurred which ‘changes the character of his oeuvre entirely’, with the ‘formerly social Ibsen’ having transformed into a different dramatist. 313 Of course, it is hardly unusual that the critical perception and reception of an author or a playwright changes over time. The crucial question here is how these changes affected the way Ibsen was produced on stage and received by audiences. In the following I will draw upon a sample of studies in the critical reception of Ibsen in Germany in search of conceptual models for further interrogation of my dataset. David E.R. George has studied the German reception of Ibsen as a series of revisions. According to him, the initial phase was entirely dominated by the image of Ibsen as a naturalist. Decisive impulses came from the writings 312 “Der Ibsen, den wir alle in den beiden letzten Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhunderts vor uns sahen oder zu sehen glaubten, ist nicht der wahre Ibsen.ˮ Walzel 1912, 4. 313 “In der Auffassung seiner Werke ist in letzter Zeit ein Umschwung eingetreten, der, von einzelnen Forschern ausgehend, in immer weiteren Kreisen Schule macht und um so beachtenswerter ist, als er dem ganzen Schaffen des Dichters ein verändertes Gepräge gibt.ˮ “[…] der soziale Ibsen von ehedem [ist] ein anderer geworden.ˮ Holm 1915, 241. 7.3 The ‘other’ Ibsen: changes in the critical perception and reception of Ibsen 219 of Georg Brandes, and associated critics were Otto Brahm, Paul Schlenther, Berthold Litzmann, and Emil Reich (George 1968, 28-43). Then followed three revisions emphasizing, respectively, Ibsen the neo-romantic, Ibsen the neo-classicist, and Ibsen the expressionist. The neo-romantic approach was prefigured by Lugné-Poe’s symbolist Ibsen performances in Paris in the 1890s. The three leading German theoreticians were Hermann Bahr, Leo Berg, and Alfred Kerr, who interpreted Ibsen to the extent that his works posed the possibility of creating a synthesis of either naturalism and romanticism (Bahr, cf. 5.3 above) or naturalism and symbolism (Kerr, cf. George 1968, 55). This formation turned Ibsen into a forerunner of Maeterlinck and a kindred spirit of Nietzsche (Berg 1901, 33, 67). Key works besides Maeterlinck’s plays were Hauptmann’s The Sunken Bell , Hofmannsthal’s plays, and Ibsen’s The Master Builder and Peer Gynt . George divides the neo-classicist approach to Ibsen into two periods: The first period, in the 1870s, was represented by the Schiller epigones Ernst von Wildenbruch and Heinrich Bulthaupt, while the second, in the first decade of the twentieth century, was led by the Hebbel epigones Paul Ernst, Wilhelm von Scholz, and Samuel Lublinski. The latter downplayed Ibsen’s socio-critical dramas in favour of his historical dramas, above all The Pretenders , characterized by Bulthaupt as a “work of genius of the first order and in my estimation one of the greatest plays of world literature” and by Ernst as Ibsen’s “most significant play” (quoted in George 1983, 68-69). In his double capacity as theatre director and literary historian, Max Martersteig was also instrumental in rediscovering Hebbel and interpreting Ibsen as a “neo-Hebbelian” who “followed the demands of classical aesthetics” (ibid.). The third revision which connects Ibsen with expressionism is marked by ambivalence. The expressionist revolt against naturalism and neo-romanticism expressed itself as a revolt against Ibsen. He was replaced by Strindberg, Nietzsche, and Wedekind, all three of whom rejected Ibsen in no uncertain terms, with Strindberg branding him a “coward” and a “charlatan”, Nietzsche a “typical old spinster”, and Wedekind a fraudster who wrote “charades” (ibid., 69). However, as noted above, central elements of Peer Gynt resonate well with expressionism, elements which George claims that Dietrich Eckart strengthened in his adaptation of the play (George 1968, 84-90). In other words, expressionists were not anti-Ibsen per se, only in opposition to particular approaches to him, notably the naturalist and the neo-romantic ones. George’s model and IbsenStage speak different languages. Events are not recorded in IbsenStage according to aesthetic ‘schools’. Nonetheless, George’s model has the advantage of bringing nuances into my generational set-up. Hermann Bahr and Carl Heine, both of whom George places in the neo-romantic camp (George 1968, 44-61), belonged to Brahm’s generation by virtue of 220 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage their birth year, but their critical writings placed them in opposition to Brahm. Heine’s Ibsen performances are accounted for above (cf. 6.3). Bahr, who pursued a multiple career as critic, playwright, and director, was employed by Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater in 1906. In the spring season of 1907, Bahr directed Hedda Gabler and Love’s Comedy as part of the first Kammerspiele season, which was inaugurated with Reinhardt’s staging of Ghosts with Edvard Munch’s set design - Munch designed Bahr’s production of Hedda Gabler as well. 314 A decade and half earlier, Bahr was the initiator of the very first performance of a play by Maeterlinck on the German stage, as L’Intruse ( Intruder ) was presented at the Theater in der Josephstadt in Vienna on 2 May 1892 (Lorenz 1995, 94-96). The performance was organized by the Verein für modernes Leben (Modern Life Society) and announced as a ‘Symbolist evening’. 315 As the head of the Litterarische Gesellschaft in Leipzig (Leipzig Literary Society), Heine presented the same play on 7 February 1896 (Strohmann 2006, 792). Even more, Heine became known for his strong advocacy for Wedekind’s plays. On 25 February 1898, he presented the first-ever performance of Wedekind’s Earth Spirit , the playwright himself appearing as Dr Schön. Shortly after, Heine embarked on his first tour with his Ibsen-Theater, during which Earth Spirit was performed ten times. Later on, Heine presented multiple Wedekind productions: The Love Potion in Leipzig in 1900 and at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in 1915, The Court-Singer in Leipzig in 1900 and on tour in Rotterdam the same year, Earth Spirit on tour in Cologne and Düsseldorf in 1904 and in Frankfurt am Main in 1907, King Nicolo in Frankfurt am Main in 1907, and Pandora’s Box at the Kleines Schauspielhaus Berlin in 1918 (Seehaus 1964). Brahm encountered Ibsen’s works first as critic, then as a man of the stage. In Martersteig’s case it was the other way around. Born 1853, he was only three years older than Brahm, but made his stage debut as Charles VII in Schiller’s The Maid of Orleans fifteen years before Brahm became the head of the Freie Bühne society. 316 Martersteig’s career as a contributor in Ibsen performances spans from 1878, when he appeared as Rörlund in Pillars of Society at the Großherzogliches Hoftheater Weimar, to 1918, when his adaptation of Peer Gynt was performed at the Stadttheater Leipzig. He is one of few whose career spans the entire period under scrutiny here. He covered multiple functions as actor, 314 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ event/ 79335 ( Hedda Gabler ); https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio. no/ pages/ event/ 79340 ( Love’s Comedy ), accessed 15 November 2016. 315 “Symbolistischer Abend des Vereins für modernes Lebenˮ, Neue Freie Presse , 2 May 1892, 6. Bahr gave an introductory speech about Maeterlinck and his school. 316 Rolf Badenhausen, “Martersteig, Max”, in Neue Deutsche Biographie vol. 16 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1990), 271-272, cf. http: / / daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/ 0001/ bsb00016334/ images/ index.html? seite=283, accessed 16 November 2016. 7.3 The ‘other’ Ibsen: changes in the critical perception and reception of Ibsen 221 director, translator, and adapter. 317 Between 1896 and 1905 he withdrew from the stage to devote himself to writing. In Martersteig’s 1904 book Das deutsche Theater im neunzehnten Jahrhundert , he formulated his interpretation of Ibsen as a neo-Hebbelian and argued strongly against naturalism. On stage, he produced plays by Wildenbruch, Grillparzer, Kleist, and Grabbe, but was above all responsible for the rediscovery of Hebbel. In Riga he staged Gyges and His Ring and completed Hebbel’s Demetrius fragment. During his five seasons as the director of the Vereinigte Stadttheater in Cologne (1905-1911), he presented seven plays by Hebbel (George 1968, 67; 1983, 68). Looking at Martersteig’s contributor page in IbsenStage, it turns out, surprisingly, that he was involved in Ibsen performances of plays from four decades: Love’s Comedy , The Pretenders , Brand , and Peer Gynt from the 1860s, Pillars of Society and A Doll’s House from the 1870s, An Enemy of the People and The Lady from the Sea from the 1880s, and When We Dead Awaken from the 1890s. 318 Thus, however strong Martersteig’s emphasis was on Ibsen’s historical plays in his critical writing, his stage career was characterized by variety, and he did not restrict himself from presenting the ‘entire’ Ibsen. Around the turn of the century, Ibsen plays tended to turn up in conjunction with Hauptmann plays. Brahm was by far the strongest advocate in this regard, with the two playwrights frequently and regularly being included in Brahm’s repertoires at the Deutsches Theater and the Lessingtheater. During Brahm’s years at the latter stage (1904-1912), he presented 704 performances of nineteen Hauptmann plays and 635 performances of thirteen Ibsen plays (Buth 1965, 19). 319 Bahr, Heine, and Martersteig were responsible for establishing other relational associations, namely Ibsen and Maeterlinck, Ibsen and Wedekind, and Ibsen and Hebbel. Yet to what degree Heine’s stage productions were actually in accordance with neo-romantic aesthetics and to what degree Martersteig’s stage productions themselves adhered to the classical aesthetics that he propagated in his writings, must remain an object for further scholarly investigation. As suggested above, although the perception and reception of Ibsen might have changed in the 1910s, his overall standing on the German stage remained 317 Martersteig is not listed as a translator in IbsenStage, but according to George he prepared a translation of Brand in 1887 for the purpose of producing the play at the Großherzogliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Mannheim (George 1968, 68) - the production was most probably dropped. 318 https: / / ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/ pages/ contributor/ 439619, accessed 16 November 2016. Contributor records with event numbers in brackets: When We Dead Awaken (3), The Pretenders (2), Peer Gynt (2), Pillars of Society (2), Love’s Comedy (1), Brand (1), A Doll’s House (1), An Enemy of the People (1), The Lady from the Sea (1). 319 Note that the numbers here refer to individual performances, not events in IbsenStage’s sense. 222 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage strong. In order to study a period in which his plays truly experienced a recession, one has to look at the Weimar Republic. George references essays appearing in German journals and periodicals in the late 1920s and early 1930s entitled “The Twilight of Ibsen”, “What’s Henrik Ibsen to Us? ”, “Should We Still Play Ibsen Today? ”, “Has Ibsen Still Anything to Say to Us? ”, and “Does Ibsen Still Have Value for Our Times? ” (George 1968, 70; 1983, 68). In her essay Henrik Ibsen, ein Erlebnis der Deutschen , which was published in 1928, Marianne Thalmann studies Ibsen’s impact from a strictly historical perspective. At one point in history, by a stroke of fate, a German Ibsen came into being next to the native Norwegian Ibsen, she reasons in line with Alfred Kerr. This stroke of fate was a German experience, that is by Ibsen’s German recipients and not by Ibsen himself. The Freie Bühne greeted him as an attacker, but Ibsen the attacker is now dead, Thalmann claims: ‘Ibsen is no progenitor, no guide for younger generations, but a consummator of old cultures and a preacher before the end’. 320 Note that Thalmann uses the exact same key terms as Kerr, but negates them. 321 Ibsen’s ‘German mission’ has literally gone down in history. Kerr’s narrative, written in 1894, has changed into a 1928 narrative which flips the story into its negative. But what are the historical causes for this development? ‘What continuously separates us from [Ibsen] is his being one with a bourgeoisie that has faded away’, Thalmann contends. The bourgeoisie is in turn linked to naturalism, which Thalmann characterizes as the ‘artistic amen of an overburdened bourgeoisie’, with Ibsen co-authoring ‘this bourgeoisie’s requiem’. 322 The core of Thalmann’s argument relates to Ibsen in as much as he thematized bourgeois existence. In his recent book, Moretti claims that Ibsen’s plays are “the great ‘settling of accounts’ of the bourgeois century” and says he finds no workers in Ibsen’s “broad bourgeois fresco” because “the conflict Ibsen wants to focus on is internal to the bourgeoisie itself” (2013, 170, italics in original). Yet that inevitably depends on where you look. The approach of Thalmann and Moretti prompts the question, is Ibsen nothing but a writer of bourgeois dramas? Looking closely at how they frame and substantiate their arguments, substantial parts of Ibsen’s oeuvre are left in the shade. Moretti focuses single-mindedly on Ibsen’s cycle of contemporary plays, all of which he stresses 320 “Ibsen ist kein Ahnherr, kein Führer junger Geschlechter, sondern ein Vollender alter Kulturen und ein Prediger vor dem Ende.ˮ Thalmann 1928, 1-2. 321 “Ahnherrˮ, “Führer junger Geschlechterˮ, cf. Kerr 1976, 105-122. 322 “Was uns dauernd von [Ibsen] trennt, ist sein Verwachsen sein mit einem Bürgertum, das abgeblüht hat.ˮ Thalmann 1928, 2. “Der Naturalismus ist damit ein ergreifendes deutsches Schicksal geworden, insofern er das künstlerische Amen eines überlasteten Bürgertums wurde. Und diesem deutschen Bürgertum hat Ibsen mit das Requiem geschrieben.ˮ Ibid., 62, italics in original. 7.3 The ‘other’ Ibsen: changes in the critical perception and reception of Ibsen 223 are prose plays. In the main, Thalmann’s examples and references come from the same body of works. Foucault has taught us that the principle of exclusion governs every discourse. Thalmann and Moretti leave us with an Ibsen they do not talk about: the playwright behind the plays written before Pillars of Society , and Ibsen the writer of bourgeois dramas, that is the cycle of contemporary prose plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken . The canonization of Ibsen gained momentum in the two decades following the Freie Bühne performance of Ghosts , whereas the next twenty years, 1910- 1930, represent a period of changes. Looking at the total set of events recorded in IbsenStage over these four decades, altogether 1,100 German events are recorded from 1890 through 1910. 1,015 of these events (92 %) represent Ibsen the bourgeois dramatist in Moretti’s sense. Over the years 1910-1930, 935 German events are recorded, 614 of which (66 %) refer to performances of the bourgeois dramas. In other words, the canonization of Ibsen in 1890-1910 is almost exclusively due to his contemporary prose plays. Post-1910, on the other hand, Ibsen the bourgeois dramatist loses momentum. The drop is first and foremost due to a decline in popularity of a specific play, A Doll’s House : In 1890-1910, 241 German events of the play are recorded, only for the equivalent number to drop markedly to 84 in 1910-1930. Comparing event numbers of the ten plays outside the contemporary prose play cycle, Peer Gynt makes all the difference: While the event numbers of the other plays stay more or less the same, Peer Gynt increases radically from eight German events pre-1910 to 261 events in 1910-1930. Thus, the process of renegotiating the Ibsen legacy that took place on the German stage from 1910 onwards is above all a story of the rise of Peer Gynt and the fall of A Doll’s House . How is the one related to the other? On the surface of it, there is an ocean of difference between the two works. A Doll’s House , written in prose, is a domestic drama set in the flat of a middle-class family. It is famously regarded as one of the works instituting realism in dramatic literature, one where Aristotle’s classical unities are followed. Peer Gynt , written in verse, is a closet drama, the action of which spans a lifetime and takes place “partly in Gudbrandsdal and in the surrounding mountains, partly on the coast of Morocco, partly in the Sahara Desert, in the lunatic asylum in Cairo, on the sea, etc.” (OxI 3, 254). Aristotle’s classical unities are spectacularly violated, as are most realist conventions. The two dramas belong to two distinctly different phases in Ibsen’s career which seemingly have little in common. From early on in the history of Ibsen criticism, it became a commonplace to refer to this shift, from verse to prose, from non-realist to realist, from the historical and philosophical drama to the modern social drama, as a point of discontinuity. Yet this view, Albert Dresdner maintained in a book published in 1907, regards only the exterior. Brand and Peer Gynt con- 224 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage stitute a ‘beginning’, not an ‘ending’ in Ibsen’s dramatic production. All later works are concerned with no other issues than those raised in these two verse dramas. 323 In Ibsen, everything boils down to one overarching issue, Dresdner claimed, the ‘issue of the freedom of the individual and the boundaries of this freedom’. By restricting himself to this single issue, Ibsen became a factor in the intellectual life of Europe. 324 Dresdner’s analysis establishes coherence and continuity between Peer Gynt and A Doll’s House . Until then, holistic approaches to Ibsen had the tendency to exclude marginalized parts of his oeuvre, as Brahm’s example shows (cf. 6.4). Dresdner’s approach represents a shift of focus from the contemporary prose dramas to Brand and Peer Gynt , though not to the extent that the latter two works completely overshadow the former body of plays. Verse and prose are tied together to an integral whole. Accordingly, IbsenStage contains evidence that the rise of Peer Gynt and the fall of A Doll’s House implies a shift of emphasis, not a matter of mutual exclusion. A Doll’s House continued to be produced on stage, only on a less frequent basis. 325 As some of the Ibsen cycles accounted for above exemplify, stringing together plays from apparently disparate phases of Ibsen’s writing career was far from unheard of. Thirteen out of thirty-nine Ibsen cycles included works that Ibsen published in the 1850s and 1860s. In two cycles, Peer Gynt and A Doll’s House were presented alongside each other: at the Lessingtheater in May/ June 1916 (both directed by Barnowsky) and at the Altonaer Stadttheater in Hamburg in April/ May 1918. At least three other directors produced both plays, namely Max Martersteig, Adolf Winds, and Gustav Lindemann, the latter multiple times. 326 323 “Ich glaube aber, daß […] Brand und Peer Gynt nicht einen Abschluß, sondern einen Anfang, einen Ausgangspunkt in Ibsen’s Schaffen bilden. Ich will versuchen, den Beweis dafür zu führen, daß Ibsen in seinen sämtlichen späteren Werken nichts Anderes mehr behandelt hat, als die Probleme, die in Brand und Peer Gynt aufgestellt worden sind.ˮ Dresdner 1907, 25. 324 “[E]s gab eben wirklich nur eine Frage, die [Ibsen] interessierte, nämlich die der Freiheit des Ichs und ihrer Grenzen, und gerade durch die Beschränkung auf diese Frage ist er ein Faktor im europäischen Geistesleben geworden.ˮ Dresdner 1907, 27-28, italics in original. 325 After World War II, A Doll’s House has recaptured its leading position among Ibsen’s works. Globally throughout history, IbsenStage shows that A Doll’s House and Peer Gynt are Ibsen’s most frequently performed plays. As of May 2017, A Doll’s House returned 4,152 event records and Peer Gynt 2,852 event records. Ghosts and Hedda Gabler follow with 2,745 and 2,477 event records, respectively. 326 Lindemann is recorded as the director in 9 Peer Gynt records distributed over a period of seventeen years and 9 A Doll’s House records over a period of twenty-eight years. 7.4 Ibsen performances during World War I 225 7.4 Ibsen performances during World War I The German theatre landscape would change radically due to World War I. The end of the war saw a drastically changed political map, the so-called age of empire came to a halt, social institutions connected to the old regime collapsed and were replaced by new ones, and new migration patterns emerged. All these factors inform my choice of 1918 as the historical end point of my study - but what was the direct impact of World War I during the war years? Eugen Schöndienst has shown that half of the theatres of the German Empire had to close because of the war, and not just theatres along the front lines (Alsace-Lorraine, West Prussia and East Prussia); rather, most of them were minor stages that had to cease activities due to economic circumstances (Schöndienst 1979, 242). Theatres that managed to keep afloat had to cope with reduced staffs, and the employees had to tolerate wage cuts. Call-up orders, resource shortages, social hardship, and the realities of the war were ubiquitous. In the light of these circumstances, it would be entirely wrong to consider the volume of Ibsen performances during the four and half war years as evidence of a recession. During 1914-1918, an annual average of 68 events are recorded in Ibsen- Stage, 327 while the corresponding figure for the 1890s was 40.3. Figure 6.1 suggests that Ibsen was not in command of the German stage to the same degree as he had been 1900-1909 (as the annual average then amounts to 77.6 recorded events); his standing, however, was still considerable, remarkable even, given the ramifications of World War I. During the war, the censorship authorities banned plays by enemy state dramatists and composers, and French comedies, Italian operas, and plays by for example George Bernard Shaw disappeared from the repertoires. Plays by German dramatists critical to the regime, like Carl Sternheim, were banned too (Schöndienst 1979, 243). Ibsen, by contrast, had the advantage of being a canonized dramatist from a small neutral nation with strong cultural bonds to Germany. His controversial plays had long since stopped running afoul of the censors, and there were neither moral nor political reasons to ban his plays. Over several decades, Ibsen had proven to be a commercially viable playwright. The level of naturalization that he had achieved further privileged him. More than indicating a playwright falling out of fashion, the wartime event numbers testify to Ibsen’s enduring position on the German stage. 327 The annual figures are 63 (1914), 67 (1915), 67 (1916), 73 (1917), and 70 (1918). 226 Chapter 7: Negotiations over the Ibsen legacy: Peer Gynt enters the stage 7.5 Conclusion 1910 represented a turning point in the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays for at least two reasons: the event numbers began to show a declining tendency and that year marked the moment when German performances of Peer Gynt started to proliferate, thereby running counter to the overall declining trend. I examined the German stage success of this particular play in view of two key factors: the impact of Grieg’s music and the viability of Dietrich Eckart’s adaptation. Grieg’s incidental music, roundly condemned by many critics but strongly applauded by the audience at large, seemed to have functioned as a guarantee of success. IbsenStage documents that Eckart’s adaptation was the most widespread version of Peer Gynt on the German stage in the period until 1945, especially so during the Nazi years, but before 1933 German Peer Gynt events divide in two equally sized camps of those preferring either Eckart’s ideologically permeated adaptation or Christian Morgenstern’s more faithful translation. The immensely popular productions at the Lessingtheater and the Königliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin that are likely to have been instrumental in causing the play to spread to provincial stages all over Central Europe chose either version: the Lessingtheater used Morgenstern and the Königliches Schauspielhaus used Eckart. In the second section of this chapter I analysed Ibsen’s German stage history as a process of generational contestations and negotiations between two subsequent generations of stage directors, Otto Brahm’s generation on the one hand and Max Reinhardt’s on the other. 91 % of the events presented by Brahm’s contemporaries were connected to Ibsen’s cycle of contemporary plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken . For their part, Reinhardt’s peers showed a renewed interest in Ibsen’s 1860s plays - above all Peer Gynt - and less interest in his 1870s plays, most notably Pillars of Society and A Doll’s House . The main merit of the Reinhardt generation was that they opened up the German stage to Peer Gynt . My survey of selected productions of the play directed by four of Reinhardt’s contemporaries (Victor Barnowsky, Leopold Jessner, Gustav Lindemann, and Reinhard Bruck) suggested how Peer Gynt became the pivot of the process of renegotiating the Ibsen legacy of the German stage, for example by serving as an eye-opener to neglected parts of Ibsen’s oeuvre, such as Love’s Comedy , Brand , and Emperor and Galilean . Parallel to this, there was an increasing tendency among critics and scholars to question prevalent views and propose new perspectives on Ibsen. No longer predominantly regarded as a writer of socio-critical dramas, approaches to Ibsen informed by aesthetic schools other than realism and naturalism gained momentum. David E.R. George’s three-stage model of revisions - from naturalism 7.5 Conclusion 227 via neo-classicism to expressionism - served as a point of departure for further interrogations of the IbsenStage dataset. Unlike Brahm’s strong bias towards Ibsen and Hauptmann and his inclination to produce plays by the two of them in conjunction, directors such as Max Marstersteig, Carl Heine, and Hermann Bahr were creating associations between Ibsen and other kinds of dramatists, namely Hebbel, Wedekind, and Maeterlinck, respectively. Scholars such as Marianne Thalmann and Franco Moretti treat Ibsen first and foremost as a writer of bourgeois dramas and focus almost single-mindedly on the cycle of plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken , but post-1910 it is exactly these plays that lose momentum. In this chapter, the digital approach prompted a closer scrutiny of the German stage success of Peer Gynt from 1910 onwards from two perspectives, the impact of Grieg’s incidental music on the one hand, and the battle for favour between Morgenstern’s and Eckart’s versions of the play on the other. Data analysis of the subset of German stage directors contained in the contributors dataset of IbsenStage further indicated that Peer Gynt was promoted as part of a process of renegotiating the German Ibsen legacy led by Reinhardt’s generation of directors, whereas the older generation of directors, as represented by Brahm, had focused almost exclusively on Ibsen’s cycle of contemporary plays. When viewed from a distance, this process of renegotiating the Ibsen legacy is above all a story of the rise of Peer Gynt and the fall of A Doll’s House . 7.5 Conclusion 229 Chapter 8: Concluding remarks The present thesis studied the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays until 1918 from a quantitative angle with a point of departure in the event-based, relational performance database IbsenStage and a set of e-research methodologies pioneered by the AusStage team. The main object of study was a subset of 2,035 German events presented at theatre venues all over the Western world, from Moscow in the east to San Francisco in the west in the period 1876-1918. SQL queries were used to retrieve and preprocess data, providing result sets that were used to generate visualizations. These visualizations - graphs, tables, charts, and maps - in turn proved instrumental in preparing data for analysis and forming a basis for questioning conventional assumptions, and developing new hypotheses and new lines of inquiry. The study was structured according to the major patterns of Ibsen’s German stage history as they emerge in these visualizations. The first two chapters focused on events covering the years 1876-1881 and examined Ibsen’s first major success on the German stage, Pillars of Society , and the subsequent failure of his following play, A Doll’s House . In the late 1870s the former play was produced more than twice as much as previously assumed. The stage success of Pillars of Society started off at venues in densely populated, central areas like Berlin and were then disseminated into the periphery. German performances of Pillars of Society paved the way for Ibsen both westwards across the Atlantic and eastwards into the Russian Empire, demonstrating the transnational entanglements of the play’s German success. Ibsen was introduced to the Hungarian, Serbian, Czech, and Dutch stages, respectively, by way of performances using translations made on the basis of German editions of Pillars of Society . Yet the international side effects were limited, and IbsenStage does not bear out Emil Reich’s assertion that Pillars of Society established Ibsen’s international reputation. The data-driven approach prompted an examination of Ibsen’s initial success with Pillars of Society on the German stage focusing on three key factors: the commercial context, the role of Bjørnson’s preceding success with A Bankruptcy , and the ‘competition’ between the three different German versions of Pillars of Society . The play’s success on the German stage must be considered against the backdrop of a commercialized theatre industry. Pillars of Society was presented as part of a repertoire of comedies, farces, and light operas; within this context, the play’s event figures were anything but extraordinary. Bjørnson’s play A Bankruptcy was a frequently recurring point of reference in the critical 230 Chapter 8: Concluding remarks reception of Ibsen’s play. Pillars of Society did in fact not quite measure up with Bjørnson’s preceding success in terms of critical appraisal and performance figures. Moreover, A Bankruptcy paved the way for Pillars of Society on the German stage in a more concrete sense than previously known. Ibsen’s play was distributed to the German theatres in three versions. The IbsenStage dataset documents that the great majority of the stages based their productions on the two unauthorized versions by Wilhelm Lange and Emil J. Jonas, whereas only a small group of court stages used the authorized translation of Pillars of Society , made by Emma Klingenfeld. The findings are not yet conclusive, but certain sources suggest that Jonas’ adaptation - which Ibsen characterized as a ‘mutilation’ of his play - was preferred by most of the German stages. The case demonstrates the extent to which Ibsen suffered from the lack of copyright protection and how the issue of copyright affected the introduction of his plays on the German stage. With A Doll’s House Ibsen managed to rid himself of the problem of unauthorized translations by means of his new alliance with the translator Lange and the Reclam publishing house, but only on the surface of it. The case of the alternative German ending of A Doll’s House - which circumstances forced Ibsen to write - shows that there was no escape from the issue of copyright. Problems connected to the lack of protection only took new forms. My research revealed that during 1880-1881 the version that adopted the alternative, conciliatory ending was preferred by the majority of the German stages. Compared to the widespread success of Pillars of Society , however, A Doll’s House was a failure on the German stage. In an attempt to account for this, I first analysed the network of stage artists who were involved in producing Ibsen on stage 1876-1881 and found that the level of social connectedness was low. During the initial years of his German stage history, Ibsen was first and foremost an object of speculation from the side of his German translators, the theatre agencies, and the theatre managers. When A Doll’s House failed to fulfil the expectation of becoming a box-office draw, the German stage lost interest in Ibsen’s plays. Since there were no ‘Ibsenites’ among them, the stage artists made no difference in this regard. There is no denying that the alternative ending influenced the introduction of A Doll’s House on the German stage. The reports on the switching between the original and the alternative endings at the Residenztheater in Berlin and the Stadttheater in Vienna bear witness to a process of entering into negotiations with the public regarding a crucial aspect of Ibsen’s play, but these negotiations did not succeed. Regardless of the ending, A Doll’s House failed all tests, one German critic concluded. On leaving the auditorium after the Residenztheater’s performance of the play, starring Hedwig Niemann-Raabe as Nora, Georg Brandes uttered the famous words that ‘Ibsen will never be understood in Germany’. 231 My survey of the strongly polarized critical reception of A Doll’s House on the German stage 1880-1881 revealed that performances on provincial stages like Flensburg and Kiel were favourably received, whereas performances at venues in the major cities were strongly decried. The reports from provincial newspapers are characterized by a perceived lack of critical integrity and professionalism. The leading critics and intellectuals in Berlin and Vienna, for their part, were conspicuously unbalanced and used harsh words to express their opinions, though their objections point in opposite directions. Critics informed by the tenets of aesthetic idealism disapproved of the play, the third act in particular. In defence of Ibsen and his play, critics like Fritz Mauthner and Georg Brandes strongly criticized the response of the audience instead. The latter took the Residenztheater’s performance as a point of departure for engaging in a moralizing polemics. In the light of the playwright’s own manoeuvres, Brandes’ critical position represents an alternative take on the issue of copyright. Ibsen’s approach was pragmatic, his choice of writing the alternative ending was dictated by a desire to prevent people like Jonas from coming forward with ‘mutilated’ versions of his play. Brandes, on the other hand, assumes the approach of the raging critic, bringing charges against a stage that failed to pay Ibsen due reverence. The years 1876-1881 constitute the prologue to the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays. The three-year-long period of ‘silence’ that followed after the failure of A Doll’s House signifies that the German stage lost interest in Ibsen in the moment his plays no longer guaranteed economic profit. Gradually, Ibsen regained momentum towards the end of the 1880s. The frequency graph forms a new peak in 1889, only this time the peak is caused by events associated with multiple plays by Ibsen and not just a single successful play as in 1878. From 1885 onwards, the German curve is continuous up until this very day, which implies that from then on Ibsen started to have a lasting impact on the German stage. IbsenStage shows that the German performances were part of a growing wave of international Ibsen performances. Within the bigger picture, 1889 stands out as the year of Ibsen’s international breakthrough. Ibsen’s status as a playwright on the German stage went through a significant change in the latter half of the 1880s and the early 1890s. The reasons for this are complex. In chapters 4 and 5 I directed my attention on multiple constellations of events related to four emerging movements: the naturalists, the independent theatre movement, the modernists, and the Volksbühne movement. In different ways and for different purposes, Ibsen exerted great influence on the formation of these movements. The earliest productions of Ghosts in Berlin, namely the 1887 performance at the Residenztheater and the 1889 performance presented by the Freie Bühne, respectively, are considered landmark productions in the history of naturalism. The latter performance inaugurated the Freie 232 Chapter 8: Concluding remarks Bühne’s initial season and Ghosts stands as the epitome of the advent of the independent theatre movement on the German stage. I proposed to view the movement’s appropriation of Ghosts in light of Bourdieu’s account of the field of cultural production, which in the 1880s tended to organize itself according to the opposition between two poles: the pole of pure production and the pole of large-scale production. Operating in compliance with principles associated with the pole of pure production - most notably a strong anti-commercial spirit and a striving for autonomy on behalf of the performing arts - the Freie Bühne society accommodated their activities to accumulate symbolic capital rather than economic capital. Ghosts plays a key role in conventional accounts of how Ibsen became consecrated as the father of modern drama, reflecting the fact that it was above all this particular play that was embraced by the independent theatre movement on the one hand and the modernist movement on the other. Tracing Ibsen’s major impact on the formation of the Berliner Moderne, the Wiener Moderne, and Munich’s modernist movement, respectively, revealed three slightly different conceptions of die Moderne but a common source of inspiration in Ibsen. In Berlin, the initial proclamation of die Moderne by the Durch! literary society was intricately connected on a personal and spiritual level to the initial Ghosts events. The Freie Bühne served first and foremost elitist purposes, while the Volksbühnen conversely became a mass movement. Initially stimulated by the Freie Bühne, the Volksbühne movement linked Ibsen to the growing Social Democratic labour movement, associating him with the socialist cause. During the first two seasons of the Freie Volksbühne Berlin, Ibsen was the most frequently presented playwright. The movement meant an expansion of Ibsen’s spectatorship. By 1912 the two rivalling Volksbühne associations of Berlin, the Freie Volksbühne and the Neue Freie Volksbühne, totalled 18,000 and 50,000 members, respectively. In step with the increase in memberships, the movement began to influence the repertoire policy of the established stages, to the extent that the theatres began to produce plays at the choice of the Volksbühne associations. IbsenStage represents a new body of evidence against which conventional accounts need to be tested. In theatre historiography, the independent theatre movement’s appropriation of Ghosts has tended to overshadow three aspects: first, Ghosts was also staged by commercial theatres; second, the champions of the independent theatre movement were most certainly affected by Ibsen’s warm reception from bourgeois theatre, resulting in a dynamic interplay between the commercial and experimental uses of Ibsen; and third, the stage success of A Doll’s House on the German stage in the late 1880s and early 1890s was associated with neither the independent theatre movement nor naturalism. A Doll’s House was not embraced by the avant-garde, but incorporated into 233 the repertoire of theatres operating within the confines of mainstream culture. During the 1890s A Doll’s House became successfully integrated into three connecting systems that were instrumental in spreading the play: the star system, the system of solo guest performances, and the touring system. The main line of demarcation between the first generation of German Noras, represented by Hedwig Niemann-Raabe, and the second generation, represented by Agnes Sorma, was that the former failed to incorporate Ibsen into the star system, whereas the latter succeeded. IbsenStage lists more than three hundred German events featuring solo guest artists during the period under scrutiny, and almost half of these are A Doll’s House events featuring a female guest artist appearing as Nora. Agnes Sorma, Auguste Prasch-Grevenberg, Thessa Klinkhammer, and Lilli Petri used the character of Nora to build their star status on the German stage - and indeed, in Sorma’s case, to become a star of international proportions. The network analysis in chapter 5 showed that Ibsen was reintroduced to the German stage in the latter half of the 1880s by a new generation of stage artists. Despite the relative shortness of the time gap between the initial years (1876-1881) and the period from 1885 onwards, the vast majority of artists in the early network are absent from the later network that covers the years from 1885 to 1899. Contrasting the production histories of the two time periods showed how the German Ibsen network developed from a low to a higher degree of connectedness, revealing a body of artists who gradually assumed ownership of Ibsen’s plays. Crucial in this regard were the German Noras, most notably Sorma who acted as one of the greatest ‘connectors’ of the German contributors dataset by virtue of her solo guest performances. In the final decade of his writing career, Ibsen’s European fame grew rapidly as he became a world dramatist. Every launching of a new Ibsen play turned into a major media event, which in turn resulted in an immediate growth of theatrical events. Particularly during the latter half of the 1890s, German theatres competed vigorously to become the first to present Ibsen’s latest plays on stage. At the close of his career, Ibsen had been translated into twenty-seven languages. My investigation of the impact of German as a source language for indirect translation revealed that twelve of these languages used German translations as their source texts. German editions of Pillars of Society and A Doll’s House served to illustrate how German source texts influenced the introduction of Ibsen into a number of other European languages. Given the international dissemination of his plays, Ibsen needed strategic partners in his efforts to safeguard his rights and secure his economic interests. German theatre agencies became key figures in this regard. During the 1890s, the Felix Bloch Erben agency became increasingly involved in marketing Ibsen both in and outside the German Empire. 234 Chapter 8: Concluding remarks In the initial decade of the twentieth century, the process of consecrating and canonizing Ibsen was well under way; the increase in event numbers shows that he was in command of the German stage. Fischer’s edition of Ibsen’s complete works provided the immediate context for the publication of the German edition of When We Dead Awaken and its ensuing theatrical distribution on the German stage. The German naturalization of Ibsen had come full circle with the marketing and branding of him as a German dramatist. Measured by event density, When We Dead Awaken was Ibsen’s second largest stage success on the German stage after Pillars of Society in 1878. When We Dead Awaken featured next to Bjørnson’s Beyond Human Power on the list of the most frequently produced plays in the theatre season 1899/ 1900, thus indicating the commercial viability of the two plays. Seen from the perspective of geographical dissemination, the distribution flow of Ibsen’s final play did not have the same kind of directedness - from the centre to the periphery - as Pillars of Society . By now, the provinces had no need of stages in the major cities ‘leading the way’ in the performance of Ibsen. A Doll’s House was still Ibsen’s most frequently performed play during the first decade of the new century, but not as dominating as in the 1890s; rather, it is the body of plays commonly referred to as Ibsen’s symbolist dramas that account for the largest increase in event numbers. The strongest advocates for the shift of emphasis away from the realist core of Ibsen’s dramatic production to his late symbolist plays were a group of German touring companies named after Ibsen that presented his plays across Europe in the period 1898-1914. Pioneered by Carl Heine, the Ibsen ensembles formed a relatively tight-knit network. The leading personalities within these ensembles appear to have been united in dissatisfaction with the prevalent naturalistic approach to Ibsen, as represented by Otto Brahm. Operating outside the realm of the institutional theatres, the Ibsen ensembles toured mostly outside the major cities, yet their activities had a counterpart among institutional theatre companies: the tradition of stringing Ibsen’s plays together in performance cycles. The tradition dates back to the end of the 1880s and continued into the 1920s but proliferated particularly from around the time of Ibsen’s death onwards. Although he was not the first to present one, Brahm was arguably the first to suggest that sequential parts of Ibsen’s complete works could be presented on stage in chronological order over consecutive evenings. Some twenty years after he made the suggestion, the Ibsen cult that Brahm developed during his periods as artistic director of the Deutsches Theater and the Lessingtheater culminated in the series of Ibsen cycles presented at the latter stage. The tradition of the performance cycles was especially strong in the major cities and was restricted to the works of prominent dramatists. My analysis of the mostly connected contributors - the hubs - in the German network of stage artists presenting Ibsen on stage in the period 1876-1918 un- 235 covered three clusters: the largest one consisted of artists affiliated with Brahm’s Ibsen activities at the Freie Bühne, Deutsches Theater, and Lessingtheater, respectively; the artists in the second-largest cluster were connected to the Ibsen ensembles pioneered by Heine; and the centre of the smallest cluster were the Ibsen activities directed by Louise Dumont and Gustav Lindemann in Düsseldorf. The chief principle governing the activities of these three clusters was ensemble work, either in the form of a resident theatre company or a touring theatre company. By switching from contributor-event networks to contributor-contributor networks, the significance of the relatively small but prominent cluster of independent artists touring solo came to the fore. The Ibsen career of Agnes Sorma was dominated by solo guest performances that made her acquire a substantial amount of ‘weak ties’. By contrast, the career of Emil Lessing was based on the cultivation of long-term collaboration with close colleagues, i.e. ‘strong ties’. 1910 represented a turning point in the German stage history of Ibsen’s plays for at least two reasons: the event numbers began to show a declining tendency and that year marked the moment when German performances of Peer Gynt started to proliferate, thereby running counter to the overall trend. I examined the German stage success of this particular play in view of two key factors: the impact of Grieg’s music and the viability of Dietrich Eckart’s adaptation. Grieg’s incidental music was roundly condemned by many critics but strongly applauded by the audience at large and seemed to have functioned as a guarantee for success. IbsenStage documents that Eckart’s adaptation was the most widespread version of Peer Gynt on the German stage in the period until 1945, especially so during the Nazi years, but before 1933 German Peer Gynt events divide in two equally sized camps of those preferring either Eckart’s ideologically permeated adaptation or Christian Morgenstern’s more faithful translation. The immensely popular productions at the Lessingtheater and the Königliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin that are likely to have been instrumental in causing the play to spread to provincial stages all over Central Europe chose alternate versions: the Lessingtheater used Morgenstern and the Königliches Schauspielhaus used Eckart. I further proposed to analyse Ibsen’s German stage history as a process of generational contestations and negotiations between two subsequent generations of stage directors, Otto Brahm’s generation on the one hand and Max Reinhardt’s on the other. 91 % of the events presented by Brahm’s contemporaries were connected to Ibsen’s cycle of contemporary plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken . Reinhardt’s contemporaries for their part showed a renewed interest in Ibsen’s 1860s plays - above all Peer Gynt - and less interest in his 1870s plays, most notably Pillars of Society and A Doll’s House . The main merit of the Reinhardt generation was that they opened up the German stage to Peer Gynt . My survey of selected productions of the play directed by 236 Chapter 8: Concluding remarks four of Reinhardt’s contemporaries (Victor Barnowsky, Leopold Jessner, Gustav Lindemann, and Reinhard Bruck) suggested how Peer Gynt was pivotal in renegotiating the German stage’s Ibsen legacy, for example by serving as an eye-opener to neglected parts of Ibsen’s oeuvre, such as Love’s Comedy , Brand , and Emperor and Galilean . Parallel to this, there was an increasing tendency among critics and scholars to question prevalent views and propose new perspectives on Ibsen. No longer predominantly regarded as a writer of socio-critical dramas, approaches to Ibsen informed by aesthetic schools other than realism and naturalism gained momentum. David E.R. George’s three-stage model of revisions - from naturalism via neo-classicism to expressionism - served as a point of departure for further interrogations of the IbsenStage dataset. Unlike Brahm’s strong bias towards Ibsen and Hauptmann and his inclination to produce plays by the two of them in conjunction, directors such as Max Marstersteig, Carl Heine, and Hermann Bahr created associations between Ibsen and other kinds of dramatists, namely Hebbel, Wedekind, and Maeterlinck, respectively. Scholars such as Marianne Thalmann and Franco Moretti treat Ibsen first and foremost as a writer of bourgeois dramas and focus almost single-mindedly on the cycle of plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken , but post-1910 it is exactly these plays that lose momentum. The methodological approach adopted in this thesis has demonstrated that it has the capacity to challenge conventional assumptions about the early reception of Ibsen on the German stage. The most important new findings may be summarized as follows: 1. Pillars of Society owed its initial success on the German stage to the play’s commercial viability; the play did not signify the advent of naturalism or experience a breakthrough in Georg Brandes’ sense. 2. The network of stage artists engaged in German Ibsen events during 1876- 1881 had a low density and a low level of connectedness; this caused Ibsen to lose momentum on the German stage the moment his plays no longer fulfilled expectations at the box-office, as was the case after the initial failure of A Doll’s House in the early 1880s. 3. Data interrogation revealed that events connected to the independent theatre movement’s appropriation of Ghosts occupy only a marginal position in Ibsen- Stage. Within the bigger picture, 1889 stands out as the year of Ibsen’s international breakthrough, above all owing to a growing wave of A Doll’s House performances in the German-speaking parts of Central Europe and globally. 4. Three connecting systems were particularly instrumental in spreading A Doll’s House on the German stage: the system of solo guest performances, the star system, and the touring system. 237 5. Measured by event density, Ibsen’s final play, When We Dead Awaken , was his second-largest success on the German stage after Pillars of Society . The Ibsen ensembles pioneered by Carl Heine were the strongest advocates of the shift of emphasis away from the realist core of Ibsen’s oeuvre to his late symbolist plays, and When We Dead Awaken was the most frequently performed play in their repertoire. 6. The German Ibsen cycles bear witness to the fact that the process of canonizing Ibsen as a modern classic was well under way during the first decade of the twentieth century. Maps generated by the map interface of IbsenStage showed that the Ibsen cycles were presented at venues in the major cities, whereas the touring Ibsen ensembles operated in the provinces. 7. Network analysis revealed that the most connected artists engaged in German Ibsen events during 1876-1918 were involved in three kinds of Ibsen activities: presenting his plays in the form of a performance cycle as part of a resident theatre company, presenting his plays on tour across Europe as part of a touring company, or making solo guest performances in Ibsen parts as an independent artist or on leave from a resident theatre company. 8. The advent and the rapidly growing stage success of Peer Gynt on the German stage from around 1910 onwards was part of a process of renegotiating the German Ibsen legacy. IbsenStage contains data gathered over a period of seventeen years. In some areas of study more performance data need to be traced to further corroborate the findings presented in this thesis. My argument about the early network of German stage artists, for example, is in need of complementary contributors data from the events that are recorded in IbsenStage without a cast list. Likewise, there are sources indicating that further German Ibsen cycles and additional performances by the Ibsen ensembles have not yet been recorded in IbsenStage. My argument about the early network also prompts the question, how does the introduction of Ibsen’s plays on the German stage differ from the introduction of his plays on the stages in for example Scandinavia, England, and France? Studies by scholars such as Thomas Postlewait and Pascale Casanova leave the impression that the introduction of Ibsen’s plays on the English and French stages, respectively, had a much more centralized shape both socially and geographically (Postlewait 1986; Casanova 2007); their assumptions, however, may not concur with evidence contained in IbsenStage, and I propose an approach similar to the one I have adopted in my thesis, to the early reception of Ibsen on the stages in England and France. Chapter 5 (cf. 5.6) examined how German source texts influenced the earliest translations of Ibsen’s plays, most notably Pillars of Society and A Doll’s House , 238 Chapter 8: Concluding remarks into a number of European languages and how German theatre agencies were key in marketing Ibsen both in and outside the German Empire; a further step would be to determine whether the German Ibsen tradition had an impact on Ibsen performances in these languages in terms of theatrical style and aesthetics. Ibsen played an active part in the field of cultural production not just by being an author, but also by operating as his own agent. He maintained relationships with publishers, translators, literary agents, theatrical agents, theatre managers, directors, and artists (Fulsås 2013). In the above, my intent was to analyse the artistic networks in particular, and Ibsen and his German translators were therefore deliberately removed from the contributors dataset; however, the significance of Ibsen’s own network connections constitutes a further field of study which could also shed more light on the findings presented in this thesis. How did Ibsen’s personal acquaintance with leading personalities of the German stage such as Duke Georg II of Meiningen, Max Burckhard, and Otto Brahm influence the way his plays were produced? 7.5 Conclusion 239 Bibliography Alth, Minna von 1977. Burgtheater 1776-1976: Aufführungen und Besetzungen von zweihundert Jahren . 2 vols. Published by Österreichischer Bundestheaterverband. Vienna: Ueberreuter. Amdam, Per 1993. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: Kunstneren og samfunnsmennesket, 1832-1880 . Oslo: Gyldendal. Anker, Øyvind, Francis Bull, Torben Nielsen (eds.) 1953. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnsons brevveksling med danske 1875-1910. Vol. 1: 1875-1889 . 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Contemporary Approaches to Ibsen 5: 154-179. 250 Bibliography Ulrich, Paul S. 2015. “Die fahrenden Leute kommen: Gastspiele als kulturelle, wirtschaftliche und betriebliche Faktoren im deutschsprachigen Theaterleben des 19. Jahrhunderts”. In Im Spiegel der Theatergeschichte: Deutschsprachiges Theater im Wechsel von Raum und Zeit / In the Mirror of Theatre History: German Theatre Intercultural Relationships from the Past to the Present , edited by Paul S. Ulrich, Gunilla Dahlberg, and Horst Fassel, 198-215. Berlin: LIT Verlag. Walzel, Oskar 1912. Henrik Ibsen . Leipzig: Insel-Verlag. Watzka, Stefanie 2006. Verborgene Vermittler: Ansätze zu einer Historie der Theateragenten und -verleger . Marburg: Tectum Verlag. Weigel, Alexander 1999. Das Deutsche Theater: Eine Geschichte in Bildern . Berlin: Propyläen. Weiß, Fritz 1934. Das Basler Stadttheater 1834-1934: die Spielstätte, die künstlerischen Leiter, das darstellende Personal. Gedenkschrift zum 100jährigen Bestehen des Stadttheaters. Basel: Schwabe. Willmann, Frank 1994. “Peer Gynts Schiff - Scheitern einer Reise: Zur Geschichte seiner szenischen Umsetzung.ˮ Dissertation, Technische Fachhochschule Berlin. Wunberg, Gotthart (ed.) 1976. Das Junge Wien: Österreichische Literatur- und Kunstkritik 1887-1902. Vol. I: 1887-1896 . Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Wunberg, Gotthart, Johannes J. Braakenburg (eds.) 1981. Die Wiener Moderne: Literatur, Kunst und Musik zwischen 1890 und 1910 . Stuttgart: Reclam. Zalm, Rob van der 1999. Ibsen op de planken: Een ensceneringsgeschiedenis van het werk van Henrik Ibsen in Nederland 1880-1995 . Amsterdam: International Theatre & Film Books. Physical collections 251 Appendix: Archival sources The purpose of the following survey is to account for the scope of archival sources - physical and digital - used in the process of building up the dataset. The survey covers sources consulted at various points over a period of seventeen years (2001-2018). At the start of my doctorate in April 2014, all records relevant to the subject of my thesis - by then approximately 1,300 records - were already transferred from the Repertoire Database to IbsenStage. A set of additional seven hundred records complementing the IbsenStage dataset have been added during my doctoral period (2014-2017) and after submitting the thesis. 328 Here, only sources relevant to the building up, complementing, and refining of the dataset of German events 1876-1918 are included. Physical collections • Archiv der Akademie der Künste in Berlin (Archivabteilung Darstellende Kunst) • Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich • Deutsches Theatermuseum in Munich • Hamburger Theatersammlung at the University of Hamburg • Meininger Museen • Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv - Staatsarchiv Oldenburg • Schweizerische Theatersammlung, Bern • Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin • Stadtarchiv Baden-Baden • Stadtarchiv Braunschweig • Staatsarchiv Bremen • Stadtarchiv Chemnitz • Stadtarchiv Dresden • Stadtarchiv Greifswald • Stadtarchiv Göttingen • Stadtarchiv Konstanz • Stadtarchiv Leipzig 328 In addition to records added by myself, I owe to thank my colleagues Svein Henrik Nyhus and Gianina Druta for complementing the dataset with records of Germanspeaking Ibsen performances in the United States and Romania, respectively, as part of their doctoral projects. 252 Appendix: Archival sources • Stadtarchiv München • Stadtarchiv Oldenburg • Stadtarchiv Schwerin • Steiermärkische Landesbibliothek Graz • Theatermuseum Hannover • Theatersammlung at the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt • Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung Schloss Wahn in Cologne • The Ibsen collection of the National Library of Norway • The library of the Centre for Ibsen Studies • Universitätsbibliothek Kassel - Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel • Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart Digital sources I: playbills, theatre programmes, performance data • 100 Jahre Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg: Informationsdatenbank der Aufführungen seit 1900 (CD-ROM attached to Brauneck 1999a, cf. bibliography) • Düsseldorfer Theaterzettel, ULB Düsseldorf: http: / / digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf. de/ theaterzettel • Landesbibliothek Oldenburg digital - Theaterzettel Oldenburg: https: / / digital.lb-oldenburg.de/ nav/ classification/ 602702 • Theater und Musik in Weimar 1754-1969: www.theaterzettel-weimar.de • Theaterzettel Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe: http: / / digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/ blb/ theaterzettel/ topic/ view/ 2949538 • Theaterzettel - Oper und Burgtheater in Wien: http: / / anno.onb.ac.at/ cgi-content/ anno? aid=wtz • Theaterzettel-Sammlung, Lippische Landesbibliothek: www.llb-detmold.de/ webOPACClient_lippe/ start.do • Würzburger Theaterzettel, Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg: http: / / theaterzettel.franconica.uni-wuerzburg.de Digital sources II: newspapers 253 Digital sources II: newspapers • ANNO - Austrian Newspapers Online: http: / / anno.onb.ac.at/ • BelgicaPress, Royal Library of Belgium: http: / / opac.kbr.be/ belgicapress.php • Chronicling America, Library of Congress: http: / / chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ • Darmstädter Zeitung, Digitale Sammlung Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt: http: / / tudigit.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/ show/ sammlung24 • Delpher (Dutch historical newspapers online): www.delpher.nl/ nl/ kranten/ • Digital Collections of the National Library of Finland, Newspapers: http: / / digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/ sanomalehti/ search • Digitale Bibliothek Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung: http: / / library.fes.de/ inhalt/ digitale-bibliothek.htm • Digitale Bibliothek Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: http: / / digitale-bibliothek-mv.de/ • Digitale Sammlungen, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn: http: / / digitale-sammlungen.ulb.uni-bonn.de/ ulbbnz • Digital Library - National Library of Latvia, Periodicals: www.periodika.lv/ • Digital Library - National Library of Latvia, Newspapers: http: / / data.lnb.lv/ digitala_biblioteka/ laikraksti/ • Digital Library of the University of Wroclaw: www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/ dlibra • Freiburger Zeitung digital, Universität Freiburg: https: / / fz.ub.uni-freiburg.de/ show/ fz.cgi? pKuerzel=FZ • Kujawsko-Pomorska Digital Library, University Library in Torun: http: / / kpbc.umk.pl/ dlibra • Mediastream, Royal Danish Library’s digital collection of newspapers: www2. statsbiblioteket.dk/ mediestream/ avis • Moravian Library - Digital Library Kramerius: www.digitalniknihovna.cz/ mzk/ • Newspapers.com: www.newspapers.com/ • Schweizer Presse Online: http: / / newspaper.archives.rero.ch/ olive/ ODE/ index_en.html • Teßmann digital, Landesbibliothek Dr. Friedrich Teßmann: http: / / digital. tessmann.it/ • The British Newspaper Archive: www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ • The European Library - Historic Newspapers: www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/ tel4/ newspapers • ZEFYS Zeitungsinformationssystem, Staatsbibliothek Berlin: http: / / zefys. staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/ 254 Appendix: Archival sources Performance data in printed form Relevant book titles are included in the bibliography above. Particular reference is made to the following publications: • Alth 1977 • Berner 1956 • Brauneck 1999a • Bryan 1984 • Feldens 1967 • Frenzel 1942 • Halvorsen 1892 • Krollage 2004 • Odell 1970 • Peters 1972 • Weigel 1999 • Weiß 1934 • Willmann 1994 • Zalm 1999 255 List of tables and figures Figure 1.1: Distribution of German Ibsen events by year. 28 Table 1.2: Distribution of German events according to works association. 29 Figure 1.3: Map of German Ibsen events 1876-1918. 29 Figure 2.1: German Ibsen events according to play 1876-1881. 32 Table 2.2: Ten most performed plays on the German stage in the theatre season 1877/ 1878. 38 Table 2.3: Productions of Bjørnson on the German stage 1875-1880. 44 Figure 2.4: Map of Pillars of Society on the German stage 1878-1881. 51 Figure 2.5: Map of German Pillars of Society events in the spring and summer seasons of 1878. The numbers 1-25 refer to the chronological order of the premiere dates. 53 Figure 2.6: Non-German and non-Scandinavian performances of Pillars of Society 1878-1881. 58 Figure 3.1: Event-contributor network of the 1876 performance of The Pretenders at the Herzogliches Hoftheater Meiningen. 65 Figure 3.2: Event-contributor network for contributors involved in German Ibsen events 1876-1918. 66 Figure 3.3: Stage artists linked by German events 1876-1881 67 Figure 3.4: Event clusters connected by Hedwig Niemann-Raabe (close-up of figure 3.3) 68 Figure 3.5: Subset of German events (in black) in proportion to the total set of global events 1876-1900. 85 Figure 3.6: Ibsen events 1850-1895; Nordic events in black, German events in grey. 87 Figure 4.1: German Ibsen events 1876-1945. 91 Figure 4.2: German Ibsen events according to play 1889. 92 Figure 5.1: German Ibsen events 1890-1901. 112 Figure 5.2: Stage artists linked by German events 1885-1899 114 Table 5.3: German Ibsen events according to play 1890-1900. 116 Table 5.4: Nora performances of Sorma, Prasch-Grevenberg, Klinkhammer, and Petri 120 Figure 5.5: Membership statistics Freie Volksbühne and Neue Freie Volksbühne 1890-1912 (source: Nestriepke 1930). 132 Figure 5.6: Language flow graphic outlining the transmission of Ibsen’s works through translation by 1900. 137 256 List of tables and figures Table 5.7: Rendering of names in Pillars of Society in three contemporary German translations (Ibsen 1877; Ibsen 1878a; Ibsen 1878b). 142 Table 5.8: Rendering of names in Pillars of Society in four contemporary non-German translations. 143 Table 5.9: Rendering of names in A Doll’s House in Lange’s German translation (Ibsen 1879). 145 Figure 6.1: German Ibsen events 1899-1918. 153 Figure 6.2: Map of German When We Dead Awaken events in the calendar year 1900, numbered by premiere date. 158 Table 6.3: Twelve most performed plays on German-speaking stages in the theatre season 1899/ 1900. 161 Figure 6.4: German productions of Hauptmann plays 1899-1900. 166 Figure 6.5: German Ibsen events according to play 1899-1900. 166 Table 6.6: German Ibsen events 1900-1909 according to play. 168 Figure 6.7: Map of Ibsen events presented by the five Ibsen ensembles, 1898-1914. 170 Table 6.8: German Ibsen events for Ibsen ensembles according to works association, 1898-1914. 171 Figure 6.9: German Ibsen cycles 1889-1922 179 Table 6.10: Plays performed during 39 German Ibsen cycles 1889-1922, by location. *Misc. includes Bern, Detmold, Leipzig, Linz, Magdeburg, Oldenburg, Prague, Toruń, Wiesbaden, and Zurich. 180 Figure 6.11: Cycle performances (black area) in relation to the total performance events (grey area), 1904-1918. 184 Figure 6.12: Most connected contributors: patterns of artistic collaboration. 187 Figure 6.13: Contributor-contributor relations: Sorma vs. Lessing 191 Figure 7.1: Map of German Peer Gynt events 1902-1918: black dots representing events using Morgenstern’s translation; white dots representing events using Eckart’s adaptation. 204 Figure 7.2: German Ibsen events staged by prolific Ibsen directors from Brahm’s generation (born in the 1850s and 1860s) and Reinhardt’s generation (born in the 1870s and 1880s), per decade of play. 209