Displacing Justice? Looking for the Law in Gustav Freytag’s Die Journalisten 53 Displacing Justice? Looking for the Law in Gustav Freytag’s Die Journalisten Benedict Schofield University of Bristol Abstract: This article assesses the treatment of the theme of justice in Gustav Freytag’s comedy Die Journalisten (1852), one of the most frequently performed Lustspiele on the German-language stage in the second half of the nineteenth century� It argues that Freytag’s play foregrounds questions of justice, but in terms of wider “structural couplings” (Thomas Beebee) between law and literature which move our attention beyond the direct representation of legal processes on the stage� After considering the place of Die Journalisten within the wider dramatic production of the nineteenth century, the article first considers the function of justice in the work’s critique of electoral injustice� Here it argues that Freytag responds to the specifics of German electoral law in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions, whilst also seeking to situate that German debate within a wider European one, through intertextual links to Charles Dickens� The article then turns to the play’s titular representation of journalism, revealing the extent to which Freytag viewed the freedom of the press from judicial control as a cornerstone for a specifically bourgeois model of German social progress. It closes by considering the play’s more concrete representation of the law through the figure of the Justizrath and its central thematic presentation of justice as a specifically bourgeois value. In so doing, the article maps the ways in which questions and concepts of justice continued to find expression in nineteenth-century drama-and met with great success in the process� Keywords: Gustav Freytag, Charles Dickens, nineteenth-century Lustspiel, elections on stage, journalism on stage, justice on stage 54 Benedict Schofield Early in the second scene of Heinrich von Kleist’s Der zerbrochne Krug (1808), the play’s comic antihero, the Dorfrichter Adam, discovers that his judge’s wig has disappeared� It is not merely a hairpiece that has gone astray, however: the very “Ehre des Gerichts,” Kleist suggests, has vanished from this village courtroom (232, l� 1631)� Attempting to cover up the loss, Adam embarks on a series of elaborate lies, which foreshadow his later, and more egregious, perversion of the course of justice: “So wahr ich lebe,” he swears falsely, he cannot wear his wig, since his cat has had kittens on it (186, l� 245)� Unable to stick to a simple story, and demonstrating what Michael Minden has termed a “voluptuous […] pleasure in lying” (64), Adam comically undermines his tale by offering up an entirely imaginary kitten as proof of the calamity that has befallen him-a calamity that has left him “[k]ahlköpfig,” and thus judicially disempowered (190, l� 377)� When, at the play’s end, the missing wig reappears as a crucial piece of evidence in the very trial Adam is attempting to undermine, Kleist’s drama reaches its comic climax: the judge’s wig, now reempowered as a symbol of justice, both exposes Adam’s lies, and cements his comic downfall, literally chasing him off-stage: “Seht! seht! / Wie die Perücke ihm den Rücken peitscht! ” (244, ll� 1958—1959)� Despite its badly received premiere at the Weimar Hoftheater in 1808, Der zerbrochne Krug would become one of the most regularly performed Lustspiele on the nineteenth-century stage; regarded too by early German literary historians as part of “einer deutschen ‘Klassik’” (Schanze 8)� The play continues to hold canonical status, not only as “one of the very few full-blooded comedies in the modern German tradition” (Minden 64), but also as a crucial example of the “performance of justice” on the German-language stage (Allan, “Gender” 55), and one, in addition, by a “Dichterjurist” (Wohlhaupter 467)� Thematically, it details a crime: the destruction of Frau Marthe’s eponymous jug, the result of Adam’s sexual blackmail of Eve� Dramaturgically, it stages a trial, with the audience functioning, at times, as a quasi-jury for Kleist’s courtroom� Philosophically, it explores the very concept of justice, questioning “whether legal right always corresponds absolutely to moral right” (Griffiths 159). And politically, too, it registers a contemporary crisis in the German judicial system: a system riven by corruption, largely controlled by aristocratic and conservative elites, and “more concerned with the maintenance of law and order than […] with justice per se” (emphasis added; Allan, “Violence” 246)� By the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, other voices had begun to displace Kleist’s drama, both in terms of performance figures, and as models for German stage comedy. The most significant of these voices is one that is now only tangentially associated with German theater: Gustav Freytag� Largely known for his bestselling, antisemitic novel Soll und Haben (1855), Freytag Displacing Justice? Looking for the Law in Gustav Freytag’s Die Journalisten 55 was also an experienced dramatist, writing six dramas between 1841 and 1859, including Die Brautfahrt, oder Kunz von der Rosen (1841), which was awarded the Prussian Hoftheater prize for best comedy, and Die Fabier (1859), awarded the prestigious Schiller prize� Freytag would go on to write a theory of theater, Die Technik des Dramas (1863), which in turn led him to be invited to become a judge for the Schiller Commission, and during his career, he would work with major theaters, such as the Berlin Hoftheater and the Vienna Burgtheater , enjoying close relationships with many of the most significant Intendanten of the day, including Eduard Devrient and Heinrich Laube� The most successful of Freytag’s dramas was his comedy Die Journalisten (1852), and the play’s performance statistics (in as much as these can be reliably reconstructed) are quite staggering� Christa Barth has demonstrated how the play repeatedly outperformed canonical competitor Lustspiele (119), bettering both Der zerbrochne Krug and Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm (1767)� Philip Böttcher has similarly revealed, in exceptional detail, the extent to which Die Journalisten was, in fact, for many theaters, their most frequently performed play� At the Berlin Hoftheater , for instance, over a 76-year period in repertory, Die Journalisten was produced 634 times, and, in the 1850s and 1860s, was the most performed play overall (relegating Goethe’s Faust (1808) to second place)� As a result, “ Die Journalisten [ging] schließlich in die Geschichte des Berliner Theaters als jenes Stück ein, dass ‘alle Aufführungsrekorde schlug’” (Böttcher 97). Significantly, the play met with success not only in Berlin; it would also be the most frequently performed work at the Frankfurt Stadttheater between 1886 and 1930, and at the Coburg and Gotha Hoftheater between 1827 and 1918� It was also one of the most popular plays at the Zurich Stadttheater between 1901 and 1921, and the Vienna Burgtheater between 1888 and 1934, with more performances there than Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1609), Schiller’s Die Räuber (1781) and Wilhelm Tell (1804), and Grillparzer’s Weh dem, der lügt! (1838) (Böttcher 101—02)� At the turn of the century (1898—1902), Die Journalisten was being performed three times as frequently as Der zerbrochne Krug (my reading of Böttcher’s statistics, 109), and its reception by critics frequently saw it as equal to Kleist’s work, heralding it as the new Musterlustspiel � Böttcher has again undertaken an exhaustive account of this reception, persuasively concluding: “Bei all diesen Wertungen handelt es sich nicht um […] eine Zusammenstellung wunderlicher Einzelmeinungen oder um eine flüchtige Episode der Kanonisierungsgeschichte, sondern um einen […] breit geteilten Konsens” (114)� The remarkable success of Freytag’s play renders its absence from most later literary-historical outlines of this era particularly glaring� It is also, however, a symptom of a wider issue in accounts of German theater history, which have frequently argued that German-language drama entered a fallow period during 56 Benedict Schofield the second half of the nineteenth century� Characteristic is the account in volume seven of the dtv Deutsche Literaturgeschichte on Realismus und Naturalismus , which devotes just one paragraph to drama during the era of Realism: 1 Das Drama, bislang die angesehenste Gattung, erlitt durch die realistische Kunstauffassung einen Rückschlag� Die unheroische Lebenshaltung des Bürgers vertrug sich nicht mit dem rhetorischen Pathos Schillers und mit der überlieferten Auffassung von den hohen Inhalten der Tragödie� So verlor die Gattung an Niveau und trat schließlich ganz in den Hintergrund: Nach Hebbel entstand bis zum Naturalismus kein bedeutendes Drama mehr� (Rinsum 275) Here we are faced with a blunt expression of what Helmut Schanze has termed, in his qualitative and quantitative study Drama im bürgerlichen Realismus , the “Lücke des Dramas von Hebbel bis Hauptmann” (1)� Schanze, however, counters this narrative of Verfall with the fact that German theater in the 1850s to the 1890s enjoyed an unprecedented level of freedom, above all from “de[m] Einfluss dilettierender Adliger auf die Bühnenleitung,” and instead developed, in the hands of the middle classes, into a vital “bürgerliche Bildungsanstalt” (5)� Edward McInnes has similarly noted how the lack of canonical works must be understood in the context of the “immer stärkeren Expansion des Theaterbetriebes” in this period, in which “[b]reite Schichten des Bürgertums regelmäßigen Zugang zum Theater [fanden],” with the number of theater companies doubling between 1869 and 1885, and audience numbers tripling (353)� The supposed gap in drama is thus a qualitative assessment by literary history, rather than a quantitative assessment of theatrical reality� For the purposes of this special issue, with its focus on the staging of justice, one further potential gap might be noted: an apparent lack of legal drama after Kleist� Neither the canon, nor literary histories-such as McInnes’s excellent survey of post-1848 Nachmärz drama (343—93)-offer immediate examples of this. In this context, it is also of note that Schanze’s list of the different genre classifications used by theaters-his study reproduces in full, as an example, the 79 different classifications used by the Mannheim Nationaltheater between 1789 and 1889-does not include any references to the law, justice, or forms of legal drama (though these might be obscured by the classification system, however expansive it at first appears)� At the very least, there are challenges in identifying major legal dramas in German-language theater in the later nineteenth century� This challenge is particularly fascinating, since in the wider European context, the processes of “legal reform and intensified professionalization of legal practice” were strongly reflected in the cultural production of the period (Sarat et al. 18), most famously, perhaps, in the forms of “legal Realism” that found particular voice in the Anglophone novel (Ben-Yishai 136)� This was mirrored in German-language writing, Displacing Justice? Looking for the Law in Gustav Freytag’s Die Journalisten 57 with the law a regular “Motiv und Thema in literarischen und publizistischen Schriften” already in the Vormärz (Conter 12)� This article assesses what happens to our understanding of German theater, and specifically its treatment of themes of justice, if we look beyond the discourse of these multiple gaps, and instead explore what was actually performed on the stage, taking Freytag’s Die Journalisten as a prime example of theatrical success in this era� Freytag is of interest here not only because of his success, but also because he has been placed by criticism in a German genealogy of the interface between law and literature� Thomas O� Beebee, for instance, has outlined a trajectory for the interaction between the “subsystems of law, politics and literature” in his study Citation and Precedent: Conjunctions and Precedents of German Law and Literature (297), which argues that the “structural couplings between law, literature and philosophy are stronger in German-speaking countries than in any other national literature” (25), and are marked by the impact of multiple “Dichterjuristen” (9)� In his conclusion, Beebee acknowledges that the specific genealogy he has outlined (across Jacob Grimm and Friedrich Karl von Savigny; to Kant, Goethe and Schiller; and to Kafka, Carl Schmitt, and Peter Weiss) presents just one of many potential trajectories for the interaction of law and literature in Germany: “Were this book to move instead from Heinrich von Kleist’s Broken Jug (1808) to Gustav Freytag’s Debit and Credit (1855) to the Weimar theater of Hans Jose Rehfisch and the novels of Hans Fallada to the contemporary law professor-cum-novelist Bernhard Schlink, a rather different outline […] might emerge” (298)� Beebee does not expand on this interesting, alternative trajectory, and the rationale for including Freytag is not immediately apparent� Freytag, unlike Kleist, Rehfisch, and Schlink, was not a Dichterjurist , and while he did work as a reporter like Fallada, the latter had a more clearly defined career as a court reporter. Beebee specifically mentions Freytag’s novel Soll und Haben in his trajectory, yet this too is not concerned primarily with the law; instead, it is a combination of Geschäftsroman and Bildungsroman � For Beebee, however, the conjunction of law and literature is to be found less in the direct “ reflection of the law” in a literary work (emphasis added; 21), and rather in wider “structural couplings” that reveal the interaction of these two systems (25)� In Freytag’s novel then, rather than looking for extensive trial scenes or courtroom battles, we might instead choose to read the novel’s critique of the aristocracy, and its antisemitic portraits of Jewish businessmen, as markers of such a structural coupling: one through which the wider legal and social shifts of the era are encapsulated-in particular, in Freytag’s depiction of a mercantile bourgeoisie beginning to assert its legal rights in the aftermath of the social and legal changes of 1848� Here we might also note that it is, ultimately, a point of law on which the plot of the 58 Benedict Schofield novel turns: the economic ruin of many of its figures resulting from the manipulation of Schuldscheine and the exploitation of laws regulating debts and their repayment� On this reading, the law and justice are present in the novel, but are displaced away from (say) the courtroom, and into the world of business� This process of displacing questions of the law and justice away from direct representations, and toward other contexts which nevertheless reveal structural couplings between law and literature, can also be seen in Freytag’s Die Journalisten . The play revolves around three interlinked plots. The first details a local election taking place in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions� The young liberal candidate is Oldendorf, whose campaign is managed by the bourgeois journalist and editor Bolz. Oldendorf ’s opponent is an older conservative figure, Oberst Berg, whose campaign is run by the aristocrat von Senden, who deploys underhand means to try and influence the election. The second plot, reflected in the title of the play, explores Oldendorf ’s role as the editor of the liberal newspaper, Die Union , where Bolz is the star reporter, and Berg’s role as a correspondent for the conservative newspaper, Der Coriolan � Here, the focus falls on the role of journalism in shaping public opinion, and on the attempts of the conservative paper to stifle the freedom of the press. A third and final plot addresses two love stories: Oldendorf, it transpires, is in love with Berg’s daughter, Ida, while Bolz is in love with a local aristocrat, Adelheid� Success in the election, and success in journalism, might thus result in the breakdown of friendships and love stories, and it is in the resolution of these simultaneously personal and public conflicts that the comedy-and political message-of Freytag’s play resides� While the play does not directly contain a trial in the mode of Kleist, then, it is clearly interested in political questions that relate to issues of legal and administrative reform in the years after 1848� In the following, I will thus explore a series of displacements in Die Journalisten , away from the direct representation of legal processes, but toward alternative structures which nevertheless reveal the law and justice at work� In particular, I will outline three key areas that reveal the continued structural coupling of law and literature in the play: first, its focus on electoral reform and the right to vote; second, its treatment of the freedom of the press after the loosening of judicial controls of censorship; and third, its conceptualization of justice as something firmly on the side of an ever more dominant bourgeoisie� In detailing an election, Die Journalisten reflects the status of electoral law in the years after 1848-a period that was marked by moves toward wider male enfranchisement, and thus a greater level of citizen participation in the political and electoral process� For McInnes, this subject marks Freytag’s comedy as especially “aktuell[] für das Gesellschaftsleben der Zeit [und von] unmittelbare[r] Displacing Justice? Looking for the Law in Gustav Freytag’s Die Journalisten 59 politische[r] Signifikanz” (367). Freytag’s journalism and memoirs demonstrate that he welcomed, broadly, the reforms brought about by 1848, albeit from a relatively cautious, national-liberal, and bourgeois perspective, that primarily sought a kleindeutsch solution to German unification under Prussian leadership. This did not entail, therefore, full-throated support for universal suffrage. In the pages of Die Grenzboten , the journal he co-edited from 1848 to 1870, Freytag frequently attacked, for example, what he saw as “die Auswüchse der Demokratie” ( Werke 1: 155)� Freytag’s concern was not with democracy itself-indeed, he clearly believed that democratic reform could strengthen the position of the bourgeoisie (and in this mold, he himself would stand and be elected to the Reichstag des Norddeutschen Bundes in 1867)� At the same time, though, it is equally apparent that he felt too broad an enfranchisement of the population could endanger this very influence: in particular, full male enfranchisement would allow the working classes, and other groups, a level of access to the democratic process which he feared might displace the power of the bourgeoisie� Despite his pro-Prussian sentiments, then, Freytag was often strongly dismissive of Bismarck, especially of the latter’s introduction of “allgemeine[s] Wahlrecht,” which Freytag condemned as “das leichtsinnigste aller Experimente, welche Graf B[ismarck] jemals gewagt hat,” since “die Wahl liegt [jetzt] in den Städten in der Hand der Arbeiter, auf dem Land in der der kleinen Leute, Tagelöhner und Knechte”-in other words, to the detriment of the middle classes (Tempeltey 213—16)� In Die Journalisten , it is not primarily the working classes that concern Freytag though; far more he fears the election might be manipulated and won by the conservative aristocracy, and the play is particularly concerned with forms of electoral injustice. Specifically, Freytag articulates his distrust of indirect elections: in other words, those where there is limited direct democracy, and where the results are decided instead by a select group of Wahlmänner (in the case of the play, one hundred of them)� For the liberal and conservative parties in the play, then, their primary goal is to win over enough Wahlmänner to secure victory� Since most of these electors, on both sides, are already set in their politics (with their votes thus resulting in a form of stalemate), the outcome of the election ultimately resides in the hands of a very small number of Wahlmänner who are either undecided or open to influence. Journalism thus plays an important role in the electoral process, since it can shape both wider public opinion and the decisions of these crucial Wahlmänner � Indeed, Freytag comically notes that the outcome of the election is, in the end, perhaps less the result of discussions centered on policy, and instead the consequence of the force of (journalistic) narrative: “Natürlich werden wir die Majorität haben, eine Majorität von 8-10 Stimmen,” Bolz assures his editorial team; “erzählen Sie das überall mit der 60 Benedict Schofield größten Sicherheit� Mancher, der noch unentschlossen ist, kommt zu uns, wenn er hört, daß wir die stärkeren sind” ( Werke 3: 21—22)� Freytag casts a satirical eye over the entire electoral process, from the selection of candidates to the aftermath of the results� Much humor is derived, for instance, from his critique of the motivations of individuals who stand for election, especially those that engage with politics out of ego and vanity, rather than genuine political commitment� This temptation befalls both conservatives and liberals in the play, and Freytag revels in exposing political hypocrisy� When the conversative Berg, for instance, learns that Oldendorf is standing for the liberal party, he deftly skewers any sense that such a decision can be taken without self-interest: “so wird der Eitelkeit ein hübscher Mantel umgehangen und der Wahlcandidat springt hervor, natürlich aus reinem Patriotismus” ( Werke 3: 34)� Yet in the very next scene, Berg himself falls prey to this process: flattered by von Senden, he agrees to become the conservative candidate, now able to delude himself that he is doing so for the good of the nation, rather than as a result of a well-massaged ego� Ultimately, though, Freytag suggests that the best politicians are able to free themselves of such vanity, and significantly-if not entirely surprisingly, given his own political views-it is only the liberals that are granted this possibility of achieving a more noble, indeed almost transcendent, state of political being� Oldendorf alone, then, is granted a speech which sets out a positive vision of the impact that the new political and democratic process will have on Germany: Es ist möglich, daß, wie jetzt Sie, auch eine spätere Zeit unsern politischen Hader, unsere Parteibestrebungen und was damit zusammenhängt, sehr niedrig schätzen wird� Es ist möglich, daß unser ganzes Arbeiten erfolglos bleibt; es ist möglich, daß vieles Gute, das wir ersehnen, sich, wenn es erreicht ist, in das Gegentheil verkehrt […]; aber das alles darf mich nicht abhalten, dem Kampf und Ringen der Zeit, welcher ich angehöre, mein Leben hinzugeben; denn es ist trotz alledem dieser Kampf das Höchste und Edelste, was die Gegenwart hervorbringt� ( Werke 3: 75) This bourgeois form of political engagement requires the sacrifice of the self, rather than self-promotion-in other words, it is an act of duty, a concept Freytag consistently proposes as a core middle-class value in his writing (best encapsulated by the hero of Soll und Haben , who actively embraces the subjugation of self to become a dutiful “Rad eingefügt in die Maschine” ( Werke 4: 67) of bourgeois business)� Even Adelheid’s ironic response to Oldendorf ’s speech-“Das also ist einer von den Edlen, Hochgebildeten, von den freien Geistern deutscher Nation? Sehr tugendhaft und außerordentlich vernünftig! er klettert auch aus reinem Pflichtgefühl ins Feuer! ” ( Werke 3: 76)-ultimately reinforces what Frey- Displacing Justice? Looking for the Law in Gustav Freytag’s Die Journalisten 61 tag considers to be core bourgeois values (such as Bildung , Freiheit , Tugend , Vernunft , and Pflicht ), even as it generates laughter at Oldendorf ’s expense� Freytag’s most direct representation of electoral injustice occurs when the conservatives decide that the best way to win over the Wahlmänner is not to appeal to their politics, but to their appetites� The play’s central comic scene depicts von Senden’s plans for “einen großen Fischzug nach Wahlmännern,” in the form of a party “wo die vornehmen Leute mit den Bürgern Arm in Arm gehen” ( Werke 3: 29)� Politics results in an unusual social gathering in this moment; one in which different classes mix, which in turn requires a change in political tone from the conservative-aristocratic figures: “Denken Sie nur an Ihre Rede; sein Sie populär, denn wir sind heut unter dem großen Haufen,” von Senden is reminded by his colleague Blumenberg ( Werke 3: 45)� In particular, the conservatives have identified the wine merchant Piepenbrink as a key elector to win to their side by means of the party, since he in turn holds influence over a block of undecided Wahlmänner . The conservative plot to influence and bribe the electors falters, however, when Bolz infiltrates the party and flatters Piepenbrink to such a degree that the latter agrees to side with the liberals instead� In this positive outcome for the liberals, Freytag prompts us to see that an injustice has been averted: von Senden’s plan to manipulate the Wahlmänner and sway the election has been foiled� At the same time, though, the liberals are hardly covered in glory, since their success also resides in Bolz’s ability to manipulate the indirect electoral system� The ambiguity in the presentation of Bolz here is in some ways reminiscent of Der zerbrochne Krug , and Kleist’s comedically ambivalent depiction of Adam� Like Adam, Bolz is a compromised figure in this sequence, at once exposing the injustice of the aristocratic plans, but then using the same method for his own side’s benefit. To bring Piepenbrink round to the liberal cause, Bolz has been forced to deploy his imaginative creativity, and to lie, demonstrating, like Adam, a “rasche Anpassungsfähigkeit an neue Situationen [und] Überzeugungskraft” (Borries 179)� Nevertheless, unlike Adam, Bolz is quickly rehabilitated, and in the end it is clear that Freytag views his skills of persuasion and adaptability as excellent attributes for a journalist (as well as a great vehicle for generating comedy), especially if these help expose the potential for injustice posed by “das falsche Princip indirecter Wahl” ( Werke 15: 4—5)� The Piepenbrink sequence has, however, a more explicit forbearer than Kleist, and one that places the play’s treatment of electoral injustice in a transnational frame, through an intertextual connection to Charles Dickens. Dickens’s influence on the play is announced from its opening, in which Ida, Berg’s daughter, is naming new varieties of dahlia, of which “eine soll heißen […] ‘Boz’” ( Werke 3: 5)� Böttcher has read this use of Dickens’s penname as a dramaturgical tool that 62 Benedict Schofield foreshadows the play’s later romance plot: “Adelheid nämlich mag nicht nur Boz, sie hängt auch am namenähnlichen Bolz, der mit Charles Dickens zudem den Journalistenberuf teilt” (Böttcher 188)� That Freytag uses “ausgerechnet Dickens’ Zeitungspseudonym” is in turn seen as a form of thematic foreshadowing, encoding from the play’s start “eine deutlich positive Bezugnahme auf den Journalismus” (Böttcher 188)� These are convincing readings, and yet they do not fully capture the wider influence of Dickens on the play, which was as much literary as journalistic (something also encoded in the opening reference to Boz, since Dickens not only published journalism under this name, but also most of his serialized fiction from The Pickwick Papers , 1836—1837, to Dombey and Son , 1846—1848). Indeed, contemporaries of Freytag noted the influence of Dickens on his works: Theodor Fontane identified both The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist (1837—1839) as intertexts for Soll und Haben (Fontane 215), and Rudolf Gottschall saw Die Journalisten as rooted in “[einem] an Dickens anklingende[n] Humor” (qtd� in Böttcher 135)� Freytag himself viewed Dickens “as a particularly appropriate model for German cultural renewal” (Schofield 125), and was especially fond of The Pickwick Papers , a novel he believed had been of profound impact on the development of German bourgeois culture: Da kamen die Pickwickier in das Land� Man muß jene Zeit in gebildeten bürgerlichen Familien durchlebt haben, um die schöne Wirkung zu begreifen, welche das Buch auf Männer und Frauen ausübte. Die fröhliche Auffassung des Lebens, das unendliche Behagen, der wackere Sinn, welcher hinter der drolligen Art hervorleuchtete, waren dem Deutschen damals so rührend, wie dem Wandrer in der Fremde eine Melodie aus dem Vaterhause, die unerwartet in sein Ohr tönt� Und Alles war modernes Leben, im Grunde alltägliche Wirklichkeit� (“Ein Dank” 482) Freytag stresses here several facets of Dickens’s appeal that also contribute, in a generic manner, to his own play (his use of humor; his focus on contemporary reality), while also subtly positioning Dickens as a form of honorary German: a figure whose writings both revived the German spirit, while echoing (and thus finding a natural home in) a longer German tradition-precisely what Freytag hoped to achieve with his own works� It is The Pickwick Papers too that provide an important model for Die Journalisten . Like much of Dickens’s work, the novel reflects on the nineteenth century as “an age of reform” (Sanders 235), and is marked by the “lexis of the law” (Schramm 317)-most clearly in its trial scenes, with chapters, for instance, “ wholly devoted to a full and faithful Report of the memorable Trial of Bardell against Pickwick ” (Dickens 445)� Even more crucial for its impact on the composition of Die Journalisten , however, is the novel’s extensive satire on local elections (a form of wider “structural coupling” (Beebee 25) between Displacing Justice? Looking for the Law in Gustav Freytag’s Die Journalisten 63 law and literature, as outlined in the introduction to this article)� Chapter 13 of the Papers in particular gives “ Some Account of Eatanswill; of the state of Parties therein; and of the Election of a Member to Serve in Parliament for that ancient, loyal, and patriotic Borough ” (Dickens 165)� The humor of Dickens’s depiction of the events at Eatanswill rests on his account of an election which is subject to voter manipulation through acts of bribery� These acts strongly mirror Freytag’s later play and von Senden’s plans in the Piepenbrink scene, since they also revolve around the “masterly stroke of policy” of offering copious amounts of food, drink, and gifts, in return for votes (Dickens 168)� In the Papers , the conservative agent Mr. Perker remains confident of his side’s electoral victory, since, as he confides to Mr. Pickwick, “sinking his voice almost to a whisper,” they have “had a little tea-party here, last night-five-and-forty women, my dear sir […]� Secured all their husbands, and half their brothers” (169)� At the same time, their opponents have “three-and-thirty voters in the lock-up coach-house at the White Hart” (168), where they are being kept “very drunk on purpose” (169)� And when Mr� Pickwick queries whether the electors are truly “devoted to their party,” his valet Sam replies: “Never seen such dewotion in my life, sir� […] I never seen men eat and drink so much afore” (173)� As Mark Wormald has noted, Dickens “express[es] the degeneration to which voters’ expectations of bribes of food and drink often tended” (Dickens 782), and although Dickens is broader in the range of targets for his satire than Freytag, there remains a very close connection between the Papers and Die Journalisten through this similarity in their “bribery” plots, and the role these play in exposing electoral injustice� As von Senden notes at the start of the central comedic episode with Piepenbrink: Alles geht gut� Ein superber Geist in der Gesellschaft� Diese guten Bürger sind entzückt über unser Arrangement. - Das mit dem Fest war ein vortrefflicher Gedanke […]� Machen Sie nur, dass die Leute schnell warm werden� […] Es kann nicht fehlen, die Leute müssen Herzen von Stein haben, wenn sie ihre Stimmen nicht geben zum Dank für ein solches Fest� ( Werke 3: 44—45) The naming of Dickens at the start of the play can thus also be read as an intertextual pointer to this shared satirical treatment of local elections, suggesting an even stronger case for influence (in addition to the gestures toward journalism, and the foreshadowing of the later romances), and one which would be fully in line with Freytag’s wider engagement with Dickens, and the Papers in particular� While Die Journalisten might thus at first appear to be a highly specific work politically and temporally-the product and reflection of a small window of national liberalism in Germany after 1848-it can also be placed within a wider European debate on the state of democracy in the mid-nineteenth century� 64 Benedict Schofield In staging democracy, then, one of Freytag’s primary concerns is to present it as a system that is open to abuse� He critiques indirect elections, given their openness to corruption (in the play, by the aristocracy in particular)� At the same time, his wider writings reveal him rejecting universal male suffrage, for the danger it poses to bourgeois hegemony (especially from the working classes)� Instead, Freytag favors some form of restricted but direct franchise as a means of ensuring that the German bourgeoisie is able to continue to solidify its influence in the post-1848 period, placing its interests at the heart of debates on the future shape and form of Germany� Given the title of Die Journalisten , it comes as no surprise that Freytag also posits the freedom of the press as equally central for the shaping of a bourgeois-German future� The extent to which Freytag viewed the freedom of the press that blossomed briefly after 1848 as a cornerstone for German social progress can be seen in the Schluß der Ahnen (1880), the conclusion to his nine-volume novel, Die Ahnen (1872—1880)� Tracing two thousand years of German history from the year 357 onwards, Freytag sets the climax to his epic during the 1848 revolutions, with the hero of the final volume choosing to become a journalist� Journalism, the novel thus argues, is the best medium with which to shape proactively the future of the German nation after 1848, not least since it is now free from the legal jurisdiction of censorship: “Erst wenn das gedruckte Wort frei wird, kann unser Volk zu einem gesunden Gedeihen kommen” ( Werke 13: 267)� Freytag himself had direct experience with the censor as editor of Die Grenzboten , and through his work for the Literarisch-politischer Verein � He joined this group in 1852 (the same year as the premiere of Die Journalisten ), which was dedicated to circumventing the new censorship controls of the Nachmärz , by producing the anonymous “Autographische Korrespondenz,” which had as its aim “die öffentliche Meinung in Preußen zu revolutionieren” (Tempeltey 24). Freytag’s letters detail many of the censorship measures of the era: the confiscation of pamphlets by the police; the targeting of publishers to uncover the names of authors; and the issue of arrest warrants-including one for Freytag, who had to flee Prussia as a result. By 1854 Freytag would write, in a state of demoralization: “Die Zeitungen sind fast alle auf dem Punkt angekommen, wo ihre Existenz in Frage gestellt ist� Sie sind zur äußersten Vorsicht gezwungen und jede Redaction schreibt mit einem Knebel vor dem Mund� […] Diese Gesetze und ihre Handhabung sind abscheulich” (Tempeltey 23)� Die Journalisten , too, faced forms of theatrical censorship, both through indirect censorship practices by cautious Theaterintendanten , and through the challenge of obtaining permits for performance� In 1852, the Intendant of the Hoftheater in Berlin, Botho von Hülsen, for example, initially rejected Displacing Justice? Looking for the Law in Gustav Freytag’s Die Journalisten 65 Freytag’s play because of its supposed political radicalism; Hülsen later explained to Freytag that “die Wahl und parlamentarische Angelegenheiten und die Besprechung darüber [waren] ein Spiegel der Zustände,” and thus, he felt, impossible to stage at the Hoftheater (Droescher 144) . Meanwhile in Vienna, the play was almost not staged because of its positive depiction of the freedom of the press, and in order for a license for its performance to be awarded, Laube, the Intendant of the Burgtheater , had to demonstrate to the authorities that “der Journalistenstand […] nicht geschont wird” (Laube 255)� Freytag’s experiences with censorship, both as dramatist and journalist, thus illuminate a crucial node of interaction for law and literature: one where authorship was “nicht nur als ein politisches Medium verstanden, sondern dezidiert auch als ein justitiables, als eine stets auch der Gerichtsbarkeit unterworfene Sache” (Conter 13)� The plot of Die Journalisten thus takes place during a small window of press freedom between 1848 and before the introduction of new federal laws in 1854, which drew on “the mechanisms of the criminal law [to ensure] [a]uthors, publishers, and printers became legally responsible” for their publications (Heady 6)� The play celebrates this window of freedom, and liberal journalism’s ability to hold up politics to scrutiny� As Berg notes of his friend Oldendorf: “Seit Sie Journalist geworden sind, Ihre Union redigieren und dem Staat alle Tage vorhalten, wie mangelhaft er eingerichtet ist, seit der Zeit sind Sie nicht mehr der Alte” ( Werke 3: 6)� For the conservative old guard (here represented by Berg), the liberal press is now able “Maßregeln anzurathen, die er [Berg] haßt, und Einrichtungen anzugreifen, die er verehrt” ( Werke 3: 7)� For the liberals, however, it is precisely the task of the press to critique traditional structures, and to demand social change and modernization, holding the state to account: “Wir [ Journalisten] summen wie die Bienen […] und stechen, wo uns etwas mißfällt” ( Werke 3: 78)� Freytag does not favor an unbiased mode of journalism in the play, then, and his sympathies clearly lie with journalistic work that openly seeks justice for the social and political program of the liberal bourgeoisie� This work is presented as a virtuous activity, mirroring the depiction of liberal politicians analyzed earlier in this article� Journalism, like politics, is presented as a form of middle-class duty, entailing both commitment and self-sacrifice: “Wenn Konrad Bolz [the liberal journalist], das Weizenkorn, in der großen Mühle zermahlen ist, so fallen andere Körner auf die Steine, bis das Mehl fertig ist, aus welchem vielleicht die Zukunft ein gutes Brot bäckt zum Besten Vieler” ( Werke 3: 78)� The honorable, future-orientated work of the liberal Die Union is consistently contrasted with critical accounts of Der Coriolan , in which “die Vertreter der konservativen Zeitung als überwiegend opportunistisch, gesinnungs- und 66 Benedict Schofield charakterlos entworfen werden” (Böttcher 213)� Schmock, for instance, a journalist for Der Coriolan , is critiqued in an antisemitic portrait for his willingness to write stories for all political parties, and thus, by extension, for lacking commitment to both politics and the German nation: “Ich habe geschrieben links, und wieder rechts� Ich kann schreiben nach jeder Richtung” ( Werke 3: 48)� And while there is some satire reserved for liberal journalists too, this is again generally presented as a source of passing humor, rather than political critique� Bellmaus, for instance, a journalist for Die Union , repeatedly prints a story about a sea snake, which, at six lines long, perfectly fits the space of type required to complete a page. For this he is berated by Bolz: first, and jokingly, for not being creative enough to compose a better lie (“Erfinde deine eigenen Geschichten, wozu bist du Journalist? ”), but more seriously for not choosing to write about truth, rather than fiction: “Es gibt so Vieles, was geschieht […], daß es einem ehrlichen Zeitungsschreiber nie an Neuigkeiten fehlen darf�” In the end, then, any critical commentary here is displaced by Bolz’s assertion of truth over fiction, granting the liberal press the moral high ground, however many times “du die ewige große Seeschlange durch die Spalten unserer Zeitung wälzen solltest” ( Werke 3: 20)� Against this backdrop of electoral injustice and journalistic freedom, more abstract notions of justice do come into focus in Freytag’s play� The concept of just behavior, for example, is raised with marked frequency, with characters constantly debating who has Recht on their side, and, as a corollary, who is guilty of Unrecht � These terms are used by Freytag in a systematic and political manner: as a means with which to group figures along class lines, and they come to stand for specific codes of behavior that are either praised or criticized. Recht is thus ascribed to the bourgeoisie and the liberals, while Unrecht characterizes the actions of the aristocracy and the conservatives� It is no surprise, then, that the aristocratic figure von Senden is depicted as “ein ungerechter Mensch” ( Werke 3: 99). As the figurehead of Berg’s candidacy for the election, von Senden not only masterminded the electoral manipulation of the Wahlmänner during the party, but also a further “grosse[s] Complot […] unsern Professor Oldendorf beim Herrn Obersten [Berg] in Mißcredit zu bringen”-a plot replete with legal tropes, including locating witnesses who might testify to the plans, and a search for “Beweise” which are later retrieved from von Senden’s waste paper basket ( Werke 3: 83)� Even a conservative character that is presented in a sympathetic light, like Berg, is forced after the election to acknowledge that “[e]r [Bolz] hat wieder Recht, und ich habe immer Unrecht! ” ( Werke 3: 93)� As Böttcher rightly notes, “Recht und Moral [sind] ganz auf der Seite von Bolz” (Böttcher 217)� In this way, Recht becomes a form of linguistic and dramatic shorthand for bour- Displacing Justice? Looking for the Law in Gustav Freytag’s Die Journalisten 67 geois , imbuing and connecting those characters with qualities-especially, as has been demonstrated in this article, the desire to do one’s duty, and adherence to moral behavior-that are consistently marked as positive attributes of the middle classes� Even more tangibly, among the play’s cast is a representative of the justice system, in the figure of the Justizrath Schwarz, who plays a small, but significant role in resolving the plot of Die Journalisten � In the play, once the election has been settled in favor of the liberals, the conservatives attempt to get their revenge by trying to shut down the liberal press by purchasing Die Union , in order to convert it into a further conservative mouthpiece: “mit diesem Wechsel des Eigenthümers [soll] auch eine Aenderung in der politischen Haltung des Blattes verbunden sein” ( Werke 3: 108). This is firmly marked out as an act of injustice, both because it explicitly flies in the face of the freedom of the press the play celebrates, and because it would silence the liberal voice Freytag himself favors and supports� Adelheid, however, has been hatching a counterplan, and has purchased Die Union , hiding her identity behind the Justizrath who has acted as her legal “Bevollmächtigter” ( Werke 3: 107)� Adelheid’s decision to buy the newspaper is motivated by her sense of both moral and political justice, and when questioned about her plans, she stresses they are “[n]ichts Unrechtes, nichts, was Ihrer und meiner unwürdig wäre” ( Werke 3: 103)� Here Adelheid uses Recht in a triple sense: her actions are Recht in the legal meaning (as she is following the conventions of the law); they involve the transfer of “alle Rechte” ( Werke 3: 107) to her (thus both the legal ownership of the paper and her rights over its intellectual property); and they are Recht in the sense of ensuring moral justice for the bourgeoisie in the face of the attempted aristocratic takeover� Here, Freytag explicitly contrasts Adelheid’s motivations with those of von Senden, which lie not in what is good for the press and freedom, but in his unjust and “unwürdig” desire for revenge� The end of the play thus focuses on what is essentially a contract dispute, as the liberal journalists anxiously await to hear “an wen wir unsere Rechte abgetreten haben” ( Werke 3: 109)� Bolz argues that even if the ownership of the newspaper has changed, “[u]nsere Contracte geben uns das Recht, die Zeitung ganz nach unserm Ermessen zu redigiren,” to which von Senden retorts that he will find the legal “Mittel […] dem zu begegnen” ( Werke 3: 108)� It is with the arrival of the Justizrath that this conflict is resolved, through his confirmation of Adelheid’s ownership� The Justizrath thus becomes a form of legal deus ex machina : the law descending at the very end of the play to resolve the contractual dispute, and, in so doing, ensuring justice is served through the salvation of the liberal newspaper� While the law here is displaced to the function or status 68 Benedict Schofield of a plot mechanism, it is a mechanism that nevertheless strongly implies that justice will always rule in favor of the bourgeoisie� In Drama im bürgerlichen Realismus , Schanze argues that “[n]ach der gescheiterten Revolution von 1848 die bürgerlichen Revolutionäre nicht die Regierung, sondern das Theater übernommen [hatten],” converting it, as noted at the start of this article, into a form of “bürgerliche Bildungsanstalt” (Schanze 5—6)� Schanze’s assertion might appear a surprising one, given the wider assessment of this period as one characterized by a paucity of drama (that supposed gap from Hebbel to Hauptmann)� Yet Freytag, this article has argued, did seize this moment after 1848, creating a bourgeois theater that was simultaneously a political one� In it, questions of justice were displaced, but not forgotten: the performative structures of staging a trial reformed into the staging of an election; the arguments articulated in the courtroom converted into the arguments conducted in the pages of a newly free press� Audiences responded strongly to Freytag’s national-liberal comedy, ensuring its continued dominance on the German-language stage� In staging democracy, I have argued, the play does not unambiguously celebrate democracy, and instead explores questions of electoral injustice, and the ways in which indirect elections are open to manipulation, above all by entrenched, conservative, and aristocratic interests, to the disservice of the bourgeoisie. Significantly, it is a play that also situates its stance on electoral reform not only in a German context, but, I have shown, in a transnational one, through its intertextual references to Dickens: both Freytag and Dickens pull back the curtain on supposedly democratic processes� The play in turn presents the freedom of the press after 1848 as a crucial means through which the voice of the bourgeoisie can take a key role in shaping the future of Germany: Freytag’s celebration of liberal journalism, as I have demonstrated, systematically places justice in the hands of the middle classes, in contrast to a conservative aristocracy that is consistently portrayed as unjust in its actions� Die Journalisten thus demonstrates how the interaction of legal and literary systems is not only something that occurs via direct textual representation of, say, trials and courtrooms, but also in what Beebee terms the wider “structural couplings” between literature and legal-political change (25)� In this context, too, the play’s production history, and its initial difficulties in gaining sanction for performance on the Berlin and Vienna stages, act as a further important reminder of how culture not only reflects justice textually, but is also subject to forms of extratextual judicial control� Florian Malzacher has argued that “it was not by chance that the awakening of the European bourgeoisie was accompanied by the emergence of the bourgeois theater as an aesthetic but also cultural-political and institutional phenomenon” Displacing Justice? Looking for the Law in Gustav Freytag’s Die Journalisten 69 (11)� As this article has shown, Die Journalisten clearly marks the emergence of a contemporary, political, and popular bourgeois theater in Germany in the years after 1848� The notion of a theatrical gap in the later nineteenth century, then, in fact reveals more about the evolution of the canon than the historical state of the theater: a canon that regularly fails to reflect what Lynne Tatlock has termed the actual “reading nation” (6), or, in this context, what might be called the spectating nation� To ignore this phase in the story of German theater, and its most popular proponent in the figure of Freytag, is thus to mischaracterize an era in which the middle classes sought multiple means-from the ballot box, to the newspaper article, to a play like Die Journalisten -to reflect, and promote, the ever increasing social, political, and legal power of the bourgeoisie� 2 Notes 1 The volume does briefly discuss Wagner’s operas as “eine Sonderstellung in dieser Entwicklung,” but only turns to theater again with Hauptmann (Rinsum 275)� 2 I would like to express my thanks for the support and community of all the members of the DDGC (Diversity and Decolonization of the German Curriculum) Writing Support Group, hosted by Dr� Ervin Malakaj, and the DDGC Remote Write-on-Site Groups, hosted by Marisol Bayona Roman, Dr� Nicole Coleman, Prof� Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, and Dr� Maureen Gallagher, within which this article was written� Works Cited Allan, Seán� “‘So glaubst du jetzt, daß ich dir Wahrheit gab? ’ Gender, Power and the Performance of Justice in Kleist’s Der zerbrochne Krug �” Heinrich von Kleist and Modernity � Ed� Bernd Fischer and Tim Mehigan� Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011� 55—70� ---� “‘Mein ist die Rache spricht der Herr’: Violence and Revenge in the Works of Heinrich von Kleist�” A Companion to the Works of Heinrich von Kleist � Ed� Bernd Fischer� Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003� 227—48� Barth, Christa� Gustav Freytags “Journalisten”: Versuch einer Monographie. 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