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Georg Kaiser's Social Tetralogy and the Social Ideas of Walther Rathenau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert Kauf
Robert Kauf*
Affiliation:
University or Illinois, Chicago 11
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Extract

Georg kaiser's work is often treated as the reflection of its author's unusual personality. Such a treatment, though valid, tends to obscure the fact that his writings, in their probing of existing values, their manifestation of Lebensangst, their quest for regeneration, and their hope for redemption, also reflect the intellectual and spiritual concerns of his period. That his visions were not, as has been often held, the phantasies of an extreme subjectivist, but that they accurately mirrored the age, is demonstrated by the fact that representative thinkers of the period, such as Bergson, Vaihinger, and Jaspers, voiced similar concerns, arrived at similar conclusions, sought similar solutions. There seems to exist a particularly strong affinity between the ideas of Walther Rathenau and those presented in Kaiser's social tetralogy (Die Koralle, 1917; Gas, 1918; Hölle Weg Erde, 1919; Gas, Zweiter Teil, 1920), which was written at a time when the impact of Rathenau's works (Zur Kritik der Zeit, 1912; Zur Mechanik des Geistes oder Vom Reich der Seele, 1913; Von kommenden Dingen, 1917) on the intellectual life of Germany was very strong. Even though explicit references by Kaiser to Rathenau could be found neither in Kaiser's published work nor inhis correspondence and other unpublished material, there is, I believe, enough circumstantial evidence to make a plausible case for Kaiser's indebtedness to Rathenau. To present this evidence and, by so doing, to contribute to a better understanding of Kaiser's social tetralogy, is the purpose of this study. I shall first briefly summarize Rathenau's ideas, then present the evidence for his influence on Kaiser, and, in conclusion, speculate very briefly on the nature of this influence.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 77 , Issue 3 , June 1962 , pp. 311 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1962

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References

Note 1 in page 311 I am greatly indebted to Wolfgang Liepe, Professor Emeritus of the Universities of Chicago and Kiel, for first calling my attention to the probability of Rathenau's influence on Kaiser. Neither Wolfgang Paulsen's recent book on Georg Kaiser (Tübingen, 1959) nor earlier literature on the author touches upon this subject.

The preparation of this article was carried on with the assistance of a Fellowship from the Research Board of the Graduate College of the University of Illinois.

Note 2 in page 311 The term “social tetralogy” for the three thematically related dramas Die Koralle; Gas; Gas, Zweiter Teil, plus the ideationally related play Hölle Weg Erde was first used by Bernhard Diebold (Der Denkspieler Georg Kaiser, Frankfurt, 1924, p. 53). Gas, Zweiter Teil will hereafter be referred to as Gas II.

Note 3 in page 311 I am much obliged to Dr. Walther Huder of the Georg-Kaiser-Archiv of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin for searching through unpublished material for me.

Note 4 in page 311 Oskar Walzel, Die deutsche Dichtung seit Goethes Tod (2nd ed.; Berlin, 1920), pp. 218–223; Walzel, Die deutsche Dichtung von Gottsched bis zur Gegenwart, ii (Wildpark-Potsdam, 1930), 300 f, in Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft; Albert Soergel, Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit: Neue Folge: Im Banne des Expressionismus (Leipzig, 1925), p. 385 f.

Note 5 in page 311 By 1925, Zur Kritik der Zeit had gone through twenty, Zur Mechanik des Geistes . . . through fourteen, Von kommenden Dingen through seventy-two printings. Among Rathenau's correspondents were Julius Bab, Hermann Bahr, Franz Blei, Richard Dehmel, Max Dessoir, Hermann Hesse, Börries von Münchhausen, Rainer Maria Rilke, Wilhelm Schmidtbonn, Fritz von Unruh, Frank Wedekind, Björn Björnson, Gustav Frenssen, André Gide, Oskar Loerke, Ernst Mach, Thomas Mann, Fritz Mauthner, Edvard Munch (Rathenau, Briefe, 2 vols., 4th ed., Dresden, 1927).

Stefan Zweig discusses Rathenau in Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers (Wien, 1948), pp. 246–250, 414–417, and passim. Robert Musil also wrote a very thoughtful review of Zur Mechanik des Geistes (Robert Musil, “Anmerkungen zu einer Metapsychik,” Die Neue Rundschau, April 1914; reprinted in R. Musil, Tagebücher, Aphorismen, Essays und Reden, Hamburg, 1955, pp. 647–650).

Note 6 in page 312 Walther Rathenau, “Ignorabimus,” Nachgelassene Schriften (Berlin, 1928), ii, 165. The original article appeared in the periodical Die Zukunft, 19 March 1898.

Note 7 in page 312 All references are to Walther Rathenau, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1925), 5 vols., hereafter referred to as GS and cited within the text. Vol. i contains Zur Kritik der Zeit; Vol. ii, Zur Mechanik des Geistes ...; Vol. iii, Von kommenden Dingen.

Note 8 in page 313 Kaiser, Die Koralle: Schauspiel in fünf Akten (Berlin, 1917), p. 26.

Note 9 in page 313 Diebold, op. cit., pp. 56 f.

Note 10 in page 313 Die Koralle, pp. 22–24. Italics mine.

Note 11 in page 313 Ibid., p. 25.

Note 12 in page 314 Kaiser, Eolie Weg Erde: Stück in drei Teilen (Potsdam, 1919), p. 34.

Note 13 in page 314 Ibid., p. 49.

Note 14 in page 314 Kaiser, Gas: Schauspiel in fünf Akten (Berlin, 1918), pp. 10 f.

Note 15 in page 314 “Ihr habt den Gewinn—und kein Leben!” (Ibid., p. 86). Nothing, of course, expresses the failure of the socialist experiment and the limitations of rationalism more dramatically than the explosion of the system in spite of the fact that it is run by a scientific formula that appears flawless to human intelligence: “... die Formel bleibt gültig—muß gelten. Er rechnet mit Menschenverstand—und Menschenverstand rechnet nur so!” (Ibid., p. 41). Kaiser seems to imply that any system that relies exclusively on scientific formulas in guiding human affairs is bound to fail.

Note 16 in page 315 Kaiser, Gar, Zweiter Teil: Schauspiel in drei Akten (3rd and 4th thousand; Potsdam, 1924), p. 66.

Note 17 in page 315 Ibid., p. 67.

Note 18 in page 315 Ibid., pp. 39, 64 ff.

Note 19 in page 316 Gas, p. 97.

Note 20 in page 316 Gas, Zweiter Teil, pp. 61, 63, 69 f.

Note 21 in page 316 Ibid., p. 68.

Note 22 in page 316 Vossische Zeitung (Abend-Ausgabe), 2 May 1921, p. 2. I must again thank Professor Liepe for calling my attention to this note and letting me use the clipping from his file.