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“No Laughing!” Autonomous Art and the Body of the Actor in Goethe's Weimar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Klaus Schwind
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Extract

In his “Special Formal Report” of 24 April 1808, Weimarian court actor Heinrich Becker informed his superiors about a little theatrical irregularity. Becker was reporting in his official function as controlling supervisor for representations—a kind of stage manager for the theatre. By this report the “graciously decreed Noble Saxonian Commission for Direction of the Court Theatre,” chaired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, had to take official notice of the following punishable histrionic faux pas:

Wednesday the 20th of April during the performance of Piccolomini [Schiller's] in the scene with the butler Actus 3, Scene 3. Mister Morhardt has willfully acted the cavalry captain Neumann in a comical way.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , November 1997 , pp. 89 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1997

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References

1. Thüiringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Weimar, documents of the “Generalintendanz, des Nationaltheatres,” 1416/9 (cited hereafter as GI of the DNT, no. —).

2. Theatre Laws of 1793, GI of the DNT, 1/1.

3. GI of the DNT, 1416/9.

4. Of course, this phrase hints at Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punishment (Surveiller et punir, Paris, 1975). One may establish many parallels between political “power”—in the broadest sense —and the civilizing “discipline of the body.” To follow along Foucault's lines, the “discipline” propagated by Goethe also operates on the “individuality” of the actor by controlling the activities of the body. Differentiated, written methods of discipline serve as means to codify time, space, and motion on stage in order to create a special subjectivity. An administrative machinery is needed to sculpt a body manipulated by authority. The “written” power of this machinery manifests itself in laws, rules, and fines which have direct effect, outwardly and inwardly, on the body of the actor who is to be disciplined.

5. For additional documentation of this, see the author's related article, “‘Man lache nicht!’ Goethes theatrale Spielverbote Über die schauspielerischen Unkosten des autonomen Kunstbegriffs,” in Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 21 (1996): 66—112Google Scholar.

6. See, for example, Julius Wahle's early insight: “Space does not allow full development on this issue of Goethe's discipline, although material is abundant. I highlight the more interesting cases here, which were mostly a result of the battle of unruly, boisterous, egoistic individual actors against the firm norms of a disciplined community formed by laws. If it really mattered, Goethe was not to be trifled with. He allowed no contradiction when he—and his view determined the whole—acted in good conscience on his better understanding. In art, as in every disciplined community, the true freedom must be based on law.… In spite of theatre laws and rules for stage management, and in spite of severe disciplinary punishments, including house arrest and confinement in the guard house, and in spite of the moral power of Goethe's personality, the lasting silence, inner peace, and total subordination to the will of the administration could not be achieved” (Wahle, Julius, Das Weimarer Hoftheater unter Goethes Leitung, Schriften der Goethe-Ges., Bd. 6 [Weimar, 1892], 195Google Scholar.) In contrast with the authors of numberless Goethe-panegyrics after him, Wahle arrived at a carefully considered judgment because of his knowledge of the documents, the so-called “Directorialakten” or “Theater-Akten” in Weimar. Later generations, especially those who might have been more suspicious of Führer personalities, were quicker to condemn the individual actors who were not willing to become “well-educated.” (See, for example, Kindermann, Heinz, Theatergeschichte der Goethezeit (Vienna, 1948)Google Scholar; Knudsen, Hans, Goethes Welt des Theaters (Berlin, 1949)Google Scholar; and Flemming, Willi, Goethe und das Theater seiner Zeit (Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne, and Mainz, 1968)Google Scholar. Historians have identified themselves with the sacrosanct perspective of the “Minister of Cultural Education,” who, nobody denies, functioned in a role quite different from his role as poet, conceding all the while “that the disciplining of the actors was a protracted process” (Müller-Harang, Ulrike, Das Weimarer Theater zur Zeit Goethes (Weimar, 1991), 87Google Scholar; and Linder, Jutta, Ästhetische Erziehung: Goethe und das Weimarer Hoftheater (Bonn, 1991)Google Scholar. This one-sided view also characterizes the American image of Goethe's theatre. See Carlson, Marvin, Goethe and the Weimar Theatre (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978Google Scholar), concerning “deterioration in company discipline” (187 and also 150, 226, and 246).

7. For example, see Hinck, Walter, Goethe—Mann des Theaters (Gōttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1982), 8—9Google Scholar.

8. Theater-Akten, Goethe Museum, Dusseldorf.

9. 3 July 1797, GI of the DNT, 1279/9.

10. Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, ed im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, 4 sections (Weimar, 1887 seq.) section 1, vol. 35, 75. (Goethe's writings cited hereafter are taken from this edition.)

11. Franz Fischer, stage manager, 29 July 1792, GI of the DNT, 1272/4.

12. GI of the DNT, 1/1.

13. 7 March 1793, GI of the DNT, 1/1.

14. GI of the DNT, 1/1.

15. It seems remarkable that the system of the Weimar theatre enterprise models, on different levels, the contradictions and discontinuities that are illustrated by Wilson, Daniel W. in his Geheimräte gegen Geheimbünde, Ein unbekanntes Kapitel der klassisch-romantischen Geschichte Weimars (Stuttgart, 1991), 263Google Scholar: “The high ideals of humanity, of individual autonomy, and of cultural education were based on a cracked foundation, a ground which was permeated by surveillance, censorship, and intimidation: in short, by the dialectics of power and ethics which took much of the strength from those ideals.”

16. Memo from Goethe to Kirms, Court Chamberlain, 2 November 1800, in Goethe, Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, section 4, letter no. 4306.

17. End of March 1809, Goethe-Akten, 30/132 Stiftung Weimarer Klassik, Goethe-und Schiller-Archiv.

18. Goethe to Kirms, 27 June 1806, in Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, section 4, letter no. 5212.

19. Becker to Kirms, 4 August 1804, GI of the DNT, 1272/16.

20. Kirms, “Under orders [in Auftrag],” to the actors, 12 October 1795, GI of the DNT, 1/1.

21. Goethe, 17 and 21 March 1807, Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, section 4, letter no. 5330b–5331c.

22. 28 March 1807, Goethe-Museum, Düsseldorf.

23. 10 April 1807, Goethe-Museum, Düsseldorf.

24. 28 September 1801, “Kunst und Wissenschaft,” A 10268, Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Weimar.

25. See, for example, the reports of—and rather ironic commentaries on—this event in two contemporary journals: Neue allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, Berlin and Stettin 1802, vol. 74, Part 2, No. 6, 356—362Google Scholar, and Der Freimüthige, Berlin, 10 January 1803.

26. “Blätter aus dem Nachlauß Pius Alexander Wolffs,” cited in Böhme, Hans-George, Die Weilburger Goethe-Funde (Emsdetten, 1950), 20Google Scholar.

27. “Points to which the Weimarian Theatre Company bind themselves” (“Puncte, zu welchen sich die Mitglieder der Weimarischen Dramatischen Academie verbindlich machen”), in Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, section 1, vol. 40, 426—29.

28. Theatre Laws, 7 March 1793, GI of the DNT, 1/1.

29. Concerning this concept, compare especially the Rules for Actors, § 3—5 in Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, section 1, vol. 40.

30. In order to draw lines clearly, I am talking about approximately five percent of the Weimar repertoire, for which I can show the rigidity of the concept of tragedy and what it cost the players in this autonomous art theatre. Comedy and opera were another matter. Still, the educational success of tragedy eventually influenced other parts of the repertoire; e.g., by degrees, comedies also were played in the tragic style.

31. Goethe, , “Eröffnung des Weimarischen Theaters” (1798), in Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, section 1, vol. 40, 10Google Scholar.

32. See Bollenbeck, Georg, Bildung und Kultur, Glanz und Elend eines deutschen Deutungsmusters (Frankfurt/Leipzig, 1994)Google Scholar.

33. Cited from the recollections of a parson who visited Goethe's theatre often and which were published under his pseudonym, Gotthardi, W., as Weimarische Theaterbilder aus Goethes Zeit, 2 vols. (Jena, Leipzig, 1865), 1:200—205Google Scholar.

34. Karoline Herder, 1 March 1802, in Duntzer, Heinrich and Herder, Ferdinand G., ed, Von und an Herder, Ungedruckte Briefe aus Herders Nachlafβ (Repr. New York: Hildesheim, 1981), no. 243Google Scholar.

35. “Rhythmic Delivery” is the subheading for paragraphs 31–33 of Rules for Actors. For descriptions of Weimar acting, see, for example, the books cited in endnote no. 6 and Dieter Borchmeyer, “…Dem Naturalism in der Kunst offen und ehrlich den Krieg zu erklären…Zu Goethes und Schillers Bühnenreform,” in Bamer, Wilfried, Lämmert, Eberhard, Oellers, Norbert, ed, Unser Commercium. Goethes und Schillers Literaturpolitik (Stuttgart, 1984), 351–370Google Scholar.

36. Letter from Schiller to Goethe, 20 May 1803, in Schiller Werke, Nationalausgabe, Briefwechsel, vols. 29–32 (Weimar, 1961 seq.).

37. Letter from Schiller to Goethe, 24 November 1797: “Der Rhythmus leistet bei einer dramatischen Production noch dieses große und bedeutende, daß er, indem er alle Charactere und alle Situationen nach Einem Gesetz behandelt, und sie, trotz ihres innem Untcrschiedes in Einer Form ausfürt, er dadurch den Dichter und seinen Leser nöthiget, von allem noch so characteristisch verschiedenem, etwas Allgemeines, rein menschliches zu verlangen. Alles soil sich in dem Geschlechtsbegriff des Poetischen vereinigen, und diesem Gesetz dient der Rhythmus sowohl zum Repräsentanten als zum Werkzeug, da er alles unter Seinem Gesetze begreift.”

38. Cited from the theatre director Klingemann's, Ernst AugustKunst und Natur. Blätter aus meinem Reisetagebuche, (Braunschweig 1823), 1: 433Google Scholar, and Reinhold's, Carl WilhelmSaat von Göthe gesäet dem Tage der Garben zu reifen. Ein Handbuch für Ästhetiker und junge Schauspieler (Weimar, 1808), 17–26Google Scholar. The last is a satirical parody of Goethe's Rules for Actors, published anonymously. (Reinhold was a Weimarian court actor for about a year.)

39. Goethe, Weimarisches Hoftheater (1802), in Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, section 1, vol. 40, 75.

40. “Points,” in Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, section 1, vol. 40, 428.

41. Goethe, 16 August 1824, cited in Eckermann, Johann Peter, Gespräche mit Goethe, ed Bergmann, Fritz (Frankfurt, 1994), 112Google Scholar.

42. First “Point” in Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, section 1, vol. 40, 426.