Marx Trade Routes final

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Theatrical Trade Routes: Transatlantic Trails. Peter W. Marx It is a widely held view that 20th century Modernity has been deeply influenced by the transfer of people, ideals, technologies, goods and capital of all kinds. When looking at traditional histories of 20th century art, one might be even tempted to perceive the “modern world” as a sphere where geographic distance is merely translated into temporal distance and not really understood as a significant border. This is particularly true for the (conventional) history of “modern theatre”. The interplay of different agents such as Stanislavsky, Reinhardt, Belasco and many others seems to be so self-evident that we tend to neglect the preconditions and requirements of these interrelations. Thus, Stephen Greenblatt makes an important point when he insists (in the context of Mobility Studies) that mobility must be conceived as emphasizing physical mobility. While we generally attribute a global dimension to Modernity, the mundane details as well as different levels of movement require further consideration. In the following paper, I will outline a research project focused on German-U.S. American theatrical relations in the formative years of Modernity, i.e. 1880 to 1930. In order to avoid falling back into the patterns of an abstract modernist narrative, I intend to take a closer look at ‘ethnic’ theater and its reception on both sides of the Atlantic. 1.

Catering to Heimweh and German Gemütlichkeit

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Reversing the cultural asymmetry: Turning the tables and changing the media

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Outlines for further research

1.

Catering to Heimweh and German Gemütlichkeit

Referring to Schiller’s dictum of the “Schaubühne als moralische Anstalt”, theatre held a privileged position in the German concept of Bildung. But this high esteem came with a price, as theatre was considered tied to moral claims while the idea of entertainment was vastly devalued. (This is partly due to the fact that until the midnineteenth century the theatre continued to be sponsored by a number of royal courts. This situation did not change until the massive urbanization of the 1870s.) This perspective also influenced the perception of touring actors and ensembles. As many renowned actors toured to the United States, and particularly to New York, they 1

conceived themselves as kinds of cultural ambassadors, representing German high art for German-speaking communities, and even more importantly, for the general public. It is surely not unintentional that many of these artists boasted about the official honors they received during touring, as this noble gesture had a very profound and most welcome side effect - the actors could usually make a fortune with their tours. Sabine Haenni has shown, however, that the reality of the theatrical landscape in the U.S. looked slightly different, as ambitious concepts were often thwarted by economic struggle and the need to constantly reach an audience. Consequently German theatre was conceived to provide high art and, at the same time, offer an experience of geniality, coziness and culinary pleasure, in particular the enjoyment of German beer. This combination of performance and food and drink followed the model of the American music hall and thus connected the German theatre to the most popular and vibrant sphere of urban entertainment. In order to accommodate the various venues, the repertory had to diversify. It is therefore not particularly surprising that the wave of Bavarian peasant troupes who successfully toured in Germany between 1890 and 1910 also swept across the Atlantic and reached the U.S. The New York Times emphasized this Janus-face of German cultural exports (art and beer) in their review of the Schlierseer in 1895: “Enough Bavarian beer is annually consumed in New-York to create a bond of sympathy between the ‘hustlers’ of this western metropolis and the simple folk of the Black Forest.” (New York Times, October 3, 1895)

Like their reception in German cities where they were greeted as a mildly exotic expression of German autochthony (Marx 2008, 215-235), the troupes appealed to German-Americans first and foremost. Yet they also attracted non-German speaking audience, as the Brooklyn Daily Eagle stated in his review of the Tegernseer: “A genuine novelty that is worthy of support from jaded theater goers who seek something unconventional, is in town. It is furnished by the Tegernseer Company, an organization of Bavarian peasant actors from the mountain districts. They appeared last evening in ‘Der Herrgottschnitzer von Amergau’ (The Crucifix Carver of Amergau) and were greeted by a good sized audience, composed mainly of Germans, who were free in their expression of approval. […] Even to the auditor who may find trouble in understanding the quaint Bavarian mountain patois, the performance is interesting, if for nothing else than to find relief from the hot and stuffy atmosphere of the drawing room and to revel, apparently, in the health giving mountain oxygen.” (The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb, 28, 1899)

Nurturing the Heimweh of German-Americans was obviously a crucial part of the troupes’ success and reveals the deeply nostalgic dimension of these performances. However, the German-American community in everyday life and in their relationship

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with mainstream society, particularly in New York, emphasized their urban, middleclass culture, and the rural imagery of these troupes only loosely connected to their concept of Deutschtum (Germanness). The critics usually hailed German virtuosi for their refined play but the Bavarian troupes received a somehow different praise: “Lung power is not spared and the accompanying music of guitars, mandoline and other instruments give a soft and sweet and sweeping effect. There are two splendid and resonant basses and two high sopranos in the company who find good opportunities in the yodling and juchsen. Some of the men show remarkable agility in their strange dances.” (The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb, 28, 1899)

In contrast to how German immigrants were perceived, where most were fairly well integrated in the US-American social life, the Bavarians on stage offered a joyful spectacle of German-ness that appealed to a broad audience. These troupes managed to cater to two different audiences. They responded to the longing of the Heimweh of the German community – an aspect that gained increasing importance when these troupes toured into the Mid-Western states such as Wisconsin – and to a general mainstream audience that enjoyed a colorful spectacle. Economically, these tours followed an almost colonial pattern. The troupes exported their successful productions to an American audience and usually returned a large benefit. In this way they applied economies of scale, where high profits could be earned after a relatively high initial investment. This cultural exchange created a typical colonial asymmetry as the Germans exported culture and received dollars, exchanging cultural capital for economic capital. The export of U.S.-American culture, in reverse, was restricted to very few famous examples, such as Edwin Booth, or to pop-cultural enterprises, such as Barnum & Bailey, or in catering to European stereotypes with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The German actors and troupes took a peculiar position in the U.S.-American culture. In contrast to British artists who were often conceived as rivals in the fight for cultural autonomy, as it was shown by the Astor Place Riots of 1849 (Cliff 2007), the German culture was viewed as sublime and did not interfere with the U.S.-American struggle for their “own voice”. Sabine Haenni even claims “German American theater may have been a crucial institution easing the American Victorian middle class’ transition into a mixed-sex leisure culture of consumption, sensuality, and expressiveness” (Haenni 2008, 59). The touring German artists considered the German-American stage merely as a marketplace and not as a place to gain aesthetic merits. Thus, the distinction between 3

high art and popular entertainment became almost interchangeable. In his account of the Tegernseer’s tour to the U.S. in 1911, Bertl Schultes describes how they were booked in Chicago to fill-in for Ernst von Possart, and so traded German classics for Bavarian folk dances (Schultes 1963, 80-82). According to Schultes, the audience was surprised but eventually appreciated the change in the program. Since there were no cultural claims at stake, the biggest danger German artists faced on their tours to the U.S. was economic failure. In most cases this failure was due to an unplanned extension of their run. Bertl Schultes, for example, describes in his autobiography how the Tegernseer faced bankruptcy several times because they extended their tour. In order to avoid the ‘disgrace’ of returning to Germany without an American fortune they prolonged their stay several times. In this light, the recurring complaint about the lack of a permanent German theatre in New York misses the point. Obviously, the German troupes could only sustain themselves for a short period of time, and only when they were able to capture both a specialized and broad audience. To fully understand the economic dynamics of the German-American trans-Atlantic trade route, it is important to broaden the focus beyond New York. While New York could claim to be the first stop on a tour, the German-American hinterland was the main contributor to the success of these tours. Many of the tours started in New York but went on to Chicago and then to states like Pennsylvania, Minnesota or Wisconsin, all who had a considerably large German-American community. The Tegernseer is an extreme example of this development, as this show toured for three years and played in 137 towns. To summarize this argument: German cultural exports before World War I primarily addressed the community of German expatriates and, together with culinary goods, offered a commodified version of German Kultur and Gemütlichkeit that appealed to a mainstream audience. These exports could not, however, create any sustained interest. This trade route was more accurately a one-way route, where cultural/symbolic capital was exchanged for economic capital.

2.

Reversing the cultural asymmetry: Turning the tables and changing the media

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The end of World War I and the economic downfall of Austria and Germany turned the tables in the trans-Atlantic theatrical exchange. Suddenly, Europe (and especially Germany and Austria) lost their prestigious status and became a place for cheap labor. At the same time German as a vernacular language ceased to be important and so German-speaking performances lost their base. Movies filled this gap as a consequence, and so fundamentally changed trans-Atlantic cultural relations. As Thomas J. Saunders has shown in Hollywood in Berlin (1994), in the 1920s the U.S. movie industry dominated over German productions (Saunders 1994, 55). While economy of scale can be found in the theatrical tours, film is the ultimate product for such an economy. Even though silent films presented no language barrier, the U.S. film industry was far more developed than the German industry, which could not claim an equivalent distribution reach. However, these films were not merely passive objects of circulation, their imageries also negotiated these new trans-Atlantic relations. Ernst Lubitsch’s The Oyster Princess (1919) is a good case in point. Ossi, daughter of a ridiculously rich oyster magnate, decides that she wants to marry a European aristocrat just like the “shoecream king’s” daughter who has married a count. The father wants to accommodate his daughter’s wishes and arranges for a wedding with the impoverished Prince Nucki. After several turbulent events, they end up a happy couple. The film is not so noteworthy for its plot, but more for its imagery. It indulges in several scenes of the “Oyster King” that present a mock Fordism, where even the scratching of a back or lighting a cigar is part of a divided and semi-automatized process. Prince Nucki, representing European aristocracy, on the other hand is ridiculed as living off his prestige without any further perspective. Fuelled by the love story of Ossi and Nucki – that turns out to be true affection – the dialectic tension of cultural/symbolic capital and economic force is cheerfully reconciled. But reading it against the grain, one might also conclude that the hegemonic asymmetry between the U.S. and Europe has been turned around. Europe is merely the ‘shopping place’ for the U.S.-American interest in art of all kinds. In this light, Lubitsch’s movie is rather prophetic, as Ernst Lubitsch was among the first directors in 1922 who followed the trans-Atlantic trail and helped to create a new model of romantic comedies. His engagement was not a temporary one however as he immersed himself in U.S.-American movie culture.

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Along with Josef von Sternberg and Billy Wilder, Lubitsch epitomizes the lasting influence of Austro-German artists in Hollywood, but his involvement also marks a rapidly diminishing importance of theatre in this field. In the 1920s in New York there was a decline of touring ensembles and guest performances from Germany. Max Reinhardt had negotiated opening his own theatre just before Word War I, but his later appearances in the U.S. were as a director, hired for special productions. The climate that allowed for an ongoing exchange had definitely gone. Reinhardt’s Miracle (1923) was not an import but custom-made, tailored to a New York audience (Marx 2006, 135-148). The German-American theatre scene almost vanished in the aftermath of World War I, yet the Yiddish culture flourished. There had always been an intersection between the German-American and Yiddish-American culture (though obviously not so much in the field of the Bavarian folk art). Artists like Bogumil Dawison or Rudolf Schildkraut were mostly perceived as ‘German’ actors but they also made a contribution to the Jewish-American cultural landscape. However, by this time the economic geography of this trans-Atlantic relation had changed. Places that never had a sustainable Yiddish-speaking community, such as Berlin, became a center for Yiddish publishers and newspapers, as it was cheaper to produce and distribute their products from there rather than in Poland (Neiss 2002). Similarly, the production of Yiddish films was partly transferred from the U.S. to Europe. In 1923, Sidney Goldin and Molly Picon, two well-known stars of New York’s rich Yiddish stages, went to Vienna to shoot their film East and West. The plot of this movie echoes Lubitsch’s Oyster Princess and transforms it into a Jewish setting. Molly Picon, then an icon of Yiddish performance art, plays the spoiled daughter of an American millionaire who decides to visit her father’s family in Poland. Molly, who we see boxing in the first scenes, mocks the Jewish traditions, yet then, more or less accidentally, marries an Eastern European boy (a “Jeshive bokher”). He refuses an immediate divorce. They both then proceed to undergo an almost dialectical process of mutual rapprochement. While she develops an interest in and respect for the Jewish roots she had so disgracefully neglected before, he starts to assimilate to Western standards. His transformative visit to a barber shop is prominently featured as “surgery”. Vienna, where the movie was shot, becomes the epitome of a dialectic reconciliation of Eastern traditions and Western modernity (Hoberman 1995, 66-69). 6

In this particular case, the Yiddish base for the movie created an international audience, which indicates that for these ranges of cultural circulation, the nation-state was no longer a decisive point of reference. The copy of the movie that is kept in the Austrian Film Archive has German subtitles and may have circulated from Eastern Europe to the U.S., and could have even reached a non-Jewish/non-Yiddish-speaking audience. Mobility was not restricted to the movies, however, it was also a topic for the stage. Abisch Meisels’ fun ssechisstow bis amerika (1927) is a dramatic revue that shows Baruch Hersch and his Russian family’s journey from America to Israel (Meisels 2000). Here, we find the scenic equivalent to the movies described above – the theatrical negotiation of mobility and the search for a new home, where Europe is no longer the self-evident center. Conclusion and further perspectives: These rough sketches have aimed to develop the argument that Modernity should also be considered in terms of international exchange, circling around but not restricted to certain ethnic communities. Values such as cultural prestige, aesthetic innovation or new concepts did not grow out of an abstract discourse, but were rooted in certain groups and their respective agendas. Aside from further developing these case studies, I would like to suggest four other fundamental aspects that need to be addressed through further research: -

Gender roles appear to play an important role when considering the transAtlantic interrelation. This is particularly true for the 1920s when American girls and women are often depicted as emancipated and self-confident, even seen as challenging traditional (i.e. European) gender roles. In this context, the cheerful reconciliation in many comedies should be critically revised and these stereotypes should be compared to the appearance of female European actors in the U.S.

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While here I have focused on German and Yiddish troupes and films, I imagine it would be interesting to broaden the focus to further ethnic groups and to compare their interrelation not only in the U.S. but also in Europe.

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In our consideration of theatrical trade routes, touring within European countries is a phenomenon that is fairly marginalized. However both 7

economically as well as in terms of cultural politics, extensive tours within Germany, for example, were fundamental for the development and articulation of Modernity. -

The economic dimension of these trade routes needs further consideration. Here I have focused only on one effect, I am sure that there is a complex economic interplay that does not only concern the exchange of performances but also of other theatrical goods such as settings, plays, music or productions.

Literature Cliff, Nigel. Shakespeare Riots. Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Random House, 2007. Greenblatt, Stephen. "A Mobility Studies Manifesto." Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto. Ed. Greenblatt, Stephen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 250-53. Haenni, Sabine. "'A Community of Consumers': Legitimate Hybridity, German American Theatre, and the American Public." Theatre Research International 28. 3 (2003): 267-88. ---. The Immigrant Scene. Ethnic Amusements in New York, 1880-1920. Minneapolis/ London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Hoberman, J. Bridge of Light. Yiddish Film between Two Worlds. 1991. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. Marx, Peter W. Max Reinhardt. Vom bürgerlichen Theater zur metropolitanen Kultur. Tübingen: Francke, 2006. ---. Ein theatralisches Zeitalter. Bürgerliche Selbstinszenierungen um 1900. Tübingen: Francke, 2008. Meisels, Abisch. Von Sechistow bis Amerika. fun ssechisstow bis amerika. Eine Revue in 15 Bildern. Aus dem Jiddischen übersetzt und herausgegeben von Brigitte Dalinger und Thomas Soxberger. 1927. Wien: Picus Verlag, 2000. Saunders, Thomas J. Hollywood in Berlin. American Cinema and Weimar Germany. Weimar and Now. 6. Berkeley [etc.]: University of California Press, 1994. Schultes, Bertl. Ein Komödiant blickt zurück. Erinnerungen an Ludwig Thoma, das Bauerntheater und seine Freunde. München: Feder, 1963.

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