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Theodor Fontane on Changing Public Tastes in Theater (1878-1889)

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III. To Friedrich Stephany (October 10, 1889)


Berlin, October 10, 1889

[ . . . ] And now Gerhart Hauptmann, the new robber in chief, next to whom Ibsen is a mere cadet. [ . . . ] There is something in these new plays that the old ones did not have, something that leaves them relatively impoverished and often seemingly dead. Realism is understood entirely falsely if one assumes that it is wed to ugliness once and for all; it will only be totally authentic when, conversely, it has been wed to beauty and has transfigured its accompanying ugliness, which is simply part of life. [ . . . ]



IV. To his Son Theodor Fontane


Berlin, October 19, 1889.

My dear old Theo,

I have not written since last summer, and when I gaze over the intervening period, I see before me the “primeval land of German victories” (these were Albedyll’s words, more or less). Divisions here and there, camps, supply columns and bakeries, and in between, on horseback, a rider on a white horse, who, still lit up by the joy of having seen his Kaiser, bursts into the semi-revolutionary gang of bakers and restores obedience, and with obedience [restores] that upon which everything depends: bread. Knesebeck, the later field marshal, made his career by having the courage during the Rhine campaign to use a bread transport he was leading to fill a ditch that his artillery could not cross. Perhaps this bread will be a source of luck for you – all the more since you did not sacrifice it (which will always be unfortunate) but instead created it. By the way, that whole incident – and there are many similar ones – has shown me once again just how shaky everything is and how much we are in need of luck and victories to overcome the dangers emerging from all sides, and in our camp at that. Everything and everyone is wrong-headedly democratized, Guelph-ified, Catholicized, or just generally disgruntled and annoyed, and obeys only because everyone’s mind imagines cannons being brought out to close the circle and fire grape-shot inwards. One day, however, even those who can be counted on to close the circle will not be there anymore, and then it will all be over. You do not have to be a prophet of doom to see such times ahead, and I have only this consolation in my soul: Things always turn out differently in the end. Just as Louis Schneider once compiled newspaper clippings from the period 1780-1870 to prove “that it was said every year that the theater had never been as bad,” you could make a list of quotations to prove that the word every year was that “next year, the world is going to end, or at least come very close to it.” Some sinful tide, or even the Flood itself, is always imminent, and yet people continue to live happily and bake their wedding cakes.

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