Leopold Jessner: Intendant der Republik: Der Weg eines deutsch-jüdischen Regisseurs aus Ostpreußen by Matthias Heilmann

Abstract

MLR, I03.2, 2oo8 595 enabled him topropagate avant-garde work inhismagazine and through exhibitions abroad. Petra JennyVock sheds new lighton thismixture of avant-gardism and na tionalism, first,by exploring the rolesplayed by Walden's Swedish wife and hisDutch secretary,Sophie van Leer, and secondly, by paying attention to Walden's considerable output. Her superb reading of his essay 'Das Hohelied des PreuBentums' (pp. 149 64) shows howWalden drew a parallel between an individual's submission to social order inwartime and the artist's submission under the formal laws of thenew art. The next part of the book is devoted to six individual Sturm poets, exploring re presentations of thewar in theirwork. Given the complex mixture of art and politics thatpervades Der Sturm, Vock's careful readings suggest time and again that thewar poetry is equally complex and paradoxical. The section on August Stramm, whose poems Walden heralded as amodel of 'Wortkunst', exemplifies thiskind of reading. Vock is alert toStramm's tendency toeroticize fighting,and she detects inhis poems a psychic need to counterbalance the real horror ofwar with gestures towards order, duty,and conformity.Subsequent chapters, varying in length,deal with lesser-known Sturm poets. The most interestingof these are Franz Richard Behrens, whose futurist technophilia helped him develop amore constructivist style, and Otto Nebel, whose collage-text 'Zuginsfeld' (written in I9I8-I9, while he was a POW inColsterdale) is one of the better texts of post-war 'Wortkunst', inviting comparison with Karl Kraus's Die letzten Tage derMenschheit. Of the remaining poets, Thomas Ring and Wilhelm Runge are epigones of Stramm, while Kurt Heynicke was peripheral to the Sturm circle, but his laterwork suggests links between Expressionism and National Socialism. This book has a number of strengths: it covers the full range of available texts, includingmuch archival material; itconfronts extant scholarship in amost thorough (if at times tiring) fashion; and itofferswell-balanced assessments. The interpreta tions are always alert to the ambiguity of abstract poetry as well as the difficulties in pinpointing 'ideology' in literary texts.However, because the latter chapters are monographic in scope, the focus on the institutional context becomes somewhat blurred at times; a little less coverage would have been more in this case. And as Vock's discussion of theminor Sturm poets shows, it is difficult to see theirwork as significantoutside its immediate context. On thewhole, though, this isa valuable con tribution to the scholarship on Expressionism because itpositions Walden's Sturm and itsabstract 'Wortkunst' squarely in itshistorical and political context. Despite its length, itenables the reader todevelop a sense for the curious politics of theGerman avant-garde tornbetween nationalism and internationalism. GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ANDREASKRAMER Leopold Jessner - Intendant der Republik: Der Weg eines deutsch-jiudischen Regisseurs aus OstpreuJ3en.By MATTHIAS HEILMANN. (Theatron, 47) Tiibingen: Niemeyer. 2005. vii+445 pp. Ei I2. ISBN 978-3-484-66047-2. This magisterial volume is the first major academic study in any language of the pioneering German theatre director Leopold Jessner (i878-I945). It is founded on extensive archive research-crucial to accessing the numerous reviews of Jessner's productions, reflectingthe full range of political affiliations in theGerman press from far leftto far right-and concentrates on his work in the Weimar Republic. Heilmann discusses some fifty productions from the Weimar period, the most prominent drama tists in Jessner's euvre being Schiller and Shakespeare, but also gives due attention to Jessner's earlier work inHamburg and Konigsberg and his limited output while in exile during theNazi years. Jessner had a major impact on the development of 596 Reviews twentieth-centuryGerman theatre,and has been seen as thekey figure inestablishing 'Regietheater', or 'director's theatre'.He took theview that the theatredirector should shape all aspects of theproduction by identifyinga play's core thematic idea in relation tocontemporary social and political contexts, and radically reshaped theatrical space by abandoning the conventions ofNaturalism and illusionism in favour of represen tational abstraction. Jessner also rejected theecstatic and highly emotionalized acting style associated with lateExpressionist theatre, insisting that the actor's use of lan guage should embody clarity,pace, and rhythm rather than declamatory pathos. His best-known actorwas Fritz Kortner, with whom heworked on all his key productions...