Theorizing Theater Antitheatrically: Karl Philipp Moritz's Theatromania

Abstract

I. Theaterleidenschaft and Theaterfeindschaft Readers of Karl Philipp Moritz's psychological novel chronicling the etiology of an almost pathological passion for the theater have displayed a remarkable lack of puzzlement over the fact that the title is borrowed from the name of one of the most vehement antitheatricalists in the German theater wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Anton Reiser. In 1681 this Hamburg pastor published a voluminous and verbose tome whose title, AV! Theatromania Oder Die Werke der Finsterniß In denen öffentlichen Schau-Spielen, provides the matrix for the diagnosis of the hero's theatrogenic suffering. This lack of philological puzzlement ranges from Lothar Müller's outright dismissal1 of any connection between Moritz's Enlightenment novel and the unenlightened diatribes of a Pietist cleric to the dutiful mentioning of a nominal connection2 without further investigating [End Page 507] this unholy textual alliance. The sole exception is a rather short and rough article that Wolfgang Martens contributed to the international Fachtagung "Karl Philipp Moritz und das 18. Jahrhundert" and in which he draws on his seminal work on Literatur und Frömmigkeit to suggest (rather than fully develop) the idea that "Moritz' Urteil über Roman- und Dramenlektüre und Theaterlust [...] ist abhängig von frühen, voraufklärerischen Einflüssen und Prägungen, die er erfahren hat, obwohl er als Erwachsener, in seiner von ihm vertretenen Weltanschauung und in seinen Schriften, auch im 'Anton Reiser,' sich davon befreit zu haben scheint. Ich meine Einflüsse und Prägungen durch den Pietismus, durch pietistische Kritik, ja pietistisches Urmißtrauen gegenüber dem Scheinhaften, dem Romanhaften, dem Fiktionalen und Theatralischen."3 But just like most readers of Moritz's oeuvre, Martens is blinded by the simple opposition between his later commitment to Enlightenment ideals and the darker "frühe, voraufklärerische Einflüsse und Prägungen." Moreover, Martens alludes to the reconciliation of this internal contradiction that is generally accepted within Moritz philology: namely that Moritz's contact with Enlightenment thinkers from Gottsched to Mendelssohn enabled him to overcome his religious upbringing. As I have shown elsewhere,4 this assumption of discontinuity does not hold for the history of Enlightenment theater, and more importantly, it naively takes at face value the Enlightenment's myth of a "self-fashioning" that breaks with the past. Certainly the relation between his early religious "Eindrücke" and his later philosophy is a complicated and conflicted one, and it is alluded to by an early diagnostic statement of Anton Reiser's narrator: "Diese ersten Eindrücke sind nie in seinem Leben aus seiner Seele verwischt worden, und haben sie oft zu einem Sammelplatze schwarzer Gedanken gemacht, die er durch keine Philosophie verdrängen [End Page 508] konnte."5 Not only does the narrator suggest here that this religious milieu is to be blamed for the hero's enduring melancholy, but he seems to anticipate Klaus Heinrich's famous bon mot that "Theologie ist das Verdrängte der Philosophie." These first theological impressions can neither be entirely erased, nor can their symptomatic return be repressed. They live on, and the mode of their haunting will be the subject of this investigation of Karl Philipp Moritz's engagement with the theater.6 While a number of studies have traced the connection between pietist introspection and autobiography, and Moritz's "psychologischem Roman" and project of Erfahrungsseelenkunde,7 the possible connections between Anton Reiser's Theaterleidenschaft and pietist Theaterfeindschaft have gone largely unexplored. The following reading is guided by the working assumption that they are not irreconcilable, but complementary. Theaterleidenschaft and Theaterfeindschaft represent two sides of the same coin; they are inextricably linked and condition each other reciprocally. Their confrontation is productive and reciprocal rather than inhibitory and exclusionary, leading to complex interchanges and transpositions. Its enemies combat theater, because they are particularly susceptible to its charms and effects. Their critical analyses are therefore characterized by an unusual sensitivity for its specific mediality...