German Life and Letters 37 : 2 January 1984 0016-8777 $2.00

THE MEDIUM AND THE MESSAGE: SOME REFLECTIONS ON ERNST TOLLER’S HORSPlEL ‘BERLIN-LETZTE A USGABE!’

BY STEPHEN LAMB

‘Berlin-letzte Ausgabe !’ is the only play Ernst Toller wrote specially for radio. I t was broadcast originally by the radio-station Berliner Funkstunde on December 4th 1930, under the direction of Alfred Braun, but, for reasons which must remain a matter of speculation, was never published. I n the mid-seventies the radio play producer Gunter Bommert unearthed the original ‘unverkaufliches Manuskript’ in Harvard University Library and on March 19th 1976 the play was broadcast for a second time, this time by Radio Bremen in conjunction with Siidwestfunk and Westdeutscher Rundfunk.’ Response on the part of critics to this broadcast would appear, as in the case of the original, to have been minimal, being restricted, as far as this writer has been able to discover, to two reviews in the specialist radio press in West Germany.2 Perhaps not surprisingly, interest there focussed primarily on the play’s significance as a ‘Dokument aus jener Fruhzeit der F~nkgat tung’ .~ Annemone Benthues for instance is distinctly sceptical as far as the literary quality of the work is concerned, and her dismissive judgement ‘Fur das Werk Ernst Tollers bedeutet dieses Horspiel n i ~ h t s ’ ~ would appear to echo that of Toller scholars in general, who for the most part seem to have ignored the work a l t~ge the r .~ In the light of the play’s recent publication,6 it is surely now time to look at it a little more closely, with a view to establishing how important this forgotten work is in the context of Toller’s work as a whole.

On a purely thematic level it is certainly true that the play offers little that is new, as a brief listing of the issues dealt with will show. Paramount among these is Toller’s belief in the need for international disarmament. This is reflected in an early scene, where Toller reconstructs part of the proceedings of the fifth League of Nations Disarmament Conference, during which proposals made by the Soviet delegate Litwinoff for ‘sofortige, allgemeine und totale Abrustung’ (p. 97) are rejected by Western delegates.’ Unemployment, an increasingly acute problem in the later stages of the Weimar Republic, is also dealt with. Statistical information quoted from newspaper reports is juxtaposed with the portrayal of the suicide of a young couple disowned by the ‘Wohlfahrtsamt’ and threatened with eviction. Further evidence of the anti-capitalist sentiments underpinning the play is provided by a scene portraying the AGM of a firm by the name of Schlump Warenhaus AG. Toller’s main concern here is to show

how the chairman’s proud boast that the firm has survived despite the ‘ungunstige Wirtschaftslage’ (p, 105) masks an insensitivity to the reality of such a situation, especially as far as unemployment and its human consequences are concerned. Toller’s reservations concerning the effectiveness of parliamentary democracy, especially its ability to confront the important issues of the day, emerge in his dramatisation of a real-life incident from the summer of 1930, when the Labour MP Fenner Brockway was named by the Speaker of the British House of

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Commons and required to leave the Chamber for refusing to be silent on the question of detention without trial in India. Apart from providing further evidence of Toller’s anti-colonialism,8 the choice of this particular incident, suggested by Toller in the text as an alternative to the ‘Abrustungsprobleme’ scene mentioned earlier, is of special interest, in that it hints at links between Toller and comrades in Britain.g Verification of Toller’s dramatised version of the incident is to be found in Brockway’s autobiography Inside the Left, which interestingly contains several references to Toller. For instance when writing of the immediate post-First-World-War situation in Germany Brockway notes : ‘I was particularly excited by the Socialist Revolution in Bavaria, in which Kurt Eisner and Ernst Toller were involved’,1° adding in a footnote: ‘Toller, with whom I became friendly later, died whilst I was writing this book’.” When discussing the work of the Masses Stage and Film Guild, a left-wing cultural organisation of which he was Chairman, Brockway singles out for special mention its production of Toller’s Masses and Men.’* Perhaps the most interesting reference occurs in the chapter entitled ‘Tours abroad : a campaign against Hitler’. Here Brockway reflects on a speaking tour he made in Poland and Germany in 1931, the final meeting of which took place in Berlin. This was organised by the League of Human Rights and was presided over by Toller, and it marked the beginning of a friendship which flourished during Toller’s enforced exile after the Nazis’ seizure of power. Toller no doubt found much to admire in Brockway’s commitment to the cause of independent international socialism, a commitment which combined an implacable hostility to the compromise politics of Social Democracy with an abhorrence of Communist Party orthodoxy, especially the latter’s disastrous doctrine of social fascism. Brockway’s scathing remarks on Communist Party sectarianism for instance (‘their Party has no place for ethical considerations of fraternity, honour, truthfulness outside their own as~ociates’’~) could easily have been uttered by Toller himself, and furnish interesting evidence of affinities between the non- aligned left in Germany and the British ILP in the twenties and thirties.

However, as already stated, the essentially anti-capitalist ‘Tendenz’ of ‘Berlin-letzte Ausgabe!’ will not come as much of a surprise to students of Toller, and indeed an orthodox thematic approach would in itself do little to elucidate the particular character of this play. We must therefore look more closely at questions of medium and structure. As regards the former, it is worth noting that this play is not the only example of Toller’s use of the medium of radio. The best known other example dates from the same year (1930) when Toller took part in a broadcast discussion with Alfred Miihr, editor of the Deutsche Zeitung, organised by Berliner Rundfunk on the theme ‘Kulturbankrott des Burgerturns’. l4 ‘Berlin-letzte Ausgabe!’ is however the only known example of Toller’s wish to make use of the dramatic potential of the then new medium. His desire to exploit its technical possibilities is reflected not least in the role played by sound, not simply as a means of creating atmosphere, for example in the railway accident scene, but, more interestingly, to signal a rapid switch of location. The overall effect is of a ‘nachgestelltes Horbild’,l6 a sound picture of Berlin life, interspersed with excursions into the arena of world politics. This

114 REFLECTIONS ON ‘BERLIN-LETZTE AUSGABE !’ ~ ~~ ~ ~

‘Blitzlicht’ technique suggests parallels, albeit on a less ambitious scale, with contemporary developments in other arts. Doblin’s novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) and Walter Ruttmann’s film Berlin, D i e Symphonic ezner Grossstadt (1927), for example, both employ the structural principle of montage in an attempt to capture in artistic form the complexity of modern urban society. Toller’s aim in ‘Berlin-letzte Ausgabe !’ is however not limited simply to recording a ‘Bestands- aufnahme’ without comment. His concern here, as in all his works, was to encourage the reader to adopt a critical attitude to urban industrial society in general, and in this particular case to developments in sound technology and the media. T o understand clearly what Toller’s attitude was to such developments we must first look at an earlier work in which this issue is first raised, namely Hoppla, wir leben! (1927) . The scene of particular relevance occurs in Act 111. Here the radio operator in the Grand Hotel seeks to initiate a disbelieving Karl Thomas into the intricacies of instant world-wide communication, but succeeds only in increasing his bewilderment. ( I t must be remembered that the would-be revolutionary has spent the first eight years of the Weimar Republic in a lunatic asylum.) His response to hearing the transmission of a distressed passenger’s heart beat in mid-Atlantic : ‘Wie wundervoll ist das alles! Und was machen die Menschen damit . . . Sie leben wie Hammel, tausend Jahre hinterdrein’,I6 is followed by that of the radio operator himself with his resigned observation that such advances in technology have done little to improve the lot of mankind, and indeed are often used for destructive purposes : ‘Vorlaufig dienen diese Apparate dazu, damit sich die Menschen desto raffinierter totschlagen . . . wir werden’s nicht andern’.” Toller is here exploring an aspect of a theme addressed as early as Masse Mensch ( I 91 9) and which receives its most searching examination in Die Maschinenstkrmer ( 1922). That is to say he is demonstrating his belief that technology is neither inherently good nor inherently evil, its effects depending entirely on the use men make of it. Seen in this light ‘Berlin-let& Ausgabe!’ acquires particular significance, since Toller here chooses to address the question of the effect of press reporting on public consciousness.

The play’s format contains the key to an understanding of how this question is treated. The play has no plot in the conventional sense, comprising a series of separate vignettes which are apparently unrelated, their only common denominator being that each represents an item reported in a newspaper being read by a guest in a restaurant. The dramatisation of each item represents this reader’s imaginative reconstruction ofthe event reported, and as such is intended to reveal the truth behind the bare facts. Connections between the scenes are made by headlines which provide the stimulus to the reader’s imagination. The choice of such a format has two major benefits. Firstly it enables Toller to integrate authenticating documentation into the dramatic structure without undermining the play’s validity as a drama. The function of such documentary information is especially apparent in the scenes dealing with disarmament and unemployment. In the former Toller approaches the problem from three differing but ultimately complementary angles. First he presents a mass of statistical information, which, judging by its linguistic register, is quoted verbatim from

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official reports. Next he moves from the general to the particular by quoting the initial lines from the report on the suicide of a young couple. The official statement with its bland assertion that there is no explanation for the tragedy (‘Die Griinde sind unbekannt’ (p. 106)) is then called into question by the third angle on the problem, which consists of an imaginative reconstruction of the final moments of the young couple. The listener/reader is thereby able to grasp both the wider social and political dimensions of the problem, whilst at the same time being made aware of the specific human implications in a particular case. Elements ofreportage and drama are thereby fused in a mutually enhancing way. In the case of the theme of disarmament a similar principle applies. Here a dramatisation of the conference debate is supplemented by quotations from various press agencies concerning such matters as the financial cost of the last war and developments in the arms race. The listener/reader is thereby invited to condemn the delegates for their disregard of the consequences of their decisions.

The second major advantage of the play’s format is that it enables Toller to juxtapose the weighty and the trivial, that is, events such as those referred to above are placed alongside the trial of a bigamist and a boxing match. Apart from producing a degree of comedy, a quality not normally associated with Toller (viz. the interview with Lia Lora, an American film star: ‘Berlin ist so niedlich. Very nice indeed. Man spurt den Einfluss von Goethe’ (p. rog)), the inclusion of such scenes has a serious point. I t enables Toller to highlight a facet of Weimar pluralism of which he was acutely aware, namely the desensitisation of public consciousness in a period of increased media and cultural activity. Faced with a welter of information, where unemployment and disarmament compete for attention with boxing and show-business scandal, the public increasingly loses the ability to differentiate and evaluate its daily diet of news. Toller’s technique of montage enables him to illuminate this levelling-out process, whereby the death of an unemployed couple is accorded no more or less significance than the junketings of a privileged minority in St. Moritz. Toller’s own ironic self reference : ‘Literarische Matinee. Ernst Toller liest Gedichte’ (p. I I I ) , sandwiched between adverts for a performance of Figaros Hochzeit and a concert at the Philharmonie, shows his resigned awareness of the difficulties of a committed intellectual competing for attention in the cultural market-place. The ultimate comment on this levelling-out process is provided by the newspaper reader himself, who notes by way of summary:

Jetzt habe ich die Zei tung vom Leitartikel bis zum letzten Inserat gelesen . . . Ich lege mich schlafen, morgen fruh weiss ich kaum mehr, was drinstand. Und dabei habe ich einen Wust von Neuigkeiten aufgeschnappt. Abrustungskonferenz . . . Eisenbahnungluck, die Filmdiva Lia Lora in Berlin, Boxkampf, Selbstmord eines Ehepaars aus unbekannten Griinden, Heiratsschwindler vor Gericht, Theateranzeigen usw. Vor hundert Jahren geriet eine Stadt in Aufregung, wenn eine Scheune brannte . . . Heute? (P. 113)

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Such bemoaning of man’s lack of sensitivity and responsiveness is a theme all too familiar to students of Toller. One thinks of Eugen Hinkemann, whose desperation is intensified by his friends’ failure to respond sympathetically to his plight, or of Jimmy Cobbett and his vain struggle to arouse in the Luddites a sense of collective responsibility, the ‘Geist der Gemeinschaft’ so central to Toller’s world view. -

The concluding lines of the newspaper reader’s final speech contain perhaps the best clue to why Toller used the medium of a radio play:

Die Menschen lesen nach dem Abendbrot ihre Zeitungen, gahnen und legen sich zu Bett. Wenn sie ein bisschen Phantasie hatten, wenn sie sahen und horten, was sie lesen-vielleicht wiirden sie nicht so ruhig schlafen. Aber wer hat Phantasie, mein Lieber? Wer will sie haben? . . . Vom Leiden des anderen fiihlen-nee . . . so genau wollen wir das gar nicht wissen . . . So sind die werten Mitbiirger. Gute Nacht. (p. I 13)

Wurffel views these lines as a ‘moralisierende Schlusswendung’ and claims that they contain more than a hint of that ‘linke Melancholie’ which Walter Benjamin considered typical of many non-aligned left-wing writers in the Weimar Republic. This may well be so, but to proceed from this to an assertion that, as such, recognition of the importance of personal attitudes necessarily precludes an understanding on Toller’s part of the ‘gesellschaftlichen Kontext’ is surely to misread the play as a whole. The inclusion of factual material, the judicious balance between the particular and the general, surely shows that Toller was aware of the social and political context of the problems he portrays. Whilst i t is true that ‘Berlin-Letzte Ausgabe!’ typifies a general development on the part of Toller during the latter stages of the Weimar Republic away from the idealistic activism of his early work, it is surely wrong to-, equate such a development with an ‘Exodus aus der gesellschaftspolitischen Offentlichkeit’.l a A willingness to abandon abstract utopianism in favour of a more rational and sober examination of specific social and political questions is surely not tantamount to resignation. In choosing to portray imaginatively the unreported reality behind the bare facts contained in newspapers Toller is not only testifying to his belief in the importance of literature as a creative medium, but also demonstrating that the incorporation of ‘Sachlichkeit’ into art need not necessarily produce the insipid and uncommitted objectivity of the then fashionable ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’, dismissed by Toller as a movement ‘die mit Nahe zu Menschen und Dingen wenig zu tun hat’.l9 He had no time for ar t which abrogated its creative potential in favour of a ‘Flucht in die Sachwerte’. For him art’s task was to explore the complex interrelationship between specific human problems and their social and political ramifications. That he sought increasingly in the late twenties to fuse the private and the public in works such as Hoppla, wir leben ! ( 192 7) , ‘ Berlin-letzte Ausgabe ! ’ ( I 930) Feuer aus den Kesseln (1930) is surely evidence of his maturing as a writer, rather than an ‘exodus’ from reality.

Whilst it would be wrong to make exaggerated claims on behalf of ‘Berlin- letzte Ausgabe!’ in its own right, when placed in the context of Toller’s work as a whole the play offers further evidence of this maturing process. I t shows

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above all that when confronted with an intensifying economic crisis Toiler still clung tohis socialist perspective, whilst at the same time realising the need for balance, both philosophically between social and personal change, and stylistically between ‘Sachlichkeit’ and creativity. 2o

NOTES

I am grateful to Klaus Schoning, Head of the ‘Horspielahteilung’ of Westdeutscher Rundfunk, for making available a copy of the script used for this broadcast.

Cf. Annemone Benthues, ‘Realitat im Blitzlichtverfahren’, Kirche und Rundfunk, Nr. 29, 1 4 April 1976; Klaus Hamburger, ‘Friihe Szenen fur Rundfunk. Ernst Toller, “Berlin-lefzte Ausgabe!” Horspiel aus dem Nachlass’, Funk-Korrespondenz, Nr. 13, 24. March 1976.

3 Hamburger, loc. cit.

4 Benthues, loc. cit.

References in secondary literature are usually restricted to a mention of the work‘s existence. Scholars are uncertain as to the precise date of the work’s composition. Wolfgang Fruhwald and John M. Spalek in Der Fall Taller, Munich 1976, give ‘um 1928/29’ as the date of its completion, and Michael Ossar in his Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toiler, Albany 1980, suggests 1928 as the ‘approximate date’. A precise dating is not possible, since Toller makes no reference in his work to the play. The inclusion of the Brockway incident indicates that he was still working on the play, or at least revising it, in 1930, since that incident occurred in the summer of that year.

Ernst Toller, ‘Berlin-letzte Ausgabe!’ in Friihe sozialistische Horspiele, ed. Stefan Bod0 Wiirffel, Frankfurt a .M. 1982. All subsequent page references are to this edition.

’I O n precisely the date of the play’s broadcast Toller was signing a resolution of the ‘Internationales Verteidigungskomitee fur die Sowjetunion’ entitled ‘Gegen die imperialistischen Kriegstreiber’. Cf. Fruhwald/Spalek, Der Fall Taller, p. 2 0 .

* Toller was a member of various anti-colonialist organisations, most notably the ‘Liga gegen die koloniale Unterdriickung’.

9 In a recent article Richard Dove has drawn attention to contacts between Tollrr and British contemporaries. See ‘Ernst Toller, Wilfred Wellock and Ashley Dukes. Some historical connections’, GLL, 35 (19811, 58-63.

Fenner Brockway, Inside the Left, London 1942, p. I 15.

‘ 1 Ibid., p. I 15 .

1 2 For further discussion of the reception of Toller’s plays by contemporary British theatre groups see Richard Dove’s article.

13 Brockway, op. dt . , p. 343

‘4 Nationalsozialismus : Eine Diskusion iiber den Kulturbankrott des Burgerturns zwischen Ernst Tolkr und AIfred Miihr, Berlin 1930.

‘ 6 Hamburger, loc. c i f .

Munich 1978, p. 83. Hoppla, wir leben! in Gesammelte Werke, ed. John M. Spalek and Wolfgang Friihwald, vol. 111,

Ibid.

18 Stefan Bodo Wurffel, op. cit., p. 23.

‘ 9 ‘Bemerkungen zurn deutschen Nachkriegsdrama’, Ges. Werke, vol. I , p. 130.

20 For further development of’ this argument see my essay ‘Ernst Toller: vom Aktivismus zum humanistischen Materialismus’ in Das Literarische Leben in der Weimarer Republik, ed. K. Bullivant, Konigstein Ts. 1978, pp. 164-92.