German cultural nationalism and romanticist theatre

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)

First off, as Dave Bisaha appropriately brought up on Monday, the notion of affirming a national theatre based in some kind of local tradition was not new in the late 18th century. Rousseau, in his Letter to Msr. D’Alembert arguing against establishing a French theatre in Geneva, had made claims about a primitive folk culture that should be the true basis of a distinctively Swiss culture. John Dryden had argued that English drama had distinctive qualities superior to that of the French, and David Garrick had devoted most of his life to establishing Shakespeare as a great national poet. With the founding of the Comedie Francaise in 1680, the French had laid claim to a great national dramatic and theatrial tradition worth preserving from generation to generation. And we can look back to Lope de Vega in the early 17th century, and his argument for privileging Spanish uso against the claims of neoclassicism as a kind of primordial national theatre project. These were all promotions of local distinctiveness against claims for universal standards of art.

So what was so special about the arguments laid out by Johann von Herder in the 1760s and 1770s that lets Steve Wilmer claim him as the most important inspiration not only for a German national culture and theatre, but for the modern rhetoric of national culture throughout the world?

Herder encouraged German-speaking people to take pride in their own cultural traditions and their native language. Like Rousseau, he urged them to acknowledge the importance of the folk poets of the past. But unlike Rousseau and those who followed him, Herder promoted the notion that everyone in the world naturally belongs to a nation, that every nation is distinct in its culture and traditions, and that every nation should express the volksgeist, the spirit of its own people in its own unique way.

In this way, he broke through some of the basic assumptions that had informed the debate over neoclassicism for the past two centuries. Rather than worry about what the ancients really meant, or who was authorized to break the rules, he started with the assumption that there are no universal standards for art. Everyone should look for what is unique in the pasts of their own peoples, and this will give them distinct traditions to draw on in formulating an art particular to their own people. The ease with which we nowadays talk about American or English or French or German or Chinese culture as distinct things reflected in the practices of all representatives of those cultures owes a lot to this fundamental shift in thinking. As Wilmer points out, there were significant political consequences. A people with distinct cultural traditions, and a distinct national voice, could make a strong argument for having the right and the natural destiny to have the status of a separate nation-state. So we start to see revolutionaries taking an interest in various kinds of cultural expression, including theatre, as a tool for advancing their goals to establish new states. We see subjects of empires attracted to notions of building a national culture—like much of Europe during the Napoleonic wars, the Finnish in relation to Russia, the Irish in relation to England and the Asian and African peoples colonized by Europe.

Eric Hobsbawm’s notion of invention of tradition is important in this context. Nationalists, of course, would like everybody to think that their claims to distinctiveness are based in reality, that national identity is part of human nature and beyond dispute. The truth is always more ambiguous. The nations of England and France were forged through political and military actions and choices. It took people like John Dryden and David Garrick to promote the notion that there was such a thing as a great dramatic tradition that was distinctively English (rather than being the works of certain people who happened to be English). The disorienting experiences of modernity in the late 18th century with bloody revolutions and huge social uphevals like the industrial revolution made people think about “traditions” with a new kind of nostalgia and to define rigidly practices that had actually been more fluid. To preserve the purity of national origins, nationalists invented traditions that owed nothing to other cultures, conveniently forgetting any kind of complexity that might contradict their distinctiveness.

As Wilmer argues, Herder’s ideas about national culture can be seen in the rhetoric of national theatre projects around Europe and beyond. All these projects show aspects of what John Hutchinson calls cultural nationalism, whose goal is “the moral regeneration of the national community rather than the achievement of an autonomous state.” (64) In Germany, for example, where real political nationhood did not become feasible until the late nineteenth century, cultural nationalism was a significant force building the sense of a national community over the preceding century from the lat 18th century. The goal of such institutions as the German theatres of Hamburg and Munich and Weimar was to build up a national mythology independent from the cultural hegemony of France, England and Italy. As Schiller would put it, “if we had a national stage, we would also become a nation.” (69)

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Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)

Nationalism, Imperialism and 18th Century Theatre

TIMELINES

Rise of the British Empire

1707 Act of Union, a treaty with France and the Netherlands leaves England the dominant colonial power in North America and India. The dominance of the British Empire over its rivals might be dated from here.

1757 Battle of Plassey gives the British East India Company decisive control over India against French and indigenous rivals.

1775 American revolution begins (a setback for the British Empire)

1783 United States of America gains independence

1788 British penal colony founded at Australia

1795-1815 Napoleonic wars envelop Europe and their colonies throughout the world. Britain emerges as the pre-eminent global empire.

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The Industrial Revolution

1721 John Lombe’s water-powered silk mill at Derby, arguably the first modern factory

1780s Steam engines increasingly used to power machines; iron foundry technology advances; patents on textile technologies expire, all leading to mass industrialization

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German Romanticism and Cultural Nationalism

1765-9 A number of wealthy burghers in the free city of Hamburg embarked on the establishment of the first German National Theatre with Lessing as ‘theatre poet’. In this position, he issued the Hamburg Dramaturgie. But there was too little public support, and it closed two years later.

1776 The German Sturm und Drang movement begins with Friedrich Klinger’s play by that name–tumultuous dramas rebelling against political, economic, and artistic tyranny; celebrating ordinary people in natural (even primitive) settings; heroic peasants overthrowing villainous and tyrannical rulers; sensational action, Manichean conflicts of raging elements.

1777 A German court theatre established in Munich with Schiller as writer in residence.

1779 Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, the first German play written in blank verse on the inspiration of Shakespeare

1782 Schiller’s The Robbers establishes plot and character types that would become common with melodrama– damsel in distress, falsely accused hero, ruthless villain with labyrinthine castle.

1784 Schiller’s “The Theatre Considered as a Moral Institution’; Herder’s Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind


1795 Napoleonic wars commence. The occupation of German territories inspires greater interest in cultural nationalism as a form of resistance

1798 Schiller joins Goethe at the court of Weimar, initiating a period of intense theatrical activity trying to articulate a German national theatre

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NATIONALISM

The United States, coming into existence as it did in the late 18th century, has always been dominated by commercial theaters, popular and bourgeois. For us, the role of the government in the arts has always either been as a censor or as a provider of grants that are usually not as generous as those provided by private corporations. We had a national theater for a very brief period in the 1930s in the form of the Federal Theater Project, a producing theater funded by the US government. Since then, however, we mostly hear about our government being outraged at any taxpayers money being used to support controversial art, and defunding the NEA. The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. serves some small part of the social function of a national theater, but not the basic economic relationship. As a presidential memorial, the Kennedy Center receives a direct, federal appropriation, but these funds can only be used for the operation and maintenance of the building. None of this funding goes toward the Center’s performances or educational activities. Without private donations and ticket sales, the Kennedy Center would stand only as an empty building. The Kennedy Center is also not ideologically committed to an American repertoire. It is just a big venue for theater in the nation’s capitol.

In most of the rest of the world, national governments have taken theater seriously as a way of promoting national culture and national identity. Making English into “the language of Shakespeare.” French as “the language of Racine and Moliere.” Most of the nations of continental Europe have prominent national theater buildings funded by the government. From the consolidation of many European nations in the 19th century to the new independence of colonized nations in the 20th century, governments have funded national theaters to promote national culture. The establishment of the Comedie Francaise in 1680 was a historic move in this direction, a very different initiative than the joint-stock companies of late 16th and early 17th century England, and a very different initiative than the professional Italian commedia troupes. This was, and still is, a state-sponsored theater whose purpose is to maintain a national repertoire of the great works by French playwrights.


IMPERIALISM

In 1600, China may have been the most economically and politically powerful nation on Earth. Biggest, most populous, most politically sophisticated, most technologically advanced, most economically advanced, most literate. In 1800, it might have been a little harder to say. Europe was getting rich on its colonies through much of the world, had taken huge steps towards advancing democracy and capitalism in their own governments, and was in the midst of accelerating scientific and industrial progress. However, much of the world viewed them, and they viewed themselves as just another set of warring powers who appeared to be tearing each other apart in the Napoleonic wars. Even their colonies were mostly limited to port towns and garrisons. By 1900, however, European powers directly governed nearly 90% of the surface of the Earth. In science, industry, economy, politics and culture and the arts, most of the world now sought to emulate Europe.

As Europe conquered the world militarily, politically and economically, it also did so epistemologically and culturally. Despite the reaction against Enlightenment rationalism in the Romantic era, the 19th century saw a new explosion of science that worked hand in hand with colonialism. European naturalists, such as Charles Darwin, accompanied military journeys to the colonies to catalogue and produce knowledge about all of Nature. Materialist political philosophy channeled Christian notions of emancipation from sin into a progressive emancipation from ignorance. Adam Smith, August Comte, Georg Hegel and Karl Marx all saw human societies and nations as progressing according to rational material causes (rather than God’s will or other super-natural forces) that should be shaped by educated and aware people to bring humanity closer to full knowledge and justice. This is the wider socio-cultural context of the "modern" theatre and drama that began with late 18th century Romanticism and eventually gave rise to 19th century Realism.