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De-monopolizing the Public Sphere: Politics and Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Germany1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2012

MEIKE WAGNER
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Abstract

This article focuses on an incident of censorship and police intervention at the Königstädtische Theater in Berlin in 1828, occasioned by a performance of Gotthilf August von Maltitz's The Old Student (Der alte Student). Identifying how the playwright and his actors sought to represent political topics onstage allows me to explore how theatre functioned as a potential player in an incipient public sphere. In turn this reveals how the desire to represent political topics onstage and to become a performative player in the public sphere was already under way in the 1820s, well before the revolutionary turbulence of 1848.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , July 2012 , pp. 148 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2012

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References

Notes

2 Allgemeine Theaterzeitung, 28 March 1848.

3 Poland had already suffered major territorial losses to Russia and Prussia in the late eighteenth century. Due to Poland's support of France in the Napoleonic wars, the Congress of Vienna decided in 1815 that it should be completely under Russian rule.

4 Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Burger, Thomas with the assistance of Lawrence, Frederick (Cambridge: Polity, 1989)Google Scholar.

5 Cf. e.g. Calhoun, Craig, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA et al.: MIT Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

6 Theatre scholars Christopher Balme, Freddie Rokem and Janelle Reinelt, among others, have recently emphasized the importance of the concept of the public sphere for theatre research, although with a focus mainly, albeit not exclusively, on contemporary theatre and performance.

7 Cf. e.g. Maslan, Susan, Revolutionary Acts: Theater, Democracy, and the French Revolution (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Bérard, Suzanne J., Le théâtre revolutionnaire de 1789 à 1794 (Saint-Cloud: PUV de Paris Ouest, 2009)Google Scholar.

8 Cf. my research project on ‘Theatre and the Public Sphere in Vormärz’ (habilitation, LMU Munich 2011), to be published in 2012.

9 Cf. Fohrmann, Jürgen, ‘Erfindung des Intellektuellen’, in Fohrmann, Jürgen and Schneider, Helmut J., eds., 1848 und das Versprechen zur Moderne (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003), pp. 113–27Google Scholar, here p. 113.

10 Ibid., p. 115.

11 Denkler, Horst, Restauration und Revolution: Politische Tendenzen im deutschen Drama zwischen Wiener Kongress und Märzrevolution (Munich: Fink, 1973), p. 29Google Scholar. My translation.

12 Cf. Hegel's, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Wood, Allen W., trans. Nisbet, Hugh Barr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), §§314–19, pp. 351–8Google Scholar.

13 Cf. e.g. the differentiated approaches presented by Calhoun in 1992.

14 According to Habermas, this accumulation of bourgeois capital power is the basis for a bourgeois political public sphere; cf. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, esp. pp. 18–21 and 73–9.

15 Cf. Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz (GStA), I HA, Rep. 77, Tit. 420, Nr. 7, Bd. 1, pp. 5–7, theatre concession, 13 May 1822. All citations from archival files are my translation.

16 Cf. GStA, I HA, Rep. 100, Nr. 1124/2, pp. 3–5, letter of Count von Brühl to Prince Wittgenstein, s.d., 1825.

17 GStA, BPH, Rep. 192, NL Wittgenstein, II, Nr. 6/2, p. 2, letter from Courtly Secretary Albrecht to Prince Wittgenstein, 14 April 1829.

18 The concession for the Königstädtisches Theater was based on the precondition of closing down all minor private theaters formerly existing in Berlin. Cf. GStA, I HA, Rep. 100, Nr. 1124, pp. 18–19, royal order of 14 April 1822.

19 GStA, I HA, Rep. 77, tit. 1000, Nr. 4, p. 3, letter of Chancellor von Hardenberg to Secretary of Interior Affairs von Schuckmann, 11 March 1820.

20 von Maltitz, Gotthilf August, Der alte Student (Hamburg, 1828), p. 57Google Scholar. My translation.

21 Berlin University was founded in 1810.

22 Landesarchiv Berlin (LA), A Pr. Br. Rep. 30–5, Nr. Th. 357, p. 14, species facti, c.9 January 1828.

23 Ibid.

24 LA, A Pr. Br. Rep. 30–5, Nr. Th. 357, p. 79, final report, 2 February 1828.

25 LA, A Pr. Br. Rep. 30–5, Nr. Th. 357, pp. 37–8, second investigation of von Maltitz, 15 January 1828.

26 LA, A Pr. Br. Rep. 30–5, Nr. Th. 357, p. 43, investigation of Mundt, 21 January 1828.

27 LA, A Pr. Br. Rep. 30–5, Nr. Th. 357, p. 81, final report, 2 February 1828.

28 LA, A Pr. Br. Rep. 30–5, Nr. Th. 357, p. 23, investigation of Louis Angely, 12 January 1828.

29 LA, A Pr. Br. Rep. 30–5, Nr. Th. 357, p. 80, final report, 2 February 1828.

30 Der alte Student, 88. My translation.

31 LA, A Pr. Br. Rep. 30–5, Nr. Th. 357, p. 81, final report, 2 February 1828.

32 Ibid. Prussia was right not to underestimate the radical potential of students. Twenty years later, during the revolution of 1848, these academic citizens were the most active revolutionary forces.

33 LA, A Pr. Br. Rep. 30–5, Nr. Th. 357, pp. 78–9, final report, 2 February 1828.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 GStA, I HA, Rep. 77, tit. 420, Nr. 7, Bd. 1, p. 117, Kunowski's demand for exercising the censorship of the Königstädtisches Theater, 28 September 1823.

37 Preface to The Old Student, n.p. My translation.

38 von Maltitz, Gotthilf August, Das Pasquill (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1829), p. 40Google Scholar. My translation.

39 In 1830 the police president of Berlin tried in vain to obtain a ban of von Maltitz's writings in the territory of the state of Hamburg. Cf. LA, A Pr. Br. Rep. 30–5, Nr. Th. 357, p. 113, letter of the Police Department to the Ministry of External Affairs, 12 April 1830.