Just Reading Some Early 20th Century German Expressionist Plays

Recently I’ve been reading some of the oeuvre of Carl Sternheim, a German playwright of the early 19th century. It’s pretty good stuff, but you have to know a bit about Expressionism to really get the plays. I’m referring specifically to Expressionism in a literary sense. And what is Expressionism? If we define it as an intentional distortion or magnification of reality, then Sternheim’s dialogue can be approached from the right perspective.

Because in marked contrast to the realism of his contemporary Henrik Ibsen, Sternheim makes no effort whatsoever to write realistic dialogue. (I’ll go ahead and add here that I am an enormous fan of Ibsen and I think his greatest gift as a playwright was his ability to write dialogue that actually sounds like something someone would actually say. Quentin Tarantino is also quite good at this.) In fact, the unrealistic nature of the speech in his plays is kind of the point. Much like Raven-Symoné’s execrable sitcom, the characters in Sternheim’s plays converse in words and phrases that could not sound less like real speech. Which is, of course, his intent. By using unrealistic and distorted speech, he can exaggerate the negative traits of his characters and thus call more attention to them. Since his best plays are satires of German middle-class social mores, exaggeration and Expressionist dialogue was probably the best call in that context.

However, there is one big problem with Sternheim’s approach. In the introduction to the collection of plays I’ve been reading, the translator laments that the plays are not performed more often. But there’s a reason these plays aren’t performed very often: they’re not terribly accessible. According to the online Literary Encyclopedia: “the stylized language in which he wrote made considerable demands on his audience.” No shit. The inaccessibility I refer to manifests itself in two ways: first, if you’re not familiar with Expressionist writing, you might say to yourself, “What the hell is going on here? Nobody actually talks like that.” Secondly, and perhaps more significant, is the subjects he chose for his plays. Sternheim’s best work is satirical, but more specifically he is satirizing the developing bourgeoisie in early 20th century Germany. If you don’t know anything about the social history of pre-war Wilhelmine Germany, then the whole point of his plays is going to go totally over your head. His tales are so closely tied to a specific time and place that it becomes very difficult to fully appreciate them outside of that context.

Let me offer William Shakespeare as a counterpoint. Shakespeare’s work was undoubtedly influenced by the political and social atmosphere of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Knowledge of that atmosphere will absolutely aid in the appreciation of his work. But it’s certainly not necessary. This is because Shakespeare concerned himself with themes and subjects that are resonant in any culture at any time. There is a reason his plays are performed as often as they are and in so many different languages (including the original Klingon). While countless high school students may bemoan the density of his language, it’s important to remember that Shakespeare’s plays are about things like love, honor, duty, and the bounds of friendship and loyalty. That’s considerably more timeless than tales of the German middle class of the early 20th century.

All artists, and writers especially I believe, have to ask themselves how accessible they want their work to be. If you want to write a 1,200 page book that meticulously details Lyndon Johnson’s 10-year senatorial career, it's not realistic to expect it to be a bestseller. Likewise, if you want to focus your themes on a really specific time and place, perhaps you shouldn’t expect your work to age too well. I don’t mean to take anything away from Carl Sternheim. I think he was an excellent playwright and I think his plays accurately and effectively convey the messages he was trying to get across. But ultimately, I think these plays might work better as historical documents than they do as pure stories.