Ödön von Horváth

• Born: December 9, 1901
• Birthplace: Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now in Rijeka, Croatia)
• Died: June 1, 1938
• Place of death: Paris, France

Other Literary Forms

Ödön von Horváth wrote a number of prose pieces and sketches as well as three short novels: Der ewige Spiesser (1930), Jugend ohne Gott (1938; Youth Without God, 1938), and Ein kind unserer Zeit (1938; A Child of Our Time, 1938).

Achievements

A passionate social moralist with a keen sense of satire and irony, Ödön von Horváth was considered an undesirable individual by Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists and his work was on the Nazi index of banned books. He was extremely critical of the hypocrisy and falsity that he saw in the middle-class society around him (especially with regard to issues such as the societal mistreatment of workers, sexuality, and the often exploitative relations between men and women), and it became the expressed intention of his writing to “unmask the false consciousness” (Demaskierung des Bewusstseins) or the self-delusion that veiled such injustices in the minds of those who perpetrated them. He accomplished this with great skill and success. Equipped with an ear for the speech and language habits of the German/Austrian middle and lower-middle classes as well as a keen psychological insight into human motivations, Horváth exposed the often vicious and cunning motives behind the beautiful and noble sentiments expressed in the words of everyday conversation, and he did so with a sly and devastating sense of humor.

In order to appreciate the full achievement of Horváth’s dramatic art, one must realize that his major works stand within two important traditions in German-Austrian culture. First, he revitalized and modified in his plays the nineteenth century Viennese genre of the Volksstück, or popular folk play, which used the linguistic expressions and dialect of the people. These pieces were often rather sentimental and trite, but in the hands of more skilled writers such as Johann Nestroy and Ludwig Anzengruber, they contained elements of satire and social criticism. Second, Horváth’s writings should also be seen within the larger context of the twentieth century philosophical and aesthetic movement of language criticism (also centered in Vienna), most prominently associated with the drama critic turned philosopher Fritz Mauthner, the poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and the well-known philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The thought of these individuals evidences not only a profound skepticism concerning the ability of language to reflect reality accurately but also a suspicion that linguistic forms are themselves a major component of human perception and may even falsify the reality that one does perceive. Horváth’s Volksstück draw on both of these traditions, focusing on ordinary, lower-middle-class people and on the ways in which their use of language (which Horváth labeled Bildungsjargon)—in the form of pretentious clichés, trite proverbs, and popular sentimental platitudes—shapes and distorts their perception of themselves and of others. Voicing the most tired romantic clichés or the most idealistic sentiments, his characters—particularly the males—often perform vicious and egotistic acts that reveal the hypocrisy and emptiness of their words. The ironic and satiric thrust of Horváth’s writing consists in this unmasking of the false consciousness of his figures. His intention as a dramatist is essentially a moral one: He seeks to create a society in which honesty and sincerity—not falsity and duplicity—are the guidelines for human relationships.

Horváth’s most important plays were written during the last years of the Weimar Republic, before Hitler’s rise to power. They present great psychological insight into the social and spiritual malaise that plagued that society and that, in part at least, allowed the advent of National Socialism and the horrors that it subsequently unleashed. Horváth is thus of great significance as both a chronicler of a pivotal period in European history and a moral commentator on the human spirit. Although his plays were well received during his lifetime, there was little scholarly attention to his work until the 1960’s and 1970’s. He has been an influence on the modern Austrian writer Peter Handke and on writers of the contemporary Volksstück such as Martin Sperr and Franz Xaver Kroetz.

Biography

Ödön von Horváth was born in 1901 to upper-middle-class parents, the son of a diplomat. Because of the father’s occupation, the family moved frequently during Horváth’s early years, and he resided in various cities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in Germany, such as Belgrade, Budapest, Munich, and Vienna. In 1919, he attended the University of Munich for several semesters, and in 1924 he moved to Berlin, where his early plays met with some success and he gained a reputation as a talented dramatist. Performances of his work also began to attract the vigorous protests of the National Socialists in the late 1920’s. In 1931—on the recommendation of the well-known playwright Carl Zuckmayer—Horváth was awarded the coveted Kleist Prize. He left Germany in 1933, after Hitler’s election, and moved to Budapest and then to Vienna. When Austria joined the Nazi Reich in 1938, Horváth went into exile in Paris. On June 1, 1938, he met a bizarre and untimely death: He sought shelter under a tree on the Champs-Élysées during a thunderstorm and was killed by a falling branch. He is buried in Paris.

Analysis

Ödön von Horváth’s corrosive wit, his skeptical treatment of language, and his awareness (before the feminist revolution) of feminist issues make him a valuable resource for playwrights in the late twentieth century, many of whom see in his works a prescient expression of their own concerns.

Italian Night

Horváth’s most successful plays were his Volksstück written between 1930 and 1932. His first major work in this style, the satiric comedy Italian Night, received highly positive reviews from liberal theater critics and was roundly condemned in the Nazi press. The text consists of seven scenes without traditional act divisions. Set in a provincial small town in Southern Germany (Bavaria) around 1930, the play satirizes the political climate of the time. A group (which includes the town’s mayor) of democratic supporters of the Weimar Republic are planning a big party—a festive “Italian Night”—at their local pub. Much to their chagrin, they learn in the first scene that the enterprising owner of the restaurant has also rented the place for that afternoon to the town’s group of National Socialists, who are celebrating a solemn “German Day” with a nationalistic parade and nighttime military maneuvers. As the play opens, the mayor’s group is playing cards in the pub and discussing their evening’s events. One of their members, a politically intense young man named Martin, angrily reveals the plans of the Nazi group and suggests that they should take more aggressive action. The mayor responds with an impressive sounding but vague and pretentious answer about how the reactionary elements lack any real ideological basis. This is a good example of Bildungsjargon, a seemingly educated but actually meaningless use of language that masks the mayor’s basic lack of concern. The Weimar supporters do not seem to regard the National Socialists as a genuine threat. The mayor and the others have little interest in politics and are really concerned only with eating, drinking, and having a good time. Horváth comments satirically here not only on the political complacency of the German middle classes at the time—a fact that would lead a few years later to the collapse of the Weimar government and the takeover of the Hitler regime—but also on the extent to which politics (or all social behavior for that matter) is linked to basic and unconscious psychological drives and desires (eros/pleasure in its broadest Freudian sense). The theme of the political versus the erotic is prominent throughout the play. Karl, another militant younger member of the group, cannot, for example, separate his political commitment from his attraction to the opposite sex. Horváth thus also takes up the pervasive theme of male-female relationships. This theme is apparent in the first scene, in the mayor’s crass comments about his wife.

The second scene opens with two women watching members of the National Socialist group parade past in their military uniforms. The older of the two women is greatly impressed by the spectacle—with an erotic fascination—and she voices worn-out political clichés concerning Germany and World War I. The younger woman, Leni, then meets Karl, who asks her to accompany him to the party that night. Karl is later confronted by Martin, who considers Leni to be politically uncommitted. Karl tries to mask his erotic intentions by suggesting that she is sympathetic to their cause. He then attempts to excuse himself by claiming that Martin, as a laborer, cannot understand his individualistic and artistic nature, which compels him to seek erotic adventure as aesthetic stimulation. Karl’s words are a virtual listing of trite and sentimentalized bourgeois notions of the artistic personality. In this dialogue, Horváth ironically exposes the falsity of Karl’s reasoning. His idealized and romantic notions mask the more elemental erotic drives that motivate his actions. At the end of this scene, Horváth makes the psychological implications of the play explicit by having Betz, one of Martin’s group, discuss Sigmund Freud and the relationship of desire, aggression, and social behavior.

The themes of the interaction of men and women and the interrelationship of politics and the erotic are continued in the third scene. Martin meets his girlfriend Anna in the park. Concerned solely with his duty as a political leader, he treats her brusquely, rejecting her attempts at affection. After Martin leaves, Karl learns from Anna that Martin intends for her to have a sexual encounter with one of the Nazis so that he can gather information about the type of weapons they carry, making her, as Karl aptly expresses it, into a kind of political prostitute. Horváth points in satiric fashion to what he sees as the fundamental exploitation that often underlies the relationship of the middle-class couple. Conditioned to feel inferior and worthless, the woman accepts such treatment and continues to idolize the man. This type of relationship is a frequent theme in Horváth’s plays. Anna sees nothing wrong in Martin’s request and feels gratitude that he has “elevated” her. Karl then meets Leni, and they have a discussion about politics. Leni is not at all interested in political issues and is concerned only with marriage. Karl voices a number of trite (but unfortunately, in view of German history, somewhat accurate) notions concerning the traditional German apathy toward politics, seeking to give the impression that he is interested in more than the merely sexual. In the end, however, his desire for Leni wins over his political scruples.

The fourth scene opens with several of Martin’s group painting the statue of the state leader red in an attempt to infuriate the National Socialists. Meanwhile, Anna has met one of the Nazi group, and they stroll through the park. The man voices the conservative ideology of the Fascists. In one of the most comic passages of the play, he decries Jewish socialism and its “materialist” philosophy while simultaneously attempting to molest Anna. With such a humorous juxtaposition, Horváth reveals the discrepancy between language and action that is characteristic of so-called civilized behavior. When the Nazi suddenly sees the defiled statue, he is so incensed that he finally stops molesting Anna.

In the fifth scene, the National Socialists celebrate their “German Day,” and Horváth satirically rehearses the standard Nazi rhetoric about Germany’s enemies (the French, the English, and the Bolsheviks). After the National Socialists leave, the Weimar supporters enter with their “Italian Night.” As a protest gesture, Martin and his group refuse to dance. Karl, however, is finally “persuaded” by Leni. Again there is an instance of the discrepancy between words and behavior that is so characteristic of Horváth’s ironic “unmasking” of the false consciousness in his characters: Karl speaks to Leni of having given his word to Martin and the others that he would not dance—and a man’s “word of honor” is a sacred thing—but at the same time, he is fondling her with his hand, and soon he unconsciously begins to dance with her. The dialogue between the mayor and his wife, Adele, reveals the often cruel suppression of women within the middle-class family structure as well as the hypocrisy of its social behavior. The mayor tries to present the image to others that he is a loving and concerned husband while he viciously seeks to silence his protesting wife. He attempts to mask the violence of his behavior by citing a famous quote about women from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. (This is another good example of Horváth’s use of the Bildungsjargon of the middle classes.) The evening ends in a hostile debate between Martin and the mayor over the Weimar group’s lack of response to the threat of the National Socialists. The issues involved, although treated in a humorous manner, are serious indeed. In a prophetic fashion, Horváth focuses precisely on the apathy and blithe lack of concern that characterized the Weimar democratic parties’ response to the rise of Fascism in Germany during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s.

In the sixth scene, Martin learns from Anna, who has been intimate with one of the Nazis, that they are planning to disrupt the “Italian Night” party and beat up the Weimar group because of the defiled statue in the park. Although he tries to mask his emotions with socialist rhetoric, Martin is somewhat jealous that Anna has had an affair with another man. Karl is asked to leave the group of younger radicals because of his lack of political commitment. The final scene of the play begins with the mayor and his fellows playing cards at the pub after the party has dispersed. Again the mayor reveals his true self in his callous treatment of his wife. She voices the truth about him when she declares that although he publicly proclaims sympathy with the proletariat and the worker, he has exploited her at home for the thirty years of their marriage. (Horváth’s female characters are often the true voices of reason and humanity in his plays.) Ironically, the mayor’s wife saves him at the end when the Nazis enter the restaurant, planning to assault him and his friends. She chases them out, and they leave as Martin and his group approach. The play ends on a comic note—one that particularly irked the Nazi press—but as with all Horváth’s plays, one is left with a disquieting sense that all is not as right as it seems.

Tales from the Vienna Woods

Tales from the Vienna Woods is the most famous of Horváth’s Volksstück. It consists of three parts made up of individual scenes. The premiere performance in Berlin featured the young actor Peter Lorre and received excellent press reviews. In this play, set in Vienna and the surrounding area around 1930, Horváth satirizes the mentality of the Austrian lower-middle classes. The action opens with strains of a Johann Strauss waltz, which suggests the kitsch, sentimental sensibility of the characters. (Horváth uses such music throughout the play as a means of ironic commentary.) Alfred has brought his new girlfriend, Valerie, to meet his mother and grandmother, who live out in the country. Their conversation, however, centers not on love but on money and whether this will be a financially profitable marriage opportunity. The economic situation in Europe was very poor at the time Horváth wrote the play; recession and unemployment were felt by everyone, especially the lower-middle classes. Thus, in the opening scene, Horváth suggests a theme similar to that seen in Italian Night: One’s crasser instincts often overcome one’s presumably more noble sentiments.

The next scene shifts to the lower-middle-class district of Vienna and features the two rather crude butchers Oskar and Havlitschek. The latter’s comment concerning one of the store’s female customers again raises Horváth’s theme of violence and the exploitation of women. Marianne, who helps run her father’s doll store, enters the scene. She is a kind young woman. Oskar is planning their engagement and asks her for a kiss, though in his coarseness he bites her (again a suggestion of suppressed violence). The two talk to each other, as do all the characters, in meaningless clichés, which Horváth accentuates by periodically inserting the word “silence” in the stage directions. These pauses in the dialogue are intended to reveal the emptiness in the minds of the speakers.

Alfred comes to visit Valerie, who owns a small tobacco shop on the street. He sees Marianne, and the two seem very attracted to each other. He then purposely begins an argument with Valerie. The next scene is of a picnic on the Danube that is to celebrate the engagement of Oskar and Marianne. Alfred ends his relationship with Valerie and begins talking with Marianne. Speaking of marriage, he asserts that the financial independence of the husband and the financial dependence of the wife are “natural laws” or a matter of “fate.” With these trite and yet very commonly accepted notions, he confuses the natural, biological differences between men and women with the social roles that are the product of specific historical and sociological developments. Horváth’s goal is for the audience to realize the difference as well as the fact that such social roles can be changed. In this respect, his drama is very close to that of his German contemporary, Bertolt Brecht, whose works are intended to make the audience aware that circumstances can be altered, that mutual exploitation is not an inevitable consequence of human nature but a result of social conditions.

The theme of the exploitation of women is also continued in this episode when Oskar practices his judo holds on Marianne, and in the clichéd speech given by Marianne’s father about his deceased wife. He shows his own egocentric feelings and seems to have had little empathy for her problems. He then tries to seduce Valerie. With the figure of Erich, the visiting student from Germany, Horváth also satirizes the rigid Prussian mentality, so different from the more relaxed attitudes of the Austrians. In the next scene, the picnic continues. Alfred and Marianne speak in sentimental and romantic clichés about love, and he kisses her. The first part ends with Marianne breaking her engagement to Oskar.

The second part begins with a misogynistic conversation between Oskar and Havlitschek. In the second scene, the audience learns that Marianne and Alfred have lived together for a year, that they have a child, and that Alfred is unemployed; Marianne supports them both by working in her father’s store. Alfred’s treatment of her is crude and manipulative. In the course of the third scene, in which Alfred and a friend are playing cards, it becomes clear that the relationship has gone sour and that they are extremely poor; their child is with Alfred’s mother in the country. Because Marianne is interested in dance and gymnastics, the friend suggests that she try to get a job dancing in an “elegant establishment” owned by his acquaintance. This is a euphemism for a nightclub in which there is nude dancing. In the next scene, Marianne, unaware of what kind of job it really is, tries out and is accepted. That Alfred would permit such a thing indicates his callous attitude and suggests again Horváth’s theme of male mistreatment of women. During the fifth scene, Alfred visits his mother and grandmother, who are resentful of having to take care of his child without payment. They tell him to move to France, where economic conditions are better. The sixth scene is set back in Vienna; Alfred meets Valerie, from whom he tries to borrow money. The next scene shows Marianne going to church to confess her “wrongdoings,” and here Horváth illustrates the cruelty and repression that can be a part of rigid religious doctrine: The priest demands that Marianne show contrition for having borne her child out of wedlock, but because of her strong love for the child, she is unable to regret its birth, and she is sent away without absolution.

The third part takes place during the annual Austrian celebration of the year’s wine harvest, a time of celebration and festivity. Horváth satirizes in the first scene the sentimentalized nostalgia of the Viennese for their city and culture. The drunken revelers sing all the clichéd songs about their “beloved Vienna.” They all then decide to go to Maxim’s, unaware that this is the disreputable nightclub where Marianne performs in a nude revue. In this nightclub episode, Horváth gives another example of the pretentiousness with which society often tries to mask its baser motives and desires. Although the show is a crass exploitation of female nudity, the nightclub announcer introduces it with ceremonious allusions to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. During the proceedings, Marianne appears and is recognized by her father, Valerie, and the others. When she tries to explain, she is denounced for her “shameful” behavior and labeled a “whore.” That she has acted out of poverty and desperation is not considered in the hypocritical condemnations of her father and the others. Marianne’s options in life are slowly being eliminated, and the tragic conclusion of the play becomes apparent. The second scene shows Alfred again with his mother and grandmother, from whom he tries to borrow money for the second time. They have a violent argument, and he leaves. Marianne’s child, Leopold, is ill, and Alfred’s mother reveals that the grandmother has left his window open at night. With such an example of blatant cruelty, Horváth shows the depths to which human beings can fall in their greed and lust for revenge. In the third scene, one of the drunken customers in the nightclub has accused Marianne of stealing money, and she has been arrested and is in jail. Alfred and Oskar commiserate with each other and express a hypocritical feeling of pity for Marianne. Seeing an economic advantage to be gained, Alfred begins to court Valerie again. The motives for the characters’ behavior are so transparent that the situation becomes humorous; it is through this painful humor that Horváth seeks to bring awareness to the audience. The final scene of the play has Marianne visiting Alfred’s mother and grandmother, where she learns that her child has died. The tragedy completely crushes her spirit. Oskar, who will now marry her, leads her offstage. The portrait of the Austrian lower-middle classes that Horváth gives in Tales from the Vienna Woods is one of viciousness, greed, and pettiness masked by stupidity, pretentiousness, and sentimentality.

Faith, Hope, and Charity

Faith, Hope, and Charity is another of Horváth’s central Volksstück. The scheduled premiere in 1933 in Berlin was forbidden by the National Socialists, and it was finally produced in Vienna in 1936. The play’s subtitle means “a little dance of death in five parts.” It begins with Elizabeth, the impoverished heroine, who goes to the Anatomical Institute in the mistaken belief that she can sell her body in advance for the use of science. She tells one of the attendants that she needs the money in order to purchase a special working permit. The scene is an ironic commentary on the poverty and desperation experienced by the lower-middle classes during the economic crisis of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s in Germany and Austria.

In the second part, Elizabeth is at her job in a store specializing in ladies’ undergarments. Her boss criticizes her poor sales record. One of the Institute employees, who has lent Elizabeth the money she needed, enters and claims that she deceived him when she said that her father was a customs inspector. It is then revealed that she did not need the money for a work permit but rather for the court fine that she had to pay when she was arrested for not having had the proper working permit. Because of this arrest record, she is fired from her job. The irony of the situation is clear, and it becomes apparent that Horváth is criticizing the stupidity and inhumanity of the bureaucracy that condemns Elizabeth. In the third part, she is at the Welfare office and has spent fourteen days in jail. She meets a policeman named Alfons, and their conversation is another listing of tired expressions and clichés that mask their sexual interest in each other. An older woman advises her that she should marry so that she can achieve a measure of security. The position of women in a largely male-dominated society again becomes a major theme in this work. Horváth’s portrayal of men is, as in the other plays, rather negative; as Elizabeth says earlier, all men are crass egotists.

The fourth part takes place in Elizabeth’s room. She and Alfons have obviously slept together. Alfons’s words suggest an attitude toward women that is typical of the lower-middle-class male, as in his comment that he values a woman who is dependent on him more than one who is not. The chief inspector of the vice squad comes to check on Elizabeth’s source of income. Worried about his career as a policeman, Alfons denounces her. In the last part, the attendants from the Anatomical Institute as well as Alfons and some other policemen are together when someone yells that a woman has thrown herself into the river in a suicide attempt. A man rescues her, and it is Elizabeth. The crass attitude of the men is suggested by the fact that her rescuer is interested only in getting his picture in the newspaper and getting some attention for his firm. The men try to give Elizabeth courage to go on living but merely recite trite platitudes about life and hope. When she recognizes that one of the policemen is Alfons, she becomes enraged and denounces him for the cad and egotist that he is. The intensity of her emotions is such that her heart gives out and she dies; the men react with indifference.

Bibliography

Balme, Christopher B. The Reformation of Comedy: Genre Critique in the Comedies of Ödön von Horváth. Dunedin, New Zealand: Department of German, University of Otago, 1985. A study of the comedies of Horváth.

Bance, Alan, and Ian Huish, eds. Ödön von Horváth, Fifty Years On: Horváth Symposium, London, 1988. London: Institute of Germanic Studies, 1988. A collection of essays in English and German on Horváth’s life and works. Bibliography.

Beardsworth, Robert. From Virgin to Witch: The Male Mythology of the Female Unmasked in the Works of Ödön von Horváth. Stuttgart, Germany: H.-D. Heinz, 1991. An examination of the women characters in the works of Horváth.

Carstens, Belinda Horton. Prostitution in the Works of Ödön von Horváth. Stuttgart, Germany: H.-D. Heinz, 1982. A study of Horváth’s dramas, with the emphasis on his treatment of prostitution. Bibliography and index.

Gussow, Mel. “Examing the Dark Flower That Was Weimar Culture.” New York Times Current Events Edition, October 23, 1991, p. C17. An account of the Classics in Context festival, on Weimar culture, at the Actors Theater of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky, in October, 1991. Contains an overview of the works of Horváth and Bertolt Brecht.

Hampton, Christopher. Tales from Hollywood. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1983. An examination of the drama of Horváth.