Carl Sternheim

• Born: April 1, 1878
• Birthplace: Leipzig, Germany
• Died: November 3, 1942
• Place of death: Brussels, Belgium

Other Literary Forms

In addition to plays, Carl Sternheim wrote a novel, several novellas, and a number of essays. A typical example of his fiction is the novella Busekow (1913), the prose style of which marks a transition from naturalism to a condensed expressionistic narrative technique. Sternheim deliberately omits insignificant details, highlighting in a woodcutlike fashion only the essential facts and events. This style shows a strong tendency toward abstraction, overstatement, and satiric exaggeration. The novella Meta (1916) is written in similar fashion. In it, Sternheim traces the psychological development of a maid who loses her sweetheart in the war and spends the rest of her life trying to compensate in various ways for the loss. The essay Gauguin und van Gogh (1924) and the novella Heidenstam (1918) are of particular significance, because Sternheim uses them to discuss the central issue of expressionist aesthetics: the attempt to penetrate beneath the surface of the "appearance” of reality toward its true “essence.” The expressionist artist attempts to tear off the “mask” of reality as it appears to sensory perception to reach the true being of things (das Wesen).

Achievements

During the two decades between 1910 and 1930, Carl Sternheim was one of the most prominent playwrights in Germany. His plays were staged at most of the prestigious German theaters, with occasional performances in Rome, Paris, and London. His influence is evident in the work of modern German and Swiss dramatists who are critical of the middle class and of capitalist industrial society—in particular, Bertolt Brecht and Friedrich Dürrenmatt. After World War II, some of his plays were successfully revived in West Germany. Several of his works have been translated into English, French, and Italian.

Biography

Wilhelm Adolf Carl Sternheim was born on April 1, 1878, in Leipzig, Germany. He spent his early childhood in Hannover. In 1884, his family moved to Berlin, where Sternheim attended high school (he was graduated in 1897). In 1897, he attended Munich University, where he took courses in literary history, history, and the theory of knowledge. He continued his studies at the University of Leipzig, and the University of Göttingen, where he studied law and literary history. In 1900, he married Eugenie Hauth and moved first to Weimar, then to Berlin. In order to strengthen his physical health, he voluntarily served for a year in a cavalry regiment in 1902. In 1903, he moved to Munich, and four years later, he married for the second time. The wealth of his second wife, Thea Bauer, enabled him to live the life of the upper-middle class. He collected paintings (among them, ten van Goghs) and had a castlelike mansion built for himself and his family on the outskirts of Munich (and later in the suburbs of Brussels). With the success of his play The Bloomers in 1911, he began to establish himself as one of the most prominent German playwrights of his time. His plays written after 1918, however, did not achieve the success of his plays written between 1911 and the end of World War I.

Repeatedly, Sternheim ran into trouble with the censors. His plays The Bloomers, The Snob, and 1913 were allowed to be staged only after certain lines were stricken and other textual revisions were made. The reasons given by the authorities were either moral (Sternheim’s plays were labeled obscene) or sociopolitical (the censors claimed that the plays would antagonize certain classes of German society and thereby jeopardize the peace.) Some of Sternheim’s plays indeed caused scandals when first performed (notably The Strongbox). The middle-class audience felt attacked and offended, much to the delight of the author.

After 1914, Sternheim temporarily took up the cause of the workers in Germany. He published articles in the leftist expressionist journal Die Aktion and became a member of an anarchistic splinter party called “The General Unity Organization of the Workers,” which called for a society free of any form of domination and for the destruction of all workers’ unions and all political parties. This “political” period in Sternheim’s life, though, was short-lived and was followed by a withdrawal into privacy. After living in various other European cities, Sternheim moved back to Brussels in 1930. In the same year, he was married for the third time, to the daughter of German playwright Frank Wedekind. Under National Socialism (1933-1945), Sternheim’s plays were banned from German and Austrian stages. On November 3, 1942, he died in Brussels of pneumonia.

Analysis

Carl Sternheim’s major plays describe German society during the period from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War I. This was the so-called “Wilhelminian era” (after Emperor William II), a time of rapid industrialization in Germany. This period also saw the founding of the Social Democratic Party, which, under Chancellor Bismarck, was soon repressed and whose loyalty to the Reich was questioned because of its ties with international communism. The German government, authoritarian and dominated by the aristocracy, attempted to contain the growing pressure from the rising middle class and from the militant workers’ movement by means of an increasingly aggressive foreign policy (which ultimately led to World War I).

During the 1890’s and during the first years of the new century, social legislation (no work on Sundays, protection of children against abuses in child labor, accident and health insurance) was designed to appease the workers, whose political strength was partially paralyzed by the growing conflict between the revolutionary communists and the reformist Social Democrats. Germany was ruled by a coalition of the old aristocracy and the new bourgeois plutocracy (the former still being the dominant factor). Among this elite there developed a strong sense of nationalistic expansionism fostered by a number of well-funded and organized interest groups and sometimes coupled with outbreaks of anti-Semitism. Thus, a precarious balance between inner social unrest and an aggressive expansionist foreign policy constituted the political and social climate in which Sternheim’s plays were conceived.

Although Sternheim did not consider himself an expressionist (in fact, he uses the terms “expressionism” and “expressionist” in some of his plays to characterize an overly agitated, conspicuous, and spectacular mode of behavior on the part of particular characters), he shares some common ground with expressionism in terms of both style and content. Most of Sternheim’s characters are types representing their respective social classes. Because they are not psychologically differentiated individuals, the German spoken by them is an extremely artificial and abstract idiom. Although Sternheim’s aristocrats speak in somewhat more stilted fashion and use a different vocabulary from that of the other characters, language does not function as an instrument of social or psychological differentiation in his plays. The elimination of the definite article, the frequent use of past participles, the end position of the subject, and other stylistic devices run counter to “normal” German usage. Their function is not to help describe life in a realistic true-to-life fashion. Sternheim, like his expressionist contemporaries, does not attempt to copy or reproduce reality. Rather, he proceeds from essential truths underlying social interaction, which are then “expressed” in the way his characters speak and act, regardless of any mimetic norms.

Sternheim’s comedies often present a protagonist who is powerful, successful, and victorious from the outset and who, withstanding all challenges, inevitably triumphs in the happy ending typical of traditional comedy. Whereas traditional comedies often expose the discrepancy between a character’s actions and the norms, values, and ideals that society represents, Sternheim’s comedies seem to celebrate the triumph of the material norms of the German middle and upper classes from the first to the last scene. The glory of bourgeois and aristocratic existence, however, always contains an element of caricature. Sternheim’s satiric mode of presentation (although it is never totally critical or skeptical in terms of social change and leaves room for positive evaluation) confronts the flaws of social reality (in all classes) with an ideal that is never quite explicit in his texts. The author does not openly call for a “new man” or a utopian social order, as many of the expressionists did at that time. The implicit ideal must be deduced by the reader or audience from the negativity of the world presented in Sternheim’s plays. Glimpses of this ideal can be seen in the theoretical statements made by Sternheim’s “revolutionary” characters, such as The Bloomers’ Mandelstam, 1913’s Krey, and The Fossil’s von Bohna. Yet these characters remain helpless theorists. Their ideas have no impact on social reality, and some of them—such as Krey and von Bohna—even adapt to the status quo by betraying their cause.

The Bloomers

Sternheim’s biting criticism of the German bourgeois pervades his first successful play, The Bloomers. Its plot is simple: Luise, the wife of a civil servant, Theobald Maske, loses her bloomers during a Sunday afternoon walk on a crowded street. The embarrassing incident is noticed by a few bystanders. Maske acts as though a major disaster has happened, which might threaten his position. The only consequence of the event, though, is the appearance of two men at Maske’s home. They both witnessed the incident and have come to rent a room. Both Scarron, whose social status remains mysterious (he appears to be wealthy; he is a writer, an educated intellectual, a follower of Friedrich Nietzsche, and a passionate Don Juan all in one) and Mandelstam, a sickly barber’s apprentice, have come to Maske’s place because they have been attracted by Maske’s beautiful but naïve wife. Their only function in the play, though, is to serve as contrasting characters vis-à-vis the boisterous and smug protagonist Maske. After some amorous overtures to Luise, which meet with little resistance on her part, Scarron abandons her and his room for a whore, whereas the unlucky lover Mandelstam stays on.

This is the framework within which Theobald Maske makes his buoyant appearance. Sternheim’s satiric portrait of the German bourgeois around the turn of the century reveals the following features: He is a loyal subject of his superiors, especially the king; hating daydreaming and disorder, his mind is focused entirely and exclusively on the daily practical matters at hand; and nothing matters more to him than his secure position. He would never dream of striving toward a higher office. If everything stays the same until the day of his retirement, he will be totally satisfied. Maske exhibits anti-Semitic leanings (although he does not admit it). He talks like a staunch nationalist, but he has no interest in politics. To him, happiness is a good meal, good health, and physical strength. He regards women as inferior to men, beats his wife, and indulges in an occasional adulterous adventure. Although he is not a religious man, he feels it is “all right” to go to church because it is the proper thing to do for people of his kind. He likes to think of himself as one of the “little people” and makes every effort to live as inconspicuously as possible. By the same token, he turns out to be a greedy profiteer when it comes to squeezing money out of Scarron and Mandelstam. Whereas he knows nothing about literature, music, or art, he does have a vague sense of “culture” as something that is supposed to give his drab existence some luster and status. Yet his attitude toward cultural activities is truly philistine.

The Snob

The Bloomers was the first play of a tetralogy published in both Aus dem bürgerlichen Heldenleben and Scenes from the Heroic Life of the Middle Classes. The second play of this tetralogy, The Snob, focuses on the tendency among members of the German middle and upper-middle classes to emulate the lifestyle of the aristocracy. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the German aristocracy witnessed the decline of its wealth while it was still able to hold on to political power. A new financial elite had arisen. Wealthy capitalists from the upper-middle class had acquired high social status, yet they continued to look up to the members of the aristocracy as their role models for social behavior.

Christian Maske, Theobald Maske’s son, is a case in point. Through hard work and shrewd business deals, he has acquired a fortune and is about to be appointed president of a mining company. Count Palen is a member of the board of directors of that company. Christian wishes to marry the count’s daughter Marianne. To him, that marriage means the ultimate authentication of the fact that he has arrived at the top of his society. Count Palen views this marriage with mixed feelings. On one hand, he welcomes the influx of the money of the nouveau riche into his impoverished family. On the other hand, Christian is a parvenu, an upstart who does not really “belong” in aristocratic circles.

The character of Christian is—as is so often the case with Sternheim’s protagonists—portrayed satirically, but not without a certain degree of sympathy and even admiration on the part of the author. The adjective “heroic” in the title of the English translation that includes the entire tetralogy must be understood exactly in this twofold (and only seemingly self-contradictory) sense: The Maskes are not truly heroes, yet their vitality, energy, and success are admirable. The satire exposes Christian’s lack of compassion, love, and gratitude. Once he has amassed his wealth, he literally pays back those who helped him achieve his goal, especially his parents, whom he then shoves off to Zurich because he does not want to be reminded of his petty bourgeois background, which might prove to be an embarrassment to him in an aristocratic environment. His cold and calculating behavior as well as his efforts to emulate aristocratic style (exemplified by such details as how to tie a necktie properly, how to phrase a letter, or how to use art as a status symbol) are attempts at playing a prescribed role. Behind Christian’s aristocratic persona (in the Jungian sense) there remains, however, the original individual who is still capable of showing grief when his father brings him the news of his mother’s death. Yet he tries to impress Marianne by boasting of his ancestors, by emphasizing that his financial genius is something that is “in his blood,” and finally by claiming that he is really the illegitimate son of a French viscount because the one thing that money cannot buy is a genuine aristocratic lineage (as documented in the famous register of the aristocracy, the Gotha Almanac).

Christian Maske is indeed a “snob,” both in the accepted sense of the word and in its original sense—sine nobilitate—yet the sheer energy and self-discipline that enable him to advance in society not only are duly admired and envied by the aristocracy but also positively impress the reader or spectator. Christian is an ambivalent character. His success is both baffling and questionable, especially because it is based on the exploitation of millions of workers (as Christian himself cynically admits).

1913

The third play in the tetralogy, 1913, shows Christian Maske at the end of a successful life. Having risen to the ranks of the aristocracy, he is now Baron Christian Maske von Buchow, the wealthy owner of many factories, a still-powerful and energetic patriarch. His cold and ambitious oldest daughter, Sophie, tries to wrest the power from her father’s hands by striking on her own a deal with the government of the Netherlands involving the sale of weapons. The fact that the members of the Maske family are Lutherans (conveniently publicized by Sophie) facilitates the negotiations with the Dutch. When Maske hears about the deal, he has all the major newspapers print the news that the Maskes have converted to Catholicism. This is his way of striking back at his daughter. Maske is able to reestablish his authority but at a deadly cost. The excitement is too much for him, and he dies of a heart attack.

More significant than the plot (the triumph and fall of the patriarch) are Maske’s views about the state of his society. He is able to anticipate the dangers of mass production, and he foresees the stifling impact of a materialistic consumer mentality. Furthermore, he forecasts World War I and fully recognizes the revolutionary potential of the masses once they are stirred up by Socialist ideas. He even goes so far as to say that he would welcome social change along Socialist lines, if only a great leader of the underprivileged masses would appear. Maske’s secretary, Wilhelm Krey, is an articulate theorist who combines radical socialism with a strong sense of nationalism. As so often in Sternheim’s plays, the herald of social change is not a leader but merely an apolitical intellectual, an ideologist. Not only does he fail to make the slightest practical impact on social life, but also he compromises his position at the end by attaching himself to the social class he is supposed to crush: the aristocracy. His liaison with Ottilie (Maske’s daughter) and the symbolic act of trying on (or rather, masquerading in) certain garments worn only by aristocrats attest the discrepancy between theory and practice that characterizes this Socialist who turns out to be a would-be aristocrat.

As in The Snob, Christian Maske is portrayed in 1913 as a complex character. On one hand, he represents bourgeois capitalism and ruthless materialism at their zenith. The accumulation of wealth appears to be the only goal in his otherwise aimless and directionless life. On the other hand, he also represents Sternheim’s ideal of the strong-willed individual who realizes his potential regardless of any social or financial obstacles. This individualism is based on a combination of Darwinism and a Nietzschean philosophy of the will to power, though Sternheim’s attitude toward both thinkers was ambivalent. He deplored in Darwinism the lack of a spiritual goal and feared that Nietzsche’s thought would unleash the animal instincts in humankind.

Although Krey, the socialist thinker, fails, there is another character in the play, Stadler, who vows that he will carry forward the torch of socialism. This shows that Sternheim, in spite of his admiration for the successful industrialist Maske, is fully aware of the “social question” and sees the necessity of social change.

The Fossil

The last play of the tetralogy, The Fossil, has two protagonists: a retired general of the cavalry, Traugott von Beeskow, and an aristocrat, Ago von Bohna. Von Beeskow, who is completely out of touch with his time, still doggedly clings to the ideals and to the lifestyle of his class. Before World War I, his daughter Ursula was engaged to Ago von Bohna, who subsequently spent many years in Moscow. The dreadful experience of the war and his stay in Russia have converted von Bohna to communism. Like most of Sternheim’s communist characters, he is a pure theoretician who shows little interest in practical politics. Von Bohna has summed up his ideas and insights in a manuscript. He returns to Prussia in order to see Ursula and to confront her father. When he meets Ursula again, he realizes that he still loves her. Ursula, reared in the aristocratic tradition, finds herself unable to accept von Bohna’s views. She even goes one step further and promises her father (who detests the renegade) to get hold of von Bohna’s manuscript and destroy it. The lover in von Bohna is stronger than the communist theoretician. He sacrifices his manuscript (which Ursula throws into the fire) in return for Ursula’s love. When the old von Beeskow surprises the two lovers, he kills them both in a fit of rage before surrendering to the police.

Two different worlds clash here, and both sides discredit themselves. Von Beeskow is indeed a “fossil,” a survivor from an extinct social class. His position becomes strikingly and graphically clear when—in one scene of the play—he mounts his rocking horse and acts out (in full uniform) a fantasy about commanding a cavalry attack. Two types of aristocrats challenge each other in this play: the “fossil” who knows no other way than to adhere stubbornly to his ancient values and ideals and the radical social reformer von Bohna. Like Krey in 1913, von Bohna does not know how to translate theory into action. In his case, personal matters have priority over his “mission.” He preaches that the individual must subordinate himself to the needs of the collective. His own actions, however, belie his social theories. Thus, the play shows the last gasp of an aristocracy that has become its own caricature while necessary social reforms have not yet progressed beyond the stage of theory and have not yet found—as far as Germany is concerned—a qualified champion.

The Strongbox

In 1912, Sternheim published the play The Strongbox, which focuses on the idolization of material wealth on the part of the typical bourgeois. Krull, a teacher, finds himself torn between two women: Fanny, his second wife, and Elsbeth Treu, a middle-aged woman who possesses stocks and bonds of considerable worth. She keeps those papers in a heavy iron coffer. Krull, his wife, and his daughter Lydia (from a previous marriage) are the only relatives to whom Elsbeth could bequeath the money. Elsbeth hates Fanny and is jealous of her, while Krull tries very hard to please both women. The coffer becomes more and more the focal point of his entire existence. He is allowed to draw up a list of its contents and to drag it from place to place. Elsbeth lets him have the strongbox while hesitating to write the will that will make him its rightful owner. Krull even takes the coffer to bed, where it literally replaces his wife. He is portrayed as an egotist whose sole purpose in life has become the quest for pleasure and enjoyment. The prospect of inheriting Elsbeth’s money keeps alive his hope of escape from the drudgery of a poorly paid teacher’s life. Egotism, nationalism, and mammonism are the striking features of this typical specimen of the German middle class. He is intelligent enough to realize that the international nature of high finance (not all the stocks one may own represent German assets) conflicts with his nationalistic instincts. What is good for one’s wallet might not be so good for one’s nation. Krull also understands quite well (and accepts) the fact that those stocks that he hopes to inherit are the fruit of the exploitation of millions of workers.

Elsbeth, whose hopes and expectations with regard to Krull remain unfulfilled, finally bequeaths all her wealth to the Catholic Church. The play does not proceed to the point where Krull finds out about Elsbeth’s move. The shattering of his grand illusion and the dashing of his hopes can only be imagined by the audience or the reader.

Paul Schippel Esq.

Although Sternheim’s comedy Paul Schippel Esq. confronts a member of the German proletariat with a number of representatives of the middle class, this confrontation does not lead to conflict but to the rise of the proletarian Schippel to the status of the bourgeois. Schippel, an illegitimate child, is a poor musician who plays in beer halls. His only asset is his beautiful voice, which earns for him a place in a quartet that has recently lost its tenor. The three other members of the quartet are all men of the middle class: Hicketier, a goldsmith; Krey, a civil servant; and Wolke, the owner of a printing shop. The proletarian is reluctantly accepted simply because he is needed. Hicketier, Krey, and Wolke hope to win first prize at a competition, and they cannot compete without a good tenor. At first, Schippel is overly conscious of his low social position. At the same time, he hates the middle class for their wealth and their secure and carefree life. His only desire is to move up in society. Yet the other members of the quartet keep their distance and, whenever the occasion arises, impress on Schippel the fact that he does not “belong” in their circle (just as Count Palen in The Snob felt that Christian Maske did not “belong” in aristocratic circles). Schippel, unsure of himself, vacillates between a humble expression of his déclassé social status and bold attempts to usurp the role of the bourgeois now that “they” cannot do without him. He has set his eyes on Thekla, Hicketier’s beautiful sister. When he asks Hicketier for her hand, he learns that someone else, namely the prince himself, has just spent the night with Thekla. Now that the girl has lost her “finest luster,” as her brother tactfully puts it, Hicketier is willing to give her to Schippel. Schippel, however, in a moment of glory, refuses the girl under the changed circumstances. His moral principles and his honor, so he claims, do not allow him to marry a girl who is no longer a virgin. Krey, who does not know about Thekla’s escapade with the prince and wants to marry her, is told about the incident by Schippel. Because Schippel gloats over Krey’s dilemma and because Krey cannot but take Schippel’s condescending attitude as an insult, he is obliged to challenge Schippel to a duel. The duel, originally a social ritual of the aristocracy, in particular of the high-ranking aristocratic officers of the military, had become an integral part of the bourgeois emulation of aristocratic behavior.

Ironically, both Schippel and Krey are deadly afraid of the duel. Schippel makes an unsuccessful attempt to flee (at this point, he is ready to sacrifice his social ambitions), while Krey almost faints on his arrival at the spot where the duel is supposed to take place. The duel begins, and Schippel happens to inflict a slight injury to Krey’s arm. This “victory” prompts Wolke and Hicketier to elevate Schippel to the social rank of the middle class, as though he had thereby passed the ultimate test. Therefore, it is not Schippel’s artistic talents that determine his fate but rather the totally accidental outcome of a social ritual in which none of the combatants really believes.

Paul Schippel Esq. illustrates once more Sternheim’s conviction that the German proletariat of the early twentieth century did not strive for social revolution, but either had dreams of moving “up” (as in Schippel’s case) or simply accepted the status quo. Everybody knows his “place” in this society. There are boundaries that one should not transgress. The only transgression allowed in certain situations is a downward one. The prince has the privilege to ruin the reputation of a middle-class girl (whether or not she consents). The girl then can—against her will—be shoved “down” to the proletariat (as Hicketier intends to do with his sister). Both “transgressions” involve an appalling lack of moral decency in a society that gives only the appearance of moral propriety. Oddly enough, the proletarian (Schippel) finds himself in the position to violate the bourgeois code of honor and thereby to place himself on the same level as the members of the bourgeoisie (the duel). Once he is allowed to play the “game” of the duel, his “victory” legitimizes his new position as a respected bourgeois. The play satirically exposes the artificiality of the social structure and the arrogance and the banality of the lifestyle of the German middle class, in particular its cultural pretentiousness and its hollow claims to dignity, importance, and moral integrity. It both describes and ridicules, but it lacks any intention to offer a blueprint for social change.

Bibliography

Chick, Edson M. Dances of Death: Wedekind, Brecht, Dürrenmatt, and the Satiric Tradition. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1984. Chick examines the use of satire in the works of Sternheim, Frank Wedekind, Bertolt Brecht, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Bibliography and index.

Dedner, Burghard. Carl Sternheim. Boston: Twayne, 1982. A basic biography of Sternheim and critical analyses of his works. Bibliography and index.

Sturges, Dugald S. The German Molière Revival and the Comedies of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Carl Sternheim. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. Sturges examines the influence of Molière on the plays of Sternheim and von Hofmannsthal. Bibliography and index.

William, Rhys W. Carl Sternheim: A Critical Study. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 1982. William provides an analysis of Sternheim’s life and his works. Bibliography.