`Woeful taste`: German-language theatre in need of censorship

‘Woeful taste’:
German-language
theatre in need of
censorship
The upper classes dismissed the German-language
theatre as insufficiently genteel – the burlesque
elements based partly on improvisation and the coarse
jokes appealed mainly to less well-educated audiences.
Nevertheless, the conviction is not so common that
obscene jokes and antic farces still have so many
and such powerful adherents who prefer the
convulsion of their lungs to the education of the
nation and by stealthy means make all endeavours to
smother the first burgeonings of good taste. […] Are
there not more sections of the lower class of citizen
which the state is obliged to provide with recreation
after a day of arduous labour? Would it be a matter
of indifference to send this part of the citizenry
either to a mountebank’s show, where they must
perforce listen with disgust to the follies of a buffoon
and his bawdy sallies, or to provide a civilized
entertainment where their minds may be cheered
without their decency being put to the blush? The
man of the middling class needs this to an even
greater degree than the nobility, that the State
should seek to provide him with
decent entertainment.
Joseph von Sonnenfels (1732–1817) 1770 to Joseph II
Theatre censorship, which had hitherto been limited
merely to improprieties against religion and state
and gross violations of morality, was then extended
to include nonsense, and at the same time it was
stipulated that a censor was always to be present at
performances who would have the power instantly to
inflict a penalty in the case of any offences arising
from extemporisations.
Theaterkalender von Wien für das Jahr 1772
Keen reformist critics such as Joseph von Sonnenfels
complained about the ‘woeful taste’ of the Viennese. They
criticized the fact that there was more ‘Hanswurst’ clowning on
Viennese stages than in any other city of the Holy Roman
Empire of the German Nation. For this they squarely blamed
the government, who saw the purpose of the theatres as being
not in education but in ‘entertainment’. Or in ‘keeping the
people from those private conventiculis or gatherings which
frequently lead to dangerous notions’, as it was phrased in an
official document dating from 1741.
In his fictive Briefe über die wienerische Schaubühne (Letters
on the Viennese Stage) Sonnenfels urges the establishment of
‘purified theatre’ in the spirit of the Enlightenment, based on
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767–
1769): a play should have a regular structure, a logical plot,
proper, rational subject-matter and be written and performed in
standard German. He particularly condemned extemporization
and the improvised texts spoken in the ‘Hanswurst comedies’
which were coloured by vernacular forms of German and
mocked those in authority.
Influenced by Church advisors in matters concerning the
theatre, Maria Theresa placed fundamental strictures on the
plays that were performed: religion and morality should not to
be violated and Enlightenment ideas should not to result in
atheism and free thought. She thus ordered the setting up of a
committee on book censorship in 1749, and in 1770 a special
office for theatre censorship.
The purification of the language was intended to serve the
education of the nation, with drama epitomizing an ideal rather
than holding up a satirical mirror to the present.
Author
Julia Teresa Friehs
Literature
Hadamowsky, Franz: “Spectacle müssen sein.” Maria Theresia und
das Theater, in: Koschatzky, Walter (Hrsg.): Maria Theresia und
ihre Zeit. Eine Darstellung der Epoche von 1740–1780 aus Anlass
der 200. Wiederkehr des Todestages der Kaiserin, 2. Aufl.
Salzburg/Wien 1979, 387–392;
Maria Theresia und ihre Zeit, Katalog zur gleichnamigen
Ausstellung, Wien, Schloss Schönbrunn, 13.5.–26.10.1980, 370–
395;
Prawy, Marcel: Die Wiener Oper. Geschichte und Geschichten, Wien
1969, 25–39;
Schrögendorf, Konrad/Weys, Rudolf (Hrsg.): Burgtheater. Eine
Chronik in Bildern. Ein Führer durch Haus und Geschichte, Wien
1985;
Vocelka, Karl: Glanz und Untergang der höfischen Welt.
Repräsentation, Reform und Reaktion im habsburgischen
Vielvölkerstaat, Wien 2004 (Österreichische Geschichte 1699–
1815), 399–408;
Vocelka, Karl/Heller, Lynne: Die Lebenswelt der Habsburger. Kulturund Mentalitätsgeschichte einer Familie, Wien 1997, 52–66;