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Theatre Survey 39:2 (November 1998)

Lynn Dierks

ARNOLT BRONNEN'S VATERMORD AND THE GERMAN

YOUTH OF 1922
As scholars investigating historical audiences, we are always searching for
that magic moment when the theatre critic shifts in his seat, notices the people
around him and finds them interesting enough to write down his observations.
When such a moment occurs, we are given the rare opportunity to witness a
spectatorial presence and spectatorial response not usually represented by
theatre reviews. One such magic moment occurred on April 22, 1922, in
Frankfurt, Germany at the premiere of Arnolt Bronnen's play Vatermord
(Patricide). Carl Zuckmayer, a fellow playwright, drew his eyes away from the
expressionist play before him and lifted them to the gallery. He recorded his
experience in his review for Die Nene Schaubiihne: "I saw fifteen-year-olds
who foamed in such enthusiasm that one had to fear for their fathers. And I
saw fourteen-, fifteen-, eighteen-year-olds who hissed furiously, whistled and
fumed in moral indignation." Suddenly we are presented with a puzzle to be
solved. Who were these gallery youths? To what in particular in the
performance were they responding? Did they love the play or hate it? Were
there two different responses? Why were their responses so passionate,
especially compared to the tepid response of the reviewer?
In order to answer these questions, we must recover a spectatorial position
for which little documentation exists. This seems always to be the case when
one is investigating responses other than the critics', such as those of women,
the working-class, or youth. Yet such alternative spectatorship often provides
new insights into established theatre history narrativesin this case, the narrative of theatrical expressionism's decline in the mid-1920s. When exploring
an alternative spectatorial position, we must look beyond traditional theatre
reviews. We could try to unearth the few primary sources that might provide
the position: diaries or letters in which spectators record their reactions to a
play. Although it provides us with the proof of attendance that allows further
exploration, this kind of research seems to have much potential for failure. If
we are to postulate a spectatorial position for a broadly defined group such as
"youth," we will need more 'information than a single diary entry can provide.

Lynn Dierks is a candidate for the interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and

Drama at Northwestern University, working on her dissertation, "Alternative
Spectatorship in German Theatrical Expressionism."

Theatre Survey
So it is to socio-cultural history we turn, seeking in historical analysis a picture
of a social group from which we can construct a spectatorial position. Once
this is done we can return to the text and performance to examine them for
moments or images of particular importance for that position.
First we must attempt to be more specific about the gallery youths. Were
they male or female? To what economic class did they belong? Were they
regular theatregoers? Surveys of Berlin teenagers from 1930 help us to answer
the first of these questions.2 The surveys examined how and where young
people were likely to spend their free time. When it came to time spent with
the family, of 2,000 youths only 27% of boys and 4% of girls said they went to
the theatre with their family. However, boys were much more likely to spend
their time outside the home with friends instead of parents. Of 5,000 youths
fourteen to seventeen years-old, 20% of boys went out with their parents and
58% with male friends. Girls were much more likely to be out with their
parents (47%). Statistically, then, it seems more likely that the gallery youths
were unchaperoned males. Less objective reasoning gives us more confidence
in this supposition. When we take into account the title and subject matter of
the play it seems even more unlikely that parents or girls were present in the
gallery. A play about patricide does not seem the ideal choice for an
entertaining family outing.
As to the economic class of the gallery youths, the 1930 surveys are even
clearer. Of 5,000 youths, 77% of the so-called "higher students" had spent
some of their free time at the theatre, compared to 20% of bakery or butcher
apprentices, 18% of wood, metal, and brickwork apprentices, and 22% of
unskilled workers. "Higher students" in this case refers to those who were
attending secondary schools beyond the standard requirements which ended
around age 14. These students were studying for employment in the professional and academic fields and were most commonly from the middle- and
upper-classes. For working-class youths, less expensive entertainments
occupied a greater place in their free time. At an average of four marks per
ticket in Berlin, theatre performances were beyond the reach of many workers.
(Thus we have the development of Volksbuhne organizations offering special
performances at cheaper rates for working-class subscribers.) When they did
attend the theatre, workers were less likely tO be interested in or informed about
the latest theatrical trends. As Richard Bodek explains, "proletarian youths had
neither the time nor the money for avant-garde productions at the Kroll Opera,
were unlikely to have read the theatre reviews of Herbert Jhering or Alfred
Kerr, and quite probably had never heard of Walter Benjamin or Theodor
Adorno."3

Middle and upper-class students, however, did have the time and money
for such theatrical pursuits. The German bourgeoisie considered theatre part of
the process of Bildung, or social education, and students were exposed to
26

Vatermord and the German Youth of 1922

theatre through both family and school. The memoirs of Go lo Mann, son of
famed writer Thomas Mann, provide a representative example of a German
upper-middle-class student's experience with theatre. As a member of a youth
organization he performed in amateur theatricals; in his final years of
Gymnasium (secondary school) he performed in productions of classics such
as Antigone and Schiller's Wallenstein; and as a university student in Berlin he
sought out the newest trends:
To be sure, there was wonderful theater in Berlin, and I, too, savored it: the most
recent classics, Hauptmann and Shaw, and also new playwrights.
Twice we went to the Theater on Nollendorfplatz, where Erwin Piscator offered
productions touted as socialist and radically new. The audience would clap like
mad, then go off to an excellent meal on the Kurfurstendamm, if they did not
already have one in their stomachs; certainly no 'proletarians' came to Piscator's
theatre; the ticket prices were steep.5
1922 in Frankfurt, a student such as Golo Mann seeking out the latest
theatrical trend found himself watching expressionist performances. Since the
end of the war, the city's theatres had been strong supporters of expressionist
theatre, premiering many expressionist plays. Even the Frankfurt Opera
offered expressionist fare in its 1921-22 season, performing operatic
adaptations of Oskar Kokoschka's Morder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murder,
Hope of Women) and August Stramm's Sancta Susanna. Students who were
regular theatregoers would have been familiar with the scenic, lyric and acting
styles of expressionism, and may have sought out Patricide as the latest
example of the movement.

In

We arrive, then, at the supposition that the youths Zuckmayer observed in

the gallery of the Frankfurt theatre were primarily upper- or middle-class male
students. These students were part of a larger demographic group born between
the years 1900 and 1914 which Detlev Peukert in his influential work on youth
in the Weimar Republic calls the "uberflassig (superfluous) generation."6 The
definition for this generation derived from its contrast to the "front generation,"
born in the 1890s. The front generation's experience in the war served as a
commonality which the superfluous generation could not share.' The complete
demobilization required by thc Versailles Treaty meant that the superfluous
generation could not even gain peacetime military experience. Their perceived
differences from the front generation served to bind together those too young to
bc a part of it. While historians have doubts about the front generation's ability
to see itself as a group with common interests and experiences, they are more
sure that the superfluous generation gained self-awareness through their perceived exclusion from the war and the Weimar Republic.
This generation was superfluous in several ways: economically, socially,
and demographically. Economically, they entered the workforce at a time when
27

Theatre Survey

..

unemployment was rising (it would reach catastrophic levels in the mid-1920s).
They faced a saturated labor market. The entry-level positions traditionally
filled by men of their generation were already held by women who had entered
the workforce during the war and by returning soldiers. The higher students
hoping for academic positions found the educational system scaled back
because of the postwar drop in the birthrate. Although the unemployment rate
in Germany may have been relatively low in the early 1920s, the large numbers
of youth flooding the job market made the unemployment rate within their
generation alarming. Thus one of the most important steps in the transition to

adulthoodpermanent employmentwas put on hold for most members of

this generation.
Socially, the superfluous generation suffered competition from the front
generation on multiple levels. Because the war had interrupted their
integration into German society, the front generation supplanted the
superfluous generation as the newest members of the Republic. It was the
returning soldier who was considered "just starting out" in Weimar society.
Attention and resources which otherwise would have focused on youth issues
were dedicated to the war veterans. The government found them jobs, treated
their illnesses, and made provisions for their widows and children. As reward
for their military service, the Republic invited them to take an active role in
building the new nation. The superfluous generation found themselves without
support in their transition from family membership to national citizenship.
Their desires to help shape the Republic appeared to lack justification when
compared to those of the front generation. Without the opportunity to prove
their loyalty through military service, the superfluous generation seemed to
have no stake in the nation-building process.
Finally, the youth of the Republic were literally superfluous from a
demographic point of view. This generation represented one of the largest
birth:booms in German history. Particularly when compared to the dramatic
drop in young children because of the declining birthrate during the war years,
this generation appeared to be enormously populous in Weimar society. Thus
people in the Republic could worry about the coming death or "graying " of the
German population and at the same time begin the propagandistic refrain of
"Volk ohne Raum" ("people without space").8 Although Weimar society soon
became obsessed with the idea of youth, "the cult of youth was unable to
conceal the political, economic and social oppression of young people; rather it
increased the oppression," according to historian Elizabeth Domansky. Thus,
"the new youth-image stood in stark contrast to the consciousness of the
majority of young people."9 Their demographic numbers meant that youth
could not be ignored, but the Republic failed to address the problems faced by
the superfluous generation.

28

Vatermord and the German Youth of 1922

All these factors led to a clear self-awareness and self-definition on the
part of the superfluous generation. Youth rallied together as victims of a
Weimar system which was unresponsive to their needs. They joined
associations for young people in huge numbers. By 1926, of 9 million young
people, 4.3 million belonged to a youth club or organization, 1.6 million to
sports clubs, 1.2 million to church youth groups, 368,000 to workers' youth
organizations, and 51,000 to bandisch organizations.'
This last type of organization, though smallest in number, was highly
influential in articulating the desire of young people for an autonomous role in
German society. The Bfinde (literally, "groups") were descendants of the prewar Wandervogel ("ramblers ") youth movement, which had encouraged urban
youths to counteract the negative effects of industrialization with walks in the
countryside and a return to more agrarian values. The Wandervogel had
sought reforms in the treatment of youth, especially in education. Adult leaders
of the Wandervogel movement had proposed numerous ideas for replacing
Germany's rigid, authoritarian educational system with a more nurturing,
personal system. The Bfinde retained the Wandervogel ideals, but with two
important differences: they emphasized the collective over the individual and
rejected all adult authority in favor of an autonomous youth society. The
Wandervogel's spiritualism was given a more activist emphasis as the Bfinde
argued for a new youth-defined, youth-led form of society. Although the Bfinde
organizations had no desire to enter the political realm, their aim to create an
autonomous youth movement outside the Weimar system had political
ramifications. Mark Roseman summarizes the relationship between the youth
movement and Weimar politics:
[Title most consistent feature of the bourgeois youth movements' view of
themselves and their role was that it was naively unpolitical, indeed, often antipolitical and certainly anti-party. Youth was seen, and saw itself, as the
alternative to the dirty, divided material world of party politics. The shabbier
Weimar politics looked, the more the youth movement clung to the idea of
representing an alternative."

This rejection of Weimar politics did not, however, mean the rejection of
nationalism. Rather, the Bfinde developed a strong sense of duty to the state,
creating opportunities for service which the government did not provide.
Though they did not reject Germany, the superfluous generation could not
support the Weimar system which seemed to hold no future for them. They
responded by worshiping youth itself as a more pure and more vital basis for
society. Only spiritually invigorated youth would save Germany from the
shabbiness of Weimar politics.
With this information about the attitudes and experiences of the
superfluous generation and about the age, gender and class of the gallery
youths, we can return to the night of April 22, 1922. Focused on an abusive
29

Theatre Survey
relationship between an eighteen-year-old and his parents, Bronnen's Patricide
has the potential to resonate with a young audience. Walter Fessel wants to
enter the agriculture school, but his father insists he become a lawyer. When
Walter asks his father to sign an application to the school, Mr. Fessel beats
him. This scene is repeated with growing brutality throughout the play, the
application paper reappearing as a concrete symbol of the father-son conflict.
Walter's mother, Luise, stands by meekly when the beatings occur. Only
afterwards does she comfort Walter and confess her own dislike for her
husband. Mother and son are drawn together by their fear of the father, and
this bond veers towards incest as the play continues. Upon learning of the
incestuous bond between Walter and Luise, Fessel enters Walter's room with a
gun. In the ensuing struggle Walter disarms and kills his father. However,
when his mother wants to make good on their wistful plan to run away
together, Walter rejects her. Walter steps over his father's body towards an
uncertain, but free, future.
As directed by Wolfgang Hoffman-Harnisch at the Schauspielhaus
Frankfurt, Patricide was not the play printed by S. Fischer in 1920. The
director cut the script to avoid problems with potential censors, removing
scenes that were sure to offend. From a scene in which Walter's tutor attempts
to seduce and masturbate his pupil, Harnisch deleted all sexual content and
overt suggestions of homosexuality. Further, he removed any nudity and sexual
content from a scene in which Luise joins Walter in his bed and removes her
nightgown. In general, the incest theme was given only the slightest suggestion." Though the production took liberties with the text, it stayed true to
the play's expressionist style. The set, as seen in a photo from the Berlin
magazine Die Woche, displayed typical expressionist features: disproportional
walls, shadowy lighting, only hints of a realistic location. Mr. Taube, Gerda
Muller, and Hans Baumann as father, mother, and son received good notices
for performances apparently in keeping with expressionist performance norms.
The play demonstrated clear affinities with expressionism in its
generation-conflict subject matter, its use of telegraphic speech patterns, and its
strongly emotional and symbolic characterizations. And it was as part of a
larger genre of expressionist youth plays that critics viewed Bronnen's play."
Zuckmayer praised the rhythmic speech, but considered the play and the genre
as a whole as pass: "the one-sidedness of concept-or idea-plays can no longer
satisfy merely by the power of the playwright."" Others felt the play was
representing the Oedipus complex too literally." Bronnen, who attended the
premiere, hated the production:
It was the wildest expression, a disjointed rage and thrash, from which only Gerda
Also interesting was Helene Weigel as the
Muller as the Mother stood out
young Pole. It was a clear flop, which gained approval with some difficulty
through the actors and the applause of friends in the house."

30

Vatermord and the German Youth of 1922

While each critic could identify praiseworthy or derivative features of the play,
all but Herbert Jhering found the play somewhat lifeless. The critics felt that
for all its shock value, the play could not truly affect its audience. How
different were their responses from those of the gallery youths!

Clearly the gallery youths saw something in Patricide that resonated with
their own experiences and feelings. An examination of the play reveals many
moments and themes which would have brought a strong response from a
young audience member. I want to examine three issues in detail: the play's
critical representation of paternal authority, war and militarism, and repressive
educational methods.
First, it is clear that the play addresses the idea that being young is in
itself a virtue, that being young means, ostensibly, being liberated from the
past. Walter identifies himself as a youth, saying at various moments, "I am
young." The simple statement becomes a sign of Walter's strength and selfassurance. It appears as a reason for his feelings and actions; to say "because I
am young" explains everything. To be young is to have a certain set of desires.
The sentence is most powerful in the final moment of the play, when Walter
rejects his mother in favor of a new future. He says: "I've had enough of you /
I've had enough of everything / Go bury your husband you are old / but I am
young / I don't know you / I am free." Here Walter identifies himself not only
as young, but as freefree from any attachments to the old, even his mother.
To be young is to be free. For the young in the audience, Walter must have
seemed to be speaking directly to them. Repeatedly hc says he is one of them.
Against this self-defined idea of youth stood paternal authority, both
parental and governmental, the former represented in the play by Mr. Fessel.
For this man, fatherhood is not about love but about duty. Fessel repeatedly
explains that it is his duty as a father to make Walter study for thc /Mini, (the
exam required to leave secondary school), that he has sacrificed much in order
to provide Walter with the opportunity to further his education. But as Walter
points out, his father has never given him the chance to choose that opportunity
himself. Fessel's response is that the young do not know what is best for them:
"Look you don't know what you really want you only talk about it / while I
know exactly / after all I want the same as you namely the best / only I know
how to succeed and you cannot know it."I8 Here paternal authority robs youth
of their perceived right to control their own lives, a right for which thc
biindisch youth organizations fought as they freed themselves from their adult
sponsors and leaders. The superfluous generation felt their parents never could
know what was best for them. There was no common language or experience
on which to draw; therefore they could not communicate. For the older
generations, this refusal of the young to participate in the traditional system
stood as a threat to everything they had known and valued. Fessel's frustration

31

Theatre Survey

at his son's disobedience may have been understandable in the critics' eyes, but
not in the eyes of the gallery youths.
The link between parental authority and state authority was unquestioned
in German society. As Roseman notes, there was a "well-established
propensity in German culture to see challenges to patriarchal authority in the
family as somehow linked to assaults on the strength and virility of the wider
patriarchal order in state and nation. Family battles thus took on an immediate
moral and political significance."I9 Conversely, government attempts to
legislate youth behavior seemed as arbitrary and uninformed as a parent's
guidance. An emotional exchange in the play between father and son, Fessel
and Walter, encapsulates both the equation of parental with governmental
authority and the contradictory views of this authority as benevolent protector
and restricting jailer:
W:
F:
W:
F:
W:
F:
W:
F:
W:
F:
W:
F:

The fatherland is the land of the fathers

The fatherland is the land where the fathers sacrifice for their sons
And beat them
And feed them
And lock them up
And clothe them
And enslave them
And educate them
And hate them
And are worried about them
And crush them if they can
And crush them if they wish"

The word fatherland takes on a literal meaning; the identity of the nation is that
of the fathers. As the young saw it, the front generation and its predecessors
controlled the Weimar system, and through the system attempted to control the
inherent freedom of the young.
Patricide takes place against the backdrop of a war, presumably World
War I. The war appears in the play in various ways: the Fessels' oldest son,
Karl, is away at the front; the family is short of food because of rationing; they
are housing a pair of Polish refugees to make extra money; and their youngest
son, Rolf, is enamored of the military, wanting to be a general. Walter's
reaction to this situation is reflective of the superfluous generation's attitude
towards the war. His exchange with Rolf at the beginning of the play
demonstrates his rejection of the military in favor of spiritual pursuits:
R:

I will be a general / and what will you be nothing

W Do you think I will tell you

R:

Because you don't even know ha ha

32

Vatermord and the German Youth of 1922

W:

R:

W:
R:

W:

What comes after the poet when the poet and painter and composer and
sculptor are finished / that's what I will become / and I won't tell you that I
will become it
I will be a general I will be a general / when Karl comes home he must
teach me to shoot / and must tell me how it all is / then I'll get war
experience
But what if he doesn't come home
You'd like that / because he is older / I have much love for him he can fight
better than you too / my brother is in the war / my brother is in the war / and
shoots the Russians / he sits on a brown horse / and rides quick as the wind
/ and that horse has red hooves / because he is always riding over the dead
Russians / because they always win
They lay all the dead of the armies in the graves in the snow or in the earth
or in the forest or in the grass / cut to pieces and bombarded / I was all of
them and now no one knows what he should become / go to them you wind /
you hot hot wind2i

In these two different responses to the war, the naive Rolf yearns to join the
system, thinking he needs the war experience that his eldest brother is getting
at the front, while Walter understands the realities of war and strives for
something spiritual beyond even the experiences of the poet and painter.

The superfluous generation may have had a similarly split reaction to the
war. For those who were old enough to remember the homefront hardships,
war was unglamorous and its return undesired. For those born at the beginning
of the war, however, the stories of war may have held some excitement.
Indeed, the very youngest of the Weimar youth could still hold idealized visions
of the heroic soldier. In this sense, the idea of the front generation was more
appealing to the very young than to the veterans themselves.22 But for the
majority of the superfluous generation the veterans and their war stood as a
threat to the ability of the young to participate in nation-building and to evolve
towards a non-political state. As presented in the play, it is clearly Walter's
which is the correct response to war. The gallery youths would have been old
enough to remember, old enough to have seen the crippled veterans returning
home, old enough to share Walter's disgust with militarism.
That these gallery youths were most likely higher students is of great
importance to an understanding of their reaction to the issue of education in the
play. The crux of the conflict in Patricide is Walter's refusal to study for the
Abitur, the final examination to determine if one could continue on to university. For the gallery youths, most of whom would face this same challenge,
Walter's dream of becoming a fanner may not have seemed foolish. For the
superfluous generation, the academic world was becoming as unwelcoming as
the labor market. As previously mentioned, the demographic changes wrought
by the war meant that just as these students were seeking academic positions,
the educational system was cutting back. The situation was similar for

33

Theatre Survey
professional positions. The superfluous generation could not compete with the
front generation, nor could it compete with its own numbers.
Though Walter does not link his wish to become a farmer rather than a
lawyer to a stagnant employment market, the play attacks the educational
system from another angle. Both the tutor, Edmund, and Mr. Fessel provide
examples of an educational system that viewed students not as individuals to be
nurtured but as machines to be processed. Edmund can barely be called a tutor.
He appears more interested in seducing Walter than teaching him. He feeds off
Walter like a vampire, draining his pupil of the vitality of youth in an attempt
to regain his own. Mr. Fessel's attempt to help Walter study demonstrates the
traditional form of education. Opening Walter's chemistry book, Fessel has
Walter repeat after him the laws of atomic theory. When Walter pleads that he
knows what the book says, he just doesn't understand the meaning, Fessel
replies:
F:

W:
F:
W:
F:

W:
F:
W:

What meaning / one sees the meaning all the same / one must learn rules
and laws / you don't need to go to school for the meaning
But but if I don't don't understand
What don't you understand
Everything and why is it this way / and really starts the same / and I don't
know anything
Yeah, yeah, don't know anything (reading) it takes place between definite
weights of substances / is that not clear / what could be unclear about that /
is that not clear
Yes
And you understand

Yes'

In this example traditional education values rote memorization over understanding. Mr. Fessel's impatience with Walter's need to understand reflects the
youth movement's criticisms of the educational system as too rigid, too authoritarian. The play reveals education as a sham, with corrupt teachers and
meaningless diplomas.

Three of the major concerns of Patricideits representations of youth

verses paternal authority, war and militarism, and repressive educational
methodsdemonstrate the play's affinity with the concerns of the superfluous
generation. Bronnen himself had ties to the youth movement and considered
this play and his Die Geburt der Jugend (The Birth of Youth) to be his
commentary on their situation. As Bronnen later stated: "That was my
purpose: to fight for the rights of youth, for myself, for my classmates, for the
youth or the whole world."24 However, we must take into account that though
it premiered in 1922, Patricide was written in 1915. The youth of 1915 had a
different identity than the youth of 1922, as did the paternal authorities against
which they rebelled. In 1915, "youth" meant the front generation, rebelling
against Wilhelmine fathers and a conservative, imperial state. In 1922 it was
34

Vatermord and the German Youth of 1922

the superfluous generation who rebelled against Weimar fathers and a
progressive, democratic state. While the actual desires of each young
generation may not have been very differentfreedom, participation, selfdeterminationthe political ramifications of their rebellions were distinct. The
youthful rebellion of the front generation resulted indirectly in the founding of
the Weimar Republic and its progressive, liberal politics. When the rebellion
of the superfluous generation came to fruition, however, the result was the
triumph of fascism.
We must keep this in mind when we evaluate Arnolt Bronnen and the
place of his plays in the expressionist theatre canon. There has been a tendency
to see Bronnen (because of his later association with the Nazi party) and his
plays as having inherent fascist inclinations. Examining the response of the
gallery youths and linking it to the time-specific situation of the superfluous
generation, this fascist evaluation now seems too simplistic. In different
contexts, for different audiences, the play would have different meanings. The
response Patricide might have received from a youth audience had it been
performed in 1915 might have been identical to the response of the gallery
youths, but not for identical reasons and not with identical results.

The response which Zuckmayer described in 1922 Frankfurtfifteenyear-olds foaming in enthusiasmfourteen-, fifteen-, eighteen-year-olds
hissing, whistling and fuming in moral indignationbegins to make sense in
light of the socio-cultural history of youth during this period. It would not have
been the expressionist theatrical style which provided the shock value for these
youths in one the foremost cities for expressionist theatre. Rather, it was the
subject matter of the play that caused such emotional tumult. The enthusiastic,
patricidal fifteen-year-olds were most likely reacting to the active role Walter
Fessel played in shaping his own destiny. Young men facing a society which
gave them no role in nation-building, which offered them no economic future,
which treated them with strict authority may have carried in them the desire to
destroy both thcir literal and figurative fathers. Zuckmayer, himself a member
of the front generation (born in 1896), had good reason to fear for the boys'
fathers and, perhaps, for himself. The play presented his generation as violent,
perverted monsters bent on ruining the hopes and dreams of thcir sons.
Walter's actions seemed the only choice when faced with such monsters.
But what do we make of the morally indignant youths? In his review,
Zuckmaycr seems to present two opposing reactions: positive enthusiasm from
the fifteen-year-olds, negative indignation from the rest. Is it possible that boys
of roughly the same age could be in complete disagreement about the play?
One could attempt to argue that because of the more conservative, nationalistic
tendencies of thc bilndisch youth organizations, the gallery youths were morally
outraged by the suggestion that military service is undesirable or that murder is
justifiable. This explanation might work if the responses were reversed, the
35

Theatre Survey
younger boys morally outraged and the older enthusiastic. Were this the case,
.
the explanation would fit nicely with historical narratives about the rise of
National Socialism and its manipulation of nationalistic, conservative youths.
But it is not the case. Instead, it seems more likely that the youths' moral
indignation came not from the shock of incest or murder (especially considering the cuts made for the performance), but from the shock of recognizing
their current frustrated desires for social and economic involvement. Their
demonstrations of anger may not have been directed at the play, but at the
world it presented.
The two responses in the gallery, which from Zuckmayer's position on the
main floor looked quite different, have the same basis. Walter's experience in
Patricide echoed the limitations and injustices of the gallery youths' own
experiences: controlling fathers, rigid schooling, confused sexual feelings,
blocked paths. The play revealed the injustice of their treatment at the hands of
a society in which they were superfluous. The responses of the gallery youths
did not represent different interpretations of the play, but different expressions
of the anger and frustration which the play's themes released. Perhaps some
boys naively thought rushing home and killing their fathers would solve the
problem. Others may have realized the futility of Walter's actions and
furiously hissed and whistled their displeasure with the situation in which they
found themselves. Both responses acknowledged that Bronnen's play had
effectively represented their own desires and frustrations. Further evidence that
the superfluous generation found the play reflective of their experiences is
found in Bronnen's memoir, where he notes that the second production of the
play was not the Berlin premiere one month later, but an amateur student
production at the arts high school in Hamburg. Though we have no evidence of
response for that production, the riot that occurred at the Berlin premiere
indicates that the play continued to inspire an emotional response from the
gallery not found in the rows of critics on the main floor.25

This investigation of the youth response to Bronnen's Patricide provides a

potential new development in the narrative of expressionism's decline. In their
rejection of expressionism in the mid-1920s, critics and playwrights may have
been reacting (consciously or unconsciously) to the response of the gallery
youths. Their own responses to Patricide were mixtures of boredom and unease. For them, the rebellion of youth had come and gone. The front generation was now integrated into Weimar society, a society and a state which
they had helped create. For Zuckmayer and other playwrights of his
generation, the emotional intensity of expressionism no longer expressed their
current desires and feelings. By the mid-1920s, the only Ones responding to
expressionism's violent emotionalism were the youngand their response did
not bode well for the faltering Republic. Bronnen himself recognized the
dangerous potential of this response only in retrospect, writing in 1954:

36

Vatermord and the German Youth of 1922

Then the "Patricide" of 1913 was different from the "Patricide" of 1922, because
the father had become different in between. Seen socially, your patricide of 1913
was a really revolutionary act, despite quite a few eccentric appendages, because
the murder of the father in 1913 had killed the powers which had pushed, or were
pushed, towards the First World War. Yet the murder of the father in 1922 was a
murder of progressive powers, and the minute corrections which you had begun on
your work in between could only strengthen this meaning.... Then the powers
freed by your "Patricide" were partly anarchic, partly fascist powers.26

The front generation expressionist playwrights turned to new, less emotional

forms to express their criticisms of society, such as Brecht's epic theatre,
Toiler's social realism, and Zuckmayer's own turn to comedy. Perhaps the
intense response Zuckmayer witnessed at Patricide, and the riots and scandals
that seemed to mar every new expressionist production after it, warned
Zuckmayer that expressionist playwriting could have dangerous, unintended
results. In 1925 Zuckmayer's Der frohliche Weinberg (The Happy Vineyard)
hid its social criticisms in laughter and became one of the most popular plays of
the Weimar era.27 Its success marked the end of expressionism in the Weimar
era.
ENDNOTES

1. Carl Zuckmayer, "UrauffUhrung in Frankfurt: V atermord,"Die Neue Schaubfihne 4 (1922):

151. Where the cited text is in German, all translations are my own.
2. The survey data is presented in Detlev Peukert, Jugend zwischen Krieg und Krise:
Lebenswelten von Arbeiterjungend in der Weimarer Republik (Kean: Bund-Verlag, 1987), 202-209.
3. Richard Bodek, "The Not-So Golden Twenties: Everyday Life and Communist Agitprop in

Weimar-Era Berlin,"Journal of Social History 30,1 (1996): 55.

4. Golo Mann, Reminiscences and Reflections: A Youth in Germany, trans. Krishna Winston
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 146.
5. Ibid., 137.

6. Detlev Peukert, "Alltagsleben und Generationserfahrung von Jugendlichen in der

Zwischenkriegszeit" in Jugendprotest und Generationenkonflikt in Europa im 20. Jahrhundert:
Deutschland, England, Frankreich und Ballet, im Vergleich, ed. Dieter Dowe (Bonn: Verlag Neue
Gesellschaft, 1986), 139-150. See also Peukert's Jugend zwischen Krieg und Krise and The Weimar
Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, trans. Richard Deveson (New York: Hill and Wang.
1989).
7. Of course, historians have pointed out the falsity of the notion of the "front generation" as
indicating veterans who had experienced the horrors of trench warfare. As it entered into cultural
significance, this concept came to include all those who were of the appropriate age but had not
experienced life at the front. This raises many questions about the difference of women's or non-military
construction of
men's experiences of the war and their perceived inclusion in or exclusion from the social
the front generation.
8. Peukert, "Alltagsleben und Generationserfahrung," 146.
9. Elizabeth Domansky, "Politische Dimensionen von Jugendprotest und Generationenkonflikt in
der Zwischenkriegzeit in Deutschland," in Jugendprotest und Generationenkonflikt in Europa int 20.

Jahrhundert: Deutschland, England, Frankreich und !when im Vergleich, ed. Dieter Dowe (Bonn:
Verlag New Gesellschaft, 1986), 133.
10. Peukert, The Weimar Republic, 90-91.
11. Mark Roseman, Introduction to Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation
Formation in Germany 1770-1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 27.
12. Glen Gadberry, A molt Bronnen and the Revolt of Youth: A Critical Analysis of Selected

Works (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1975), 152.

13. Other plays which would fit into this sub-genre are Reinhard Sorge's Der Bettler and Walter
Ilasenclever's Der Sohn.

37

Theatre Survey

14. Zuckmayer, 150.

15. See Julius Bab, "Die Gewaltsamen,"Deutschlands Dramatise*, Production 1919-1926,
vol. 5 of Die Chronik des Deutschen Dramas (Berlin: Oesterheld & Co., 1926), 181-190, and C. F.
Wirtschaft, Politik und Kunst 4 (1922):
W. Behl, "Theatre: Vatermord," Der Kritiker: Zeitschrift

8-10.
16. Amolt Bronnen, arnolt bronnen gibt zu protokoll (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1954), 100.
Bronnen's comments about the actors, written in the 1950s, cannot necessarily be taken as a true
reflection of the quality of the performances. Bronnen moved in with Gerda Muller several months after
the production, and the presence of Helene Weigel might only be noteworthy because of her later
accomplishments.
17. Amolt Bronnen, Vatermord, (1920, reprint in the series Bibliothek des Expressionismus.
Berlin: Kraus Reprint, 1973), 80. I have reproduced the punctuation of the play in my translations.
Except for slashes and dashes, there are no punctuation marks in the play's dialogue.
18. Ibid., 30.
19. Roseman, 23.
20. Bronnen, Vatermord, 66-67.
21. Ibid., 11-12.
22. Richard Bessel, "The 'Front Generation' and the Politics of Weimar Germany," in
Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany 1770-1968, ed. Mark
Roseman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 133. Bessel notes that in the Freikorps and
S. A., groups which relied on the image of the heroic soldier, recruitment was better among the younger
generation.
23. Bronnen, Vatermord, 38.
24. Bronnen quoted in Klaus Siebenhauer, Klange aus Utopia: Zeitkritik, Wandlung und
Utopie im expressionistischen Drama (Berlin: Agora Verlag, 1982), 41.
25. There is evidence of a split in the audience at the Berlin premiere, as Herbert Jhering noted in
his review: "From the performance went out such a sphere of power that the public behaved itself
exemplarily during the performance and the whistling at the end was put down by hurricane-force
applause." "Vatermord: lunge Mime im Deutschen Theatre," Von Reinhard bis Brecht: Vier
Jahrzehnte Theatre und Film, (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1958), 2:258. This exemplary behavior lasted
until the audience reached the lobby, where fistfights broke out.
26. Bronnen, gibt zu protokoll, 103-104.
27. William Grange, Comedy in the Weimar Republic: A Chronicle of Incongruous Laughter
(Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996), 19-20.

38