Abstract

Theatre in Germany: I, 1956, June, 23

The author says that as he remembers Berlin, Germany, which he first visited in 1922, it was a stuffily comfortable city which gave evidence of a fulsomely prosperous, unmistakably middle-class past. One thing has not changed, the theatre now, as in the twenties, is of the best. There were more ambitious and practiced playwrights then, in fact the German expressionists of those days were auguries, some people believed, of a new and exalted drama-and there were innumerable actors of high rank. Today there are few new playwrights worth special mention, and most of the famous actors whose names were the pride of the European stage have disappeared through natural causes and some through causes which were not at all natural.