Ever since I heard and saw Agnes Sorma in Liebele, I have admired the
dramatic writings of Arthur Schnitzler, and, remember, that charming,
withal sad, little play was written in 1895. I haven't seen all his
works, but I have read many. The latest adapted into English for the
American stage is the Anatol one-act cyclus (1893), and his new play I
witnessed at the Kleines Theatre, Berlin. It bears the singularly
unpromising title Professor Bernhardi, and is a five-act comedy. Its
performance was interdicted in Vienna. The reason given by the
Austrian authorities seems a simple one, though it is specious: for
fear of stirring up religious animosities Professor Bernhardi was
placed on the black books of the censor. The Jewish question, it
appears, is still a live one in Austria, and this new play of
Schnitzler's, himself of Semitic descent, is the very frank discussion
of a certain incident which occurred in Vienna in which a Roman
Catholic clergyman and a Jewish doctor were embroiled. The dramatist
is fair, he holds the scales evenly. At the end of the piece both
priest and surgeon stand alike in your regard. That the incident
hardly suggests dramatic treatment is beside the mark; Schnitzler,
with his invariable deftness of touch, has painted a dozen vital
portraits; the priest is superb, the character values of exquisite
balance. The hero, if hero he be, Professor Bernhardi, is carved out
of a single block and the minor personalities are each and every one
salient. I can't altogether believe in the thesis. Any one who has
lived in Vienna must know that, except in certain restricted circles,
there is no Judenhetz, no social ostracism for Hebrews. At the
eleven-o'clock high mass in St. Stefan's Cathedral, the numbers of
Oriental faces that one sees would be surprising if we did not hear of
so many conversions. It is considered rather fashionable in Vienna to
join the Christian fold. And on the score of business certainly the
Austrian Hebrews have little to complain of, as they are said to be
the leading factors in commerce. However, Henry James has warned us
not to question too closely the theme of an artist; that is his own
affair; his treatment should concern us. Has Schnitzler succeeded in
making a play of heterogeneous material? I don't think he has
altogether, yet I enjoyed several acts and enjoyed still more the
reading of it in book form.
Professor Bernhardi is the professor of a medical institute in Vienna
known as the Elizabethinum. A patient, a young woman, is dying in one
of the wards, the victim of malpractice. But her passing away will be
painless. She is happy because she believes that she is on the road to
recovery, that she will live to marry her beloved young man. Euphoria,
the doctor calls her condition. To tell her the truth would be in his
eyes criminal. She would die in anguish. Why not let her go out of the
world in bliss? But a female nurse, a conscientious Roman Catholic,
thinks differently. With the aid of a budding student she sends for
Father Franz Reder in the near-by Church of the Holy Florian. The
priest obeys the summons, anxious to shrive a sinning soul, and to
send her out of the world if not to Paradise, at least to Purgatory.
In the office he encounters Professor Bernhardi, who tells him
politely but firmly that he won't allow his patient to be disturbed.
The priest, without excitement but painfully impressed, argues that,
even if there are a few moments of sorrow, the saving of the girl's
immortal soul is of paramount importance. The physician shrugs his
shoulders. His business is with the body, not the soul, and he
continues to bar the way. The priest makes one last appeal, uselessly;
but, unperceived, the nurse has slipped out, and going to the bedside
of the dying woman announces the advent of the holy man. The patient
screams in agony: "I am dying!" and she does die, from fright.
Bernhardi is enraged, though he never loses his air of sardonic
politeness. The act ends. The result of the incident, magnified by a
partisan press, is serious. A great lady, an archduchess, refuses to
head the list of the Elizabethinum annual charity ball. She also snubs
the wife of an aristocratic doctor. The politicians make fuel for
their furnace, and presently the institution finds itself facing a
grave deficit, perhaps ruin, for the minister of instruction does not
favour further subventions, though he is a school friend of Bernhardi;
worse follows, the board of directors is split, some of its Jewish
members going so far as to say that Bernhardi should not have refused
the consolations of religion to the dying. Wasn't the Elizabethinum
Roman Catholic, after all?
There can be no doubt that the reason Arthur Schnitzler enjoyed
handling the difficulties of such a theme is because his father was a
well-known laryngologist of the University of Vienna, and he himself
studied medicine and was an assistant doctor from 1886 to 1888 in the
principal hospital of Vienna. With his father he helped to write a
book entitled: The Clinical Atlas of Laryngology (1895). Hence his
opportunity of studying the various types of Viennese professors in a
little world must have been excellent. The veracity of his characters
seems unimpeachable. There are all kinds of Jews--in Europe there is
no such false sensitiveness if a Jewish type is portrayed on the
boards, so long as it is not offensive; for example, there is the Jew
who believes himself the victim of anti-Semitism, and, while the
dramatist makes him "sympathetic," nevertheless he is funny with his
mania of persecution. Then there is Doctor Goldberg, the lawyer, the
counsel for Professor Bernhardi, in the prosecution case for insulting
religion. He sends his boy to a Catholic college, his wife has
Christian friends, and in his zeal not to seem friendly to Bernhardi,
he loses the case. There are several others, all carefully sketched
and with a certain wit that proves Schnitzler is as fair to his
coreligionists as to the Gentiles. Let me hasten to add that there is
nothing that would cause offence to either race throughout the piece.
Its banning in Austria is therefore a mystery to me, as it must have
been to the author.
What is more serious is the absence of marked dramatic movement in the
play. It reads much like a short story made long in its dramatic garb.
Fancy a play all men, chiefly bewhiskered; one woman in Act I, and
only for ten minutes; fairly long-winded arguments for and against the
ethics of the case. Not for more than one act would this capitally
written work be tolerated on the English or American stage. Until Act
IV there is hardly one genuine dramatic episode, though Bernhardi at a
directors' meeting is forced to resign and is eventually sent to
prison for two months. But in the penultimate act the priest calls on
him, and for fifteen minutes the situation is strong and splendidly
conceived. The conscience of the ecclesiastic brings him to Bernhardi,
not to confess, but to explain.
At the trial he positively insisted that he did not believe Bernhardi
had wished to insult religion, but that he followed the dictates of
his conscience; he believed that he was doing his duty in sparing the
girl the pain of discovery. But this statement was of no avail, for
the nurse swore that the professor had employed physical violence to
prevent the priest from entering the hospital ward. Later she
confesses her perjury. Bernhardi is pardoned, is convoyed home in
triumph by enthusiastic medical students, but is so disgusted by the
perfidy of some of his friends and associates that he returns to his
private practice. His argument with the priest throws light on his
obstinate character; in reality neither man retreats a jot from his
original position. I must add that the priest, because of his honest
attitude, although pressure had been put upon him, was relieved of his
duties at St. Florian's and sent to a little village on the Polish
border. He had displeased the powers that be. Again I must admire this
portrait of a sincere man, obsessed by his sense of duty, a fanatic,
if you will, but upheld by his supreme faith.
The acting throughout was artistic, Professor Bernhardi impersonated
by Bruno Decarli, and Father Reder by Alfred Abel, the latter a subtle
characterisation. The "team play" of the Kleines Theatre company was
seen at its best in the third act, where the directors hold a stormy
meeting. It was the perfection of ensemble work. The creator of Das
Suesse Maedel type of Vienna has painted a large canvas and revealed a
grip on the essentials of characterisation. To Ibsen's An Enemy of the
People he is evidently under certain obligations; Professor Bernhardi
is a variation of Doctor Stockmann, plus not a little irony and
self-complacency. But the thesis of Ibsen is less academic, sounder,
of more universal interest than Schnitzler's. There is no metaphysical
hair-splitting in An Enemy of the People, nor sentimental talk about
euphoria and going happily to death. Grim old Daddy Ibsen told us
that people were being poisoned by impure spring water, and, as Alan
Dale said, was the first man to write a drama around a drain-pipe.
Arthur Schnitzler, shedding for the nonce his accustomed Viennese
charm and nonchalance, has written a comedy about a very grave
subject, and has not uttered a single word that can be construed as
disrespectful to either religion, Jewish or Roman Catholic. He is a
genre painter almost to the point of perfection.