I Encounter with Genius, Detlef Sierck

Being a wanderer between many poetic worlds, a theatre producer occasionally encounters the world of genius. And such an occasion is the great compensation for his restless mission, which forever condemns him to circle an alien identity, for it means that he, too, can commune with greatness. Although a poetic work of minor stature gives the interpreter an opportunity to express his personality in a way which reveals more decisively and energetically his own part in the second creation, the encounter with genius is nonetheless the one adventure not to be forgotten.

I shall never forget; above all else, those intoxicating weeks, when I was allowed to put on Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, even if in the event it became only a sketch, a bare outline of what I actually felt. This world of political gamblers, puffed-up Caesars, soldiers, sailors, gypsies — and the incomparable woman herself! Each of them driven by their lust for power, their sensuality, their political fever — a world of terrifyingly palpable flesh, which finally spiritualises itself in the death of the couple, most voluptuous of them all.

A world! — Never in a play have I felt so strongly, beside the spiritual plane, the existence of the geographical sphere. One senses the globe, the earth, and one looks from Europe to Asia, and further into the depths of Africa, until in the end the pyramids receive this world of passion and power. However, I do not want to talk of Shakespeare here, about whom I could never say enough, but about another genius, whom I had the good fortune to encounter very early, and again most recently in my career.

I hated Friedrich Schiller — and I loved him. The realism of my youth rebelled against his idealistic world, with its magic fires, and its characters motivated not psychologically, but by metaphysics. As a seventeen-year- old grammar schoolboy I staged Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) among friends, 'but not without first subjecting Schiller's prose to some extensive reworking, which in our opinion would replace his pedantic style by a little more life-likeness and updated relevance. A wall-paper covered with gilded baroque ornaments in a large ' salon' was the background to our efforts to improve Schiller, an attempt which met with only partial approval by the guests at my parents' house. Nevertheless, a first contact, a recreative acquaintance was made with this genius, whose charm was not lost on me. Despite the youthfully ironic arrogance in the face of Schiller's hateful polarity, the overbearing schoolboy was overwhelmed, and before he knew what had happened, he was baptised by his fire.

When I came to put on Die Räuber for the first time, I succumbed to Schiller with such a frightening immediacy that the pull between the creative vision of the producer, and the excited abandon to the poet's word and image was never wholly reconciled. The spiritual and political energy of this playwright, the mystic-cool flame burning in his heart all of a sudden overwhelmed too abruptly and too deeply the aversion I still believed was in me. I, living in the present completely surrendered to the greatness of the past. As a result, something very beautiful, but also very distant, came into Schiller's sombre, musical dissonances, his romantic baroque, the giant dimensions of his diction. During this time, I learnt most decisively that the recreating artist must touch his model only as material upon which to work, and that the essential thing is not only to feel one's way into the spirit of a work of the past, but rather to embrace it with one's own personality, and to give it a new place in the heart of the present. The important point is not to be dead with the dead, but to set. their imperishable life and their immortal spirit free from the husk of the past, and to bring them to life once more among living human beings. Only this is fidelity towards the work, respect towards the. creative personality — something that in turn only a personality can accomplish.

I have later experienced this liberating fulfilment of one's own artistic self during my work on Maria Stuart, where I was able to flesh out the idealist political atmosphere of the play with a clear-cut, translucent realism, and succeeded in making these lords and lovers who surround two great political women appear as truly human and actual, beneath the arch of Schiller's ideas. And finally, I have experienced it now, in weeks of deeply gratifying work on Don Carlos.

(from the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, November 30, 1929. Translated by Thomas Elsaesser.)

II Detlef Sierck: An Obituary, Gerhard Hellmers (in: Bremer Nachrichten, 11th January 1930

This obituary is dedicated not to one who is dead or has passed away, but to someone who is particularly alive, possessed as he is by the life and the art of the stage. Detlef Sierck, until recently chief producer at the Bremen Schauspielhaus, has left Bremen in order to take over the municipal theatre at Leipzig as its absolute dictator (art being always autocratic). Not so long ago we wrote about his first important new production at Leipzig, Schiller's Don Carlos. Already the choice of this play, replete with historical, passionately humanitarian and revolutionary political ideas, particularly difficult because presenting the audience with two successive heroes, shows the undaunted, self-confident determination of the producer. Sierck overcame the historical distance of the material by steeping it, in his customary way, deeply in our present times, once again driven forward by the impetuous breath and rhythm of life in ferment. He toned down the ambiguity of the action, which changes its hero in mid-course, by placing the spokesman of enlightened liberalism, the Marquis of Posa at the centre of events right from the beginning, thus letting the revolutionary ethic emerge in a powerful dramatic final chord out of the artistic and technical unity of the production. With this play, Sierck gave evidence to the Leipzig public of the same high standards as a producer which we had so often the occasion to observe in Bremen.

The intellectual basis of his talent is above all to be found in Sierck's creative imagination, which guides him blindfold and yet securely through the labyrinth of intention and sentiment even in a work of art outside our tradition, straight to the central nerve of the artist's intention. With this recreative imagination, he can 'integrate unfamiliar worlds of feeling, as well as historical distance into our present experience. At the same time, and this is Sierck's greatest accomplishment, he is able to situate a modern play in the wider perspective of more permanent aesthetic values. He is familiar with the dramatic tradition, possesses a sense of responsibility, not derived from laborious study, but from an inborn feeling for form and artistic tact. In his memorable production of Schiller's Die Räuber (The Robbers) the fire of our own revolutionary youth was burning brightly, and by contrast, in Arnolt Bronnen's raucous and braiding Rheinische Rebellen (Rhineland Rebels), through all the excessive and confused noise, one could still sense the breath of Schiller's revolutionary yearning. Such artistic far-sightedness makes one conscious of the universality of Sierck's talent which protects him from the fanatical one-sidedness of someone like Erwin Piscator, who mercilessly compresses every historical past into the procrustian bed of his political-communist Utopia, and for whom present-day drama only exists as political propaganda.

This superiority Sierck owes to his firm grasp of a thoroughly universal and humanist education, acquired at grammar school and university. There his imagination, by nature inclined to dissipate itself, was tamed and directed towards shaping itself into the form and substance of reality. This is amply proven by his productions of modern plays. One recalls the razor-sharp precision of his dramatic sense in Georg Kaisers soul-operation called Oktobertag (The Phantom Lover), or the clear French dialectic in Jules Romain's Dictator, and then again, the dramatic strands, always kept visible amidst the twilight of a colourful mysticism in Strindberg's Dreamplay, or the instinctual, and yet shiningly protestant St Joan by Shaw, to name only a few. Sierck's apogee in Bremen was his artistic collaboration with the exceptionally gifted actress of dramatically demanding parts, Doramarie Herwelly. What might have seemed over-exuberant in Sierck's creative urge vibrant with full-blooded passion, was moderated and tempered by this actress and her clear spiritual air into exactly the right degree of transparency and fluidity. I am thinking in particular of her parts in Hebbel's plays — Mariamne, Judith and Rhodope; furthermore, there were the Shakespearean comedy roles, Kleist’s Penthesilea, Goethe's Iphigenie and Sophocles' Antigone.

The strongest, though in my opinion not altogether most successful sign of Sierck's determination to transpose classical plays into our modern, hysterical present, was his production of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. By means of a modern, psychoanalytical interpretation, the old tragedy of fate became the tragedy of a monomaniac blinded by his sexual urges, who succumbs to his Freudian complexes. Here the obsession of the producer with his own times and modern life in general loosened the mystic-mythical basis of the original, and as it did in Hofmannsthal's Elektraversion, ended by fragmenting the monumental form. Yet this was to remain the only case in which the historical roots of a work suffered from Sierck's commitment to the present. This commitment manifested itself most successfully in the witty and sparkling dialogue of modern plays, and in the entertainment pieces of today, which are of course important for any financially viable theatre. To demonstrate the versatility of his dramatic work, one need only draw attention to his interpretations of playwrights like Grabbe (Napoleon, oder Die Hundert Tage — Napoleon, or The Hundred Days), Kleist (Hermannsschlacht — The Battle of Arminius), Ibsen (John Gabriel Borkman), Shaw, W. Goetz and Angermaier. And to complete the picture, one might mention the short-lived entertainment provided by plays like those of Edgar Wallace, Maugham, Molnar, etc., in which Sierck was supported by the overflowing talent of a born actress like Hilde Jary.

This, then, in a few lines, sketches the six years of creative work at the Schauspielhaus of a distinguished German theatre producer and director. Undoubtedly Bremen theatrical life has suffered a great loss. But it is also true that no one is irreplaceable, and that only a rolling stone gathers no moss. On the stage, an occasional blood-transfusion is particularly necessary. Sierck, too, must and will be replaced. His own development will predictably lead him far. That he may continue to serve German art, threatened as it is by internationalism, is surely his own wish as much as it is ours.

(from Bremer Nachrichten January 11, 1930. Translated by Thomas Elsaesser.)

III Letter from Sierck to the Bavarian radio, June 20, 1969.

' Briefly, as far as my memory still holds about this time, which I have always tried hard to forget:

Immediately after Hitler's seizure of power, a bitter struggle broke out in my theatre in Leipzig about the artistic autonomy of the theatre in general. In spite of many warnings, both from the Nazis and from the municipal council, I was determined not to scrap the opening performance of the Die Silbersee (The Silver Lake) *by Georg Kaiser, with music by Kurt Weill, which I had planned for a long time, and which was about to go into rehearsal. Even today one can imagine in what an increasingly nervous atmosphere the rehearsals took place. More than half the members of my ensemble were running round with the swastika in their button-hole — and this just from one day to the next.

*But the real, essential content of the play continued to appeal to the actors, who still remained loyal to me. And so the day of the premiere came nearer. An enormous contingent of reporters, both from Berlin and from abroad turned up. Kaiser and Weill, who had been present at the last rehearsal, could not hide their nervousness. And Weill, so far as I can remember, was already preoccupied with leaving Germany very soon. Even at the dress rehearsal, the Nazi — but comparatively well-disposed — town-councillor, Hauptmann asked me to put off the opening. Something terrible would happen, he assured me, which he was not in a position to prevent. After consultation with Kaiser, Weill and the set designer Casper Neher, we decided to take on ' the terrible', especially as we were convinced of the political importance of the play, and of the artistic quality of the production, the music and the sets. Right on the day of the opening, the mayor of Leipzig, Dr Carl-Friedrich Goerdeler, rang me and advised me to pretend to fall ill and postpone the first night for a couple of weeks. Then everything could be let drop without much stir. I explained to him that I held the freedom of intellectual and artistic life in Germany to be too important and in this particular moment too threatened to postpone a first night of Kaiser and Weill. Then Dr Goerdeler told me that he had reliable information that the SA and the [Nazi] Party groups intended to block the opening. I replied that only two people could stop the opening — he himself as the mayor of Leipzig, and I, as the sole responsible artistic director of the town theatre. ' I will not ban the performance,' Dr Goerdeler said. He neither knew the piece, nor had he seen the rehearsals. But he let it be understood that my position as director of the theatre was being laid on the line, and that in the case of a political scandal, he, the mayor, would perhaps be unable to do anything for me.

The performance, I then told him, would take place. When this call was made, we were about ten hours away from the greatest political scandal there had ever been in this theatre.

The rest is theatre history. In spite of all the rampaging, the piece was played right through to the end, with sensational success among most of the audience. It was living theatre in the best sense of the word. But, unfortunately, this was also the very last example of a free artistic theatre in Germany. The famous translator of Shakespeare, Hans Rothe, once wrote later that this was the hour in which the curtain rang down on the German stage.'*

Note: the Berlin opening, scheduled for the following night (February 19) was scrapped.

(from Sirk on Sirk, Jon Halliday. To be published later this year in the Cinema One series.)

Posteript In retrospect, the last sentence of the obituary cannot but strike one as a piece of unintentional irony, of the kind that is typical of much of Germany's cultural history. It is telling, for example, to realise that already in 1930 a reviewer who on the whole was particularly sympathetic to Douglas Sirk's work in the theatre, and who — at least in aesthetic matters — voiced the liberal opinions of the 'Kultur '-conscious German bourgeoisie, should end his article on what must now appear as a very sinister note. His pious wish for a German art protected from the evils of 'internationalism' was soon to be fulfilled by the most ruthless policy of institutionalised philistinism Germany had ever known. Nazi vilification of modernism, denounced and persecuted as 'degenerate art', as well as the campaign against left-wing artists and intellectuals — who were accused of 'Kulturbolschevismus' — managed to destroy German art of the post-war period more radically than any imaginary internationalist conspiracy. If it is generally accepted that the advent of the Third Reich signalled the demise of one of the most thriving periods in German theatrical history, one has to remember that the German theatre is unique among European theatrical traditions. Having emerged comparatively late — in the eighteenth century — the stage in Germany was, from the times of Lessing onwards dominated by dramatists with critical tendencies, and drama has only rarely been the privileged artistic mode and aesthetic experience of a single class, as was the case in France and post-Elizabethan England. On the whole, Germany has always produced what is called 'Weltanschauungstheater'*, a theatre which focuses on the clash of different and incompatible ideologies rather than on conflicts of manners and social behaviour and its artistic continuity is not one of dramatic style or diction, but of social commitment.

In 1782 Friedrich Schiller put on his first play Die Räuber; a few weeks later he fled from Wurtemberg, his home state, because the Duke had forbidden him to write further plays and had put him under police surveillance. In 1933, about forty theatre producers all over Germany were suddenly told that they had been relieved of their functions, and Sirk was not one of them, his career is symptomatic. His artistic talents and intellectual interests made him one of the representative figures of that aspect of Germany's literary and theatrical tradition — socially committed, basically left-wing and uncompromisingly scathing about chauvinism and cultural provincialism in any form — which, though present since the Enlightenment, had never occupied such a central place in social and political life as it did in the 1920s. The more tragically ironic that he, along with so many others, had to leave Germany and was. forced to spend his most creative years in Hollywood — significantly enough, the leading centre of 'internationalism' of the time.

Sirk's theatrical work is important in several respects. Above all, for the light it throws on the German theatre, because in his productions are resumed several interesting cross-currents of the contemporary theatre. Secondly, his work deserves to be regarded on its own merit; he was, from all accounts, an exceptionally gifted and versatile producer whose productions in Bremen, for example, lifted an average provincial stage to the rank of the very best German theatres, and his work in Leipzig and elsewhere received notices in all the major national papers. Finally, the choice of plays and the methods of his theatrical mise-en-scène gives us valuable information about his films, where themes and motifs turn up which bear an unmistakable relation to the dramas and comedies he staged during his period as a producer.

After a brief apprenticeship in Hamburg and Chemnitz, Sirk was given his first important post in 1923 at the Bremer Schauspielhaus, a privately-financed repertory theatre. There he immediately impressed audiences and critics by his imaginative and unconventional productions. The phrases which turn up most persistently in the early reviews are his 'ear for the inner melody of a play', his 'ability to weld the ensemble together', his mise-en-scène 'trembling with feeling, like inaudible music flowing warmly through the soul'.1 The somewhat florid language makes it rather difficult to judge with any accuracy the type of style which Sirk adopted for his first independent productions, but when we come to the plays by Hebbel, put on in 1924 we get a better impression of Sirk's idea of the theatre: 'We have tried for the first time,' Sirk explained to his audience on the first night of Judith und Holofernes, 'to show the face of a thinker, tormented by doubt and his own conscience. His inner greatness, his superior intellect make him a solitary figure, whose haughtiness was as great as his longing for a human soul to share his spiritual insights was without remedy.'2 As to the production, a critic described it as follows: 'Eight sharply delineated scenic images emerged from the darkness, and were again absorbed in it. The twilight of super-human worlds gave a curiously floodlit relief to his two main protagonists, whose fate it was to meet, in order for each to fulfil his own individual destiny.'3

What strikes one in Sirk's productions at this time are two things: His ' thematic' conception of a play, and his use of lighting. While seemingly sharing to some extent the monumentalising tendency of much German theatre and cinema of the period, Sirk clearly recognised that in order for a play to possess unity, the theatrical mise-en-scène must be organised around a certain dramatic idea, a single coherent, interpretation, which translated into visual terms dominates the various elements, and that this idea would differ from one play to the next. This particular notion of the mise-en-scène, though perfectly conventional today, was something of a breakthrough at the time, intimately connected with the theatrical revolution brought about by expressionism. Although by 1924 expressionism as a protest movement was generally considered to be passé, partly because the deliberately subjective, emotional and anti-materialist analysis of social problems and political reality was felt to be ambiguous if not downright reactionary, its stylistic influence throughout the twenties remained undiminished. For whatever the shortcomings of the expressionists in terms of their political stance, their plays, both in thematic range as well as dramatic structure were a decisive rupture with naturalism, and a vital step towards the free handling of the scenic space and dramatic action which characterises the modern theatre. One of the consequences of this development was the preponderance of the producer and his contribution in relation to that of the playwright. No doubt, the emergence of the mise-en-scène as the central concept of the theatrical creation was a gradual one, associated with the work of Wagner, Craig, Appia, Copeau, Meyerhold, who all in one way or another advocated the supremacy of movement, gesture, light, colour, sound, rhythm over the spoken word; in Germany the process was however, accelerated by the attack of the expressionists on the well-made play with its homogeneous, socially representative audience, and their demand for a stage with as little spatial circumscription as possible. Against the facsimile stage of naturalism, they wanted to 'open' the proscenium, make it transparent, which in turn created the need for an internally unifying principle in the visual and dramatic organisation of the individual performance, a task more and more explicitly assumed by the producer.

This unity Sirk interpreted in terms of giving space a specifically psychological notation, by a principle generally known as 'innere Regie' (intrinsic mise-en-scène) as opposed to 'aussere Regie', that is, a form or production which imposes unity by historically accurate sets and gestural realism. Thus, Sirk's productions were praised for their 'Raumgestaltnng', the way word and gesture defined the dramatic space, and his plays were said to have 'Seelenraum', they delineated an inner world, which was given a clear and concrete embodiment by the manipulation of decor and movement (one critic speaks of Sirk's 'physical imagination'), and yet this world had also something 'unreal and spectral, without losing any of its force.'5 In Strindberg's Dreamplay, for example, 'the realm of the unconscious is extremely difficult to handle scenically', but Sirk had 'recreated every suggestive modulation of the work' by translating it into 'colour, rhythm, tone, until from the string of successive scenes emerged the grand symbol of a spiritual line, which gave to the poet's visions the metaphysical expansiveness of the imagination'.6 Such convincing play on the ambiguity of dream and reality was due, it seems, mainly to Sirk's use of lighting, the relation he created, sometimes by means of the 'skiopticon', the projected transparency, between background and action.

The combination of modern lighting techniques and a psycho-symbolic realism in Sirk's style could be seen most clearly in his production of Schiller's Die Räuber (October 1926). What the critics liked, in particular, was a scene in which a wholly subjective emotion of anguish and foreboding was transcribed into setting and decor by the skilful use of lighting and transparencies.

'The strongest confirmation of the producer's persuasive powers was the poetically superb Kosinski-scene, in which the setting sun plunges the forest into a mellow red light, which following the cue 'Amalie', Karl's imagination transforms magically into a scene in a park, where his brother Franz is trying to seduce and intimidate Karl's sweetheart. The absolute control over the scenic image, which develops freely the main dramatic idea while leaving aside all rationalist stage technique, is a brilliant idea of the producer. It is the first striking success in Bremen of a new theatrical conception. The production showed quite clearly the concentrated energy of Sierck's work: discipline and intellectual grasp are the hallmarks of his achievement.'7

Unlike other theatrical producers who later became film-directors Sirk's style owed little to Max Reinhardt, who was undoubtedly the greatest formative influence on directors like Lubitsch, Lang, Murnau and even Preminger. Reinhardt's idea of the theatre was a scenic-spectacular conception of the stage, with an emphasis on the mood and composition which was partly inspired by his passion for Renaissance painting, perhaps most successful in the adaptations of Shakespeare, for whom he started a veritable craze in Germany. What made Reinhardt leave Berlin and move to Vienna was the turn to 'reality', and the use of the theatre for directly social purposes. Sirk's forte, by contrast, was the 'Kammerspiel', in which he could develop to perfection his own psychological-impressionist mise-en-scene, closer to the tradition of Otto Brahm and Leopold Jessner than to either Reinhardt or Piscator. One of his greatest successes in Bremen was Georg Kaiser's Oktobertag (The Phantom Lover), the curious story of a girl so much infatuated with a French officer who doesn't even notice her, that she believes him to be the father of her child, in actual fact conceived — as a result of a double case of mistaken identity — by a butcher's apprentice. Kaiser, perhaps the most prestigious playwright of the twenties, brings off this unlikely drama with all its ensuing complications by a subtly engineered psychological relativism, which leaves the audience guessing as to what moral lesson the author may have intended. (The officer, overwhelmed by the girl's genuine love, accepts the child as his, but is forced to dispose of the real father by running him through with his sabre.) Sirk's production stressed the 'inner truth of the play', giving every character a credible motivation and a convincing point of view, as against Kaiser's typical reliance on improbability and sheer chance. As in almost all of Sirk's work, the critics were at pains to stress the realism he managed to infuse into the apparently dream-like world. Hellmers had this to say:

'This production was of an exceptionally high standard, in the way the theatrical space suggested the basic moods and the world of the individual characters, but also in its timing, its rhythm — which most of the time was attuned to the protagonists' inner melody. In one respect, at least, Sierck's production undoubtedly surpassed the premiere in Berlin: that was in the convincingly realistic and natural conception of the butcher, as the man of the people. Through his performance, especially the third act became a unique dramatic experience.'8

Equally suited to Sirk's style was the dramatic work of Hofmannsthal, whose poetic dream-plays were often difficult, if not impossible to stage adequately. In March 1928, Sirk put on Der Turm, an adaptation of Calderon's Life is a Dream. While some of the socialist critics regarded Hofmannsthal with mixed feelings, asserting that:

'the idea of rejecting any kind of force or struggle for power in favour of understanding, forgiveness and communal harmony is so beautiful, so necessary, so promising for the future that it would have deserved a poetically more gripping and convincingly dramatic embodiment '.9

Hellmers pointed out that Sirk had managed to give form to the contemporary aspect of the drama in our own time, shaken by wars and revolution.

He goes on:

'the strongest element in the play is the idea of power embodied in the king, and the notion that from crime only hatred, fear, cruelty and loneliness will grow, which in turn cannot but produce brutality, revolt and murder. In this context, the child-like wonder and innocent purity of the prince, severed from all human contact, a martyr of humanity who only follows his inner light in the dark dungeon of the self, is particularly moving. His pallid, spiritually translucent traits shine through the labyrinth of the action.'10

Although perhaps dealing with a rather more otherworldly and ethereal subject than Sirk's films, some of which he likes to describe as 'gutty', we have here one of the plays in which he could formulate in dramatic terms certain themes which have remained constants in his work: power and vitality corrupted and at the same time ennobled by a feeling of quasi-metaphysical guilt, the emergence of an individual conscience in an essentially public or political context — themes which one can detect in his remarks about Anthony and Cleopatra but which are equally present in his interpretation of Schiller and Hebbel — both dramatists whose plays he repeatedly staged throughout his career.

If playwrights like Hofmannsthal, Kaiser, Schnitzler gave Sirk an opportunity to become a master in the style which one critic described as 'the intimate art of direction and ensemble-work, that subtle mood which concentrates all the nervous fibres of an audience, uniting stage and auditorium in a communion of shared feeling', he also produced plays of an entirely different kind, and which testify to the political and social commitment which he tried to put across on the stage. Although in many ways restricted in his choice by the select and predominantly middle-class audience in the private theatre at Bremen, he managed to put on some highly controversial plays, whether revivals of classics (cf Hellmers' disapproving comments on his interpretation of Oedipus Rex) or modern plays.

The most significant productions of this kind were those of Bronnen and Brecht. Arnolt Bronnen, a friend of Brecht who later became a Nazi and eventually ended up in East Germany after the war, was a highly successful dramatist. Both he and Brecht belonged in their early days to what was called ' black expressionism ' plays, a movement which attempted to destroy expressionist idealism by showing instinct and undisguised sensuality as the motive forces of human behaviour. Brecht's Baal, Trommeln in die Nacht (Drums in the Night), Im Dickicht der Städte (The Jungle of Cities), with their emphasis on sadism, sex, violence, perversion and megalomania were intended to shock both the bourgeoisie and the liberals. Bronnen on the other hand, specialised in plays which had a certain topical relevance and a confused, but dramatically effective political stance. For example, he wrote Rheinishche Rebellen — a play about popular resistance in the French-occupied Rhineland and a later work Reparationen, dealt with the misery and injustice engendered by the Versailles Treaty and Germany's payment of war-damages to France. In 1925 Sirk put on Rheinische Rebellen, whose plot was a skilful mixture of politics, sex, assassination, spying, lesbianism and murder — a kind of political sexploitation thriller which could only have been written in the wild and confused days of Weimar Germany. The play was generally considered to be artistically worthless, but it gave a gifted producer an ideal opportunity to 'have fun' and prove his talent. One critic wrote of Sirk's production:

'That the political verbiage indiscriminately thundering from the right and the left received strong applause, lies in the nature of such phrasemongery and its audience. But the applause was also due — and this we gratefully acknowledge — to the incredibly skilful and extremely tactful direction (even in the lesbian bed-scene) by Detlef Sierck, who gave very convincing proof of his intelligence and ability. A pity that such a polished production wasn't devoted to a more deserving play.'

And commenting on Sirk's mise-en-scène, the same critic adds:

'Richard Lamey (a regular collaboration on the sets during Sirk's Bremen period) created a stage design which impressively excluded all naturalistic associations and which, by its unearthly strangeness gave the producer a free hand to develop his scenic ideas. Sierck moved his figures in a sharply controlled rhythm and a masterful dramatic pace, whose breathless speed made high demands on actors and audience alike. But only through speed can such a play be put across at all, because there is neither spiritual nor intellectual movement, and thus everything depends on the producer. That Sierck interpreted, as it were, the lines of the characters as spoken stage-directions, and thus reached a theatrical climax, even where there wasn't a dramatic one — that in itself made the production worthwhile.'11

Of Brecht, Sirk staged the Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera) (April 1929; world première: Berlin, August 1928) which today he sees very much as the work of Kurt Weill. It seems that Sirk toned down the diverse ruptures in style,12 and a Hamburg critic who speaks of the production as a great success, even a 'sensation', points out how it 'managed to fuse the garish mosaic of different poetic and musical material and tendencies into a unified shape of disciplined lively and exciting effectiveness.'13 Even a conservative critic who saw in the texts nothing but a 'wrinkly old aunt from England, whose face has been tarted-up' and who considered Weill's songs 'an a-tonal mish-mash of sounds without contrast', 'an American bluff which leaves a stale taste', noted the 'cinema-like production' and ended by saying that 'the whole thing was far more agreeable than the original Berlin production, which put too much emphasis on the erotic element in the whore scenes and too much gruesomeness into the hanging.'14

From 1930 onwards, after Sirk had moved to Leipzig and had got control of the municipal theatre, his political convictions became more apparent, if only because his position was more precarious, given the rapidly changing climate. One of his very first productions, Im Namen des Volkes (In the Name of the People) — a play about the trial of the anarchistic Sacco and Vanzetti — created a minor political scandal, and was subsequently banned. 'It gave me a rather bad name in Leipzig,'15 Sirk remembers, and he was able to hang on to his post after 1933 only because the mayor of Leipzig who knew Hitler personally, was well-disposed towards Sirk. But it was under the pressure of the authorities who interfered more and more in the running of the theatre and dictated the choice of productions that he decided to go into movies — an industry which because of its international prestige was at that time far less rigorously controlled by the Nazis than the theatre.

Sirk ended his theatrical career in Leipzig with a bang: his production of Kaiser's Silbersee was one of the stormiest episodes in his entire career. Sirk's own account of it is published above in the letter he wrote to Bavarian radio in 1969. (See ' Documents on Sirk ' above)

Perhaps one ought to be grateful for the turn of events which made Sirk devote himself to the cinema. Although, even today, he considers his theatre work more important, more accomplished than any of his films, the perishable nature of that work doesn't allow us to admire the genius of his visual imagination, his gift for the dramatic potential of colour, his sense of rhythm and movement in any other than its cinematic form.

Curiously enough, Hellmers' wish to see Sirk perpetrate German art has come true, though not in the way he had in mind. In joining Hollywood, Sirk became one of those who took what was best in the German cultural tradition to the United States, transmuting it into an idiom which became an enduring part of the American cinema.

T.E.