Banned in Berlin. Gary D. Stark

theater was a particularly fertile and dangerous breeding ground for unpredictable, irrational crowd behavior. Le Bon was convinced crowds think only in images, which are able to horrify, inspire, or incite a crowd to action. Theatrical performances present images in their clearest form: “Nothing arouses the fantasies of people as strongly as a theater piece. The assembled spectators simultaneously feel the same emotions…[and] sometimes the feelings suggested by these images are strong enough to…translate themselves into action…. The unreal is in their eyes nearly as important as the real. They have a remarkable inclination not to distinguish between the two.”²⁸ Indeed, Le Bon and other observers could cite examples of nineteenth-century theater audiences who had been incited to disorderly, even violent behavior by what they saw on stage: enraged lower-class theatergoers attacking actors who had depicted villains on stage; pitched verbal and physical battles between supporters and opponents of Victor Hugo's daring romantic style after his Hernani premiered in February 1830; how the opera La Muette de Portici, which depicted a seventeenth-century Neapolitan uprising against Spain, sparked demonstrations and riots that ultimately led to the Belgian revolution of 1830; and the 1896 near-riot that erupted when Jarry's absurdist Ubu Roi premiered in Paris.

      German observers often cited these incidents as evidence of the unique power live theater exercised over its audience and the dangerous excesses to which theatergoers were sometimes prone. Theaters are collective enterprises in a public space; because the nature, function, and effect of that medium differed so radically from that of the press, government officials, local police, many legal scholars, and even some dramatists generally agreed it must be more stringently controlled. State supervision of the stage was considered necessary not only to safeguard the theater's special moral and national-political mission, but also to protect society against theatergoers who might, after viewing a particularly stirring performance, be transformed into a disorderly, even violent mob.²⁹

      Special legal restrictions were therefore placed on playwrights, theater operators, performers, and theatergoers, the two most important of which were licensing and prior censorship. While the Press Law of 1874 had established freedom of the press by ending state licensing and censorship of that medium and created uniform regulations for the journalism profession, no comparable national law was ever passed for theaters and other public entertainments. Theaters continued to be governed by a complex, uneven patchwork of laws and ordinances that predated the empire. Some aspects of theatrical life, such as licensing, were regulated by the Imperial Commercial Code (Reichsgewerbeordnung); others, such as theater censorship, were governed by state and local ordinances that varied widely.

      Germany's liberal Commercial Code, adopted by the North German Confederation in 1869 and extended two years later to the new empire, proclaimed, “The practice of an occupation is permitted to everyone.” It removed corporative restrictions and established freedom of enterprise in most occupations, but not for the theater industry. Those who wished to operate a privately owned theater anywhere in Germany (with the exception of Alsace-Lorraine³⁰) were still required to apply to district or county authorities for a license (Konzession), although royal theaters, theaters owned and financed by municipalities, and those holding only private performances not open to the general public were exempted from this requirement. Applicants could be denied a license only if authorities had evidence of their “unreliability.”³¹

      During the 1870s local officials judged applicants' reliability primarily in ethical terms. As Cologne's district administrative president pointed out to officials in his district: “Since theatrical performances, especially those geared to the lower classes, can be very detrimental from a moral standpoint, it appears necessary to impose the strictest demands when considering the reliability of those who are seeking a theater license. Licenses should be granted only when the lifestyle of the applicant has been completely beyond reproach and provides no grounds for censure from a moral standpoint.”³² Even so, an enormous number of new theater licenses were granted in the years after 1869.³³

      But since theater attendance lagged well behind the proliferation of new theaters and the growing number of aspiring actors, the industry soon suffered from serious overcrowding and murderous competition, a condition many observers believed was responsible for an alarming decline in the quality of theatrical life. Drama critics and officials alike lamented that easy admission into the theater industry after 1869 had turned dramatic art into the crassest kind of speculation. Many new licenses, they charged, had gone to inexperienced and undercapitalized entrepreneurs who entered the business with dreams of quick fortunes; to survive they had to pander to the crudest instincts of the masses, thereby ruining the dramatic tastes of the public.³⁴

      Economic depression in the late 1870s created additional problems. Facing stiff competition, many new theaters went bankrupt, especially those whose owners lacked theatrical experience or sufficient financial resources. Several older, established houses were also driven out of business or encountered serious financial difficulties. In some cases fly-by-night theater operators simply disappeared, leaving behind huge debts and a troupe of unpaid employees and actors; many of the latter turned to busking, peddling, and begging or became a burden to local poor relief systems.

      Responding to overcrowding in the theater industry and to local complaints about a growing “artistic proletariat,” in 1880 the Reichstag amended the Commercial Code, placing tighter restrictions on the granting of theater licenses. Because local officials were now expected to consider an applicant's moral, artistic, and financial qualifications, before approving a new license they began routinely checking with the theater industry's professional associations and with the Berlin police force's special theater division regarding an applicant's professional qualifications and general reputation. To further limit competition and ensure theaters did not attempt expensive productions beyond their financial means, after 1880 authorities could restrict a theater's license to one genre of performance—to light drama, for example, but not expensive operatic productions.³⁵ These measures dramatically reduced the number of new theaters licensed after 1880. In Berlin, for example, where 146 licenses had been granted during the 1870s, during the decade 1881–1890 only twenty-seven applications were approved, while fifty were denied. Most applicants rejected by Berlin authorities in the 1880s and 1890s were actors, writers, or musicians lacking the financial means or businessmen lacking the artistic experience considered necessary to operate a theater.³⁶

      Originally, a license entitled one to operate a theater anywhere in the nation, but because of frequent abuses a theater license after 1896 was valid only within the state or specific district where it had been issued. Licensees were obligated to observe all local laws and ordinances; in Munich, police also admonished new theater operators to respect “religion and decency.” Licenses could be revoked if a theater failed to comply with the terms and restrictions of its license or the operator no longer met the necessary financial, artistic, or moral qualifications.³⁷ While the most common grounds for revocation was financial, this weapon was also used against theaters whose repertoire authorities found objectionable.

      Besides deciding who could operate theaters, German authorities were also able to decide what was performed on stage. In most of the empire, especially in the larger cities of Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony, the local laws and ordinances that theater operators pledged to obey required them to obtain prior police permission for any drama to be performed publicly.

      State censorship of the theater was hardly unique to Germany. By the eighteenth century, monarchs throughout Europe had brought theaters under strict regulation and required a central or local censor to approve each piece before it was performed. Although the democratic revolutions of 1848 temporarily abolished prior censorship of theaters in some states (including Prussia), it was usually quickly restored after the revolutions collapsed. By the late nineteenth century only a few smaller, peripheral states (Sweden, Belgium, and Portugal) did not censor dramatic works before they were performed—although authorities there, as in every nation, had the right to stop performances that violated the criminal code or caused a public disturbance; everywhere else some system of prior censorship still existed. In Russia and Denmark, for example, all dramas had to be approved by a special central censor, while in Austria-Hungary, Spain, and Italy each work had to be submitted to and passed by the local governor or prefect. Staging