As soon as I appeared I could hear an ominous giggle in the audience. I could feel their hostility until at last the curtain went down and I saw the manager waiting in the wings. He was very friendly, took my arm and led me to the greenroom. The perspiring director was already there. I burst into tears and did not stop crying until I left Zurich.
The manager was extremely kind and understanding. He advised me to forgo my second guest performance. I was not yet a Hedda Gabler, and certainly not the leading lady they were looking for. This he had known as soon as he saw me. He added that he should not have permitted me to play such a difficult part. Nevertheless, he offered me a contract, not as leading lady, but in a position more suitable to my experience. He assured me that I would play excellent roles, as he and his director were interested in my talent. Sobbing, I answered that the audience would always remember my getting stuck. The director reprimanded me: wasn’t the offer the Herr Intendant made reassuring? And it was independent of what the critics would say. His mention of the press was decisive. I refused. No, I would not stay in Zurich.
It was long after midnight. The office was closed and I could not get paid, but I had enough money for the hotel bill and a third class train ticket. The director asked where they could forward my salary. Yes, where? A great longing for Edward and Rose overcame me. Rose was in Poland and Edward in Berlin studying with Busoni. I decided to go to Berlin.
Edward was waiting on the platform of Bahnhof Friedrich-strasse with a pile of newspapers under his arm, when I arrived next day. He welcomed me with his usual tenderness and expressed one of his most gentle understatements: “I am afraid the Zurich reviews are not too favorable.”
They certainly were ferociously unfavorable. The kindest of the critics was the one who wrote: “Miss Steuermann (my name means “helmsman” in German) should turn her compass to other shores. We here are thoroughly convinced of her lack of talent.” Others elaborated on my getting stuck, and on my wig. If Baron von M. of the German Embassy ever read Swiss papers, he must have been disappointed.
Edward had a furnished room in Charlottenburg; I slept on a couch in the landlady’s living room. I must have been very depressing company. When he was not practicing or composing, we discussed my dismal future.
One evening, to cheer me up, Edward suggested that we see Lancelot, a new play performed in Max Reinhardt’s Kammerspiele. It was a smaller house next door to his Deutsches Theater. The play had already started when we arrived, and we hurriedly got our tickets at the box office; then, having entered the dark auditorium, realized that we were in the wrong theater. “Let’s leave,” I whispered, but at that moment a Negro appeared on the stage and the first words he spoke held us spellbound in our seats. It was Albert Bassermann playing Othello. I had seen Othello before, but now, taken out from the mothballs of the declamatory tradition, it was a revelation. I was beside myself and even Edward, always more critical and restrained, shared my enthusiasm.
That same night I mailed a letter to Max Reinhardt. I don’t remember what I wrote, but Edward warned me not to expect an answer. However, two days later I received a postcard from a Mr. Keindl, the secretary of the Reinhardt Theaters, notifying me that the “Herr Professor” would see me and I should prepare two scenes from different plays.
Needless to say, long before my ten o’clock appointment on the decisive day I was sitting, feverish with excitement, in the empty anteroom to Max Reinhardt’s office. It was a lovely room with antique furniture, most of it baroque. I had not been able to eat breakfast, and as the hours passed I became dizzy with hunger. It was now after one and obviously I was forgotten. At last a red-haired young man stuck his head into the room and seemed very surprised to find me there. It was Mr. Keindl, who had given me the appointment. He immediately remembered my letter and cheerfully announced that Professor Reinhardt would be back in his office soon, if he had not decided to go to lunch first. In that case he would come to the office later, though one never knew when. He, Mr. Keindl, would advise me to wait, but if I was hungry (was I! I had black spots before my eyes), then I could run downstairs to the restaurant of the Deutsches Theater and grab a bite. But on second thoughts this would be rather risky, because the Professor might come back just when I was gone, and if I missed him it would be difficult to get me another appointment, as he was leaving in three days. I decided to starve and wait. Mr. Keindl waved to me and said he was going to lunch. Again I was alone in the lovely, quiet room, and exhausted I fell asleep.
It was dark already when I heard voices and steps; somebody turned on the light. Like Napoleon surrounded by his generals and aides-de-camp (I know that this apt comparison has been made before), Max Reinhardt walked through the anteroom and disappeared into his office. His staff filed in after him. For a short second his large blue eyes rested on me, then the door closed. After a few minutes Keindl stuck in his red head and asked: “Is he there?” I nodded.
“Fine,” he said. “Now wait.” I wondered what I had been doing all day long! I must have looked desperate, because he ceased smiling and went inside. I heard him speak, then another voice answered and then somebody laughed. This was the end of my endurance. I would go back to Edward, lie down and die. Just as I was about to leave, Keindl called my name and holding the door wide open, motioned me to go in.
At that time Max Reinhardt was about forty years old, short, stocky with thick, dark hair and a face one would have called ordinary, if it had not been for the wide, iris-blue eyes. These eyes looked at me rather kindly, but at the same time they penetrated and probed.
He was sitting behind an antique desk; at his right stood a young man, who, although in civilian clothes, appeared every inch the Prussian officer. This was Baron von Gersdorf, Reinhardt’s assistant. The others were Felix Hollaender, small, jumpy and nervous, writer and stage director and the second in command, and the dramaturg Dr. Kahane, a friendly man with a long, black beard. Keindl and two other men were in the background.
Herr von Gersdorf brought me a chair; then Reinhardt asked a few questions. He sounded just as embarrassed as I. He said he liked my letter. Felix Hollaender reached for it, but hardly gave it a glance. In Berlinese German with a funny lisp, he suggested that as the Professor was tired, we should postpone my audition for another day. My heart stopped. “Professor Reinhardt is leaving,” Herr von Gersdorf reminded him. There was an awkward silence. Nobody seemed to wish to listen to an audition, until Gersdorf leaned forward and whispered into Reinhardt’s ear. I suppose he told him to get it over with and that I had been waiting since ten in the morning. Reinhardt nodded. Immediately the others made room for me and Kahane asked what scenes I wanted to do. I said Medea. The next moment I was on my knees, imploring Jason not to desert me. There was a silence at the end; then Reinhardt said he would like to hear more.
Hollaender had not liked my choice; had I prepared anything else? Hebbel’s Judith for example? But Dr. Kahane suggested I should do scenes I had chosen myself. I asked if Queen Margaret’s cursing scene in Richard III would be all right. Yes; Reinhardt said quickly that he would like to hear it. I gathered my remaining strength and cursed with all the steaming hatred I could muster.
Professor Reinhardt said that I was very good. Yes, he would like to have me at the Deutsches Theatre. The others murmured approval, but Hollaender still wanted me to do a scene from a contemporary play. Reinhardt waved aside this suggestion. He got up, shook my hand and said I should see his brother Edmund Reinhardt, the business manager of the theater, and sign a contract. He left, the generals and aides filing out after him. Gersdorf was the only one who stopped to congratulate me.
* A superstition in the German theater forbids saying “good luck.” Instead one wishes you to “break your neck and legs.”
9
FOR MANY YEARS TO COME this was my only encounter with Max Reinhardt. I was one of those who prayed in vain that his blue eyes might for a split second rest upon them. Whenever I saw him passing me in the vestibule, he was surrounde
d by such an impenetrable wall of satellites and society women, that to make him notice me I would have had to faint at his feet, as more enterprising actresses frequently did. At that time Reinhardt was traveling with his productions in Europe and the United States, returning only for short intervals to Berlin.
Only once did I participate in a production which he directed. It was the Orestie in the huge Circus Schumann, with Moissi as Orestes. I was among the Trojan slaves Agamemnon brings home with Cassandra. We were grouped in the arena on huge, wide steps covered with a black cloth and leading to the brightly lit Greek palace in the background. Baron von Gersdorf and Herr Held were transmitting Reinhardt’s instructions to the chorus and the huge masses of extras through a megaphone. Reinhardt himself was invisible in the dark auditorium. Only his voice penetrated it from time to time.
In those first weeks I was doomed to play Trojan slaves. In Goethe’s Faust II, of which Reinhardt made a much discussed but successful theatrical event, I had several small parts. One of them was Die Klugheit (Wisdom), which gave me an impressive entrance. I appeared in floating robes, sitting on the back of an enormous elephant, which looked as if it came straight from the jungle and not from the workshop of the Deutsches Theater. From my lofty seat I recited an allegorical poem, without really understanding its meaning. Then, after a majestic exit, I was transformed quickly into a Siren or a Nereid—I do not remember which—and rushed to the opposite side of the revolving stage. After that, at breakneck speed, I changed successively into several other costumes, to end up as a Trojan slave, this time escorting Helen on her return to her husband in Sparta. While the stage was revolving I groped in darkness for “the shore near Menelaus’ palace,” where we were to land. Faust II had been in the repertory two years, but the new cast had had no stage rehearsals and I am sure I would never have arrived at my destination, had not a firm hand taken my arm and a hoarse voice whispered in my ear: “Don’t be frightened. I’ll lead you to your place.” And, as though I would not have recognized his voice among millions, he introduced himself: “Bassermann is my name.” From that day on he never forgot to wait for me during the blackouts and to lead me to my place.
After Faust II had at last disappeared from the repertory, Gersdorf suggested to the Direktion that I replace the actress who had played Hebbel’s Judith. Paul Wegener was the formidable Holofernes in the evening; his understudy, a talented young actor, replaced him at the matinees. Arrogant and humorless, the understudy provoked practical jokes, which Ernst Lubitsch, the future film director, never tired of playing.
During the Easter Sunday matinee, as I was entering Holofernes’ tent, veiled and escorted by a maid, I was startled to see her crumple on the floor, while on the proscenium Holofernes was delivering a lengthy soliloquy, with two enormous, grotesquely obscene, white Easter eggs dangling below his buttocks. My face was hidden by the veil, but I was unable to speak. The situation became even more hilarious when Lubitsch, as an attendant, crawling devotedly around Holofernes, snatched the eggs away whenever he turned his back to the audience. Finally I managed to say my first lines, dreading the moment when I had to take off my veil. Holofernes became aware that something was going on and reported me to Edmund Reinhardt. I was fined seventy-five marks, which was a fortune at that time, and Lubitsch’s hypocritical sympathy made me very angry.
I do not believe Heinrich Kleist’s Penthesilea has ever been performed in England or the United States and I doubt whether it would be possible to translate the wild beauty of its language. In its unrestrained ferocity and perversion it is related to Marlowe, and to the Sturm and Drang period. I loved the role because of its extravagance. Penthesilea’s bacchantic jubilations, her demented despair and maniacal ravings were enough to release any amount of pent-up passions.
When the rehearsals began, Felix Hollaender, the director, gave me a walk-on, a “one-sentence Amazon,” one among the many who excitedly report the off-stage happenings on the battlefield “near Troy.” The play abounds in belligerent descriptions, but my meager task was to remain half-hidden behind a piece of scenery and shout that the Greeks were coming. The day of our first dress rehearsal changed my fate.
Reinhardt’s set builder, Ernst Stern, had transformed the huge, revolving stage into a hilly landscape with valleys, and bridges arching over imaginary gullies. The Amazons wore very short tunics, just reaching to the upper part of the thigh, metal breast-plates and helmets with horse tails. Their bare legs and arms were covered with a dark brown make-up and Stern ordered us to the greenroom so that he could check whether the least speck of white skin was visible. There was no question that my legs and those of Mary Dietrich, who played Meroe, the second lead, were the most “Amazon-like.” They had to be shown. (These were not the days of bikinis and mini-skirts!) Stern refused to have a pair of good legs hidden by a piece of scenery, and demanded that I trade places and lines with a somewhat hefty actress. He and Hollaender asked me to run across the stage and deliver my excited report, to which a few verses were now added.
After the première Mary Dietrich took over the title role, but her voice could not endure the strain and I was advised to be prepared to step in for her. Of course I knew every word! I played Penthesilea many times with great success, but, alas, the wandering Max Reinhardt never saw me.
•
Wilhelminian Berlin was cold, Prussian, clean-swept and well-organized. Edward and I liked it because of its utter strangeness, in which we managed to create our own small Wychylowka, especially after Rose joined us. We had a two-room apartment in the west of Berlin, in a so-called Gartenhaus, which had no resemblance whatsoever to a garden. We took our meals at a nearby pension run by a kind, Austrian-Jewish lady, Frau Ehrenzweig. In no time most of our colleagues either lived or ate at the pension and we dominated the conversation at the dinner table, often putting to flight the stolid, middle-class guests. Frau Ehrenzweig complained about our “immoral” ideas and bad manners, but she was delighted and amused.
In sharp contrast to the dinners at the pension were the afternoons at Ferrucio Busoni’s house, to which he and his blond, Norwegian wife, Gerda, often invited us. Everything was very formal and dignified. International celebrities, Berlin high society and promising young musicians gathered in the large salon. Romantic and beautiful, Busoni moved from group to group, always followed by three small, hunchbacked ladies, all in love with him and jealous of each other. Michael von Zadora, a pupil of Busoni, told us that the ladies were malicious gossips and that their presence at Busoni’s receptions was due to the Italian superstition that to touch a hump brings good luck.
It took my reticent brother some time to show Busoni his compositions. Very impressed, Busoni advised him to leave the Berlin Academy, and introduced him to Arnold Schoenberg, who had just arrived in Berlin. It was before the performance of the Gurre Lieder and he was practically unknown. He lived with his family in a modest house in Zehlendorf, where Edward went to show him his work. Schoenberg found it very promising, and immediately chose Edward as the interpreter of his own music, which was then hardly understood. Edward became Schoenberg’s apostle, sacrificing his promising piano career to propagate the works of the master.
On Sundays we often went to Zehlendorf with Schoenberg’s other pupils: Alban Berg, Anton von Webern, Hanns Eisler and a young Englishman, Edward Clark. Berg was very striking looking—slim, dark and delicate; the others appeared to be much younger. There was always excellent coffee and a homemade cake, highly appreciated by all. With his great vitality Schoenberg dominated the conversation, while his awed pupils listened and rarely said anything. An inspired teacher, he was interested in everything, and everything seemed to give him new ideas. From household chores to music and art he asked questions and immediately formulated conclusions. His wife Mathilde, a frail, sick-looking woman, sat silently in the corner of the couch, always wrapped in a warm shawl. Two lovely, uninhibited children ran in and out of the room. In all the years that I knew him Schoenberg hardly changed. He wa
s of medium height, quick in all his movements, a fringe of black hair showing at the back of his remarkable head. His most striking features were the huge, dark, burning eyes, the eyes of a genius. They had a constantly changing expression: wide open, almost bulging when something surprised him, attentive and concentrated when he listened, and often sarcastic or angrily glaring. Sometimes, because of his long upper lip, he looked as if he were sulking.
For many weeks to come, the early morning mail brought a large envelope containing a sheet of lined paper, on which the most controversial music of our century was written. It was Schoenberg’s score to the series of short French poems, translated into German by the poet Hartleben, and called “Pierrot Lunaire.” As if it were a very simple tune, Edward would sit down at the piano and play it. Then he would rush to the house of an elderly lady, Frau Albertine Zehme. Married to a wealthy man, her children grown up and the boredom of a middle class existence upon her, she had decided to have a fling at an artistic career, and, dressed as Pierrot, she toured Germany reciting the moody, delicate poems. She felt that “incidental music” would increase their effect, and somebody had advised her to get in touch with Arnold Schoenberg. Frau Zehme commissioned Schoenberg to write the score to the Pierrot cycle. Because he needed money, he agreed, but categorically demanded his sponsor’s complete artistic surrender. Frau Zehme had to accept not only the score, but also his interpretation of the poems, and to study with Edward the intricate rhythms, the pitch and the inflections of the precisely devised speaking part. She was not very musical and I remember well Edward’s despair over the difficulty he had in teaching her the difference between two-part and three-part rhythm. However, her “capacity for taking pains” was infinite, although I do not claim that in her case it was a sign of genius.
The Kindness of Strangers Page 9