3 Benjamin is likely referring to Wilfried Basse’s film Markt am Wittenbergplatz, 1929.
4 See “Berlin Dialect.”
5 See Adolf Glassbrenner, “Die Hökerin: Szene auf dem Spittelmarkte” [The Hawker: Scenes from the Spittelmarkt], in Berliner Volksleben, with illustrations by Theodor Hosemann, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1847), 159.
6 Theodor Hosemann (1807–1875), German illustrator; Franz Krüger (1797–1857), German painter, lithographer, and portraitist; Franz Burchard Dörbeck (1799–1835), a Baltic German illustrator and satirist. For Hosemann, see also “Theodor Hosemann” in this volume.
7 The Neuruppiner Bilderbogen were colorful nineteenth-century broadsheets printed in Neuruppin by the Kühn printing house.
8 The hyperinflationary period in Weimar Germany during the early 1920s.
CHAPTER 3. Berlin Puppet Theater
Children who want to go to the puppet theater don’t have an easy time of it in Berlin. In Munich, there’s the famed Papa Schmidt, who performs at least twice a week in a theater of his own, built for him by the city.1 In Paris there’s the ongoing Kasper Theater, several even, located in the Luxembourg Gardens, the equivalent of Berlin’s Tiergarten. And in Rome, there’s the famous “Teatro dei piccoli,” which means “theater of the little ones”: not something for but rather by little ones, namely puppets, and which has certainly become a place for big folks, too. This is what’s happened to the puppet theater in general. For a long time puppet theater was mainly for children and common folk. It then gradually deteriorated as it lost popularity, until it was rediscovered and suddenly became something very refined, just for grownups, and very sophisticated ones at that. Only Kasper Theater has always remained for children. During summer, even in Berlin, you can still see an absolutely wonderful rendition of Kasper Theater. At Luna Park, just at the end of the grand entrance way, there’s one that goes on all afternoon, even if it is rather short and too often the same thing.
A hundred years ago it was just the opposite. Kasper came in winter. And exactly around this time, just before Christmas. And with him came a bunch of other puppets, mostly under his command. That’s the remarkable thing about Kasper: he appears not only in the plays that were written for him; he also sticks his saucy little nose into all sorts of big, proper theater pieces for adults. He knows he can risk it. In the most terrible tragedies nothing ever happens to him. And when the devil catches up with Faust, he has to let Kasper live, even though he’s no better behaved than his master. He’s just a peculiar chap. Or in his own words: “I’ve always been a peculiar fellow. Even as a youngster I always saved my pocket money. And when I had enough, you know what I did with it? I had a tooth pulled.” When Christmas drew near, posters would appear on street corners, red or green, blue or yellow, one of which read:
The Robber Baron Flayed Alive, or Love and Cannibalism, or Roast Human Heart and Flesh. Followed by a Great Ballet of Metamorphoses featuring several true-to-life dancing figures and transformations that will pleasantly surprise the beholder’s eye with their delicate and nimble movements. And finally, Pussel the Wonder Dog will take the stage.2 For the sake of all attendees, uncivilized young men will not be admitted; and the price: 2 Silbergroschen and 6 Pfennig, for children as well as adult persons.
Such performances were always combined with the so-called “humorous Christmas exhibitions” that took place every year in a few renowned pastry shops. These exhibitions consisted of nothing more than a few colorful figures made from sugar. For example: “On display at Zimmermann’s shop in Königstraße are exquisite confections of all kinds, including the Brandenburg Gate made from vegetable gum.” But the main attraction was of course the puppet theater. Things were not always very proper or civil in the auditorium. Especially later, when the shows in the pastry shops were replaced by Julius Linde’s mechanical marionette theater and Nattke’s great Baths-and-Basins Theater Salon, Palisadenstraße 76, which advertised their performances like this: “Entertainment with good humor and tasteful wit of universally recognized quality.”3 The “tasteful” entertainment, however, did not, so we hear, prevent boys of a certain class, ages ten to fourteen, from lounging about there with large pipes and cigars and drinking tall glasses of beer.
Glassbrenner, the famous Berlin writer who described such performances, never failed to mention the music: the quartet, which he said consisted of five men, one of whom accompanied only with brandy or schnapps.
Shall we hear some titles of the shows they put on? “Around the World in Eighty Days,” “Murder in the Wine Cellar,” “Käthchen von Heilbronn,” “The Rogues’ Ball or the Ill-Fated Monkey with Fireworks,” “The Sharpshooter.”
If you ask someone how the puppet theater came about, he would probably say: “Because it’s so much cheaper than real theater.” And that’s certainly true. But it’s only one little, welcome side effect of these puppets that they eat nothing and ask for no money. In olden times, the puppet theater was not just something fun, but also something sacred, because the puppets represented the gods. (This is still the case for many peoples of the South Sea Islands, where they make puppets out of straw up to thirty meters high. Then they put a man inside the puppet, and he moves, capering a few steps. When finally he collapses from the weight and the puppet falls, the savages pounce on it, rip it apart, and carry the shreds back home as charms to ward off evil spirits.)
But the way in which the puppet theater later came to Germany is even more remarkable. It was after the Thirty Years’ War and masses of mercenaries were wandering about the countryside. They had nothing to do, had no more pay, and were making the roads unsafe. So unsafe that actors, who by trade were often on the road but only knew how to fight with stage guns and swords, were put off from traveling. Then someone had the idea to replace the actors with marionettes, and soon it was widely appreciated what a wonderful theater instrument a puppet was: above all, it never talks back. And although it too has a head, it’s much larger and heavier in relation to its body than an actor’s; and as for expressiveness, its face is much more stubborn and rigid. But that’s what makes it special, as you yourselves have surely observed at the puppet theater. The expressions on such wooden and focused faces seem to suit all the slight and subtle twitching produced in the little body when the proper puppeteer is in charge. A proper puppeteer is a despot, one that makes the Tsar seem like a petty gendarme. Imagine, if you wilclass="underline" he writes his shows alone, paints the decorations himself, carves the puppets any way he likes, and plays five or six roles, sometimes many more, all with his own voice. And he never lets complications, inhibitions, or any kind of obstacle slow him down. On the other hand, he has to get along with his puppets, because for him they’re alive. All great puppeteers maintain that the secret of the trade is actually to let the puppet have its way, to yield to it. In his essay on the marionette theater, the great poet Heinrich von Kleist (I say this for the few adults that have snuck in here today and think I don’t see them) has even proved that the puppeteer must have the exact skills and demeanor of a dancer if he wants the figures to move as they should.4 Then comes the most wonderful sight, as the little puppets make as if they’re tickling the floor of the stage with their tiptoes, for they, like angels descending from above, are not gravity-bound as real actors are.