‘Woeful taste’: German-language theatre in need of censorship

Keen reformist critics such as Joseph von Sonnenfels complained about the ‘woeful taste’ of the Viennese. They criticized the fact that there was more ‘Hanswurst’ clowning on Viennese stages than in any other city of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. For this they squarely blamed the government, who saw the purpose of the theatres as being not in education but in ‘entertainment’. Or in ‘keeping the people from those private conventiculis or gatherings which frequently lead to dangerous notions’, as it was phrased in an official document dating from 1741.

In his fictive Briefe über die wienerische Schaubühne (Letters on the Viennese Stage) Sonnenfels urges the establishment of ‘purified theatre’ in the spirit of the Enlightenment, based on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767–1769): a play should have a regular structure, a logical plot, proper, rational subject-matter and be written and performed in standard German. He particularly condemned extemporization and the improvised texts spoken in the ‘Hanswurst comedies’ which were coloured by vernacular forms of German and mocked those in authority.

Influenced by Church advisors in matters concerning the theatre, Maria Theresa placed fundamental strictures on the plays that were performed: religion and morality should not to be violated and Enlightenment ideas should not to result in atheism and free thought. She thus ordered the setting up of a committee on book censorship in 1749, and in 1770 a special office for theatre censorship.

The purification of the language was intended to serve the education of the nation, with drama epitomizing an ideal rather than holding up a satirical mirror to the present.