Historical dictionary of German Theatre

CENSORSHIP

Censorship: translation

TheGottsched-Neuberreforms of the 1730s had firmly established in both the public and the aristocratic consciousness that theater was a moral institution with responsibilities forBildung(a term meaning cultural education and refinement).FriedrichSchiller's subsequent deliberations on the role of theater as a moral institution added weight to the argument that theater had a special function in German society. The Napoleonic wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, however, prompted a reappraisal of such notions, and the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 were the result. These decrees were drafted at a conference of German states in Carlsbad (now in the Czech Republic) and later enacted into law as a means of counteracting revolutionary sympathies. Their numerous provisions provided for uniform press censorship and strict governmental supervision of both rehearsals and performances.
In March 1820 the Prussian government set a precedent for most German states and principalities by codifying censorship as a matter of police enforcement. The 1820 codification was in many ways an extension of 18th-century reform movements, since censorship perpetuated the fiction of the ruler's role as "trustee for his people," assuring them of good taste and appropriateness in theatrical fare. Most courts throughout Germany and Austria made frequent pronouncements about guaranteeing the "validity" of theater by keeping "vulgarity and disrespectful expressions at a genteel remove from the stage," but those pronouncements "rang hollow . . . in light of the sovereign's disregard of the theater in every other respect except censorship" (Hans Knudsen,Deutsche Theatergeschichte[Stuttgart: Kröner, 1970], 319).
Court theaters were exempt from official censorship, since they came under the exclusive jurisdiction of the local ruler, but local rulers were loath to present themselves as nonconforming to the larger, more powerful courts (such as Prussia), under which they operated even in the 19th century as feudal vassals.The police theater censor made his official debut in Prussia on 16 March 1820, after a decree by Prince Karl von Hardenburg (1750-1822) granting the royal police minister responsibility for theater performances. Censorship took place thereafter inBerlinunder the jurisdiction of a "royal presidium [established] for all theaters, those crown administered excepted . . . whose jurisdiction shall extend to all published and non-published tragedies, dramas, comedies, and/or musical plays, which, without expressed permission of the royal presidia or those persons assigned authority to grant said permission, may not be performed" (H. H. Houben,Polizei und Zensur[Berlin: Gersbach, 1926], 102). In other words, court theaters were expected to censor themselves (which they nearly always did) but private theaters were to be strictly supervised.
In 1848 censorship protocols appeared to change substantially in the aftermath of street riots and calls for a republican parliament among most of the German states. A "Cabinet Order" by Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV liberalized the 1820 decree, stating that theater censorship was "incompatible" with the "basic legal provisions of free speech." The order called for the elimination of theater censorship. On 31 January 1850, a new Prussian constitution went into effect; Article 27 granted "every Prussian" the "right through word, print, writing, and visual means to express his opinion," but the Berlin police began immediately to look for ways to extend their jurisdiction over theater, since "presentation" (Darstellung) was not officially spelled out in Article 27. In February 1850 the Royal Police Presidium issued regulations that required officers to file official reports on theater performances "if the content of the play offers anything suspicious" (Houben, 104). In December 1850 Berlin police chief Karl Friedrich von Hinckeldey (1805-1856) issued a police directive that successfully excluded theater from the freedoms of Article 27. InVienna, the Habsburg court was no less flexible.Johann Nepomuk Nestroylampooned his problem with Austrian censors in hisFreiheit in Krähwinkel:
A censor is a pencil who has taken human form, or a human being who has become a pencil, an eraser become flesh hovering over the human imagination, a crocodile who lingers along the banks as the river of ideas flows by, easing into the water to bite off the heads of writers.
That line was cut by Viennese censors and not allowed to be performed.
The unification of the German Reich in 1871 left intact the essentially unrestricted power of police to censor the stage, largely because the vast majority of theater producers, managers, agents, and actors liked the system as it was. The idea of theater as a moral institution usually implied state support of one kind or another, even if that meant restrictions on subject matter. The highly publicized Ladenburg-Kugler Plan (proposed by an official in the Prussian Culture Ministry named Adalbert von Ladenburg and an art history professor named Franz Kug-ler) encouraged state control of theater so long as the state subsidized it. The plan called for raising the artistic standards of provincial stages, cultivating participation in those theaters among provincial governments, rationalizing the system of taxation on box office sales, implementing qualifications for managers of theaters, creating real training institutes for young theater artists, regulating royalty payments to playwrights and composers, developing a pension plan for performers, and finally establishing a set of regulations by which all legal questions regarding theater performance could be settled. There was great hope that such measures might be implemented; in the end, none of them was. It remained for private organizations such as the Deutsche Bühnenverein (German Producers' League), Genossenschaft deutscher Bühnenangehöriger (Society of German Theater Artists), Pensionanstalt für Theaterschaffende (Theater Artists' Pension and Retirement System), and Vereinigung künstlerischer Bühnenvorstände (Organization of Theater Boards of Directors) gradually to realize the points of the Ladenburg-Kugler Plan over the next half-century.
Cracks in the censorship façade began to appear as well, as talented lawyers such as Richard Grelling (1853-1929) successfully appealed police decisions in Prussian courts, allowingOskar Blumenthal, Otto Brahm, Max Reinhardt, Viktor Barnowsky, and others to present plays byFrank Wedekind, Gerhart Hauptmann, Carl Sternheim, andArthur Schnitzlerto the general public. Police censors usually used language of moral outrage when banning a play or calling for changes in a script. They found the use of the "inherited disease theory" [in Henrik Ibsen'sGhostscausing brain damage, for example, inappropriate for a "family drama." When Sigmund Lautenberg attempted to doMaxHalbe'sDer Amerikafahrer(The Traveler to America), censors demanded that a male cast member not touch an actress's bloomers but "rather her back or at most the hem of her skirt." Censors banned the use of German words or words in languages the audience might understand that could cause offense: they forbadeWeiber(wenches) andRouéinDer kleine Schwerenöterby Leon Gandillot andMieder(corset) inMarquiseby Victorien Sardou and disallowed an actor from undoing his suspenders inDr. Jojoby Albert Carré. Grelling usually got permission for managers to present plays in question if certain offensive portions of the script were omitted; Reinhardt got permission from the police to doFrühlings Erwachen(Spring'sAwakening) by arguing that the high ticket prices and the small capacity of the Kammerspiele would attract a wealthy clientele unlikely to stir up trouble.
With the collapse of the Second Reich in 1918, most censorship protocols collapsed with it. For about six years, the German theater experienced unprecedented freedom from governmental intervention. After the death of President Friedrich Ebert (1871-1925), however, local jurisdictions began to ban plays, often using the same arguments frequently heard in the Wilhelmine period; in many cases, courts upheld their decisions.
Under the Nazi dictatorship, censorship did not officially exist. Theaters were supposedly independent entities and remained theoretically autonomous, allowing artistic freedom fancifully to flourish. ButJoseph Goebbels, in his capacity as propaganda minister, held complete executive authority over all professional theater activity in Germany and ultimately its annexed territories. Theater directors had to submit all plays for approval to the Propaganda Ministry, whose officials merely wanted to examine plays "to insure that the GermanVolkand its ethnic sensibilities would not be injured" (Hildegarde Brenner,Die Kunstpolitik des Nationalsozialismus[Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963], 16).
The German Democratic Republic employed a similar procedure to assure conformity with state goals for the theater. The regime regarded theater in particular as "one of the most important facets of domestic policy, [assuming] artistic production . . . as a socially formative force" (H. G. Huettich,Theater in the Planned Society[Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978], 2). The "official" artistic policy was one of "socialist realism," which assumed that only "positive" portrayals of communist societies were feasible because such societies had achieved their major goals and were no longer subject to criticism.
All preoccupation with art for its own sake, as well as with dilettantism, form, myth, and mysticism of any kind, had to be negated. Art had simply to be functional, and as such, supportive of the Party while accessible to the intellects and feelings of the majority of the people. [Theater] was assigned a central role in the social system as a planned, organized, and well integrated part of a cultural policy aimed at solidifying the people behind the Party. (Huettich, 11)
In West Germany, numerous localities sought to banBertoltBrecht's plays in the 1950s, and in some instances those bans were effective. By the 1960s, however, Brecht's and most other plays, along with a myriad of performance styles, appeared with increasing frequency, a trend that continued beyond the collapse of the GDR and into the 21st century.

  1. censorship—мед.сущ. самоконтроль Англорусский медицинский словарь....Англо-русский медицинский словарь
  2. censorship—censorship translation nounADJECTIVE strict government military state wartime Internet media political press official VERB CENSORSHIP impose The government has...Collocations dictionary
  3. censorship—censorship bersetzung censorship Zensur f...Englisch-Deutsch Worterbuch gesetz
  4. censorship—Censorship translation During the period of partition films in the Polish territories were censored according to the laws of the occupying powers. After regaining indepen...Guide to cinema
  5. censorship—Censorship translation Film censorship regulations were first introduced in Italy in by a law that established the requirement for all films to be furnished with an offi...Historical dictionary of Italian cinema
  6. censorship—Censorship translation Freedom of expression is guaranteed by the constitution of each Scandinavian country. Under the absolutist monarchs who ruled prior to the establis...Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Literature and Theater
  7. censorship—Censorship translation Official film censorship in Spain started in and remained in place as an explicit system to control artistic expression enforced in one form or an...Historical dictionary of Spanish cinema
  8. censorship—Censorship translation During the period of the Republicin the th and th centuries censorship of the press was in the hands of local and re gional authorities. The States...Historical Dictionary of the Netherlands
  9. censorship—CENSORSHIP translation Censorship in modern Japan has served as both a political expedient wielded by government as well as a selfregulating tool used by the publishing h...Japanese literature and theater
  10. censorship—censorship translationSee armed forces censorship civil censorship field press censorship national censorship primary censorship prisoner of war censorship secondary cens...Military dictionary
  11. censorship—censorship translationSynonyms and related wordsabbreviation abridgment bamboo curtain barrier of secrecy blackout block blockage blocking bluepenciling bowdlerization ca...Moby Thesaurus
  12. censorship—censorship translation STANLEY KUBRICK ran into censorship restrictions with SPARTACUSem homosexuality and violence LOLITAem pedophilia and A CLOCKWORK ORANGEem rape and ...The Encyclopedia of Stanley Kubrick
  13. censorship—censorship translation The censoring of theatre existed from its beginnings and in America this proclivity initially stemmed from Puritans who viewed the stage as a den o...The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater
  14. censorship—[sensp]цензурацензорцензура подавление подсознательных влечений...Англо-русский большой универсальный переводческий словарь
  15. censorship—цензура...Англо-русский онлайн словарь
  16. censorship—цензура...Англо-русский онлайн словарь
  17. censorship—военная цензура воен....Англо-русский словарь военных терминов
  18. censorship—n усечение цензура...Англо-русский словарь Лингвистика-98
  19. censorship—censorship [sensp] nu цензура должность цензора...Англо-русский словарь Мюллера
  20. censorship—сущ. цензура государственный надзор за печатью и средствами массовой информации to impose introduce censorship вводить цензуру to exercise practice censorship осуществ...Англо-русский словарь общей лексики
  21. censorship—цензура должность цензора...Англо-русский словарь по патентам и товарным знакам
  22. censorship—Цензура censorship of advertisement censorship of press preliminary censorship...Англо-русский словарь по полиграфии
  23. censorship—n .strong цензура .strong пост и срок полномочий цензора .strong в психоанализе внутренняя цензура сознания термин введен З. Фрейдом проявляющаяся в томampGTфункциями эг...Англо-русский словарь по социологии
  24. censorship—стат.цензурирование усечение...Англо-русский словарь по экономике
  25. censorship—nto be subjected to censorship подвергаться цензуреto employ strict censorship применять строгую цензуруto impose to introduce censorship on smthem устанавливать вво...Англо-русский словарь политической терминологии
  26. censorship—n. цензура должность цензора...Англо-русский словарь редакция bed
  27. censorship—сущ.emstrong цензура пост и срок полномочий цензора в психоанализе внутренняя цензура сознания термин введен З. Фрейдом проявляющаяся в том что функциями эго и суперэго ...Англо-русский социологический словарь
  28. censorship—цензорство...Англо-русский технический словарь
  29. censorship—сущ. пол. цензура система государственного надзора за печатью и средствами массовой информацииem strict press censorship [censorship of the press\] жесткая цензура пресс...Англо-русский экономический словарь
  30. censorship—цензура должность цензора...Англо-русский юридический словарь
  31. censorship—n цензура посада цензора...Англо-украинский словарь
  32. censorship—цензура посада цензора censorship for national security reasons цензура з мркувань нацонально безпеки censorship committee censorship limitations censorship of obscenit...Англо-украинский юридический словарь
  33. censorship—n цензура...Англо-український дипломатичний словник
  34. censorship—цензура...Англо-український словник
  35. censorship—n цензура посада цензора....Англо-український словник Балла М.І.
  36. censorship—цензура посада цензора censorship for national security reasons цензура з мркувань нацонально безпеки censorship committeecensorship limitationscensorship of obscenityce...Англо-український юридичний словник
  37. censorship—Цензура. Краткий толковый словарь по полиграфии....Краткий толковый словарь по полиграфии
  38. censorship—[sensp] n. цензура. ист. пост и срок полномочий цензора в Древнем Риме. censor I...Новый большой англо-русский словарь
  39. censorship—censorship [sensp] ni . цензура . ист. iпост и срок полномочий цензора в Древнем Римеi . censor I...Новый большой англо-русский словарь II
  40. censorship—sensp n . цензура . ист. emпост и срок полномочий цензора в Древнем Римеem . censor I...Новый большой англо-русский словарь под общим руководством акад. Ю.Д. Апресяна