Ihering, Herbert

(1888-1977)

   critic; evolved the parameters that de-fined Weimar's socially relevant theater.* Born in Springe, near Hanover, he studied philosophy, history, and Germanistik. He was soon writing essays on contemporary drama, in which he advocated a new form of theater and dispar-aged the period s level of criticism. His ideas attracted Siegfried Jacobsohn,* and from 1909 he wrote for Die Schaubuhne (see Weltbuhne). He was soon writing also for the Vossische Zeitung and moved to Austria* in 1914 to direct Vienna's Volksbuhne. After he returned to Berlin* in 1918, he focused exclu-sively on criticism, writing first for Der Tag and from 1922 for the Berliner Borsen-Courier. His work documents the history of Weimar-era theater. Much later he claimed that "the dynamism that was missing from the revolution was to be found in the theater. He perceived the crisis of Expressionist* theater while advocating a stage prepared to portray contemporary problems. As a board member for the Kleist Foundation (an organization founded to reward promising but financially impaired writers), he was committed to promoting young and unknown talent. He facilitated Bertolt Brecht s* breakthrough and sponsored the playwrights Arnolt Bronnen* and Ernst Barlach.* He also expedited the direct-ing careers of Erich Engel,* Jürgen Fehling,* and Erwin Piscator.*

   A champion of what he called "productive criticism," Ihering was less interested in the success or failure of a performance than in the total meaning of a production. Never a great stylist, he stressed what he conceived as a meta-physical interaction between "productive criticism and the "theater of pro-ductive contradiction. Because of his a partiality for "political theater, he was faulted for embracing selected playwrights—an error he later acknowledged in the case of Bronnen. He scorned isolated criticism and ridiculed the individ-ualistic approach of Alfred Kerr,* the era's premier critic. His published quarrels with Kerr were already legendary in the 1920s.

   Although Ihering was a well-known leftist, he remained in Germany after Hitler s* appointment. In 1933 he joined the Berliner Tageblatt, for which Kerr had written. He was silenced by the Reichspressekammer in 1936 for his "de-liberate and systematic sabotage of National Socialist reconstruction and thereafter published nonpolitical portraits of actors, worked for the Tobis Film Society, and from 1942 was intendant for Vienna s Burgtheater. He settled in East Berlin after World War II and produced criticism until the 1970s.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Willett, Theatre of the Weimar Republic.