Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Map
- 1 The establishment of the ‘city of theatre’
- 2 Censorship
- 3 The ‘old’ Burgtheater
- 4 Commercial theatres in ‘Old Vienna’
- 5 Opera and operetta
- 6 The late nineteenth century: new foundations
- 7 Modernism at the end of the monarchy
- 8 1918–1945
- 9 The Second Republic
- Appendix 1 Documents
- Appendix 2 Research resources
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Censorship
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Map
- 1 The establishment of the ‘city of theatre’
- 2 Censorship
- 3 The ‘old’ Burgtheater
- 4 Commercial theatres in ‘Old Vienna’
- 5 Opera and operetta
- 6 The late nineteenth century: new foundations
- 7 Modernism at the end of the monarchy
- 8 1918–1945
- 9 The Second Republic
- Appendix 1 Documents
- Appendix 2 Research resources
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
CENSORSHIP UNTIL 1848
From the late eighteenth century onwards, certainly until the end of the Metternich régime in 1848, it was axiomatic that censorship was even more strictly exercised in the theatre than it was on the printed word. This is because performance could make an immediate impact on people of all classes, whereas books were in effect restricted to the educated classes. This general principle was enshrined in Hägelin's 1795 memorandum, and the passage puts the point so clearly that it is worth quoting verbatim. One of Hägelin's considerations is that beside the court theatres there were now other licensed theatres (he uses the revealingly condescending term ‘Nebentheater’, ‘subsidiary theatres’), from which the same standards in taste could not be expected. In that context he spells out, in a passage reproduced on pp. 246-7 (document 2):
It is beyond question that censorship of the theatre must be much stricter than the normal censorship of printed reading matter, even if the latter may consist of dramatic works. This is a consequence of the different impression which can be made on the minds and emotions of the audience by a work enacted with the illusion of real life, by comparison with that which can be made by a play that is merely read at a desk. — The impression made by the former is infinitely more powerful than that of the latter because the former engages the eyes and ears and is intended even to penetrate the will of the spectator in order to attain the emotional effects intended; this is something that reading alone does not achieve. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Theatre in ViennaA Critical History, 1776–1995, pp. 25 - 48Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996