Professor Bernhardi

Walking on one of our interminable hikes around Vienna (well, enjoyable for me, probably interminable for Toby), we passed the Burgtheater. This magnificent building, built after plans by the most important historicist architect in 19th century Europe, Gottfried Semper, the model for every late 19th century theater in the Austrian Empire (and a few beyond its boarders), was of course on the list of structures I felt obliged to visit.

Little did I expect that the play that was showing on its stage was going to be Professor Bernhardi by Arthur Schnitzler. It was kind of like walking past the Estate's Opera in Prague and seeing that a Mozart opera was playing. Or, l'havdil, seeing the Ring at Bayreuth. It was bashert. We had to go.

Explanation clearly in order. First off, who was Arthur Schnitzler and why does the production of one of his plays in Vienna obligate a cultural historian of late 19th century Austro-Hungarian Jewry to see it?

Schintzler, a product of Leopoldstadt, was a doctor by profession, but in mid-life turned his attention to his true passion: writing, especially for the theater. Through his body of work, usually deeply complex and starkly honest in its presentation of such issues as sex, psychological turmoil, and the hypocrisy of class, race and morality in fin-de-siecle Vienna, he is considered along with Freud, Otto Weininger , Gustav Mahler and Theodor Herzl to be among the definitive symbols of the turn-of-the-century in Vienna. His most famous play is most likely Reigen (or Le Ronde), which has seen several interpretations and reincarnations, most recently as The Blue Room on stage in London and New York, and the novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story), most famous to movie fans in its incarnation as Eyes Wide Shut, a sex-o-rama starring Tom Cruise and Nichole Kidman.

So while clearly there was a little bit of the dirty old man about him, Schnitzler is nevertheless rightfully considered a master of shading the subtleties of Viennese social structure -- the cuts, the hierarchies, the wounds -- and especially the simultaneously tragic, pathetic, and often noble attempts of middle and upper middle class Jews of his time to navigate the treacherous waters. Because he did it, he certainly knew of what he spoke.

I know him best through his novel, Der Weg ins Freie (The Road into the Open), which is to my mind about the best tableau of the interior life of Jews in fin-de-siecle Vienna every produced. Remarkably, the hero of the novel is a Gentile nobleman/would-be-composer, who spends most of the novel living a life of leisure and hanging out in the cafes with his Jewish friends. It is a fantastic book, and I can't do it justice here.

The play Toby and I saw, Professor Bernhardi, was a work from the middle of his career. Perhaps its greatest claim to fame was that, ironically, it was not allowed to premier at the Burgtheater when it was written. Considered obscene by the Imperial censors, it was banned when it was written in 1912, opening instead (surprisingly) in Berlin. The reason usually understood for its being banned was its mention of abortion, which in the Catholic Austrian Empire was a subject strictly verboten and taboo in public life. But I suspect that there was something else at work: the frank depiction of institutionalized and sensational anti-Semitism in the Vienna of Karl Lueger.

The play opens in Bernhardi's clinic, where the Professor is the chief physician and head of the practice (among other things, the play is rather enlightening as to the structure of Viennese medical institutions in the early 20th century). The scene is the office, with two doors, one on the right leading to the patient's ward, on the left leading out of the office. At the opening, a woman (off stage) is dying of sepsis brought on by a botched abortion. The doctor's various interns and a nurse are discussing the case (and also flirting -- gotta get the sex in somehow). The professor comes in, and is informed that the patient is dying, but is in a state of sepsis-induced euphoria, believing not only that she is well, but is the happiest she has ever been (the only sounds you hear from the woman is her singing childhood songs off stage). Shortly after, a priest enters. He'd been told that there was a woman who needed last rights, and he was here to administer them.

This is where the play becomes interesting. Not wanting the patient to be awakened from her euphoria (presumably a priest giving her last rights would make her realize the reality of her situation), Bernhardi (did I mention he is a Jew?) forbids the priest from entering.

A fascinating moral dilemma emerges: is it preferable for a dying person to live out their last moments as painlessly as possible, or for them to be made aware of their immanent demise for the sake of a religious ritual? Bernhardi and the priest represent two poles: the priest an anti-humanist, religious certainty (of COURSE she should be administered the last rights, regardless of the outcome, as it is her eternal soul that is in peril), and Bernhardi, a Jew, a man of science and pragmatism, whose humanity places his care for the patient's state in the here-and-now first.

But in the course of their argument, the nurse (who has been tipped off by the priest when Bernhardi wasn't looking, and told she should inform the patient that the priest was here) has gone into the ward. You hear a shriek where there was pleasant singing, and then the nurse rushes in to tell the doctors and Bernhardi that the woman is dying. What Bernhardi fears would happen has taken place: knowledge of her dire condition has exacerbated it, destroyed her sense of euphoria, and with it her body collapses. The woman dies. Bernhardi, frustrated, angry, emerges, the priest, realizing what has happened, takes off his collar. Bernhardi walks over to the priest, and actually seems to try and offer cold comfort: it wasn't the priest's fault, as her death was unavoidable.

Rather than taking solace, the priest, far from feeling any responsibility, accosts Bernhardi angrily, and with anti-Jewish innuendo: it was not he, a priest who was doing his holy duty, who should feel in any way responsible; it was Bernhardi, a Jew with now knowledge of the True Faith, who bore the responsibility for endangering the woman's soul. The priest vows that this will not be the end, and storms out of the ward.

Fast forward, and the priest has gone to the newspapers (the depiction of Viennese public opinion and the role of newspapers, etc., is really first rate), and worked its way up to the important donors to the hospital, even to the Reichsrat itself. Bernhardi is attacked, accused in terms that resemble ritual murder accusations, his practice endangered.

Well, it was here that Toby and I had to leave. You see, we bought the 5 Euro tickets...which got us in the door, but also in the nosebleed seats far above the stage. The play, as captivating as it was to me (who actually understood what was going on), was unintelligible to Toby (his German, I'm afraid, isn't quite as good as his Hebrew). And the heat from the stage lights seemed to rise up right to our section. Although Toby was an INCREDIBLY good sport -- he was all for going -- and although he took everything in stride, including the bad view of the stage, the heat and the German, was clearly fading, and there was, for some ungodly reason, no intermission. We ended up sneaking out a door nearby -- luckily I had the foresight to buy tickets on an aisle.

So, hats off to Schnitzler, who wrote a great play -- I've downloaded the text to my ipad so that I can actually find out how it ends. Hats off to the actors, who were great. But most of all, hats off to my intrepid travel companion and research assistant, Toby, who was such a trooper. It was an experience I know I'll never forget, and I've probably finally succeeded in my real goal: making sure the LAST thing Toby wants to do for a living is become an academic :-).