Now that my daughter Lilwen has completed two of four weeks of GCSE exams, with 26 exams across 9 subjects, I would like to reflect
on and share memories of my school education. The memories are also
lively because of a reunion of our class 40 years after we graduated from
secondary school, which took place in late April.
Primary school started at age six, with four years. In my
case, two years were conflated into one, so that I had three years of primary
school, covering the syllabus of four years. At the end of primary school, the teachers sat together with
parents on a 1:1 basis and discussed the progression path for the pupils, with
three choices: Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium, depending on student
ability and profile. I remember that for me, progression to Gymnasium was never
in doubt, and I also remember my first experience of the problems with this
differentiation: I had mentioned in passing to a girl in my class, whom I liked
at the time, that I was looking forward to being in Gymnasium with her; she
looked at me very sadly and said that she was going to continue to Hauptschule:
“You see, Daniel, I am not as clever as you are”. I had never considered the
possibility of making judgments on the basis of “clever”.
Secondary school started in year 5, and lead all the way up
to year 13. In years 5-10, all pupils of a cohort, i.e., who had started in
year 5 in the same calendar year, were taught in three permanent groups,
classes, of up to 30 pupils each. The years were named in Latin. The lower
grade consisted of years 5,6,7, called Sexta, Quinta and Quarta. The middle
grade consisted of years 8,9,10, called Untertertia, Obertertia and
Untersekunda. The upper grade consisted of years 11,12, and 13, called
Obersekunda, Unterprima and Oberprima. Our school had its own upper grade system,
and my cohort was the last cohort allowed to graduate from this gymnasium with
its own system. While at other schools, pupils in years 11,12 and 13 abandoned
the core class system in favour of coming together only as cohorts of
subject-specific courses, in our system the core class cohorts remained across
years 11,12, and 13. In those core cohorts we remained for core subjects,
Language (Latin or English), Maths, German (with three 50-minute lessons per
week) and History, with Philosophy in year 13 and Geography in year 12 (with
two 50-minute lessons per week). In addition to the core subjects, we had to
select one main optional subject with the highest number of lessons per week
(four), and at least one secondary option, with the same amount of lessons per
week as in the core subjects (three). I chose biology as main option, and
German/Theatre, French, English and Chemistry as secondary options.
Two core
cohorts were added to the three that had been in existence since year 5, made
up of students from the Realschule schools in the area deemed “clever” enough
to progress to Gymnasium. They were not integrated into the existing cohorts,
but became two core cohorts in their own right, and had to struggle against
discrimination because of their “difference”. The school made sure that
teachers perceived to be particularly good and fair were selected where
possible as their core subject teachers. For the main and secondary options,
students from all five groups were mixed.
In years 5-10, examination took place through regular
written assessments under exam conditions in each subject, with a certain set
number of such assessments in each half year, but arranged only by the teacher concerned,
and marked only by that teacher, without co-marking by colleagues or external
input. The marks received on those assessments were then averaged and if
between two marks, the contribution to class discussion was added to the
weighting. The marks for each subject were then formalised in a report card in
January/February and in June/July. The marks on the June/July report card
determined whether a pupil could progress into the next year, or had to retake
a year, moving down to the relevant cohort. Each year, each group would thus
get repeaters from the year above. Marks ranged from 1(very good) via 2 (good),
3 (satisfactory), 4 (sufficient), and 5 (inadequate) to 6 (insufficient). A
mark of 5 in two subjects, or a mark of 6 in one subject would count as grounds
for a pupil to have to repeat the year.
In the first half of year 11, teaching in the core subjects
continued normally, while the rest of allocated hours was given over to tasters
of the option choices on offer. Each pupil could opt for a maximum of six of
those tasters, which were taught by the teachers who would also take on those
subjects for good for that cohort. At the end of the first half of year 11,
pupils made their choice of optional subjects to continue. In the 2nd
half of year 11, options were taught at full workload, but none of all year 11
marks counted towards the Abitur, the general qualification for university
entrance.
In years 12 and 13, core subjects were taught in the
established groups of pupils, each with their dedicated class teacher, in their
dedicated classroom. For lessons in the main and secondary options, pupils went
to the classrooms allocated to the options. Assessment for core and option
subjects were in centrally timetabled assessments, two per half-year. The marks
for each half-year report card were arrived at in the same way as before,
averaging the assessment marks and adding the oral contribution where needed.
In the 2nd half of year 13, one set of assessments followed the procedure
established for years 12 and 13, followed by the main Abitur exams, which were
longer (6 hours compared with four hours across years 12 and 13). For each
subject, an average of all year 12-13 report card marks (two for year 12 and
one for year 13) was further averaged with the marks of the 1st set
of assessments from the 2nd half of year 13, and the resulting mark
was finally averaged with the mark achieved in the Abitur exam proper. The
Abitur-exam was double-marked internally. The entire body of teachers then
discussed the marks profile for each pupil before finalising the final mark. Sometimes, pupils would be invited to an oral exam, and improving marks in an
oral exam was also an option for pupils.
To give an example, my profile in
maths was:
Year 12 assessment 1: 1
Year 12 assessment 2: 3
Year 12 report card mark for the first half year: 2
Year 12 assessment 3: 3
Year 12 assessment 4: 4
Year 12 report card mark for the 2nd half year: 3
Year 13.1 assessment 1: 4
Year 13.1 assessment 2: 3
Year 13.1 report card mark for the first half year: 3
Year 13.2 assessment 3: 2
Years 12 and 13.1 average: 3
Combined years 12/13 average (3) and year 13 2nd half averagec(2): 3
Year 13 Main Abitur exam: 4
Average of combined years 12,13 (3) and Abitur exam (4), and thuis final Abitur mark: 3 (taking into account
the fact that several of the previous averages were rounded up rather than
down).
Sadly, we were the last cohort following this system. Our
head teacher lost his battle against the politician-bureaucrats in charge, who
made sure that after his retirement, his successors never had his kind of
intellectual power, but were good at pushing through orders from above…
Every now
and then, art forms are considered as undergoing a crisis. Those who make that
diagnosis are usually critics for the media or from an academic background. In
2015, Detlef Brandenburg, editor of the German Die Deutsche Bühne,
published twelves statements about the current state of affairs of the art form
of opera, with focus on the German scene, with its opera houses and opera
sections at multi-section theatres.
Brandenburg
argued that many new operas are being composed and staged; however, hardly any
are taken up again at other opera houses after their premiere productions. Thus,
these operas do not become known to a wider opera audience, and the composers
do not get a chance to develop their work further to gain experience for future
compositions.
Conventional, canonical opera has attracted its audience
because of very specific characteristics. These include a very emotion-laden
plot, and, most importantly, beautiful music and singing. Many tunes, melodies
or arias from canonical operas have become well-known because of their beauty.
For some reason, contemporary composers seem to be developing a different
understanding of musical beauty, which has not yet caught on widely, or they go
against the canonical concept of beauty, or they are not trained or capable of
creating beautiful sounds. I have not yet found a convincing argument in this
context, but I find hardly any of contemporary opera music or singing beautiful.
I am therefore not surprised that opera houses do not often revive new operas,
and I admire the courage of artistic managers to invite new work to be created
in their houses if they can predict that the result will not sound beautiful.
Brandenburg refers to potentially problematic
assumptions that audiences tend to be conservative, and actually happy with an
apparently never-changing status quo of conservative productions of a
conservative repertoire. Artistic managers therefore hesitate to introduce too
much by way innovation, both in terms of innovative productions of the core
repertoire and introduction of new work.
As far as innovative productions are concerned,
they can be refreshing and interesting, but they are very rare. The reason that
many productions of the Regietheater,
director’s theatre, however, may be problematic is that they just do not make
any sense in relation to the music and the libretto. Directorial concepts then
come across, at best, as inconsequential and as such they do not distract much from the music.
I remember an interview with conductor Peter Schneider where he talked about a production
of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. In one
of the scenes in which the three Norns weave the rope of Destiny, the music is
fairly dramatic. However, the scene had been directed with the Norns sitting
down doing some knitting. Schneider showed some despair in his comment that it
is simply impossible to conduct the dramatic music of this scene as “knitting
music”.
At worst, unfortunate directorial choices or concepts are downright
annoying, constituting obstacles to the enjoyment of the performance, and to
the achievements of the musicians. As with theatre, there is no objection to
innovation in principle. If it works well, it can be great, as with Thomas
Ostermeier’s 2005 production of Hedda
Gabler, that I still consider as the best example of a very successful
contemporary approach to a canonical play text. I have not yet encountered an
opera production quite reaching the consistency of narrative of that Ostermeier
production. I have commented extensively on that production, and have posted that comment separately for reference.
From Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
(2013): Theatre,
Opera and Consciousness: History and Current Debates Amsterdam: Rodopi, 85-92
For the Schaubühne
production of Hedda Gabler, which
premiered on 26 October 2005, and has been revived on tour until 2013, director Thomas Ostermeier selected the German
translation of the play by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel, a renowned translator of
novels and plays, and frequent host, for radio, TV and theatre, of literary and
cultural discussion events. The translation had been premiered at the Theater
Basel in 2003.
Ostermeier had premiered the Schmidt-Henkel translation of
Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the
Schaubühne Berlin in 2002, and used Schmidt-Henkel’s translation of The Master Builder for his production of
the play in 2004 at the Vienna Burgtheater. In later years, Schmidt-Henkel
translated John Gabriel Borkman
(2005, Schauspielhaus Zürich, directed by Barbara Frey), Rosmersholm (2006, Staatstheater Nürnberg, directed by Stefan
Otteni), and An Enemy of the People (2008,
Theater St Gallen, directed by Martin Schulze). The dramaturg for Ostermeier’s
production of Hedda Gabler, German
dramatist Marius Mayenburg, worked with the production team on further updating
the text.
Mayenburg has an acute ear
for the way contemporary Germans speak: his way of rendering Ibsen’s text makes
it as characteristic as possible of everyday German of the middle of the first
decade of the 2nd millennium. This applies in particular to the
characters’ low key, understated responses to each other. When Hedda tells her
husband that she is pregnant, he has his head in her lap.
On hearing the news,
he sits up and stares at Hedda in disbelief, takes his hands off her knees and
moves away from her, uttering “Nee, oder?” “Nee” is a colloquial form of
“Nein”, “no”, accompanied by an ever so slight shaking of the head. He moves
away further from Hedda, while still looking at her. She does not react at all
to his question. He turns his head away from her, and supports his left elbow
on his knee and wipes his head with his left hand, accompanied by heavy sighs
and a facial expression that demonstrates how deeply moved he is, close to
tears. He briefly rests his chin in his hand, then turns again to Hedda, and
stretches out his right hand to touch her belly. He turns away from her again
with the words, again accompanied by tearful sighs: “Das gibt’s doch nicht”.
[That’s impossible!] Then he bursts out into a howl, crying, wipes his face,
howls again, jumps up, and moves to open the glass patio doors that lead to the
outdoors patio. There he howls again, longer, accompanied by further jumping
and shaking of his arms. Hedda comments this with expressions of disbelief and
says: “Gott, ich bring mich noch um. All das hier bringt mich noch um”. [God,
I’m going to kill myself. All this here is going to kill me]
Juliane Tesman, Jørgen
Tesman’s aunt, has been transposed successfully into the 21st
century as well. She is in her mid-sixties, and comes across as a
representative of a middle class woman who has retired from a moderately
successful career, perhaps as a teacher, and who now enjoys her retirement, by
looking after people who need looking after, by reading her monthly fashion
magazine to which she subscribes; she will also have her subscription to the
local opera and theatre company, and participate, on an annual basis, in
high-brow, educational trips to places of cultural interest, and have a good
amount of lady-friends and acquaintances with similar socio-economic and
educational profiles. She has selected for her visit to Tesman’s house, on the
return of the newly-weds from their lengthy honeymoon, a smart-casual outfit,
of which the new hat is one integral part. It is not the kind of hat a woman
without taste for fashion, or without money, would buy, and is thus not in
itself ridiculous, or otherwise out of place in relation to her outfit, quite
the contrary.
In comparison with
productions in which the hat represents Aunt Juliane’s somewhat desperate
attempt to “fit in” and to impress Hedda, the context established in
Ostermeier’s production provides a new perspective on Hedda’s spiteful comments
on Aunt Juliane’s hat as belonging to a servant: in the conventional scenario,
where the hat is indeed somewhat out of place, Hedda responds instinctively to
Juliane’s weakness: she senses and lashes out at it. In the Ostermeier
production, on the other hand, Hedda randomly selects the hat to comment on
because Juliane left it behind. Had it not been the hat, she would have made
her comment on any other item of her outfit. There is no weakness involved on
Juliane’s part, and her response is one of surprise rather than hurt, of
wondering at Hedda’s motivation for such unprovoked nastiness, rather than
feeling sorry for herself.
In many productions of Hedda Gabler, Judge Brack is cast with
an older actor, in view of Brack’s seniority in social and professional
position. In the Schaubühne production, Brack comes across as hardly much older
than Tesman (the actor of Brack, Jörg Hartmann, is seven years older than the
actor of Tesman, Lars Eidinger). The result is that the relationships between
Brack and Hedda, and Brack and Tesman, are quite different than if an older
actor had been cast as Brack. A younger Brack becomes a realistic rival to
Tesman for Hedda’s favours: it is more believable that Hedda could agree to an
extra-marital relationship with a younger Brack than with an older Brack, and
Brack’s advances thus represent more of a temptation for Hedda. A younger Brack
is attractive to her not only because he can talk cleverly, but also
physically, and because in comparison with her husband, Brack has achieved so
much more professionally, exudes so much more security, has so many more
influential acquaintances, and is so much closer to the world Hedda grew up in
as a general’s daughter, than Tesman can ever hope for, even if he gains his
professorship.
Thus Hedda’s decision not
to want to engage in an affair with Brack equally adds to the way this character
is depicted in Ostermeier’s production. In Brack she would have all the things
she desired, and which she is so frustrated of not having with Tesman. However,
she is also aware that Brack could have approached her for marriage before her
marriage to Tesman, and did not: he was not interested in her as a wife, and
may not be interested in any woman for marriage. He is interested in Hedda only
(but very much so) as a mistress, without obligations and commitments, but with
the added excitement of the forbidden, which as a judge he encounters on a
daily basis, and which fascinates him. Hedda knows that for Brack she will be
only one aspect of his life of pleasure without commitment, and she is
determined not to stoop to that position of inferiority. Hedda enjoys her
banters with Brack, where things are said in a witty, immediate response to a
preceding statement of the other party, without the contents of the responses
necessarily intended to be taken seriously by the other party, and not usually
taken seriously either.
The way Katharina
Schüttler’s Heddaclearly tells
Lövborg that hers is a marriage without love but also without betrayal,
suggests that this is one of the few things she is convinced about: it is not
the result of a vague, spoilt mood, not part of her banter with Brack. It is
serious, it is one of very rare instances where Hedda does something because
she has thought about it long and hard, and made that decision. Hedda does
other things quite clearly without making a conscious decision: they just
happen as immediate responses to various situations. Thus in an encounter with
both Tesman and Lövborg in the same room, she invites Lövborg to sit, on the
vast arrangement of sofas, very close to Tesman, and at a right angle to him.
She then walks over to Tesman at a suitable point in the conversation and bends
down and engages him in an extended French kiss that takes place at eye level
for Lövborg, within inches of his own face.
The actor playing Lövborg, Kay
Bartholomäus Schulze, managed brilliantly, overall, to portray the
just-about-dry alcoholic, ever so fragile in his abstinence, ever so prone to
moods and depressions that might be considered as still part of the range of
withdrawal symptoms, and ever so close to the relapse into full-blown alcoholism
due to the mess of his personal life and his self-doubts about his abilities as
an academic. He is recognised clearly as a genius by Thea Elvsted, who has
served as his muse in inspiring the latest book, and by Tesman, who openly
admits that he is nowhere as inspired and original in his own thinking.
Lövborg, however, doubts his own abilities. Hedda also recognises the threat he
poses to Tesman’s career, and this plays one part in her on-the-spot decision
to destroy the manuscript.
In Ostermeier’s contemporary version, however, it is
not a printed text, but exists only on the hard drive of a laptop, without
backup—so to destroy the manuscript, Hedda smashes the laptop with a hammer.
Lars Eidinger develops the
image of a contemporary academic in his portrayal of Tesman. There are lots of
books around the corners of the set, as well as stacks of paper. He matches
Katharina Schüttler’s Hedda in the conversational, everyday use of language,
which has a limited range of ups and downs, and is thus close to monotonous; he
comes across as really very much, and indeed romantically, in love with his
Hedda. He sees her as a child, given that she is smaller than him, and younger,
with eyes that do not reveal much of what is going on inside her, and
attractive, pouting lips. Eidinger’s Tesman is a modern man, full of feelings,
and he cries on three occasions. There is the full outburst described above
when Hedda tells him that she is pregnant; he also cries when he has beard that
Lövborg is back and when he realises the threat that Lövborg might be to his
own prospects of a professorship: Tesman may be a dreamer, stuck in his books
and overall quite naïve, but he does realise that if Lövborg were to try to
seal his comeback with an application for the professorship that Tesman is
hoping to get, Tesman will have no chance in a competition with Lövborg. The
third time we see Tesman cry is when Lövborg convincingly assures Tesman that
he will not apply for the professorship, and that thus there is no more danger
for Tesman to lose the prospects of his professional advancement and indeed
future. The production’s emphasis on the crying man, Tesman, comes at a time
(first in 2005), when a study of audience response to the third part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy found that
among the audiences in a wide range of countries in Europe and beyond, the
highest percentage of men responding to the film with tears came from Germany.
For the final scene of Hedda Gabler, Ostermeier has a striking
contemporary twist in store for his audience. The set design allows the
audience to see into several rooms in the Tesman home at the same time, either
directly, or indirectly through strategically placed mirrors. Tesman and Thea
Elvsted are busy recreating late Lövborg’s manuscript, with Brack in
attendance: he is not merely observing, but is clearly interested in the work,
and in observing how Tesman and Thea get closer to each other though their
joint mission of restoring Lövborg’s work of genius. This is the kind of work
that Tesman excels at: he and Thea inspire each other. Hedda is an outsider in
this scenario, nobody is interested in her any more, not even Brack. She moves
into the room next door, in full view of the audience, takes out the pistol,
looks at it, leans against the wall, puts the pistol to her temple and pulls
the trigger. Her head slumps to her chest, blood pours from her head, she
slowly sinks down along the wall to a sitting position, leaving a streak of
blood on the wall. Her hand still holds the pistol. Thea, Tesman and Brack hear
the sound of the shot. They hardly look up from their work. Tesman comments
that Hedda is playing around with those pistols again, implying that she has
done this before, and reminding the audience of an earlier scene where Hedda
took aim at a vase of flowers and shot it to pieces. They continue their work,
without bothering to go and see whether anything has happened to Hedda. She
lies in her blood, dead, while the others carry on with their work on the
manuscript. Tesman adds jokingly that perhaps Hedda has shot herself, and Brack
comments that people just do not do such things. This phrase, at the end of the
play, implies that Tesman’s joke is poor.
The critical response to
the production was overwhelmingly favourable. In many reviews, the most
striking aspects of the story told by the production are re-told by the
critics, as examples of the success of the play’s transposition into the 21st
century. Tesman’s catch phrase “Ich glaub’ das jetzt nicht” [I just don’t
believe this now] is noted, as is Hedda’s terror at the combination of Tesman’s
red house shoes, Tesman’s petit-bourgeouis homeliness, and his primordial
scream of happiness at finding out that Hedda is pregnant (Tilmann 2005).
Several reviews note Hedda’s young age—the actress, Katharina Schüttler, was
twenty-six when she first played Hedda in 2005. Gardner in the Guardian calls her a “damaged child”, a
child-woman who is “trapped in her vast, minimalist, glass-walled apartment”
(2008). Others comment on her fragile, slim body (Kohse 2005), referring to it
as that of “a 14-year old” (Swann n.d.), and compare her young Hedda with the
more mature nature of Hedda as portrayed by Isabelle Huppert or Corinna
Kirchhoff (Tilmann 2005).
Hedda’s physicality
attracts further attention when Isherwood reports that she “does not stand if
she can slouch, and does not slouch if she can drape herself across the long
modular couch like a bored housecat” (2006). The feline nature of Schüttler’s
Hedda is equally central in a review that describes her first entrance thus:
“We see this Hedda enter in her pyjamas with a naked midriff, looking just like
one of today’s sulky, pre-teen, sex kittens” (Swann n.d.). Bassett in The Independent writes in a similar
vein: “A skinny little thing with a touch of feral cat about her—not fully
domesticated—she looks skeletally fragile but sexually assured and surly”
(2008). Charles Spencer in the Telegraph
finds it amazing how not only the “spoilt young wife”, but also the
nerdish husband (…) the alcoholic genius and the manipulative
lawyer seem just at home in the 21st century as they did in the 19th.
This is still emphatically Ibsen’s play but it also taps directly into the
spirit of our own times—the moral equivocation, the curse of addiction, the
sense of rootlessness, boredom and depression. (2008)
Tilmann emphasises that the
way Katharina Schüttler says Hedda’s phrase “I am so bored” implies that all
her life has been boring so far, and that she does not expect any real change
to that state of affairs. Bassett agrees that Schüttler’s Hedda is “a horribly
recognisable, 21st-century enfant terrible: materially indulged yet
dissatisfied, already jaded and alarmingly amoral.” (2008)
This Hedda, Tilmann
continues, is as much a woman looking for greatness (and not recognising it in
Lövborg’s excessive nature) as a child that wishes for the moon (2005). Tilmann
thus acknowledges an apparent reason for Hedda’s inability to break out of her
cage. While the Hedda of Ibsen’s original was stuck because of the limitations
society imposed on a woman in her time, Ostermeier’s Hedda is stuck because she
is small and cowardly. She has chosen security, she shuns risks and scandal
because of her fear; in this insecurity she is representative of her
generation, and it is indeed—unnecessary—fear that is a major concern in the
life of actress Katharina Schüttler: a life without fear is her highest dream
(Böckem 2010). Spencer commends Kay Bartholomäus Schulze, whose Lövborg
captures “all the agony and self-loathing of a reformed alcoholic falling
spectacularly off the wagon” (2008).
Not all critics were
convinced that the production’s transposition into the 21st century
worked. Charles Isherwood, writing in the New
York Times, found much to praise in the production, but concluded that “Mr
Ostermeier’s cool and considered “Hedda Gabler” comes a little too close to
proving the truth of that platitude used as a prim remonstrance to children
whining to be entertained: that bored people are boring people” (2006). Bassett
does not believe that genius Lövborg will not have made a backup or printed off
a hardcopy of his masterpiece (2008), and Stasio argues that the men in Hedda’s
life, “deprived of the 19th-century social privileges that would
have blinded them to Hedda’s subtle wiles, (…) just seem uncommonly stupid”
(2006).
Despite those few concerns,
for Ostermeier’s production of Hedda
Gabler, the transposition into the 21st century works, overall,
because it tells a consistent, cogent, and interesting story, in which the
individual elements add up. The changes needed to accommodate the plot within a
21st century context make sense and bring the characters, their
words and actions, close to the contemporary German audience— more, so,
perhaps, than to the American audience, if the voice of American critic
Isherwood is to be taken as representative: his assessment of the production
and its characters as cool and distanced misses the point that the monotonous
delivery of lines, misunderstood as cool, was indeed characteristic of much of
German speaking at the time.
Tilmann,
Christina. 2005. Die Leiden der jungen H.: Ein Ibsen fürheute: Thomas Ostermeier triumphiert mit Hedda Gabler an der Berliner Schaubühne. Der
Tagesspiegel, October 28. http://tagesspiegel.de/kultur/die-leiden-der-jungen-h-/645376.html (accessed December 15, 2011).
