Händel’s Steckenpferd

We must.

According to a Spiegel poll, they’re scientists, Einstein, Planck, etc.

… and yet the Germans are constantly on the look out for the new young Siegfried who is as naive and awkward as Wagner’s fashioning of him and can also be seen as the Erlöser: a Parsifal, fresh, primitive and unfashioned as he is emerging from the forest which has, for Germans, a special mythical and historic significance witness the romanticizing of Hermann and the Teutoburger Schlacht!

… and no accident that he says in interviews that he keeps a miniature portrait of Frederick the Great on his desk.

Who, as Jonathan Steinberg says, “made Germany but never ruled it”. But seriously -

True. Even Admiral Nelson, who occupies the most famous of columns, had a highly controversial illicit affair and the government had to intervene to bar poor Emma Hamilton from his funeral. Yet, just 35 years later they erected the column on Trafalgar Square.

While Germans prefer the concept of a hero to the real thing. Which is pretty much at the core of the divide we are positing.

The Anglo-German divide has become ever more marked in the performing arts over the last fifteen years. This is especially true of the spoken theatre but also in opera even though many operatic interpreters and opera companies have endeavoured to cross the divide and cross-fertilize their work in both countries. The situation is also true of ballet to a certain extent but that is because audiences have become conditioned to, and even expect, this divide to be apparent when they go to performances. The polemic is startling between the expectancy of even the most established subscription audience at, say, the Kammerspiele in Munich, the Schauspielhaus in Zürich or the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg and the audience at a performance of the Royal Shakespeare Company or National Theatre not to speak of commercial shows in the West End. Similarly the level of what one could describe as gladiatorial dramaturgical expectancy at an opera premiere in Munich, Berlin, Stuttgart or Basel is light years away from the expectancy as the audience hushes before curtain up at the Royal Opera House or at Glyndebourne. At the former one awaits confrontation with a conceptual interpretation, the more radical the better. At the latter one awaits and expects the thrill of performance rather than analysis or the exploration of a particular concept or point of view. In short, it’s about concept versus narrative.

Yes. It is remarkable and difficult for some English commentators to appreciate that in the German system a less than brilliant or even mediocre performance by the singers and actors or even the conductor and orchestra can be forgiven and even praised if the concept is strong and strongly advocated. At English National Opera during the 80s and early 90s we endeavoured to confront this problem and this divide being, as we were in our generation, disciples of Walter Felsenstein and Wieland Wagner. And if there is any opera company in the UK today where the dialogue between audience and interpreters leans in some small way towards the German speaking dramaturgical tradition it is ENO. If that is less evident today than it was this is because of the politico-economic influence that has been bought to bear on the company and which will, I fear, become more and more evident and plays into the hands of those in the public, sponsors and even politics who fear and precipitously condemn any hint of European “concept theatre”. Of course, the ideal remains the Gesamtkunstwerk when all components fuse together into an integral whole. Interestingly however, an English audience will not forgive or tolerate a brilliant concept, however strong, if the performances are deemed insufficient.

Colleagues at ENO way back then in the mid 80s often berated me for being too German in outlook and certainly too centrist in management style. But being by nature somewhat of a chameleon, and having spent eleven years as a European Englishman skating on the tricky ice rink of Chicago arts politics I had learnt to be flexible and to adapt. At ENO I was, however, surprised at how much time I was expected to spend on pure administration, funding and political as well as marketing and fundraising issues rather than concentrating on thrashing out the core issues of what we were putting on the stage, how and why. In England one always had the feeling that a bland but popular show would be forgiven if it were to become what we used to call a “banker” at the box office and involved exciting performances. I remember once bowing to pressure from our financial imperatives and sanctioning the scheduling of seventeen performance of Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers” in one season in a decorative and popular production and realizing that the piece was only selling by virtue of one duet that everyone recognizes. That was our banker and no one complained at the revenue that flooded in and, indeed, financed other work. I do remember, however, that a friend and cultural eminènce grise, the former director of the Edinburgh Festival, Peter Diamand, whose background was originally Dutch and who was brought up and much influenced by the central European tradition, berated me in no uncertain terms for having compromised the Spielplan’s integrity in such a way. He was right but he was the only dissenting voice although it has to be said that the then Chairman of the Board, Lord Harewood, was keenly aware of over reliance on “banker” shows and the pitfalls that could await if we would succumb to that kind of financial pressure too often. George Harewood was, however, Chairman and much as it might have gone against his exceptionally fine artistic grain he still had to represent the Board’s collective responsibility up to a movable and often hard to define point. This was a tightrope walking act of governance which he managed as no other could before or since but then, of course, despite being royal he was through and through an ex professional who had spent his life in service to the Arts at Covent Garden, at the Edinburgh Festival and as General Director of ENO before me. Dramaturgical stringency in repertoire planning is not something that is part of the public or critical consciousness in the UK - rather popularity, inclusiveness and accessibility seem to be more important and this trend seems to be on the increase. If you scan the output of today’s BBC you encounter the same worrying symptoms but across a much broader and some would say more important canvas. But how can one reconcile that with the operatic art form’s intrinsic exclusivity in the positive sense of the word?

Definitely. An eclectic “pick and mix” editorial policy would have resulted in me being pretty quickly crucified as the new Intendant. Certainly it would have resulted in me being fired or, at best, not having my contract renewed after the first three years. When I arrived there to head the Staatsoper at the Nationaltheater, being the first English born and raised person ever to head Germany’s oldest and largest cultural institution -

… what surprised me most was that no one seemed to care how much money we raised, that box office success was expected and taken for granted and budgetary control much stricter (and cameralistic) than in the UK. Accessibility was an issue but not on the front page as the tradition of opera going was firmly entrenched in all levels of society since the Wittelsbacher had democratized Opera by building the National Theatre which opened in 1811 with a capacity of 2,101 in a city with a population of just 54,000 and the company had been in existence in one form or another since the mid 17th century. But survival and perceived success was based entirely on perceptions of how interesting the interpretations of the works on stage could and should be. Even a rough shod performance could be forgiven if the interpretation was decreed to be interesting, radical, maybe new and worthwhile and it always had to be, what the Germans call, “konsequent”, that is to say carried through to the last detail without compromise for better or for worse. Deficits or financial failures were punishable under the criminal code (which concentrates the budgetary mind) but the surest way to be sacked would be to mount a series of bland but popular undemanding productions that would not add anything to the constantly changing theatrical vocabulary. The “Pearl Fishers Solution” to a period of financial crisis was simply not even theoretically possible: it was unthinkable.

Absolutely and this took some getting used to after eleven years in Chicago and eight years in London. The first shock was to face the schizophrenic attitude to the RAF often reversed between successive generations as well the, for an Englishman, exotic political scenario of Conservatives (with a big C), CDU and especially CSU in Bavaria, being the parties most interested and supportive of the arts however wayward. Then I was confronted and surprised but, I must admit, also strangely comforted after reading some “hate mail” or perhaps a withering review of a Premiere that it would end with something like “....but say what you like about Jonas, like him or hate him, at least he is “konsequent”, using the exact same phrase that you just did. And the fascinating aspect of that is that such utterances would always refer personally to “Jonas” rather than the work, interpreters or production in question. The person, the figurehead became fused with the artistic policy and the work of art itself. This is very important in Germany and evident in German history and politics and one experiences it in its most acute form in the feeding frenzy around Bayreuth every year where the new directorial team of the two Wagner half sisters will always be personally attacked no matter what they present and how they present it until they show that their hides are thick enough not to give a monkeys at which point they will, if they are uncompromising, be elevated to the rank of those who are simply respected for their Konsequenz! Only then will they command the respect and honour that is their due as Germany’s answer to the Windsors.

Absolutely not! One becomes, as the figurehead, the whipping boy or subject of adulation. After a disastrous premiere one is forgiven if “konsequent” or shunned if not. This changes completely a few days or weeks later when a success, or what is deemed to be a success, occurs and one becomes as much of a local hero as the star footballer with Bayern Munich. As for private life this goes pretty much undisturbed until one travels on the tube or tram where one is constantly asked for ones autograph and harangued usually about new and unfamiliar production styles and values. Of course part of this is because the director and designer have left town and are on their next assignment in Timbuktu, Oberkuckucksheim or wherever but it is also because one becomes the leader of the institution and is completely identified with every aspect of its interface with the public artistically and administratively.

Certainly if one takes the example of Britain’s current Prime Minister, David Cameron, one sees clearly how in the English political climate “realpolitik” can work and be admired, even followed as a virtue and Cameron is indeed a master of it in a very urbane, cultivated and plausible way. But you are right about this crucial national difference. How often one reads in the German Feuilleton the criticism: “lacking in any idea/s”. And how often in German history does adherence to the grand idea get people or the country into trouble. One of the more innocent historic examples of this was Edwin von Mantteufel’s duel with the young liberal parliamentary deputy Karl Twesten in 1861 which was over the implementation of the idea of establishing thirty six new infantry regiments in time for a ceremony ordered by the King but without the authorization of the Landtag! As Twesten published a pamphlet denouncing this Manteuffel challenged him to a duel and, being the better shot, shattered Twesten’s arm resulting in the former being dismissed, court-martialed and forced into retirement and Twesten and his followers forming the new German Progress Party!

Contrary to Lassalle vs Racowizca, a rather more passionate and eccentric affair in which Richard Wagner played a small role. Lassalle had appealed to his friend Hans von Bulow to appeal to Wagner to appeal to King Ludwig to intervene in his love affair with Helene von Dönniges. But Wagner refused and so Lassalle challenged Helene’s father, Wilhelm, to a duel. Wilhelm accepted and asked Gregor von Racowitza to fight on his behalf. A good choice as Racowitza killed Lassalle and, to add insult to injury, or rather to death in this case, he married Helene swiftly afterwards.

The idea of the “eccentric” in Germany does not really exist except in an affection for English TV comedy shows such as Mr Bean. Instead the role of the eccentric is ascribed to the “Artist”.

And included in the category “Artists” are also Impresarios, Intendants, Dramaturgen and anyone who is part of the artistic, curatorial or editorial side of an artistic institution. Any Arts Panjandrum can fulfill this role too, especially if he or she holds a nice professorship in Musicology or Theaterwissenschaft at some Hochschule or University. In that category eccentric behaviour is tolerated and written off as a symptom of “artistic freedom “ which is, of course, protected by the constitution in all German states.

Indeed! And how often one encounters in German Theatres and Opera houses Intendants who even take the obligation of serving the public or “a” public an insult to their artistic integrity and breeding. This is slowly dying out but I can certainly think of some contemporaries of mine in Germany who exalted in a kind of suicidal mission to fly so low (or high) without any regard for the navigational aids to survival such as monitoring box office income and attendances and conforming to ones charter to run the theatre with all the employment responsibilities that go with that. In fact, any whiff of the audience partaking of innocent pleasure is for these few (and they are just a few) a symptom of “Biedertum”, an unsophisticated, boring but safe, petit bourgeois attitude that in their eyes deserves to be fought at all times. These few examples tend to be the ones that the philistine right love to quote and highlight in their rants against public subsidy for the Arts. I’m experiencing this today in 2011 in Holland at De Nederlandse Opera where the atmosphere against the Arts and subsidy is rabid. In the popular press in England this is also true: how often does one see in Murdoch’s Sunday Times or the non-Murdoch Telegraph the phrase “... in comparison with those lavishly funded opera companies in Germany” and praise for the plucky spirit of the British National Companies with their Dunkirk spirit still managing to get a show together against all economic odds. What is so strange about this (something that the public and even the Government are blissfully unaware of) is that British opera companies and national theatre companies are better funded than their German counterparts in terms of their overall budgets which tend to be higher when measured against the output of productions and performances than their German cousins. The structural difference lies elsewhere in the fact that the proportion of the budgets that are guaranteed (or promised) from the public purse is higher in Germany and that there is a social acceptance by and large that these companies are an integral part of society’s fabric and will and should be so in the future.

This is very funny because it reminds me of one of my encounters with Baroness (then Mrs) Thatcher while I was at ENO during her time as Prime Minister: She actually used the phrase that you describe as I attempted to convince her that “society” had an obligation to provide for and indeed needed cultural institutions for its collective health. Her dusty reply was “that there is no such thing as society only the individual decisions that make up the market”. This quote, or variations of it, became part of her emblem and won her friends in her attempt to reform the City but was also held against her in the strongest possible way during her tenure and ever since.

Nil.

And of course, as you always say, Germany is run by lawyers. Lawyers advising the government on federal and state level as well as the Bundesbank. Lawyers also run the ministries including the Arts, Culture, Education and Research Ministries. In fact there are only one or two exceptions to this rule throughout all the Bundesländer. Similarly on a micro level a large institution such as the Bayerische Staatsoper had two civil service lawyers on staff who attempted to keep us on the straight and narrow and of the two secretary/assistants in my immediate office one was a highly qualified lawyer. At ENO we had no lawyers but simply ran up the street to the solicitors Kingsley Napley when we landed in trouble. That sort of improvising can work in the English bureaucratic climate in which relations with the Board and the Arts council and Ministry swallowed so much time. In Germany, however, the lawyers relieved the pressure of the interface with government and Ministry and left one free to concentrate on artistic, logistic, technical and casting issues. The problem with German lawyers is, however, that they will move heaven and earth to avoid confronting responsibility and risk management becomes purely the duty of the Intendant. At worse this results in him or her as well as his or her directorate running around devoting much time and energy to avoiding responsibility altogether. I remember one senior directorate meeting in Munich when I exploded, after some disaster or another, when everyone spent their time and eloquence explaining why they had not even been partly responsible for said catastrophe. When I then suggested that everyone around the table should make a point of making it their business to interfere in the business and problems of everyone else, “lateral management cooperation” if you want to use current management-speak, the shock horror reaction among my colleagues was, for me, terrifying and seemed to reflect all sorts of traumas of collective guilt and DDR alienation (at that time all members of the directorate were, of course, “Wessies”). Maybe this also goes some way to explaining one of our other fields of investigation: Jura ...

Probably not. It may be a cliché but the quote from Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage” has more than a ring of truth. There is also a saying in German speaking countries: “Every city gets the city theatre that its audience deserves”. This, by the way has its charms or, at least did, before the craze of co-productions became fashionable between big city and state theatres and now has become a form of internationally rampant venereal operatic disease. The Anglo-German divide is fascinating to study but in experiencing it first hand and studying it I have become convinced that it is no mere accidental parallel.

That Shakespeare is “the greatest” is something for which I need not apologize for believing. But, suddenly, during this dialogue I also come to the conclusion that his works are perhaps the only phenomena that bridge the Anglo-German divide as well as highlighting it! It is no mere co-incidence that Shakespeare translates so well, not to say brilliantly, into German. Even the old Tieck translations are really first class and, well delivered, on the stage do not lose more than they gain.

This is not heresy but there is always a wonderful feeling for me when I sit in a German Theatre among a committed audience who really understand every word of what is being said. Then there is the inescapable fact that Shakespeare plays lend themselves to German directorial concepts and even dramaturgical re-interpretation very well and to fascinating effect even when the text is re- or even de-constructed. From a purely personal point of view I have grown rather allergic over the last years to the more naturalistic Shakespeare interpretations in the English theatre but continue to be enticed, fascinated and absorbed by current Shakespeare productions the the German speaking theatre.

… and against genetically imposed gender! Can it be that we forget sometimes that peculiar English talent for extravagant, way out, eccentric or even just odd dressing habits. One cannot really imagine the Regency Dandy flourishing in a German court of the time and certainly the phenomenon of Carnaby Street in the 1960s seems a peculiarly English movement. The English tradition of fashion has always been based on eclectic opportunistic assemblage with often brilliant results appearing to be the result of haphazard but fascinating counterpoint and contrast. Compare this with the great contemporary German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld whose own carefully studied conceptual approach is so clear even in his portrayal of his own persona.

Or to take ridiculous extremes of Vaughan Williams’ “Hugh the Drover” (1924) and Hindemith’s “Cardillac” (1926): same vintage but in spirit, form, content and style centuries apart! A ridiculous example because it is so obvious and the contrast is so sharp.

Well, that would be to respond to an exaggerated example by oversimplifying the work produced by Vaughan Williams’ avuncular and over-exaggeratedly English “country gentleman” persona. The fact remains that he was a serious composer and not a “U” composer as the 4th Symphony reveals and is certainly not to be chastised for having composed “Fantasia on a theme of Greensleaves” or, indeed, that marvellous miniature “The Lark Ascending” which regularly tops the BBC classical music charts for popularity and is by no means anything else other than a tiny masterwork. Yet “Hugh the Drover” is such a rumpty-tumpty expression of anti-continental Englishness as to be admittedly almost hors de combat in this discussion. Despite this, one must ask oneself what drove an eminent composer to seek out such a puerile anti-napoleonic balderdash of a libretto which nevertheless he sets to some wonderful music in the romantic passages.

Well I cannot quite agree with you on classical music and the English. First of all the listening public is one of the most appreciative in the world along with the Germans (in a completely different way) and the Japanese (for whom the collective ritual has a different significance) and my point of view can be witnessed at any BBC Proms concert. But in terms of composers and the creative spirit there is some truth in what you say. Let us take the case of the two great genii of the immediate post war period in English opera: Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett whose impact on European Opera cannot be overestimated. Yet the musical and dramaturgical world they inhabit is so far from that of the German post war Avant-Garde. Even if one takes the German composers, such as Hans Werner Henze, who rejected the Darmstadt School and the “official” Avant Garde, one finds that the core and heart of their work is essentially conceptual rather than narrative. As far as the reception of English works in Germany is concerned the results of further examination are puzzling. “Peter Grimes” was for some time the only work from Britten’s canon that became firmly entrenched in the repertory followed by “The Turn Of The Screw” and when I presented “Billy Budd” during my last years in Munich it was a local première! I had always thought that Tippett’s works would have spoken more directly to the German public’s receptive antennae. But when I presented the Munich première of “The Midsummer Marriage” I was shocked to discover that it had only received one previous production in Germany, in Karlsruhe, many years previously. As it turned out, the production, the staging and the performances were a great critical success but the commentators were somewhat baffled by the piece and regarded it as -

Spot on.

I do believe that we have to look at the development of our respective languages coming from common roots as they do. How strange it must have been for the Hanoverians when they came over to rule England and how brilliant Händel was at bridging the divide as the perfect (and first?) true European after his travels and sojourn in Italy. The subject of Händel in this context has enormous significance. The beginnings in Halle; his sojourn as a member of the second violin section of the Opera in Hamburg and his real start as a composer; his travels in Italy absorbing the Italian style and pouring forth creative juices in Florence, Venice, Rome and Naples; his flirt with an offer to stay in Tirol from Prince Carl von Neuberg; his calling to Hanover and then, by way of Düsseldorf, on to London and the rest is musical and operatic history including the fact that in a very modern European way he became a naturalized British citizen! Here is not the place to record the music history tale of Händel’s rise to become the equivalent of an arts and media star in England at that time but his artistic achievements, the international nature of his life and his surprising linguistic, stylistic and socio-economic assimilation into English society and his dominant position in the artistic world of London is astonishing. I do not think it is an exaggeration that his life was the first example of what was to become some 250 years later the whole European Community story (up to the current EURO crisis!)! It is especially fascinating as such a phenomenon was not repeated until perhaps Hans Werner Henze’s self imposed exile from Germany to Italy (with strong links to England) after the Second World War but this was not so deep seated and occurred for completely different reasons namely the catastrophe and artistic Lacuna that resulted from the Nazis and the second war. When one examines Händel’s productivity, and then subtracts the then considerable travelling time, one is amazed at what he produced in quality and quantity as well as how he attracted patronage, sponsorship and support. He was also a legendary manager, impresario, an all-round theatre director and a shining example for all intendants, whatever their background, today. Of course at this point in history with George II and Queen Caroline on the throne opera and music were intertwined in the fabric of English society as well as its social rivalries and machinations and, from the moment of Rinaldo’s premiere in 1711 and the King’s thorough approval of it, the composer’s path to assimilation was assured. I have always been intrigued as to what Händel’s relationships with his patrons, royal or aristocratic, Hanoverian or English born, and with his adopted country were really like. Artistically he seems to have become very quickly an integral part of the English tradition and inspired by it: Acis and Galatea (1718) was based on the English masques by Pepusch and others that had been produced in London in the years immediately prior to its composition and the composer’s later ferrying between the opera and oratorio form was politically as well as economically determined and influenced.

As well as this, Händel’s role in the establishment of opera at Covent Garden as well as his benefit performances to finance the Foundlings Hospital point to a figure who seems really to have mastered the “Anglo German Divide”. Of course, this alone would not be enough of a reason for me to embark on such an (at that time) adventurous artistic policy as to schedule fourteen Händel operas in thirteen years during my time in Munich. No, the works themselves are simply of the highest quality and not only accessible but also present excellent dramaturgical cud to chew on for the kind of directors and designers working in our constellation at the time. Also there was a hunger among our musicians to investigate this repertory and a musical advocate in Ivor Bolton who, then, was at the threshold of a great career which blossomed at the Staatsoper during those two decades.

Maybe. In economics and academia we had he shining example of Ralf, later Lord, Dahrendorf and the National Socialist catastrophe gave rise to an immigration wave which seminally influenced the professions and the arts. However, in theatre and opera post, let us say, 1970 the traffic has been more or less in the opposite direction. This is a far cry from the beginnings of the Glyndebourne Festival with Ebert and Busch and there remains the curious example of Peter Zadek the great German director who was born in Britain and actually has a British passport but no one really acknowledges him as British. But I am really pushed to think of examples of Germans who have run National Arts companies or even regional companies in Britain. There was the case of Ebert’s son Peter who ran Scottish Opera for a while but that did not really work out. It is really a tough one to contemplate a German Intendant becoming General director of, say, ENO or the Royal Opera House or National Theatre and to imagine the press reaction to such an appointment.

Yes, but he is much more English in mentality than German and it is not such a powerful position after all - with a CEO at the top of the organization. In contrast, in Germany it is quite possible to imagine an English Intendant becoming head of any of the Berlin opera houses or Munich or Hamburg or even one of the major theatre companies. My own story may have been one of the first cases of its kind but since my appointment Pamela Rosenberg (an American) became co-head of the State Opera in Stuttgart and was later, before her retirement, Intendant of the Berlin Philharmonic; John Dew (a Jamaican) was successful as Intendant in Bielefeld; Johan Simons (a Dutchman) is currently Intendant of the Munich Kammerspiele; Simone Young (an Australian) is Intendant and Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera; Ronald Adler (an American) was for two years Komissarischer Intendant of the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin and these are not all the examples that one could think of. And, just across the Bavarian border from Lindau in Bregenz, David Pountney has been for years the highly successful Intendant of the Bregenz Festival which, although Austrian, draws its public support from a German and Swiss catchment area! Could I dare to venture that the German speaking world are just a little more open to bridging the leadership divide in opera and theatre than the British?

I think that the true contribution of David Alden (who in a very distinguished way fulfilled the role of Hausregisseur in Munich) together with Richard Jones, David Pountney and Martin Ducan was to contribute to an individual and recognizable style (whether one liked it or not) and to bridge the Anglo-German divide in way that complemented work by Dieter Dorn, Jürgen Rose, Andreas Homoki, Thomas Langhoff, Peter Konwitschny and Christoph Loy just to mention a few. This is not to say that any of them were similar to each other but, in their different ways, they represented a similar dramaturgical approach to their work which was on the one side very specific to the German tradition, that is, very much concept driven, but on the other full of the eccentricities and waywardness that had grown up in the English tradition and fertilized the creative juices of a whole generation of directors who were just as Germanic in their approach but had “roughed up” the legacy they had inherited from that German theatre tradition. This was not much talked about at the time or since (and it did not need to be) but I have often thought that, just to take one example, how David Alden’s reading of the first act of “Siegfried” would have been received in England at ENO for example. It was controversial enough in Munich almost causing riots and “Krawalle” but for all the hate that was spewed forth from certain sectors of the audience there was also grudging admiration for the “Konsequenz”, for the rigorous adherence to a wild and provocative concept that was ruthlessly followed without compromise and which ignited fiercely strong performances. I have a sneaking feeling that this particular piece of work would not have spoken to the very tolerant and adventurous ENO audience of the time simply because the narrative seemed to be at service to the concept. My suspicion was borne out by the same director’s “Poppea” production where the balance of concept and narrative was rather different and, aided and abetted by an aesthetically very beautiful not to say sexy, design, was incredibly popular and universally acclaimed in Munich but then, when it went to WNO in Cardiff, was derided in some quarters as being much too conceptual and … well … German (“the product of lavishly funded German Opera houses!” chided one critic or in the words of one, still flourishing, American Intendant: “Eurotrash!”). This is a huge subject and involves not just the “Rezeptionsgeschichte” of the work of theatre directors but the whole attitude towards artistic institutions as the centre of life in most German communities and this in a country where respect for the rules and a desire for order - Sozialordnung - is enshrined in the collective consciousness.

This is a very odd corner of the “Divide” which has as much to do with form as substance. In fact the Germans, (as well as the Austrians and Swiss) are very much governed by those Health and Safety issues but go about it with rather less posturing. I have come to feel that it is the public posturing where the difference is most marked and is at its most highlighted as a knee-jerk response to political correctness which you rightly say seems to have the whole of Britain in its grip. The easiest way to experience this first hand is to take two flights from Munich or Frankfurt to London, one on Lufthansa and one on BA and to record the tannoy announcements to the passengers and one will get quite a shock. I really do believe that the new plague of announcements on British transport companies should be the subject of a psycho-economic doctoral thesis in the way both languages have evolved differently in their response to the Health and Safety scare and the fear of litigation which is, in both countries, pronounced. Oddly enough, however, the pressing invasiveness of the new British scaremongering seems much more worrying and its influence on the development of language horrific. The journalist Rod Liddle in the various print organs he writes for mocks this amusingly but I recall one experiment, written up in the Spectator recently, where he simply put on a fluorescent PVC jacket and went out on to a high street and ordered everyone he encountered around in the manner of an officious and official Health and Safety officer and was staggered to find that everyone, in this very country that used to pride itself on constructive civil disobedience, obeyed him without exception! So maybe in terms of being cow-towed into collective obedience the divide is beginning to close a little: the only thing is, however, that in Germany no journalist would have even undertaken the experiment in the first place for fear of an “Anzeige” being “erstattet” against him or her!

I agree but maybe we should get back to the idea of what both societies can get out of bridging the divide.

Convergence, bridging the divide, artificial political separation to appease the anti Europeans all have their dangers and at times their amusements as well as productive tensions but the divide is there and the bridge builders remain the exception. An interesting case was that of that strange (eccentric?) figure from your intellectual world but my nation, John Maynard Keynes, who combined the personification of the privileged British mandarin with the keenest brain, fastidious taste, an aesthete, bisexual in a not very tolerant age, balletomane and architect of the Arts Council of Great Britain who, after all, endeavoured to adopt a German system of Arts funding and improve upon it (his view) by instituting an arms length principle. That his “improvement” does not seem like one over half a century later does not deny the achievements of his creation for the first, let us say, forty years of its existence. Keynes was after all a real internationalist, ahead of his time and even, it is said, proposed the creation of a global reserve currency in 1944 at Bretton Woods as part of his proposals for the new international economic system (and the mapping out of the post war German economy) which was thrown out as an idea by the Americans but which was a foretaste of the current Chinese view as they utter their knee-jerk reactions to the downgrading of the United States’ bond rating. In an excellent article in the October 10th 2011 issue of the New Yorker re-appraising Keynes’ contribution as an economist, John Cassidy ends with a tribute “Keynes could make it deceptively easy to be a Keynesian. At the heart of his vision, however, there is an elusive combination of boldness and humility. It calls not merely for the management of risk but for something politically and intellectually far more demanding: the acknowledgement of uncertainty”. This surely is a lesson also for our times now and also a clue as to the roots and, maybe, the positive symptoms of the artistic divide. The way that interpretative artistic organizations tackle that uncertainty probably needs to be different and the differences iteratively fertilize both sides. But the audiences are not quite so much at ease with that uncertainty and remain doggedly entrenched in their own contrasting expectancies. The question remains as to why these expectancies are different and the reason cannot just be a Blairite answer such as “Education, education, education!”. Surely the answer must lie somewhere buried in what Peter Watson calls the German third Renaissance or am I looking for too simplistic an answer?

Was it Otto von Bismarck who said that the most significant event in modern history was the fact that America (what is now the USA) ended up adopting English as its language? Even if its utterance is apocryphal it certainly could have come from Bismarck’s lips even though 150 years later Spanish is now the dominant US tongue at least numerically. In a strange way this statement was at odds with his much more famous quote (in 1862) that “The solution of the great problems of today is not to be found in speeches and revolutions but in blood and iron”. And there you have in one short snippett the “concept” behind the first great arms race and the German belief even now that industrial production is still, if conceptual, well run, productive and achieved with worker consensus the answer to economic problems and the way forward to a better and more progressive society as any representative of the Swabian or Bavarian “Mittelstand” will attest to. And if you search for an answer to the question as to why Germany with its rules, regulations and sense of social order still refuses to adopt speed limits on great stretches of its fine Autobahns there you have it. Even Angela Merkel would never garner political support for such a move nor would she dare to try! To put even a gentle restraining hand on the automobile industry which lies at the heart of the German concept of the industrial pact between management, labour and the community is unthinkable today even if some of us may believe that the internal combustion engine is all but finished and road transport, with or without it, is overdue for a radical rethink. And that concept reaches “down” to the very grass roots of how the Arts are funded. It is unthinkable to imagine the Bavarian State Theatres without their State subsidy as the (admittedly not by very much) dominant percentage slice of their overall budget and unthinkable of BMW and AUDI (both after all Bavarian firms) not heading the sponsors list together with Linde AG and Siemens and unthinkable of those firms reducing their commitment and unthinkable of them not joining forces with the theatres to harangue the state government should it try to reduce that subsidy commitment by more than would be deemed fair (in consensus with all parties concerned) in times of general economic pressure. This is a symptom of a social concept that has not changed so very much since the flowering of the Wirtschaftswunder except that there is rather less money proportionately in the public purse, especially as social costs have risen and longevity so drastically increased.

And accepting the possibility of utter defeat!

So, who would you have rather tea with, the Windsors or the Wagners?