The New York herald., 1922-12-03

i 1HeEe IS F.iilll LudWis. IhOugh he has
/ been publishing now for twenty years
though he has written dramas on Napo-
leon and Tristan and Isolde and the Bor-
gias and Frederick. Crown Prince of Prus-
sia. he is not known in this country. Nor
can we say that his treatises on Wagner,
Richard Dehmel and Rembrandt and his
gigantic life Of Goethe (three volumes.
1920 have carried his fame east Of the
Atlantic. That this Is true is an accident.
for the man is gifted and prolific. \ few
months ago he brought out drama en-
titled Die Entlassung" (~The Dismissal").
which was Immediately accepted by num-
Der of German theaters. quickly performed
and quickly withdrawn because forbidden
by the censor.
II plays at Berlin in 1890. There are
twelve name characters and number of
supernumeraries. The theme is the dis
missal of Bismarck by the Benedick. with
variations. OF Doom. II is quite within
reason to say that nine out of ten students
of German literature would sprmise in ad-
vance that il was forbidden because of it's
disrespectful attitude toward the man who
gave the historical term Hun" new use.
But. despite the fact that it is a drama
/ U4udwig gives il the subtitle of a Bit of
History in Three Acts') which would in no
way offend Maurice Barres. il was mani
festly forbidden because of its belittling
delineation of the Iron Chancellor. The
| four Bismarcks-Otto. Bill Herbert and
| Johanna-are all shown in anything but
favorable light. Twenty seconds before the
| last curtain the near octogenarian Chan
cellor. who could smoke. eat or drink any
man of his age out of the room, away from
the table or under it, makes the following
remark. and makes il in a connection that
allows of two interpretations only one of
which would strike an editor as sensible or
applicable: Whoever attempts to fell the
old giant shall be crushed to death by his
| fall" The dramatic technie of the play
/ is superb; its humor is rollicking: its char
acter sketches are of rare and fetching
force. But it is a smeary piece after all.
| And in view Of what Ludwig did before
descending to this effort it undoubtedly re-
/ fleets his attitude toward the political his
/ tory OF Germany from the time Otto Won
Bismarck proclaimed the German Empire
at Versailles in 1871 until he left II Will
helmstrasse burdened with loathing and
out of a job. Emil Ludwig has passed
judgment on his own ego.
Then there is the strange case of Carl
/ Sternheim. y phonetician of the rank of
Victor says "he has passed beyond the
stage of experimentation to that Of immor-
/ tai achievement" Figaro of Paris con-
| tends editoriaily that he is the most per-
feet dramaturg in Germany to-day" The
London Times proclaims him "the in
ventor of new form of fiction in German
| literature" Sternheim wrote some time
ago a book entitled Berlin. or Juste
| Miheu," in which he shows the striking
similarity between the Berlin Of 1914 and
the Berlin of 1922. Now he comes out with
bizarre creation entitled "Libussa: the
Private Mount of the Kaiser" He has
this steed tell all she heard from the day
she was born in Russia 1897. until having
been shipped to Germany and bought by
/ the exKaiser she became the favorite of
his stable. One can easily imagine what
eavesdropping might be INDUCED in by
quadruped OF equine mentality if privi-
/ legged to carry the lords of European courts
on its back through about eighteen event
ful years-fOr Libussa is made to drop
dead on hearing that her master has
crossed the border 10 Holland. Uninter-
esting this horsey autobiography is not:
| and it contains a wealth of literary allu-
sions But it merely shows what a writer
with a reputation may be tempted into
doing II he lives in Germany four years
after the armistice. becomes Indifferent to
his aesthetic obligations, forgets that Kurt