Evening star., 1948-09-14
Strait Jacket on Culture
Battle of Opposing Ideologies Is Reducing Berlin Least
Common Denominator of Boredom

BERLIN-"Berlin Is no longer what it was"
This remark, now heard with depressing fire.
queIcy from artists and intellectuals in the
city, does not as one might think refer to the
pre-Htler or even prewar days. 1t refers to
the pre-blockade days. to the three colorful
and enterprising years since the end OF the
war when gusto and dash, an adventurous spirit
and almost feverish energy took advantage OF
the presence of the four great powers in this
city to turn it into one of the most interesting
and stimulating places in Europe
Today, the presence of these same four pow
ers directly and indirectly is having the oppo-
site effect. Political strife in its embittered
forms, currency chaos and the blockade carry
ing in their train an ever-increasing number
of material difficulties and discouraging spirit
ual complications rapidly are changing Berlin
into the one thing it has not been during the
past three years: A dull place. Laced into
the strait jacket of Four Power quarrels, cuf-
tural life is suffering from acute paralysis; the
spirit Is going out of 1t.
Currency reform and the ensuing monetary
chaos struck the frst blow. Theaters, with =
few unimportant exceptions, closed immedi-
ately as q precautionary measure and only .
fraction since have had the courage to reopen.
Although prices have been greatly reduced,
bankruptcy stares directors and managers in
the face from half filled balconies and almost
empty stalls. Cinemas are faring rather better,
but cinema owners being even more dependent
on electric light than the theaters are watching
with mounting horror the cost of Diesel oil
needed for their self-supplying generators)
brought in at forbidding price over the air
bridge. 1t has to be paid in Western currency,
too, and no one in Berlin has enough OF it to
keep going.
Severe cuts in the electricity supply to the
Western sectors have all but paralyzed the
city's transport system and this, too, has had
It's effect on theater and cinema -goers.
Underground trains and the tramways cease At
pm. that Is at an hour when the average
citizen has finished the days work and is
ready for show. Unless he happens to live
within easy walking distance of one, the diff
ficulties Of getting home afterwards are for
bidding. The Russian controlled city railway
is in operation, but it serves only a few points
in Western Berlin. Street lighting has been
switched of altogether.
Dramatic Talent in Flight.
The result of these discouraging conditions
Is a noticeable drift Of stage and hlm people
away from Berlin to Western Germany or at
least across the sector borders to the Soviet
sector where at any rate the electric lights are
burning, although other lights less visible are
going out. The scarcity of talent in the theatre
cal scenes is particularly evident. Not only
have several good producers and q number OF
we'll known and popular actors quietly left Ber-
lin during the enervating summer months for
more rewardng activity in Hamburg, Munich,
Cologne and even foreign capitals, but the city
also no longer seems to act as magnet for
talent from the outside world.
Wilhelm Furtwaengler who seemed to have
given the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra new
lease of life when he returned for brief spell
last year, Is conducting everywhere except In
Berlin Not single guest conductor OF. guest
producer has come to the city for almost six
months For the difficulties Of getting into
Berlin are almost as insurmountable as those of
getting out of it. Berlin's second opera house,
situated in the British sector. has had to sur
render a number of dts singers to its better ad-
ministered competitors in the Russian sector
and to opera houses in Vienna. Zurich and else
where It's 12-month search for capable