page_title: A. de Herz
section_title: Recovery
hierarchical_section_title: A. de Herz / Biography / Recovery
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration to the play Mărgeluș ("Tiny Bean"), showing the absent protagonist, a fetus, clinging on to a chain; the work is about his rescue of a relationship between an upper-class man and a typist.
context_page_description: Adolf Edmund George de Herz, commonly shortened to A. de Herz, also rendered as Hertz and Herț, was a Romanian playwright and literary journalist, also active as a poet, short story author, and stage actor. He was the scion of an upper-class assimilated Jewish family, with its roots in Austria-Hungary. His grandfather, Adolf Sr, was a controversial banker and venture capitalist, while his father, Edgar von Herz, was noted as a translator of Romanian literature. Adolf had a privileged childhood and debuted as a poet while still in high school, producing the lyrics to a hit romance. In his early work for the stage, Herz was a traditionalist inspired by Alexandru Davila and the Sămănătorul school, but later veered toward neoclassical literature and aestheticism. His "salon comedies", staged by the National Theater Bucharest, borrowed from various authors, including Roberto Bracco, Henri Lavedan, and Haralamb Lecca, peaking in popularity in 1913, with Păianjenul. By the start of World War I, Herz was also a writer of revues.
  Controversy followed Herz during the early 1910s, when his writing raised suspicions of plagiarism.
context_section_description: Herz resumed his other activity in the interwar's Greater Romania, first with translations of composer biographies by Romain Rolland and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. From 1920 to 1924, he put out Adevărul Literar și Artistic, while also penning contributions to Gândirea. According to his friend Gyr, as an editor he was superior to the "vulgar" Mihail Sevastos: under Herz's tenure, Adevărul Literar și Artistic remained "the meeting spot of all literary talent", with contributions that were "lively and varied". In 1923, Herz joined Caton Theodorian's Society of Romanian Dramatic Authors, serving as its censor, alongside Eftimiu. He returned to the stage with various new plays, including Caricatura sub ocupație ("Caricature during the Occupation", 1918), Mărgeluș ("Tiny Bead", 1921), Șeful Gării ("The Station-Master", 1924), Aripi frânte ("Broken Wings", 1925) and Seară pierdută ("Wasted Evening", same year). He also returned to Flacăra, publishing therein fragments from a new historical play Colivia de aur ("A Golden Cage", 1923). In 1922, fragments from his Păianjenul, translated into German, appeared in the Bukovina magazine Die Brücke.
  Călinescu reserves some praise for Mărgeluș, a "more literary" play, in which the unborn child of a typist holds together her relationship with an upper-class youth. In Sburătorul, Felix Aderca also gave Mărgeluș a positive review, describing it as a "modern drama, classical in its simplicity", but also a discreet and gifted comedy. Aderca remarked in particular Herz's wordplay, which, he argued, made the writer a companion of Caragiale and Molière. As argued by the Transylvanian review Cele Trei Crișuri, Mărgeluș restated Herz's "rare qualities", provoking "thunderous applause". The play was first produced by Regina Maria Theater, under the twin direction of Niculescu-Buzău and M. Antonescu. The latter also appeared in the title role, to positive reviews. Before 1922, the play had 78 reprisals, the biggest hit on Romania's theater circuit for that season. Manager Ludovic Dauș also bought the play for Chișinău National Theater, which went on a regional tour of Bessarabia in 1924.
  After 1920, Herz reaffirmed his traditionalism as a theater critic, being vocal as a critic of Expressionist tendencies, and specifically of director Karlheinz Martin. Martin was his direct competitor: during his stay in Bucharest, he ran three Expressionist plays with at least 74 stagings between them. Writing in 1925, theorist Ion Sân-Giorgiu argued that Eftimiu and Herz's overall output could restore Romanian drama, chasing away the "mood of superficiality". Such appraisals were contrasted by other observers. Among the traditionalists, Iorga remained critical of Herz's works, viewing them as "well-made plays" with "indifferent characters", marked by a "strain of cynicism". As seen by Iorga, Herz remained indebted to Adrien Bernheim and Georges de Porto-Riche. Criticism also came from the avant-garde: in 1924 Scarlat Callimachi singled out Herz and Camil Petrescu as dramatists who could only "garner applause from lunch ladies" and who therefore "must disappear".
  These years also marked new contributions to the revue genre, for which he found a new patron, the actor-producer Constantin Tănase. During 1923, Tănase appeared as Acarul Păun in Herz's Care dă mai mult? ("Who Pays More?"), a satirical take on the railway catastrophe at Vintileasca. The 1924 hits Ce-are a face? ("What's It to You?") and Pân'aici ("Up to Here") were co-authored with a certain Durstoy, and again showcased by Tănase. His "heavyweight" role in the interwar revue was recorded in theatrical verse by a colleague, Ion Pribeagu.
  In 1925, alongside Dragomirescu, Brătescu-Voinești, Rebreanu and V. Al. Jean, Herz was an executive of Filmul Românesc society, dedicated to the promotion and moral review of Romanian cinema productions. Around that time, he was also editor-in-chief of Dimineața daily. This allowed him to publish a lavish praise of his own Păianjenul, which was being produced by Aurel Ion Maican at Brăila City Theater. Also that year, M
caption: Cover art for the first edition of Mărgeluș, by Victor Ion Popa
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