In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

AMERICANS IN PARIS 19
am convinced that no matter how brilliant the current situation of this
country may be, a near future is awaiting it that will be many times more
glorious" (Caras y Caretas, December). In contrast, when North America
is the topic, only the poor see the world of capitalism as offering
hope. This is the case with the main protagonist in Gerhart Hauptmann's
drama Dorothea Angermann. Daughter of a Protestant pastor in a provincial
German town, the pregnant Dorothea is forced by her father to
marry the dissolute man who has corrupted her. The couple receive
sufficient money for their passage across the Atlantic. But Dorothea's
hopes are dramatically frustrated. She suffers a miscarriage, her marriage
turns out the predictable failure, and all she finds in American society is
humiliation: "They beat you, they abuse you. You have to go on the
street to make money. One day they dress you in furs like a doll, the next
day they let you stand naked in the cold. Oh, what eternal prostitution!
... Your blood and your nerves change, something happens to you
unconsciously-for if you were conscious, you would turn to stone with
shame" (Hauptmann, 75). On August 8 the Berliner Tageblatt publishes
an article on the fate of some German waitresses who have come to work
at the u.S. Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia [see Boxing]-an
article that seems like a malicious nonfictional version of Hauptmann's
play:
The bankruptcy of the Bavarian restaurant in Philadelphia has left 150
German waitresses (among them 75 from Bavaria) without any financial
resources ... The fate of the Bavarian waitresses is still uncertain
because the owner did not leave any security deposits. Permission for
their deportation to Germany is expected. But the girls refuse to leave
the country because they have yet to receive their first payment. The
waitresses who came despite the warnings of the German Embassy are
now entirely dependent on public charity ... It was a bizarre idea to
open a Bavarian restaurant in the country of Prohibition. Probably
Resl, Mirzl, and Fanny offered their guests a cool jug of-mineral
water!
Without wanting to admit it, Europeans feel a tormenting blend of
fascination and resentment. The only condition under which fascination
and desire can be explicitly mentioned seems to be when they are cate-