Max Liebermann

Max Liebermann – if I’m not mistaken, he celebrates his 85th birthday today (I must congratulate him) – in any case a great artist whose paintings always give me the impression that they are works of art, an intelligent person who has certainly made many statements about painting which have a fighting character. But when artists begin to back up their natural emotional opinions with academic material, to “fortify” themselves
philosophically, they “descend” into “superficiality”(!), what they say is so nonsensical and incorrect that you could easily forget their other achievements. So maybe that’s the reason for “Paint, artist, do not speak,” which I would like to translate into Viennese as “Plausch net, Pepi” [Don’t chat, Joseph]. That is what you would like to say when interpellated by Liebermann on your attitude towards tradition. The venerable master – in a diplomatic, roundabout way – put this question to me twice, each time during general meetings of the Academy Senate. I didn’t really know what to say. I had the embarrassing feeling that by saying (these were roughly his words): “Don’t you agree that all true art is related to tradition,” he wanted to express the doubt that my music is related to tradition. I would loved to have given an impolite answer: “I haven’t looked yet,” or, as tradition is “handed down by word of mouth,” with something in dialect, such as the above “Plausch net, Pepi.” Why should I allow myself to be told in dialect what I have to be related to by somebody who “cannot keep what he doesn’t grasp” (Jakobsleiter [Jacob’s Ladder]). Especially if you consider how many unpractised and unproductive minds are involved in passing on traditions. I can no longer remember whether the following was shown as a joke during my military service training in Bruck, or
whether it happened accidentally: It was the task of whispering an order from man to man along a firing line. The result was astonishing: it had turned into something totally different. It is the same with tradition and Mahler was right when he said: “Tradition is an example of sloppiness.” However, this is not intended as criticism of Liebermann, who is certainly both eminent and decent. It is only supposed to illustrate how necessary it can be to tread on somebody’s flatfooted toes.

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Arnold Schönberg Center, Wien ( T 04.40)

The text was written between 27 and 29 August 1932. Max Liebermann (1847 – 1935) was President of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, where Schönberg held a masterclass for composition in 1926 – 1933.