[Diskussionsbeitrag zu Theatern und Schaustellungsunternehmungen, S. 17]

Emil Lederer: Intervention on Theatres and Exhibition Enterprises (1921)

This brief intervention in an official commission record addresses two questions: whether theatres should be included in the provision under discussion, and which activities the term “Schaustellungsunternehmungen” covers. Lederer first aligns himself with Dr. Vogelstein, recalling that theatres had also been omitted the previous year. His substantive point distinguishes municipal provision from exclusive control: any municipality can establish a theatre, but that possibility does not establish the necessity of monopoly.

Die Notwendigkeit eines absoluten Monopols auf diesem Gebiete kann ich nicht anerkennen.

English translation: I cannot acknowledge the necessity of an absolute monopoly in this field.

Lederer then shifts from the justification of monopoly to the boundaries of the category being discussed. Rather than assuming that “Schaustellungsunternehmungen” includes exhibitions and trade-fair displays, he asks for clarification:

Ich möchte dann noch zur Diskussion stellen, ob unter „Schaustellungsunternehmungen“ das Ausstellungswesen, wie Messedarstellungen, im weitesten Sinne des Wortes gemeint ist, oder ob diese Ausstellungsunternehmungen ausgenommen bleiben sollen?

English translation: I would then also like to put up for discussion whether “show enterprises” is intended to mean exhibition activities, such as trade-fair displays, in the broadest sense of the word, or whether these exhibition enterprises are to remain excluded.

Dullo’s recorded reply states that these activities are not intended. The intervention thus combines a limit on the case for monopoly with a request to delimit its potential field of application. Its significance lies in these precise distinctions; the short speaking turn does not develop a wider theory of theatrical or exhibition policy.