Dramaturgies of War: Institutional Dramaturgy, Politics, and Conflict in 20th-Century Germany 303139318X, 9783031393181

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Dramaturgies of War Institutional Dramaturgy, Politics, and Conflict in 20th-Century Germany Edited by Anselm Heinrich · Ann-Christine Simke

Dramaturgies of War

Anselm Heinrich · Ann-Christine Simke Editors

Dramaturgies of War Institutional Dramaturgy, Politics, and Conflict in 20th-Century Germany

Editors Anselm Heinrich School of Culture and Creative Arts University of Glasgow Glasgow, UK

Ann-Christine Simke Glasgow, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-39317-4 ISBN 978-3-031-39318-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedicated to the memory of Alexander Weigel (1935–2020)

Acknowledgements

This volume grew out of a symposium held at the Goethe-Institut Glasgow in January 2018, which brought together academics and dramaturgs from Germany, Slovenia and Britain. About half of the authors in this volume contributed to the symposium, the other half were directly approached by the editors. We thank all contributors to this volume for their dedication and patience over the last few difficult and eventful years. We are grateful to Sharon Howe for her expert translation of Volker Mohn’s and Matjaz Birk’s German essays into English, and we acknowledge funding received from the Research Committee at the School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, to pay for these translations. The 2018 symposium was generously supported by the Goethe-Institut Glasgow and Routledge publishers.

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Contents

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Introduction: Dramaturgies of War Ann-Christine Simke and Anselm Heinrich

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Part I Dramaturgical Contexts: Institutionalised Ideologies 2

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Institutional Dramaturgy at the Deutsches Theater Berlin Ann-Christine Simke

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‘The Protector of the Arts’: Dramaturgy and Hitler’s Wartime Theatre Gerwin Strobl

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Implementing Germanic Repertoires: Institutional Dramaturgy After 1939 Anselm Heinrich

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Cold War Theatres: Theatre Criticism and the Institutional Matrix of Dramaturgy in Post-War Germany Michael Bachmann

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Part II Institutional Infrastructures: Theatres of Oppression 95

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Theatre in Occupied Poland Alexander Weigel and Anselm Heinrich

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Masked Messaging: German theatre in Maribor under the Nazis as reflected in the Marburger Zeitung Matjaž Birk

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The Prague Theatre Scene During the German Occupation (1939–1945) Volker Mohn

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The German Theatre in Oslo Anselm Heinrich

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Propaganda, Pedagogy, and Cultural Authority: The Fascist theatre in Italy and Abroad Patricia Gaborik

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Part III Performance Practice: Dramaturgy and the Aesthetics of War 11

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In the Air: Shell Shock Theatre and Ornamental Girls in Nazi Propaganda Evelyn Annuß

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Berlin—Amsterdam—Westerbork: Revue and the Aesthetics of War Veronika Zangl

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Laughing, Spanish Style: Moreto and Tirso de Molina in the Third Reich John London

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The Rationality of War: Brecht’s Theatre Experiments at the Limit of the Epic Ramona Mosse

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Notes on Contributors

Evelyn Annuß a theatre and literature scholar, is Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw). She has published widely on the figure of the chorus in arts, politics and on the streets—particularly on national-socialist mass stagings (e.g. Volksschule des Theaters. Nationalsozialistische Massenspiele, Fink 2019). Currently, she works on her book project Dirty Dragging (Transcript/ mdwpress, 2014), which deals with global perspectives on mimetic practices beyond representation. Her latest publication, Chorische Figurationen, Special Issue of The Germanic Review, edited with Sebastian Kirsch and Fatima Naqvi, 2023. Michael Bachmann is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow. His research focuses on performance and media history from a comparative perspective, looking at theatre in relation to other art forms and institutions (including radio, film, literature, museums/archives, legal discourse and digital media). Matjaž Birk is Professor of German Literature at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Maribor (Slovenia). His research focuses on literature and culture between Enlightenment and the interwar period as well as on German medias in Slovene territories and German-Slovene (and South-Slavic) literary and cultural transfers. He is PI of two bilateral Slovene-French research projects (2019–2023) and has been a visiting Professor at the universities of Regensburg and Amiens. His recent

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publications include a jointly edited collection on “Aufklärungsdiskurse in der deutschsprachigen Regionalpresse Zentraleuropas. L’héritage des Lumières dans la presse de langue allemande en Europe centrale: 1800– 1920” (Reims 2022) and a monograph entitled “‘Reisen ist Rast in der Unruhe der Welt’: Fremdhermeneutische Einblicke in die Reisetagebücher von Stefan Zweig” (Würzburg, 2016). Dr. Patricia Gaborik is Professor of English at the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica “Silvio d’Amico”. A fellow of the American Academy in Rome and 2021–22 George F. Kennan member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, she is editor of Pirandello in Context (Cambridge University Press), editor and translator of Watching the Moon and Other Plays by Massimo Bontempelli (Italica Press), and author of Mussolini’s Theatre: Fascist Experiments in Art and Politics (Cambridge University Press; translated in Italian by Garzanti as Il teatro di Mussolini. Il fascismo nell’arte e nella politica). Anselm Heinrich (Ph.D. MA BA FRHistS) is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation (2017), Theater in der Region (2012) and Entertainment, Education, Propaganda: Regional Theatres in Germany and Britain (2007). He has co-edited a collection of essays on Ruskin, The Theatre, and Victorian Visual Culture (2009), and is under contract for a monograph on theatre in Britain during World War II (for OUP). He has received fellowships at Harvard, Oxford and Marburg, and is co-editor of Theatre Notebook. John London is Professor of Hispanic Studies and Director of the Centre for Catalan Studies at Queen Mary University of London. His books include Reception and Renewal in Modern Spanish Theatre (1997) and Contextos de Joan Brossa (2010), as well as the edited volumes Theatre under the Nazis (2000), One Hundred Years of Futurism (2017), Contemporary Catalan Theatre (with David George, 1996) and El desig teatral d’Europa (with Víctor Molina, 2013). He has translated over twenty plays for performance. Volker Mohn studied modern history and Eastern European history at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf (1999–2005). As part of an exchange project between the universities in Düsseldorf and Prague, he worked as a DAAD tutor at the Institute for International Studies (Institut mezinárodních studií) at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles

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University in Prague (2003–2004, 2010). His dissertation is titled “Nazi cultural policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” (2006– 2011). From 2011 to 2016, he was a scientific assistant at the Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Since 2016 he has been working at the VolkshochschuleMusikschule Bad Homburg v.d. Höhe. Ramona Mosse is Head of Theatre at the Zurich University of the Arts. She has taught at the Freie University Berlin, the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, Bard College Berlin, Columbia University and Barnard College. She has published numerous articles on modern/contemporary political theatre and tragedy, hybrid and immersive theatres, and environmental performance. She is the co-editor (with Anna Street) of Genre Transgressions: Dialogues on Tragedy and Comedy (Routledge, forthcoming) and (with Minou Arjomand) of Erika Fischer-Lichte’s Routledge Introduction to Theatre and Performance Studies (2014). She holds a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. Ann-Christine Simke (Ph.D.) is a Lecturer in Performance at the University of the West of Scotland. Her research focuses on dramaturgy past and present, theatre and decolonisation as well as anti-racist and intersectional theatre practices. Her recent publications include the coauthored articles (with Anika Marschall) “Forensic Architecture in the Theatre and the Gallery: A Reflection on Counterhegemonic Potentials and Pitfalls of Art Institutions” (2022, Theatre Research International ) and “Voicing our concerns—attempts at decentring German theatre and performance studies” (with Marschall, Sharifi and Skwirblies, forthcoming 2023, Global Performance Studies ). She is under contract for a jointly written (with Marschall) book on intersectional theatre practices. Gerwin Strobl teaches Modern History at Cardiff University. He specialises in Central European History and is the author of several monographs. He publishes in English and German. His principal publications in English are The Swastika and the Stage: German Theatre and Society, 1933–1945 (Cambridge, 2007) and The Germanic Island: Nazi Perceptions of Britain (Cambridge, 2000). As part of an Austrian governmentfunded research project on Hitler’s home region, he published Bomben auf Oberdonau: Luftkrieg und Lynchmorde an alliierten Fliegern im ‘Heimatgau des Führers’ (Linz, 2014).

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Alexander Weigel (1935–2020) studied history in Leipzig and worked as assistant Director and assistant dramaturg in Rostock and Greifswald before joining the prestigious Deutsches Theater in East Berlin as a dramaturg. He remained in this role from 1964 to 2001 and worked with some of the leading playwrights, directors and actors of the time: Heiner Müller, Adolf Dresen, Jürgen Gosch and Matthias Langhoff. He edited the programme notes of the Deutsches Theater, organised events such as rehearsed readings and lectures in the theatre, and curated a number of exhibitions. Since retiring from the theatre he worked as a freelance author, editor and lecturer. He published widely on Heinrich von Kleist, wrote the history of the Deutsches Theater (Propyläen, 1999) and edited the complete writings of Siegfried Jacobsohn (5 volumes, Wallstein, 2005). Dr. Veronika Zangl is Assistant Professor at the Department of Theatre Studies, University of Amsterdam. Her research areas include: Theatre history, Dramaturgy, Memory studies, Holocaust studies. Together with Sruti Bala she coordinates a research group Art—Activism—Conflict at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA). Recent publication: “Politics of humor in extremis. Cabaret and propaganda in the Netherlands under German occupation 1941–1944”, European Journal of Cultural Studies 25/2 (2022): 389–405; Dramaturgy: An Introduction, Amsterdam: AUP 2021 (co-authors: Cock Dieleman, Ricarda Franzen & Henk Danner).

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4

Fig. 9.1

Fig. 9.2

Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro as produced by the German Theatre at The Hague (Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies) Weekly theatre programme Gautheater Posen, 1–9 March 1943 Theatre programme Litzmannstadt theatre, 20 October–2 November 1940 A programmatic essay on Germany’s leading role for European theatre by Ernst Leopold Stahl (Reichsgautheater Posen 1942/43: 122–127) Scene from production of Hänsel und Gretel (17 December 1941) at the German Theatre in Oslo (National Archives of Norway, RAFA-3309 Tyske arkiver, Reichskommissariat, Bildarchiv, series U—Fotografier, U 29a) Scene from production of Eine entzückende Frau (22 November 1941) at the German Theatre in Oslo (National Archives of Norway, RAFA-3309 Tyske arkiver, Reichskommissariat, Bildarchiv, series U—Fotografier, U 28c)

53 60 61

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Fig. 9.3

Fig. 10.1

Fig. 10.2

Fig. 10.3 Fig. 10.4 Fig. 10.5 Figs. 12.1 and 12.2

Fig. 13.1

Fig. 13.2

Scene from production of Eine entzückende Frau (22 November 1941) at the German Theatre in Oslo (National Archives of Norway, RAFA-3309 Tyske arkiver, Reichskommissariat, Bildarchiv, series U—Fotografier, U 28c) Pirandello’s Teatro d’Arte and Bragaglia’s Teatro degli Indipendenti repertoires (Source texts by author nationality) Bragaglia’s Teatro degli Indipendenti (1923–36) and Teatro delle Arti (1937–1943) repertoires (Source texts by composition date) The Thespian Truck tours, 1937 Principal Teatri-GUF locations, 1942 Mussolini/Forzano productions in Germanic territories, 1932–42 Manuscript page and director’s notes on the death scene; Typoscript “Ludmilla” (Source Archive Jetty Cantor, Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, Theatercollectie) Production details from the programme for Agustín Moreto’s Donna Diana (El desdén con el desdén), Staatstheater Kleines Haus, Berlin, 13 February 1936. It is indicated that this performance is for Alfred Rosenberg’s NS-Kulturgemeinde which organized large audiences for shows with a supposedly strict Nazi ethos. Also clearly explained is that the text was “translated from the Spanish by K. A. West [Josef Schreyvogel]” in “Jürgen Fehling’s stage adaptation” (Source Kleines Haus, Nürnberger Str. 1 (1935–1938); Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Berlin) Mere frivolity or Hitler parody? Werner Krauss as Perin (Moreto’s Polilla) in Donna Diana (El desdén con el desdén). The shot includes a glimpse of Traugott Müller’s set design of hanging white balls, comically echoed in Krauss’s costume (Source Programme for Paul Apel’s Hans Sonnenstössers Höllenfahrt, Staatstheater, Schauspielhaus, Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin, November 19, 1936, 2; Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Berlin)

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 13.3

Fig. 14.1

Fig. 14.2

An unsigned sketch of Nina Tokumbet’s set for the final act of Tirso de Molina’s Don Gil mit [sic] den grünen Hosen (Don Gil de las calzas verdes ) performed in Hamburg-Altona, 1939 (Source Hamburger Tageblatt, September 30, 1939: 9) Caspar Neher’s sketch of the encounter between Creon and Tiresias, courtesy of Guntram Stoll, Neher-Nachlass Title page of the first edition of Brecht’s Kriegsfibel (War Primer) from 1955

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Dramaturgies of War Ann-Christine Simke and Anselm Heinrich

Interest in dramaturgy as a theatrical practice has risen exponentially in the English-speaking world in recent years and since Mary Luckhurst’s and Cathy Turner’s and Synne Behrnd’s (2007) ground-breaking introductions to the field. Interest continues to grow as the activities of the Dramaturgs’ Network and the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) Directing & Dramaturgy working group in the UK, LMDA (Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas) in the United States, and the well-established Dramaturgische Gesellschaft in Germany as well as the Dramaturgy working group of the German Association for Theatre Studies (GTW) illustrate. This interest is broad and wide ranging, it covers practices, theories and histories of dramaturgy, and relates to academics and practitioners as well as theatregoers more broadly.

A.-C. Simke (B) Performance Programme, School of Business and Creative Industries, University of the West of Scotland, Glasgow, Scotland, UK e-mail: [email protected] A. Heinrich Theatre Studies, School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_1

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Recent publications on dramaturgy focus predominantly on contemporary dramaturgy practices and analyses (Romanska 2015; Trensényi 2015; Eckersall et al. 2017; Meerzon and Pewny 2020; Bleeker 2023, Radosavljevi´c 2023) and how-to guidebooks (Dubiner et al. 2010; Lang 2017). However, while largely valid and important, this focus on current practices sidelines both the historical dimension and—crucially—the political and institutional context of practices. Our volume intends to fill some of these gaps. This edited collection examines institutional contexts of dramaturgical practices in twentieth-century Germany. It links to current theoretical debates around the “institutional turn” (Balme and Fisher 2021; Mandel and Zimmer 2021), the way in which operationalised modes of action, legal frameworks and an established profession have influenced dramaturgical practice. German theatre represents a useful case study in this context as it is here where dramaturgy, and the role of the dramaturg, was first created (with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s post at the Hamburg National Theatre) in the 1760s, and where dramaturgy departments became part of theatres’ institutional structures from the nineteenth century onwards (Deutsch-Schreiner 2016). This collection, therefore, represents an important addition to a growing field of work as it contributes to a historical contextualisation of current practice. In doing so, it understands dramaturgy not only as a process which occurs in rehearsal rooms and writers’ studies but one that has far wider institutional and political implications. As seminal publications by Romanska (2015) and Trencsényi (2015) have successfully shown, dramaturgs create the potential for meaningful cultural experiences by curating a particular repertoire, they translate aesthetic and political intentions to audiences and facilitate spaces for discussion and debate; they might even create these audiences and the theatre as an institution for and of a community in the first place. Dramaturgs place theatres and their repertoires in wider political debates, they suggest specific readings of particular productions, they establish a position, and they invite a response. As Philippa Kelly especially shows in her edited volume Diversity, Inclusion and Representation in Contemporary Dramaturgy (2020), the work of dramaturgs can be at the forefront of a socially just and ethical theatre practice. Additionally, studies and collections dedicated to new dramaturgies (Trencsényi and Cochrane 2014), new media dramaturgies (Eckersall et al. 2017) and ecodramaturgies (Woynarski 2020) examine production dramaturgies and expanded

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notions of dramaturgical connections and thinking in theatrical projects and experiments that are progressive and forward-thinking. This overall positive understanding of the role of dramaturgs and the focus on innovative dramaturgies in an expanded field is to be welcomed although it sidelines the problematic and dangerous ideological entanglements of historical practices of institutional and production dramaturgy that interest us in this volume.

Terms and Critical Context Although this book will in some measure shine a light on dramaturgy as providing a space for critical voices, or “dramaturgy as an act of civil disobedience” as discussed at a recent event at Birkbeck, University of London, our main focus is on dramaturgy in theory and practice as utilised by the victors, the oppressors and the aggressors.1 During World War II, the German leadership saw the establishment of a network of German-language theatres across occupied Europe as a cornerstone of its wider aims of creating a Germanic super-empire in Europe. These theatres were to strengthen German culture, educate and sustain ethnic German communities, and bring suitably qualified new audiences closer to the German cultural orbit. In an “ideal” world, these German theatres did not only create new audiences but created new Germans (provided they exhibited accepted racial “qualities”). These growing German audiences/populations in turn supported and advanced the German war effort and German domination in Europe (Heinrich 2017). The onus on dramaturgy departments was, therefore, significant. The dramaturg turned into an essential part in the German war machine, one that fought the German cause on German stages across the continent. The “conflict” in the subtitle to our volume, therefore, largely relates to this role as a “cultural combatant”. We are interested in how institutional dramaturgy constituted itself at the end of the nineteenth century as an organised cultural practice, how this practice developed during the Third Reich and how dramaturgs actively supported and advanced Nazi aims of domination during military conflict. The militaristic notion of “conflict” (rather than other terms such as “combat”, “battle”, “strife”, etc.) is the

1 Panel discussion with Myah Jeffers, Anthony Simpson-Pike and Anna Himali Howard Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre on 20 February 2020.

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main organising and definitive principle of this volume on institutional dramaturgy. Another clarification we need to make is that the focus of our interest is dramaturgy as theatrical practice and not war itself. The title’s volume might be read by military historians as a book interested in military strategy and in how far military conflicts can be read as following particular scripts or dramaturgies. And, indeed, Carl von Clausewitz’ opus magnum On War (Vom Kriege, 1831) interpreted war—at least in part—as a game (Spiel), the experience of a battle “almost like a drama” (Schauspiel), and the Prussian king Friedrich the Second’s tactical methods of battle as “means of art” (Kunstmittel) (Clausewitz 1911, 16, 17, 55, 140).2 Clausewitz used theatrical terms to describe the place of battle (theatre of war—Kriegstheater), and argued that conducting war was not craft (Handwerk) but art (Kunst) as it was not determined by craft’s “narrow laws” (Clausewitz 1911, 30, 94, 140), but followed “particular patterns such as works of art do” (Vega 2007, 122). In this volume, we are not interested in war in and of itself, but only as a backdrop to dramaturgical practice at theatrical institutions.

Book Structure This collection of essays focuses particularly on the ideological entanglements of institutional dramaturgical practice as it facilitated the political framing of individual productions, whole seasons, even theatres in their entirety, during the first half of the twentieth century. Organised, professional and institutionalised dramaturgy departments offered the opportunity to further political agendas and present preferred readings of theatrical productions to both their own artistic, technical and administrative staff, as well as their audiences, stakeholders and the wider public. This role gained additional currency in mid-century Germany, and this development is analysed in further detail in the volume’s first section on “Dramaturgical Contexts: Institutionalised Ideologies”. This section focuses on institutional dramaturgy during significant periods in twentieth-century Germany: pre-war and World War I, World War II, post-war Germany and the Cold War era. Dramaturgy and the work of dramaturgs feature here as an institutional practice that significantly 2 Friedrich II. was king of Prussia between 1740 and 1786. Clausewitz particularly referred to Friedrich’s military successes during the Silesian wars.

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shapes and influences repertoire, reception and public discourse. The five chapters in this section outline how dramaturgy developed from a discursive practice that aligned itself with marketing principles at Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater to an increasingly ideological propaganda tool during the Third Reich and World War II. After the role of the dramaturg had been more formally established at German theatres at the turn of the twentieth century, Arthur Kahane and Felix Hollaender at Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater carved out its wider parameters which were to determine its development over the following decades. As Ann-Christine Simke discusses in her chapter, Kahane and Hollaender moved dramaturgy centre stage by establishing its role in marketing and public relations as they actively entered the public debate about their productions through their dramaturgically supervised in-house theatre journal. The dramaturg’s practice further diversified in Weimar Germany until it took on a more clearly political meaning after 1933. In an attempt to centralise dramaturgical practice, the Nazis introduced the role of the National Dramaturg (Reichsdramaturg), a post held by Rainer Schlösser for the entirety of the Third Reich. In their interpretation of the role, the Nazis focused on a narrow reading of it, which foregrounded control and “guidance”. Schlösser’s office attempted to control German theatrical output before it reached production and made suggestions for plays the regime liked to see performed (Drewniak 1983; Rischbieter 2000). Although not entirely successful (Dussel 1988; Strobl 2007; Heinrich 2007/2012), the National Dramaturg introduced a new national layer of potential control over theatrical output and established both the term and its practice to a wider public. It is this extension of the role as well as the interpretation of dramaturgical practices and the often competing agendas which Gerwin Strobl focuses on in his essay as he traces discourses around theatre, repertoire and war among the Nazi hierarchy. This discussion leads on to Anselm Heinrich’s chapter around the implementation of “Germanic repertoires” during World War II in an attempt to define yet another role for the dramaturg—one of translating an often mundane theatre programme to grand political goals, and one of successfully arguing that a network of German-language theatres across the continent made audiences susceptible to German domination. The essay also focuses on the rise of dramaturgy as institutional practice at German theatres more generally, a trend which was further emphasised in a divided Germany.

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The final article in this section by Michael Bachmann offers an expanded model of institutional dramaturgy. Bachmann assembles various elements of what he calls “a broader matrix of dramaturgial work”, looking beyond individual theatres and productions to theatre reviews and arts criticism, cultural policy and public debates about what theatre can and should do. By focusing on divided, post-war Berlin and analysing theatre reviews in East and West Germany, he successfully shows how dramaturgical thinking and debates evidenced in arts criticism supported opposing ideological and political visions of the two post-war German states. Here, an expanded notion of dramaturgical work is useful in revealing the close relationship between theatre and politics during the Cold War. More than just aligning itself with state ideologies, dramaturgical work undertaken by various stakeholders and individuals in the arts landscape actively supported the ideological reconstruction of the post-war states. The following section entitled “Institutional Infrastructures: Theatres of Oppression” focuses on the role of dramaturgy and dramaturgs in the occupied territories in Europe during World War II in more detail. It comprises five case studies that examine the development of ideologically aligned institutional infrastructures in Poland, Slovenia, Czechoslovakia, Norway and Italy. The first four contributions discuss how the German occupiers used traditions of German-language theatres in Eastern Europe before 1939 or attempted to construct these traditions artificially such as in Norway. The authors show how dramaturgy played a key role in attempting to establish theatres as a significant site of identity formation to create new audiences willing to sustain the German world order. This further development of dramaturgy into a politicised practice illustrated and established the acute need for a new breed of dramaturgs across occupied Europe. As in-depth analyses of theatres in Prague (Mohn), Maribor (Birk), Poznan (Weigel) and Oslo (Heinrich) exemplify, the Nazi regime made a concerted effort to state its cultural and political ambitions by opening a string of lavishly appointed theatres across Europe in an attempt to influence the wider public through the performance of a decidedly German repertoire. The German leadership stressed repeatedly that it intended to fight this war not only on military, economic and geopolitical, but also cultural terms. The continent was to accept German cultural supremacy based on the well-established mantra of “the German character shall heal the world” (“am deutschen Wesen soll die

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Welt genesen”).3 Theatres played a key role in this as they intended to stage the best of what German Theaterkunst had to offer and—via the work of dramaturgs—incorporate these productions in a discourse around German leadership. To add to this picture, Patricia Gaborik turns to Fascist Italy, Germany’s close ally, and discusses the nation’s institutional theatre development under Mussolini. Gaborik argues that in Italy control and opportunity seemed to have existed side by side. While Mussolini’s regime supported the development of a new infrastructure of dramatic arts and pedagogic institutions with large investments, it did so with the intention of creating a new generation of fascist artists and broadcasting its claim of cultural superiority. Additionally, Gaborik analyses how Mussolini’s own dramatic work was exported to the territories of the Third Reich with the aim of bolstering the personal cult around his persona abroad and thus furthering his diplomatic strategies. In the volume’s final section on “Performance Practice: Dramaturgy and the Aesthetics of War” contributors examine more closely how the institutional theatre landscape of the Third Reich, prior to and during World War II, and of post-war Germany, introduced and supported the development of specific dramaturgical practices, and performance aesthetics. The contributions in this section focus foremost on questions of production dramaturgy and institutional dramaturgy practices in regard to repertoire discussion. The contribution by Evelyn Annuß offers an analysis of the specific dramaturgies of war inherent to early 1930s Nazi open air mass theatre and Thing plays. According to Annuß, the trauma of World War I and the shell shock experience were reworked through a carefully orchestrated and predominantly acoustic dramaturgy and transformed into a narrative of national rebirth, thus supporting early Nazi propaganda aims in these precursors to Thing plays. Once Nazi power was consolidated, the dramaturgy of Thing plays shifted to visual ornamentalisation and a dramaturgy of mass movement that immersed the audience in a process of communalisation and thus, as Annuß compellingly argues, it can be

3 The term was no Nazi invention but was first used in the early 1860s in calls for German unity. After 1871 it was incorporated into an increasingly aggressive foreign policy which sought to establish German leadership on the European continent as well as justify Germany’s colonial ambitions.

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considered to have prefigured formations of subjecthood in today’s social media facilitated event communities. Veronika Zangl then turns to cabaret revues at the Nazi transit camp Westerbork in the Netherlands where prisoners, who had previously had successful careers as cabaret artists, staged semi-professional revues in front of heterogeneous camp audiences. Zangl successfully shows in her analyses of these productions, how, on the one hand, their dramaturgical structures and intertheatrical, satirical content mirrored a crisis of reality experienced by the imprisoned artists. On the other hand, the very continuation of theatrical work by Jewish artists figured as disruptive potential amidst a brutal and inhumane reality. In John London’s article, dramaturgy features as a discussion of Nazi repertoire choices in Germany in regard to the increase of Spanish Golden Age dramas on German stages between 1933 and 1944, both signalling the importance of Spain as a close political ally and Nazi Germany’s claim on Weltliteratur (world literature). The broadly apolitical dramaturgy of humour inherent to these dramas and their stagings, so London argues, points to the existence of spare-time entertainment within the controlled institutional Nazi theatre landscape. Finally, Ramona Mosse’s contribution moves into the immediate postwar period and invites us to take a look at Brecht’s 1948-Antigone model book and the way in which Brecht translated the experience of war not just into the content of his productions but into the dramaturgical framing of his theatre experiments. According to Mosse, Brecht’s model books can be read as an attempt to develop new performance aesthetics for the post-war period. They were a basis from which he constructed a new theatre informed by the perceptual and cognitive shifts that the war had created and adapted to the new ideological environment of the Cold War period. We dedicate this volume to Alexander Weigel (1935–2020), dramaturg and scholar, whose life and research touched on a number of issues discussed in this volume. As dramaturg for 40 years at the prestigious German Theatre in East Berlin he found himself repeatedly at odds with the East German regime and its Kulturpolitik. As a scholar Weigel had made a name for himself as an expert on Heinrich von Kleist’s drama and theatrical vision. He was working on his essay for this volume on Prince of Homburg right up to his passing, and we dedicate our collection to him.

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References Balme, Christopher, and Tony Fisher, eds. 2021. Theatre institutions in crisis. European perspectives. New York/Oxon: Routledge. Bleeker, Maaike. 2023. Doing dramaturgy: Thinking through practice, new dramaturgies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Clausewitz, Carl von. 1911. Vom Kriege. Hinterlassenes Werk, 6th rev. ed. Berlin: Dümmler. Deutsch-Schreiner, Evelyn. 2016. Theaterdramaturgien von der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart. Köln: Böhlau. Drewniak, Boguslaw. 1983. Das Theater im NS-Staat. Szenarium deutscher Zeitgeschichte 1933–1945. Düsseldorf: Droste. Dubiner, Julie Felise, Anne Fletcher, and Scott Irelan. 2010. The process of dramaturgy: A handbook. Newburyport, MA: Hackett. Dussel, Konrad. 1988. Ein neues , ein heroisches Theater? Nationalsozialistische Theaterpolitik und ihre Auswirkungen in der Provinz. Bonn: Bouvier. Eckersall, Peter, et al., eds. 2017. New media dramaturgy. Performance media and new-materialism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Heinrich, Anselm. 2007. Entertainment, Education, Propaganda. Regional Theatres in Germany and Britain between 1918 and 1945. London: University of Hertfordshire Press. Heinrich, Anselm. 2012. Theater in der Region. Westfalen und Yorkshire 1918– 1945. Paderborn: Schöningh. Heinrich, Anselm. 2017. Theatre in Europe under German occupation. London: Routledge. Kelly, Philippa, ed. 2020. Diversity, inclusion, and representation in contemporary dramaturgy. Case studies from the field. New York/Oxon: Routledge. Luckhurst, Mary. 2006. Dramaturgy: A revolution in theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mandel, Birgit, and Annette Zimmer, eds. 2021. Cultural governance legitimation und Steuerung in den darstellenden Künsten. Wiesbaden: Springer. Meerzon, Yana, and Katharina Pewny. 2020. Dramaturgy of migration: Staging multilingual encounters in contemporary theatre. London: Routledge. Lang, Theresa. 2017. Essential dramaturgy: The mindset and skillset. London: Routledge. Rischbieter, Henning. 2000. Theater im “Dritten Reich”. Theaterpolitik, Spielplanstruktur, NS-Dramatik. Seelze: Kallmeyer. Romanska, Magda, ed. 2015. The Routledge companion to dramaturgy. London: Routledge. Radosavljevi´c, Duška. 2023. Aural/oral dramaturgies. Theatre in the digital age. New York/Oxon: Routledge. Strobl, Gerwin. 2007. The Swastika and the stage: German theatre and society, 1933–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Trencsényi, Katalin. 2015. Dramaturgy in the making: A user’s guide for theatre practitioners. London: Methuen. Trencsényi, Katalin, and Bernadette Cochrane, eds. 2014. New dramaturgy. International perspectives on theory and practice. London: Bloomsbury. Turner, Cathy, and Synne K. Behrndt. 2007. Dramaturgy and performance. London: Palgrave. Vega, José Fernandez. 2007. ‘War as ‘art’: Aesthetics and politics in Clausewitz’s social thinking. In Clausewitz in the twenty-first century, ed. Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe, 122–137. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Woynarski, Lisa. 2020. Ecodramaturgies. Theatre, performance and climate change. London: Palgrave.

PART I

Dramaturgical Contexts: Institutionalised Ideologies

CHAPTER 2

Institutional Dramaturgy at the Deutsches Theater Berlin Ann-Christine Simke

Institutional Dramaturgy Practice Over the last 20 years, Dramaturgy as a field of study and as a professional role and title has gained popularity in the UK. Helped by seminal studies such as Mary Luckhurst’s Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre (2006) and Cathy Turner and Synne Behrndt’s Dramaturgy and Performance (2008), awareness of the historical roots and contemporary expanded notions of dramaturgy and dramaturgical practices has taken hold. While the term dramaturgy can refer both to the specific structure and construction of dramatic texts as well as performances, the professional practice

This chapter contains excerpts from a previously published chapter: Simke, Ann-Christine. 2021. Max Reinhardt and his Company. In The Great European Stage Directors Vol. 4, ed. Michael Patterson, 42–62. London: Methuen Drama, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. A.-C. Simke (B) Performance Programme, School of Business and Creative Industries, University of the West of Scotland, Glasgow, Scotland, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_2

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of doing dramaturgy can encompass a variety of tasks and responsibilities related to the work in the performing arts and is strongly dependent on its artistic and institutional context. Commonly, one might differentiate between: development dramaturgy, in which dramaturgs work closely together with playwrights on a dramatic text and aid its development; production dramaturgy, in which a dramaturg is accompanying a production from its conceptual research phase through rehearsals to its premiere and features as a researcher, outside eye and sounding board; and institutional dramaturgy, where the dramaturg is part of a larger institutional organisation and fulfils important planning, gatekeeping and communication tasks. Dramaturg and theatre scholar Katalin Trencsényi provides a contemporary description of the variety of tasks that the term institutional dramaturgy comprises: to take care of the organisation’s artistic profile, shape the institution’s narrative of creating a body of work that represents its artistic values and its philosophy, and support the organisation to locate itself within the community it serves. Generally, the work consists of advising on the organisation’s artistic profile, and making sure these aims are clearly communicated to the artists, as well as the audience, and the wider community that the organisation is part of. Then the job involves helping to track, generate and facilitate works that fit within the mission of the organisation. (Trencsényi 2015, 35)

The role of institutional dramaturgy is, therefore, unquestionably influential in creating the parameters of a theatre institution. It is the dramaturgy department that shapes the repertoire and determines what the audience should associate with the theatre and how its artistic aims are to be perceived. The historical roots for this institutional practice reach back to German playwright and dramaturg Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who worked as an appointed dramaturg between 1767 and 1769 at the Hamburg National Theatre. During this time, he wrote the seminal Hamburg Dramaturgy, a series of performance reviews and analyses of a wide range of Western canonical plays in the service of developing a national German repertoire of dramatic art. His aim was to provide a “critical register of all plays to be performed and to accompany every step of the poet’s as well as the actor’s art” (Lessing 1986, 11; my translation). Theatre historian Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner emphasises Lessing’s critical and reflective work as an

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in-house critic of the Hamburg National Theatre, who encouraged his readers to engage with the theatre on their own terms and who saw himself as a facilitator of a larger societal dialogue about the history, current status and the future of German-speaking theatre (DeutschSchreiner 2016, 43–48). Unfortunately, Lessing misjudged the effect of his in-house criticism both in regard to the sensibilities of the criticised actors and in regard to the overall profile and reputation of the theatre itself. In addition, Luckhurst points out that his overtly academic and pedantic writing style did not appeal to a broader audience of theatregoers (Luckhurst 2006, 34–35). Despite the failure of his attempt to influence the repertoire of the Hamburg National Theatre, Lessing’s critical practice laid the foundations for the profession of the institutional dramaturg in the German-speaking theatre as a conceptual thinker, who would shape the profile of a theatre by looking critically at the social, national and artistic context of art and culture and would attempt to establish a dialogue with the audience beyond the time frame of the theatre visit itself.

Dramaturgs at the Deutsches Theater At the end of the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth century in the legacy of Lessing, notable theatres employed dramaturgs such as Friedrich Schiller in Mannheim, Ludwig Tieck in Dresden and Joseph Schreyvogel in Vienna (Deutsch-Schreiner 2016, 55–108; Luckhurst 2006, 38–41). The introduction of an institutionalised dramaturgical office, responsible for the literary management as well as the inner and, above all, outer communications of the theatre, was an important development under Max Reinhardt’s directorship at the DT from 1905 onwards. It became a necessity and cornerstone of the administration of his growing theatre business.1 The dramaturgical practice at the DT was highly organised and although Reinhardt’s work was advertised under the label of the ingenious director—also referred to as “the professor”—his creative practice was fuelled by the artistic team with which he surrounded himself. The two heads of his dramaturgical department were Felix Hollaender and Arthur Kahane. Joined by changing assistant 1 For more on the theatre of Max Reinhardt, see Fuhrich, Edda and Gisela Prossnitz, eds. 1993. Max Reinhardt. The Magician’s Dreams. Salzburg: Residenz; and Fuhrich, Edda and Gisela Prossnitz, eds. 1973. Max Reinhardt in Europa. Salzburg: Otto Müller.

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dramaturgs, Hollaender and Kahane consistently accompanied Reinhardt throughout his career at the DT—apart from them, Heinz Herald (1890– 1964) too was one of the more constant members of the dramaturgical team (Kahane 1930, 32). In his diary, Kahane humorously describes a chaotic but typical “Regiesitzung” (directorial meeting) with Reinhardt and his artistic as well as technical staff. This description is very informative in regard to the distribution of tasks at the DT as well as to the way in which Kahane portrays his own dramaturgical position: Everyone is present. Even the busiest, the administrative director […] Aside from him: both of the dramaturgs: one of them the quasi minister of the theatre’s foreign affairs, the other the literary office clerk working on text, concept, casting etc.: furthermore, he has to provide for some humour in those meetings. […] While [the technical team] is quickly gathering designs and models, the foreign minister, with a bold leap, is already at the director’s left ear and whispers to him – mysteriously and in a low voice, but still loud enough so that everybody has to listen – the battle report from the ten theatres of war. The poor man has to fight with the authorities, with the press, with the competitors, with the most famous and most recalcitrant authors; the most prominent members bearing down on him. He has lawsuits, appointments, peace agreements and engagement deals behind him as well as ahead of him, and so, in the theatre world, as with everywhere else, the political tune is the nastiest. (Kahane 1928, 71–73; my translation)

In this almost allegorical description, Kahane likens the theatre to a state at war, in which both of the dramaturgs occupy central positions in the government—one of them responsible for foreign affairs, the other one assuming the role of home secretary. He effectively portrays them as being indispensable to the smooth running of the theatre and emphasises the importance of the dramaturgical advisors. This emphasis on the crucial role of the dramaturg becomes understandable when looking at the contemporary satirical discourse surrounding Reinhardt’s “army of dramaturgs” (von Winterstein 1982, 254; my translation). They figure prominently in caricatures and satirical plays of the time, like for example, Hermann Bahr’s (1863–1934) Die gelbe Nachtigall (The Yellow Nightingale) (1907), which premiered in 1907 at the Lessingtheater, practically around the corner from the DT. In this context, it does not come as

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a surprise that Arthur Kahane, who had worked with Reinhardt since before his directorship of the DT, actually defends his seminal position in the theatre institution by emphasising his invaluable contribution to the theatre’s survival in the face of constant competition. The two important but differing dramaturgical job profiles were split between Hollaender and Kahane with the former fulfilling the task of the outward facing dramaturg and the latter focussing on the literary desk job inside the institution. The difference between the two dramaturgs in regard to their work but also to their personalities is a recurring theme in the accounts of actors and directors who worked with them. In his autobiography, actor Eduard von Winterstein (1871–1967) simply states: “Hollaender was loud, Kahane was quiet, this characterises the difference between those two men most aptly” (von Winterstein 1982, 255). According to von Winterstein’s description, Hollaender was an energetic and clamorous personality, who knew how to handle the press and the public relations of his theatre, giving his dramaturgical profile the distinct edge of an advertising man knowing how to sell his product. Kahane, by contrast, seems to have embodied the stereotype of the bookish and intellectual literary dramaturg. Von Winterstein admits his fondness for Kahane, with whom he had long, stimulating discussions. However, he recalls that Kahane’s popularity amongst the ensemble of the DT was adversely affected by Reinhardt’s habit of delegating unpleasant tasks, like delivering bad news about the recasting of roles or the rejection of scripts (von Winterstein 1982, 254–256). Time and again, by contemporaries as well as theatre historians, Kahane has been described as no less and at the same time no more than Reinhard’s right-hand man, vanishing behind the overbearing name of the ingenious “Professor Reinhardt”. This is evident from the titles of articles dedicated to Kahane’s work which mostly refer to Kahane in connection to the “bigger name” Max Reinhardt (Horch 1932, 98–99; Cor 1959, 30–38; Kahane 1978, 59–65). However, a closer look at the inhouse journal Blätter des Deutschen Theaters reveals the presence of the dramaturg with a strong voice in his own right. The journal might not have been Kahane’s own exclusive project—with Felix Hollaender often using it as an advertising tool—yet, Kahane was certainly the animating force in this endeavour.

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The Theatre Journal Die Bla¨ tter Des Deutschen Theater Both Kahane and Hollaender used the Blätter as a platform to communicate their repertoire and new artistic developments to audiences. Apart from their own contributions, the Blätter featured short commissioned texts by playwrights as well as academics and even directors and actors. The first issue was published in August 1911, prefaced by a statement from the head dramaturgs Kahane and Hollaender: This journal is concerned with what we think is the concern of the Deutsches Theater. […] New routes and new objectives lie ahead of us. And since it is essential to protect a work that we deem to be good and just against everything that wants to disturb, to repudiate any misinterpretation and misconception – we open up the workshop. No new idea! It is naïve and wrong to think that art speaks for itself to its contemporaries, especially if there is a neat distinction drawn between success and understanding. No artist yet has conquered his time with his first attack […] Critical objection, however, which accrued from the matter itself, has never inhibited us. And yet we think that the essential idea of what we aimed for, and sometimes even achieved, was not always recognised. (Hollaender and Kahane 1911, 1–2, my translation)

The entire preface is quite lengthy and mentions specific artistic innovations that the DT is trying to implement in regard to directing and stage design. It becomes clear throughout the manifesto-like preface that there is an urgent concern to communicate the above-described agenda appropriately. The head dramaturgs of the DT are insinuating that their audience and especially the press have been oblivious or even hostile towards attempts for innovation in staging, set design or theatre architecture. The emphatic purpose of the new journal, therefore, is to start communicating the DT’s artistic concepts and plans. With this proactive involvement in the public discourse about the artistic merits of the DT, the journal announces itself as an ambiguous form of textual provocation. On the one hand, it veers strongly towards advertisement and propaganda; on the other hand, it promises educational content and a more direct communication with their audience. After taking over the artistic directorship in 1905, Reinhardt’s first years as the head of the DT were characterised by a move away from the

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literary-centred Naturalistic style of his predecessor towards experiments with impressionist and expressionist elements. He introduced new artistic ideas concerning the use of lighting and stage design as well as new acting and new writing styles. The lack of adherence to a familiar dramaturgy together with the wider focus on diverse elements of performance challenged the audience’s perception. Instead of a Naturalistic aesthetic that was characterised by a distinct predominance of the playtext, the audience was confronted by Reinhardt with theatre experiences that spoke to them on a much more affective level—they attacked their visceral senses as much as challenged their intellectual understanding. Around 1910, the city of Berlin hosted about 30 theatre institutions, most of which were privately run as economic enterprises which had to be financially viable (Lange 1984, 520–521). The DT’s theatrical neighbourhood was saturated with theatres and still investors were looking for new theatre enterprises to start up. The district around Friedrichstraße with its highly frequented train station and array of shops and cafés was an ideal area. Its accessibility and vibrancy were key factors for drawing in large audiences. Concerning its location and demographics, the DT was both advantaged and challenged at the same time. Located in a highly frequented area of Berlin, the entertainment competition was right around the corner. This highly competitive situation required new advertising and communication strategies that pragmatically aligned themselves with dominant cultural practices emerging in Wilhelmine Berlin. By 1911, with its population surpassing the mark of two million, Wilhelmine Berlin was on its way to claiming its position amongst the largest cities in the world. Analogous to the growing population was the growing newspaper market. In his book Reading Berlin 1900, Peter Fritzsche paints a convincing picture of a capital city obsessed with words—a true “word city” (Fritzsche 1996, 1)—a place narrated and constructed through the experience of reading. The rising number of newcomers to the city looking for orientation together with the increase in literacy created the need for written information and direction: Yet popular newspapers did more than introduce the metropolis; they calibrated readers to its tremulous, machine-tempered rhythms. They fashioned ways of looking in addition to fashioning looks, and they trained readers how to move through streets and crowds in addition to guiding them among sensational sights. (Fritzsche 1996, 16)

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According to Fritzsche, newcomers to the city as well as local people relied on the medium of the newspaper to guide them through the city space, to structure and decipher the confusing and overwhelming metropolitan experience. The daily practice of reading made the city more accessible and penetrable to the individual citizen, which, conversely, meant that “[n]ot to read the newspaper was to risk losing orientation” (Fritzsche 1996, 20). Translating this cultural background into the contemporary theatre experience of the metropolitan audience at the DT effectively means to imagine them as an audience of readers—an auditorium full of spectators who were conditioned to structure and understand their quotidian experiences with the help of the written word. Reading and navigating the city with the help of newspapers might, therefore, be analogous to reading the theatre with the help of its dedicated in-house journal that lent a helping hand in navigating the aesthetic spaces and experiences.

The Case of Carl Sternheim I would like to consider an example of how the journal tried to facilitate an understanding of the performances and entered into a dialogue with its audience—or in this case, the select audience of theatre critics. A much praised yet controversial aspect of the DT’s programming were the productions of plays by the expressionist playwright Carl Sternheim, whose work received substantial coverage and introduction in the journal. His satirical plays, especially those from his dramatic cycle Aus dem Bürgerlichen Heldenleben (Scenes from the Heroic Life of the Middle Classes), were notorious for disappointing audience expectations. His first play performed at the DT in February 1911 under the title Der Riese (The Giant) had left critics and audiences perplexed and looking for ways to access the play, which seemed to resist a straightforward reading based on familiar dramaturgical concepts and structures (Jaron et al. 1986, 672–78). This was due to the fact that Sternheim had introduced a new dramatic genre that was positioned between bourgeois comedy and satire. Sternheim made a point of purposefully undermining and even disappointing audience expectations, and the DT faced a substantial challenge introducing his style of playwriting to audiences. Sternheim’s bourgeois and parvenu characters were not designed to be likeable; their language, riddled with references and eclectic stylistic devices, had an alienating effect on middle-class audiences while at the same time uncomfortably

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mirroring their lifestyle and attitudes. In Der Riese, Sternheim deliberately deconstructed comedic tropes like a happy ending for the pair of lovers and replaced it instead with a bitter outlook on an unhappy future of a dysfunctional marriage. In his work on Sternheim’s comedies, literary scholar Boris Dudaš explains how Sternheim criticises “the represented bourgeois-fogeyish world as well as the expectations of the audience who demands a compensating justice from the poet, even if it would contradict the social and political reality” (Dudaš 2004, 148; my translation). The effect of Sternheim’s dramaturgy was that an audience laughing or even frowning at comical and narrow-minded middle-class characters (the so-called Spießbürger) did not receive the satisfaction of having the just and proper world order restored at the end of the comedy. The press did not look favourably on Sternheim’s mix of genres and blatant disregard for middle-class sensibilities. In the case of the play Die Kassette (The Treasure Box), which premiered on 24 November 1911 under the direction of Felix Hollaender, the Deutsche Zeitung criticised the “indecisiveness of the characters” (F. H. 1911, 70; my translation). Julius Hart from the newspaper Der Tag complained about Sternheim’s “insane stylistic confusions” (Hart 1911, 707; my translation) and the newspaper Vorwärts simply called his play a “Zwitterding” (hermaphrodite) (E. K. 1911, 708). The general tenor of these reviews is a lack of comprehension for what it might be that Sternheim is trying to convey, which seems to stem from the difficulty of classifying his work. Whatever the specific issue is that each reviewer criticises, they all agree on the fact that whatever Sternheim is trying to do, he does not do it well enough. Unfortunately for the dramaturgs of the DT, Sternheim turned out to be a capricious artist who was unwilling to comply with the educational and/or advertising stance of the DT’s in-house journal. In several issues of the Blätter, the dramaturgical agenda of explaining what Sternheim’s concern and artistic merit might be is palpable, yet Sternheim himself refused to elaborate on his dramatic work. Lacking a statement by the author, the Blätter, on the occasion of the premiere of Die Kassette, printed instead a letter of refusal by the playwright: My dear Mr Holländer! You want to have a contribution from me for the Blätter des Deutschen Theaters about my comedy. What is to be said about the Kassette, will be

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found in the Berlin press on Saturday morning. My next contribution for the Deutsches Theater will be a new comedy. With kind regards, Your Carl Sternheim (Sternheim 1911/1912, 129)

This letter can be read in two ways: As the answer of an artist unwilling to explain his artwork or as a sarcastic comment on the sovereignty over interpretation, which seemingly lies only with the press. Interestingly enough, the letter from November 1911 serves almost as a foreshadowing of the battle over the hermeneutic reign over Sternheim’s dramatic writing between the press and the Blätter. Sternheim maintained his resistance to providing guiding advice for the audience of his plays. A year later, in the issue accompanying the premiere of Sternheim’s Don Juan on 13 September 1912, Felix Hollaender emphasises the quality of the literary work and prepares the audience for a new theatrical experience. In the following very short interview with the dramatist, Sternheim proves to be a refractory artist, stubbornly resisting any attempts of his interview partner to extract an explanatory statement on his authorial decisions. Upon being asked if his unusual portrayal of the Don Juan character might confuse or anger the audience, he simply answers ironically: “This depends on my current credit with them. Maybe they even demand that I have died first. In that case, I need to be patient with the play” (Kopisch 1912/1913, 311; my translation). On the one hand, this stubbornness and general disregard for the audience’s reception helped create Sternheim’s reputation as an uncompromising artist. On the other hand, it undermined the purpose of the Blätter, which had stated in their opening preface: “It is naive and wrong to think that art speaks for itself to its contemporaries, especially if there is a neat distinction drawn between success and understanding” (Hollaender and Kahane 1911/1912, 1; my translation). Since Sternheim did not significantly alter his practice of being uncooperative in the communication of his artistic agenda via the Blätter, Kahane started commissioning articles about Sternheim’s plays and printed contributions providing a general background to his work. In order to familiarise the audience with Sternheim’s style and artistic concept, the 29th issue, which was distributed on 5 March 1913 on the evening of the premiere of Bürger Schippel (Citizen Schippel), featured an article about the special characteristics in the content and form of his middle-class comedies. The next day, some critics referred to the Blätter and strongly disagreed with the, in their opinion, doubtlessly biased article. In the

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Berliner Volkszeitung, the complaint was made that similar to Sternheim’s plays Der Riese and Die Kassette, the play Bürger Schippel was showing the same “dramatic anomaly which the Blätter des Deutschen Theaters refer to as originality” (M. S. 1913, 763; my translation). Fritz Engel, from the Berliner Tageblatt, states that the article in the journal is handing Sternheim an undeserved “laurel wreath”, and he even goes so far as to warn against this “dangerous idolatry” (Engel 1913, 762; my translation). A closer look at the article in the Blätter, written by Robert Gournay, shows that it stretches unusually long over five pages of the journal. In addition, it is written in a very dense style, oscillating between flowery prose and an analytical, almost academic style that does not seem to serve an idolising purpose. On the contrary, it is a rather challenging text, structured in paragraphs dedicated to “the word”, “the characters” and “the situations”. It contextualises as well as explains some of the artistic choices made by the playwright; however, it does not unabashedly sing Sternheim’s praises (Gournay 1912/1913, 457–461). The strong reaction by some of the critics was repeated on the occasion of Sternheim’s premiere of Der Snob (The Snob) in February 1914. Here, the journal presented an array of short statements and provocations on the topic of Dandyism and the nature of the snob, amongst which were also extracts from texts by authors like William Thackeray, Hippolyte Taine, Prince Pückler-Muskau, Jules A. Barbey D’Aurevilly and Oscar Wilde. These were assembled with the intention of providing the reader/spectator with some literary and historical background that could help with contextualising the play and the performance. Again, the press responded negatively to the performance and critic Julius Hart humorously referred to the futile attempt of the Blätter to introduce the idea of the snob to the audience. By insinuating that the articles in the Blätter are more entertaining than the performance itself, he pitted the dramaturgical effort of the Blätter against Sternheim’s dramatic work and thus successfully criticised the overall work of the DT (Hart 1914, 785–786). In the example of the debate around Sternheim’s comedies, the battle over the sole right for interpretation between the artistic team of the DT and the Berlin press comes to the fore. While critics often referred to the Blätter as a reference point and interpretative support, in the case of Sternheim, the press aggressively defended its right to communicate the meaning and value of an artwork to the audience. The dramaturgical effort to provide the audience with contextual material as a guide for accessing the performance was regarded as an inappropriate encroachment

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on their territory and was, therefore, heavily criticised and quickly judged as mere advertisement devoid of any competence in artistic judgement. The example of the contested Sternheim reception, therefore, shows how successful the journal was at starting up a dialogue with a wider audience beyond the theatre visit itself, a project that Lessing had already pursued in the eighteenth century.

The First War Season 1914/1915 During the first war season, the importance of repertoire decisions and the dramaturgs’ work and influence came back into focus. Kahane and Hollaender used the medium of the Blätter to retrospectively frame and communicate their repertoire decisions during the first war season 1914/ 1915. The outbreak of the war caused a considerable amount of anxiety amongst theatre professionals as many actors and members of repertoire theatres lost their employment. However, theatre closures mainly happened in regions in or bordering the direct war zones, such as AlsaceLorraine, East Prussia and smaller towns in which theatres had been facing financial hardship even before the war (Baumeister 2005, 27–28). Larger Berlin theatres opened their season with a delay of a few weeks, and they reacted to the outbreak of the war by either programming pieces from the German canonical repertoire with allusions to war themes (DT and Charlottenburg Schillertheater) or by revisiting historical plays featuring Prussian military history (Prussian Court Theatres) (Baumeister 2005, 52). Certain authors, such as Sternheim, who had been popular with audiences despite the controversies that his plays provoked, were no longer widely programmed on Berlin stages. His provocative and satirical comedies virtually vanished from Berlin’s theatrical landscape during the war years.2 The DT opened its first war season on 28 August 1914—a month after the outbreak of the war—with a new production of Heinrich von Kleist’s Der Prinz von Homburg (Prince of Homburg), a drama about military insubordination, acceptance of military discipline and the upholding of the law. What followed was a season that relied heavily on the programming of Shakespearean plays and German classics. Reinhardt and his 2 In Vienna, for example, Sternheim remained a staple of many theatres’ repertoires (Krivanec 2012, 336).

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dramaturgs distanced themselves from an all too current and topical patriotic programming and introduced lighter comedies such as August von Kotzebue’s Die deutschen Kleinstädter (The Small-Town Germans) early on in October 1914 (Baumeister 2005, 56–57). In the only retrospective issue of the first war season 1914/1915, Kahane and Hollaender commissioned feedback on their repertoire decisions by intellectual and cultural authorities. In light of the DT’s temperate and artistic canon-focused war season programming, the opening remarks by Adolf von Harnack, theologian and president of the research foundation Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science, seem to subtly emphasise the valuable and considered programming of the DT. He locates the work of the DT within a context of the general war effort and states that the work of the DT has supported the euphoric feelings in Germany and has demonstrated an unshaken nation that pursues its calm and collected work to other nations (Von Harnack 1915, 793–794). Playwright Gerhart Hauptmann starts his contribution with critical observations by a soldier who has attended a performance at the DT and wonders about its undisturbed peacetime atmosphere. Hauptmann reports his indignant question: “Do a hundred thousand in the trenches at both war fronts have to spatter their blood so that in the meantime people can follow their pleasures and their artistic indulgences undisturbed?” (Hauptmann 1915, 794; my translation) This opening anecdote, however, simply serves Hauptmann as an opportunity to reflect on the necessity of keeping up the morale and to advocate for humour in performances as something noble, wise and necessary: “Even in war itself, as we know, humour comes close to the holy sacrificial death” (Hauptmann 1915, 795; my translation). In Hauptmann’s contribution the exculpatory purpose of this edition of the Blätter in regard to repertoire decisions at the DT becomes very clear. Finally, dramaturg Felix Hollaender himself provides a lengthy explanation of his team’s repertoire decisions. He reflects on the tasks and responsibilities during wartime and poses the question: “Which programme does the Deutsches Theater owe to its Berlin audience with regards to its history and present?” (Hollaender 1915, 805; my translation) According to him, it was clear from the beginning that the DT would programme the great German poets as well as continue their work on Shakespeare’s oeuvre. He justifies the theatre’s focus on Shakespeare by reminding them of the long and established tradition of engaging with Shakespeare’s

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work on German-speaking stages since the eighteenth century. In addition to this, as he puts it, “conquest of Shakespeare” (Hollaender 1915, 804; my translation) via translations by Herder, Goethe, Schlegel and Tieck, Hollaender makes clear that the dramaturgical team had asked for feedback on the programming of Shakespeare plays, referring to a questionnaire Reinhardt had published in the Berliner Börsen Courier in September 1914 asking well-known personalities for their opinion on that matter (Baumeister 2005, 56). He emphasises that Germany has always benefited from an “exchange about intellectual and artistic values” (Hollaender 1915, 805) with other nations and cultures and then looks ahead into the future beyond the war in which these international collaborations will be possible again. Continuing his explanation and promotion of repertoire decisions, Hollaender reminds his readers that apart from dedicating his time to classical canonical plays and playwrights, Reinhardt also made considerable efforts to support new writing and contemporary voices, such as Wedekind and Sternheim. Lastly, returning to the current issue of Germany’s relationship with foreign nations, Hollaender justifies the DT’s programming of contemporary foreign artists, such as Maeterlinck, Verhaeren and Shaw and even goes so far as to admit that the DT would have shown more French authors such as Claudel and Rolland if the war had not interfered with repertoire building. Thus, in contrast to the programming at the court theatres which was based on a dynastically aligned, Prussian representation of history that established a lineage from “Arminius via the wars of the Prussian kings to the proclamation of the German Empire” (Baumeister 2005, 53), the dramaturgs of the DT developed a direct lineage from Germany’s historical intellectual figures, such as Herder, Goethe and Schröder to Max Reinhardt. Hollaender’s review of the work of the DT under Max Reinhardt’s directorship as well as the contributions by von Harnack, Roethe and Hauptmann position the DT firmly in the realm of culture and art while at the same time justifying and legitimising a distanced relationship with the war and promoting their approach to “‘art theatre’ as a transtemporal tool for reflection and commentary” (Baumeister 2005; 60). During World War I, only one issue of the journal was published. When the journal publication was resumed in January 1918, it consisted of two parts. Arthur Kahane was now responsible for Das Junge Deutschland (The Young Germany), a literary-focused, monthly journal dedicated to the new generation of writers, while his dramaturgical colleague

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Heinz Herald took over the editorship of the Blätter. The journal project Das Junge Deutschland was part of the society of the same name, which organised Sunday matinee performances at the DT of plays by emerging expressionist writers, such as Else Lasker-Schüler, Reinhard Goehring and Walter Hasenclever. The society was founded by Max Reinhardt in 1917 with the explicit aim to support young expressionist writers. Since the plays supported by the society were likely to be censored or entirely forbidden, the society was only allowed to organise single Sunday matinee performances at the DT for a closed circle of society members (Weigel 1985/1986, 36–44). In comparison with the DT-centred Blätter, the journal Das Junge Deutschland had a wider array of contributions; from political and philosophical think pieces to literary and artistic analyses. It lasted three seasons and in its last issue, Kahane drew a rather positive conclusion. However, from a historical perspective of more than sixty years later, DT dramaturg Alexander Weigel looks at the legacy of the Junges Deutschland more critically. Although he attests to the society’s success in helping artists like Lasker-Schüler with her play Die Wupper (The Wupper) to gain ground in Berlin theatre circles, he considers the overall achievements of the society with its sporadic single performances of plays as having had a rather small impact. He nevertheless ends on the interesting note that “theory here is more effective than praxis. The journal Das Junge Deutschland, together with Hugo Zehder’s Die neue Schaubühne (Dresden) is considered to have been the most important periodical organ of Expressionism” (Weigel 1985/1986, 44; my translation).

Conclusion The visibility of the dramaturgs as the responsible shapers and communicators of the repertoire at the DT increased during the first war season. While the peacetime editions of the in-house theatre journal focused on discussing and promoting artistic projects and on introducing new ideas often in opposition to prominent voices of Berlin theatre critics, the reflections provided in the Blätter at the end of the first war season show the dramaturgs’ attempt to balance the position of the DT within a shifting national and cultural landscape. Here, the carefully curated discourse initiated by the Blätter acknowledges the challenges posed by the war while portraying the repertoire decisions both in continuation of Reinhardt’s artistic vision and in service of the general war effort. Thus, the war

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edition of the journal throws into sharp relief how Kahane and Hollaender occupy the ambivalent positions of intellectual advertiser and propagandist educational facilitator in their attempt to influence and communicate the artistic decisions and profile of the DT.

References Bahr, Hermann. 1907. Die gelbe Nachtigall. Berlin: S. Fischer. Baumeister, Martin. 2005. Kriegstheater. Großstadt, Front und Massenkultur 1914–1918. Essen: Klartext. Cor, Etta. 1959. Max Reinhardts erster Dramaturg. Zur Position des Dramaturgen am bürgerlichen Theater. Theater der Zeit 14.3. Deutsch-Schreiner, Evelyn. 2016. Theaterdramaturgien von der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart. Köln: Böhlau. Dudaš, Boris. 2004. Vom bürgerlichen Lustspiel zur politischen Groteske. Carl Sternheims Komödien “Aus dem bürgerlichen Heldenleben” in ihrer werkgeschichtlichen Entwicklung. Hamburg: Kovaˇc. Engel, Fritz. 1913. Review of Bürger Schippel. Berliner Tageblatt. In Berlin: Theater der Jahrhundertwende. Bühnengeschichte der Reichshauptstadt im Spiegel der Kritik (1889–1914), ed. Norbert Jaron, et al., 762. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Fritzsche, Peter. 1996. Reading Berlin 1900. London: Harvard University Press. Fuhrich, Edda, and Gisela Prossnitz, eds. 1973. Max Reinhardt in Europa. Salzburg: Otto Müller. Fuhrich, Edda, and Gisela Prossnitz, eds. 1993. Max Reinhardt. The magician’s dreams. Salzburg: Residenz. Gournay, Robert. 1912/1913. Die bürgerlichen Komödien Carl Sternheims. Blätter des Deutschen Theaters 29: 457–461. H., F. 1911. Review of Die Kassette. Deutsche Zeitung. November 26, In Berlin: Theater der Jahrhundertwende. Bühnengeschichte der Reichshauptstadt im Spiegel der Kritik (1889–1914), ed. Norbert Jaron, et al., 705. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Hart, Julius. 1911. Review of Die Kassette. Der Tag. November 26. In Berlin: Theater der Jahrhundertwende. Bühnengeschichte der Reichshauptstadt im Spiegel der Kritik (1889–1914), ed. Norbert Jaron, et al., 707. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Hart. Julius. 1914. Review of Der Snob. Der Tag. Feb. 4. In Berlin: Theater der Jahrhundertwende. Bühnengeschichte der Reichshauptstadt im Spiegel der Kritik (1889–1914), ed. Norbert Jaron, et al., 785–786. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Hauptmann, Gerhart. 1915. Kriegswinter des Theaters. Blätter des Deutschen Theaters 50: 794–796. Hollaender, Felix. 1915. Rückblick. Blätter des Deutschen Theaters 50: 801–806.

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Hollaender, Felix, and Arthur Kahane. 1911/1912. Vorwort. Blätter des Deutschen Theaters 1: 1–3. Horch, Franz. 1932. Reinhardts Dramaturg. Zu Arthur Kahanes 60. Geburtstag. Die Scene 22: 5. Jaron, Norbert, et al. eds. 1986. Berlin: Theater der Jahrhundertwende. Bühnengeschichte der Reichshauptstadt im Spiegel der Kritik (1889–1914). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. K., E. 1911. Review of Die Kassette. Vorwärts. November 26. In Berlin: Theater der Jahrhundertwende. Bühnengeschichte der Reichshauptstadt im Spiegel der Kritik (1889–1914), ed. Norbert Jaron, et al., 708. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Kahane, Arthur. 1928. Tagebuch eines Dramaturgen. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer. Kahane, Arthur. 1930. Die Jahre 1905–1924. In Max Reinhardt: 25 Jahre Deutsches Theater, ed. Hans Rothe, 15–58. München: R. Piper. Kahane, Henry. 1978. Arthur Kahane, Reinhardt’s Dramaturge. Theatre Research International 4: 1. Kopisch, Hermann. 1912/1913. Don Juan – Eine Unterredung mit Carl Sternheim. Blätter des Deutschen Theaters 20: 311. Krivanec, Eva. 2012. Kriegsbühnen. Theater im Ersten Weltkrieg. Berlin, Lissabon, Paris. Bielefeld: Transcript. Lange, Annemarie. 1984. Das Wilhelminische Berlin. Zwischen Jahrhundertwende und Novemberrevolution. Berlin: Dietz Verlag. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. 1986. Hamburgische Dramaturgie. Frankfurt a. M.: Insel Verlag. Luckhurst, Mary. 2006. Dramaturgy: A revolution in theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. S., M. 1913. Review of Bürger Schippel. Berliner Volkszeitung. March 6. In Berlin: Theater der Jahrhundertwende. Bühnengeschichte der Reichshauptstadt im Spiegel der Kritik (1889–1914), ed. Norbert Jaron, et al., 763. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Sternheim, Carl. 1911/1912. Ein Brief. Blätter des Deutschen Theaters 9: 129. Trencsényi, Katalin. 2015. Dramaturgy in the making. London: Bloomsbury. Cathy, Turner, and Synne K. Behrndt. 2008. Dramaturgy and performance. London: Palgrave. Von Harnack, Adolf. 1915. An das Deutsche Theater. Blätter des deutschen Theaters 50: 793–794. Von Winterstein, Eduard. 1982. Mein Leben und meine Zeit. Berlin: Henschel. Weigel, Alexander. 1985/1986. Das Junge Deutschland. Ein Überblick über die Blätter des Deutschen Theaters (II). Blätter des Deutschen Theaters 2: 36–44.

CHAPTER 3

‘The Protector of the Arts’: Dramaturgy and Hitler’s Wartime Theatre Gerwin Strobl

Kampf and Kultur were twin preoccupations in Hitler’s Germany. While everything else on this earth was deemed transient, combat and culture alone were thought to endure. The former was considered an inevitable part of life, the latter proof of aptitude to rule. It was a nation’s cultural record that marked it out, in Hitler’s mind, for dominance or serfdom (Hitler 1939, 29–30, 65, 269, 273, 275). Accordingly, both arms and the arts featured prominently in the regime’s pronouncements; both were spending priorities from the moment the Nazi Party seized power, and both were held up as evidence of Germany’s ‘national resurgence’ after the Weimar ‘interregnum’ (Goebbels in Heiber 1971, 219–228; Die Bühne 8, 20 April 1938).1 It is not entirely fanciful to see the arts and 1 The term ‘interregnum’ delivered a greater semantic punch in German than it does in English because of the emotional colouring of the word Reich: Zwischenreich was utterly dismissive of the republic and contrasted it with the legitimate Kaiserreich, the earlier Heiliges Römisches Reich and now the Dritte Reich.

G. Strobl (B) School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_3

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the armed forces as twin avenues in the Nazi pursuit of glory.2 The lavish refurbishment of playhouses was perhaps to Kultur what the launch of new battleships was to the Kriegsmarine.3 The first nights, extensively covered in the press, were the theatre’s equivalent of military parades. The honorific titles conferred on favoured actors, directors and theatre managers—all those Generalintendanten and Staatsräte—recalled military preferment. The high-profile theatre festivals, some of them explicitly linked to Hitler, were the presentations of new colours, the Thingspiel, at times, a barely disguised military tattoo. And Sommertheater—the vast sector of open-air theatre in idyllic and often deeply rural locations, to which the German public were invited to hike or were conveyed on special trains laid on by the Reich railways—bore in its logistics more than a passing resemblance to Wehrmacht manoeuvres (BArch R55/20441; Guthmann 1942). During the war, the lavish stage provision at home was mirrored by the creation of a veritable theatre empire in the conquered lands. There were even opera houses for favoured defeated nations lacking an indigenous operatic culture, such as the Norwegians and the Dutch (Heinrich 2017; Haken 2007, 195–211). At the top of the pyramid of power, that self-image of serving both Mars and the Muses sustained the Führer even in his last days in the bunker. There is evidence of that. Among the final pictures taken of the dictator is one of Hitler, in uniform, gazing rapturously at an architectural model of his childhood city of Linz, his feverish eyes feasting on coming glories: the new Linz theatre, the new opera house, the operetta stage next door, the Führer Museum that would put the Louvre to shame, the Künstlerhaus for contemporary artists, the new concert hall, the new library, etc. (Sarlay 1998, 942–951; 2008, 65–78). All this was never simply a question of ‘propaganda’, of maintaining morale or providing a façade of respectability (Reichel 1992; Rathkolb

2 See the revealing remarks about culture in a time of ‘circumscribed’ might in Hitler’s speech after the passing of the Enabling Law (Entry for 23 March 1933 in Domarus [1973]). 3 Hitler himself contrasted in Chapter 10 of Mein Kampf the alacrity of Imperial Germany to fund battleships with its reluctance to fund public building projects adequately, resulting in the use of plaster rather than of marble (291).

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1991).4 Rather, conspicuous cultivation of the arts constituted a quasireligious rite in a secular age (Hartwich 2000; Maier 2011). It was also a source of political legitimacy in a nation that, in the absence of political unity, had long defined itself via its culture (Strobl 2013, 2020b). Hitler lived and breathed those assumptions. Witness his annual orations on matters cultural at the Nuremberg rallies, his quoting lines from Die Meistersinger to navvies building his highways, or his readiness to keep his generals waiting in order to give sketches for stage sets his undivided attention. All this, and much more in a similar vein, was certainly not a pose. Hitler was not feigning a passion for culture. In fact, he was never more fully in tune with his inner self—and with the ideals of a significant section of German and Austrian society—than in those moments of cultural transport (Pyta 2015; von der Lühe 2018). War did not alter that. The Führer’s interventions in the running of Sprechtheater—the theatre of the spoken word (as opposed to opera and operetta)—were infrequent. It might perhaps seem perverse, therefore, to begin with Hitler rather than with those of his paladins, like Goebbels and Rosenberg, and above all Reichsdramaturg Schlösser, who had more obvious dramaturgical ambitions. But Hitler set the scene in the Third Reich, in every sense of the word. It was not just sycophancy that prompted German theatres to place a bust of the Führer in their foyers (Propaganda Ministry circular, 13 July 1942, OÖLA, Landestheater, Sch. 2). The Schirmherr der Künste—the Protector of the Arts—was acting against a background of Central European traditions and expectations (Die Bühne 8, 20 April 1938, Die Bühne 12, 20 June 1939; Die Bühne 7, 5 July 1938; Festschrift zur Eröffnung des Augsburger Stadttheaters 1939). Historical analysis has duly oscillated between the personal and the structural: between ‘Le style c’est l’homme’, a phrase peculiarly apt in the case of a man who fashioned a dictatorship around his obsessions, and the circumstances in which he was able to do so (Pyta 2015; Föllmer 2016). Two Führer visits to the theatre—or rather Hitler’s documented reactions to two specific theatres—may serve to illustrate the point. The first

4 ‘Der schöne Schein des Dritten Reichs’, in Peter Reichel’s resonant but misleading phrase. That conclusion does not, however, diminish the validity of the argument that culture ended up deflecting attention from Nazi criminality, what might be called the ‘Mephisto argument’, after Klaus Mann’s celebrated roman-à-clef and István Szabó’s brilliant cinematic rendering (1981).

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of these was the Augsburg Stadttheater. Hitler visited that city’s Municipal Theatre in 1935. (This led to further Führer visits: in 1937, after an inspection of the Messerschmitt aircraft plant—Mars and the Muses, in other words—then, in 1938 and, finally in 1939, on the eve of war.) The second case to be considered here happened abroad: in Paris, in May 1940, with Hitler sweeping in at dawn as the conqueror of France (Sandner, vol. 3, 1331 and 1487; vol. 4, 1836–1837 respectively). In both cases, Hitler was visibly enraptured. The Palais Garnier appears to have been the crowning moment in his whistle-stop tour of the French capital, just as the Augsburg theatre constituted the highlight of his visit to that fine imperial city. Yet on neither occasion (1935 and 1940) did he actually stop to see a performance. His interest, it seems, was purely architectural.5 It was of course in theatre architecture—the designing and building of theatres—that Hitler’s early career hopes in pre-1914 Munich had lain (after his initial Viennese ambitions of becoming a stage designer had come to nought, that is). At one level, therefore, Hitler’s responses are indeed personal ones, rooted in his own biography. It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss his behaviour in Paris or Augsburg as mere eccentricity—or as the Germans might say, as Cäsarenwahn.6 Hitler was no Nero, fiddling while Europe burnt. Both the Paris Opéra and the Augsburg Stadttheater—one of many Musentempel designed by the eminent Viennese practice of Fellner & Helmer—stood for a grand style of theatre architecture to which Hitler was partial (Hemmerle 2007, 301– 336). Crucially, moreover, they both symbolised a very specific historical phenomenon, a merging of the cultural and the political spheres in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the seedtime of Hitler’s imagination. The Palais Garnier was the apotheosis of the 5 In the case of Augsburg, the 1935 visit culminated in a spontaneous decision to order the refurbishment of the theatre. His subsequent visits were thus in effect inspection tours of the progress of the project. 6 Some of the most eminent Hitler specialists, like Sir Ian Kershaw, have struggled to make sense of Hitler’s cultural obsessions, possibly because their own training as historians left them unprepared for this kind of evidence. Kershaw’s monumental two-volume biography (Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler: 1936–1945 Nemesis. 2001) has surprisingly little to offer on what Wolfram Pyta calls ‘the artist turned politician’ (Pyta 2015). Much the same goes for Peter Longerich, like Kershaw a product of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte at Munich (Longerich 2015). Over the course of nearly 1,300 pages, Longerich devotes a mere 24 pages to what he calls ‘Kirchenkampf und Kulturpolitik’ (501–525). Note, moreover, the revealing title of that section, with its relegation of culture to the realm of the afterthought. That tells us more about the historian than about his subject.

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Second French Empire, dominating the Parisian skyline (Fontaine 2004; Opéra Garnier 2020). And, in Central Europe, between Augsburg and Odesa, Hamburg and Zagreb, Fellner & Helmer’s exuberant Viennese confections epitomised a bourgeois desire to equal and perhaps surpass in the theatre earlier princely patronage (Dienes 1999). It is not irrelevant to a discussion of the institution of theatre in the Third Reich, even one considering dramaturgy, that Hitler thrilled to these buildings. His tour of the Paris Opéra was a rare occasion of Hitler, the private man, visibly in awe before another country’s cultural achievements; and at Augsburg, the public man actually launched into an impromptu lecture to his entourage about the significance of theatre buildings—and their relative state of repair—as a gauge of a city’s cultural ambitions (and of a country’s standing as a Kulturnation) (Daiber 1995, 255–2556; Nerdinger 2012, 75–78). Here, surely, we glimpse the root cause of the Third Reich’s extensive programme of renovation, re-equipping and re-opening of playhouses not just in peacetime but stretching well into the war, a project repeatedly and explicitly linked to Hitler (Völkischer Beobachter 25 May 1939).7 Here also lie the roots of the regime’s extraordinary wartime efforts at rebuilding theatres and opera houses damaged by Allied bombs. Take the case of the Düsseldorf Opera House. Re-built after being bombed by the RAF in 1943, it reopened on 27 May 1944, a mere eleven months before Hitler’s suicide and the fall of the Reich (Rischbieter 2000, 107–108). Those dates surely speak for themselves. It was not just bricks and mortar, moreover, rare commodities though these were in wartime. Dug in at his forest HQ in Ukraine, and indeed even after Stalingrad when others in the Party were demanding a radical pruning of everything not geared to the war effort, Hitler still found time to involve himself in supervising the design and production of gigantic new stage sets for the (recently refurbished) theatre in Linz, to be paid out of his own private 7 Having ordered, on the spur of the moment, the refurbishment of the Augsburg theatre, Hitler took a close interest in the progress of the project and was back in person for its grand reopening. This time he did stop to see a performance: of Lohengrin. The Party paper duly reported: ‘Der Führer, auf dessen Veranlassung und nach dessen Plänen […] das Augsburger Stadttheater baulich erneuert worden ist, wohnte am Mittwochabend einer Eröffnungsvorstellung dieses Theaters bei…’. See also the ongoing coverage of theatre renovations in the official journal Die Bühne; equally telling, so as to point a contrast, reports about the run-down state of the theatre in Metz, newly returned to the Reich after the Fall of France: Die Bühne 14 (25 July 1940) and 20 (25 October 1940).

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funds (OÖLA, Landestheater, Sch. 2, 25 October 1942; 4 June 1943).8 What mattered to Hitler, evidently, was the physical manifestation of theatre. Not the play, but the playhouse, the set and the players were the thing to which the dictator attached importance.9 That left a dramaturgical void at the top. The Führer’s presence in the theatre was, as it were spiritual, rather than programmatic. Let us consider, once more, those Hitler busts greeting theatregoers on their way to the auditorium. A particularly striking example awaited patrons of Vienna’s prestigious Reinhardt Seminar drama school (Roessler 2018, 129–147). There, in the foyer, a Führer effigy had been placed before the inscription, ‘Der Menschheit Würde ist in Eure Hand gegeben. Bewahret sie!’10 That juxtaposition may seem to us now jaw-droppingly outrageous. But it is worth noting that those words were not a political slogan. Nor indeed were they conducive to any twisted Nazi re-interpretation. There was nothing remotely racist about them either. They were not even nationalist. Quite simply, that line from Schiller’s poem ‘Der Künstler’ [‘The Artist’] is an apolitical glorification of the Arts, as the divine spark separating men from beasts. The irony of that in the context of the Third Reich is obvious enough to us now. At the time, it was presumably seen as an invocation of Bildungsbürger ideals, reflecting a pre-1914 (Austro-)German veneration of culture, aptly described as Kulturfetischismus (Weinzierl in Zweig 1996, supplement, 10). That distinctive veneration of culture had come under some pressure by the modernisation of Central European societies in the 1920, but it was very obviously

8 These Führerausstattungen were so outsize that the Linz backstage crews, thinned out by the war, were barely able to move them. Protecting the precious gift from Allied bombs marked the next stage of that affair (OÖLA, LWA, Sch. 14: 44/303g, circular Reichsstatthalter Oberdonau, 11 July 1944). 9 Hitler’s rule marked a period of unprecedented financial generosity to theatre and opera performers. The Propaganda Ministry files preserved at the Bundesarchiv BerlinLichterfelde bulge with Führer interventions bumping up salaries, offering tax relief, etc., which created immense headaches for those trying to balance the books. See also internal security reports about the financial pressures (report 17 April 1941, Boberach 1984, 2207–2210). 10 ‘The dignity of mankind has been placed in your stewardship. Preserve it!’

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shared by Hitler and known to be shared by him.11 Hence the bust of the Führer in the foyer. All this might possibly seem like over-interpreting a single example, albeit one with a personal link to Hitler: the Reinhardt Seminar had been the place where the great Austrian designer Alfred Roller taught until his death in 1935; and Roller was the very man Hitler had hoped to be apprenticed to as a young lad, in the hope of working for the theatre himself (Hamann 1998, 59–60). However, the link between Hitler’s self-image as an enabler and protector of Kultur and Schiller’s idealism fits perfectly also with another piece of evidence (Vászonyi 2016, 28–33). During the war—at a time when the Reich was struggling to muster sufficient transport to keep the Eastern front supplied—a scheme was introduced, at the Führer’s behest, to furlough soldiers from fighting (and factory workers from the assembly line), put them on trains and take them to the fountainheads of Kultur. Frequently dazed by interminable journeys, those favoured individuals found themselves, upon arrival, marshalled by stewards from the Hitler Youth into seats at Bayreuth for an evening of Wagner.12 Here, at last, dramaturgical intent might seem to heave into sight. But there is a twist. The Bayreuth operation was complemented by a parallel scheme centred on the Salzburg Festival, which makes the dramaturgical dimension doubtful (Die Bühne 25 August 1941; Kriechbaumer 2013, 315–422). Wagner, we know, was Hitler’s principal Gefühlskraftwerk—but Mozart? (Stolberg et al. 2017; Levi 2010). Tellingly, the SD—the domestic intelligence service of the SS—did not comment on the repertoire in 1941. Instead, it described the Bayreuth scheme as part of an effort ‘to introduce ever wider circles of the nation to great German Art’; this, the SD added, made the operation an ‘innovative and exemplary method of arts education and cultural guidance of the nation’ (report 21 August 1941, Boberach 1984, 2675).13

11 Schiller’s rambling poem ‘Der Künstler’ speaks of a collective responsibility to preserve culture. On the post-1918 challenges to that ideal in the realm of the theatre, see Strobl (2007, 3–35). 12 Five hours of Wagner did not always act like a tonic: the spies from Himmler’s Security Service reported that the Führer’s guests seemed ‘mitunter wie erschlagen’ (report 27 September 1943, Boberach 1984, 5810). 13 ‘…die Heranführung immer größerer Volkskreise an die große deutsche Kunst… …eine Methode der Kunsterziehung und der kulturellen Volksführung… …bahnbrechend und wegweisend…’

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‘Kunsterziehung and kulturelle Volksführung ’: Might that be the key to Hitler’s conception of Theaterpolitik? It would certainly be in line with the didactic approach he enunciated both in public and private before and after the outbreak of war. Take his recorded concern about getting German youth into the habit of theatregoing; or consider the Reichsautobahnbühne—an itinerant theatre troupe set up, at the Führer’s behest, to introduce building workers to theatregoing by bringing the theatre to them onto the autobahn building sites (BArch NS 10/44, 3; NS 5/VI/6286, 7–8; NS 5/VI/6287, 5). Tellingly the repertoire, though comprised of comedies, was uncompromisingly classical—Lessing, Molière, etc.—hardly the lightest of fares for theatre novices. Given that the audience was likely to be only semi-literate, each performance was introduced with a slide show about the background to the play and the life of the respective playwright; an approach, in other words, foreshadowing the very thing the SD would note during the war: the modulated pretheatre information delivered to the soldiers and workers via brochures and fact sheets (Merkblätter) on the trains taking them to Bayreuth, and the talks (Einführungsvorträge) on offer there, upon arrival (report 21 August 1941, Boberach 1984, 2675). While the didactic ambition pervading Hitler’s Theaterpolitik is thus unmistakable, there is no clear dramaturgical one, with the exception perhaps of his championing of Wagner, and in particular of the Meistersinger. There is indeed a distinct pattern in that regard, starting with the state performance on the ‘Day of Potsdam’ in 1933, via the Party Rallies at Nuremberg, to the 1943 offering at Bayreuth for soldiers, invalids and deserving workers (report 27 September 1943, Boberach 1984, 5810). It is worth pausing to reflect on this. Die Meistersinger is a dry, didactic opera, utterly lacking in stage heroics, in Teutonic mysticism or the emotional charge of other Wagner operas. While it is a patriotic piece, that patriotic quality resides exclusively in its glorification of culture as a collective endeavour (Strobl 2020b, 29– 48). The key line here, indeed the line people are most likely to quote from memory, is Hans Sachs’s solemn injunction to honour the German masters: ‘Verachtet mir die Meister nicht!’ (though, in the original, their Germanness is implied rather than stated). It may be worth entertaining the thought that Wagner’s Hans Sachs was at the heart of the Führer’s conception of Theaterpolitik. If so, Hitler would have seen his role as giving his nation the opportunity to worship at the altar of the arts, and inducting the young and socially disadvantaged

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‘national comrades’ into that cult. Once we accept that view, things do fall into place that otherwise seem puzzling. For instance, the remark by Hans Hinkel, a senior figure in the Propaganda Ministry, about the Third Reich discharging ‘its duty to the classics’ (Hinkel, BArch R 56 I/89, 157; Rühle 2007, 816). It might also explain Hitler’s contribution to a particularly striking behind-the-scenes moment in Nazi Kulturpolitik: the plans for Gerhart Hauptmann’s eightieth birthday in 1942. The Nobel Prize laureate Hauptmann was the closest thing in the Reich to a living classic. His immense output had been protean, ranging from the early working-class naturalism of Die Weber that had outraged the Kaiser in the 1880s, via symbolism, a pro-Catholic play to delight his fellow Silesians (and a piece about the Peasant’s War for the Protestants), to the Classicism of his late period. There was something for everyone here—or rather, given the snake pit that was the Nazi hierarchy, there was something for everyone to take offence at. Hauptmann, however, was too much of a national institution to be ignored (Sprengel 2009). The Weimar critic Alfred Kerr thought that there existed a synonym for Hauptmann, and that word was ‘Deutschland!’ (Kerr 1983, 583). The Nazis felt unable to disagree. There promptly ensued furious plotting and back-stabbing among everyone with a stake in Kulturpolitik, with Goebbels trying (and failing) to act as ring master (Wardetzky 1983, 294– 6; Goebbels diary entry 10 March 1941, Fröhlich 1994, 448–449). In the midst of the administrative chaos that was making a mockery of the very idea of a Reichsdramaturgie, Hitler himself spoke. Unaware of the feuding, he proposed a lavish edition of Hauptmann’s Collective Works as a birthday present by the Reich. A great artist, he explained, had a right to expect public recognition on a major birthday. Hans Sachs would have been proud of his acolyte. In a dictatorship, the absence of something can assume a significance of its own. Hitler’s lack of interest in determining the repertoire meant that dramaturgy was devolved to the next level down in the leadership. That much was common knowledge even at the time. Dictators, however, tend to be copied by their entourage, and this is a point less commonly appreciated in the literature. Stalin’s readiness to intervene in cultural matters was a factor in contributing to the stultifying uniformity of official Soviet culture. The plurality of styles in the Third Reich, per contra, was precisely the result of Hitler’s refusal to get involved (BArch R 56 I/89, 157). Hitler’s example, however, also influenced Goebbels, who was more adept than most at reading his beloved Führer. The story of

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the clash between Rosenberg and Goebbels over control of the arts, in which Goebbels prevailed, has often been told. It is a clash between an inflexible ideologue and a nimble tactician, or to put it differently, between someone who thought nothing of antagonising audiences and a more subtle mind who wished to co-opt them. Rosenberg was defeated by German theatregoers voting with their feet. But he was defeated also because Hitler sided with Goebbels, who was clever enough not to copy Rosenberg’s methods. The Kampfbund’s bullying, Walter Stang’s Dramaturgisches Büro, the self-styled ‘Building Blocks towards a German National Theatre’, and all the other dogmatic utterances of the Rosenberg Office discredited the idea of a centralised dramaturgy. Goebbels’s tactical master stroke was not to offer a concrete dramaturgical alternative. While Rosenberg was publicly prescriptive, Goebbels preferred to invoke the splendours of the artistic imagination, in terms calculated to chime with Hitler (Goebbels speech 17 June 1935, in Heiber 1971, 228).14 Otherwise, he limited himself to nebulous remarks, such as his muchquoted ‘steely romanticism’, which sounded programmatic but could be taken to mean almost anything. Goebbels, moreover, joined forces with Göring in sacking the ideologues in the theatre, thus making way for the polished productions, rich in classics, favoured by Hitler. An unmistakable aura of restoration soon pervaded the German stage, perfectly complementing the liberal application of gold leaf in Hitler’s refurbishment programme of the Reich’s playhouses. The lessening of ideological fervour on stage—no more Schlageter and his ilk, no more Thingspiel — encouraged a grand manner, aptly called Reichskanzleistil. That style was eminently compatible with the re-introduced monarchical trappings of theatregoing: ‘Führer boxes’, banners, life guards on duty during command performances, National Anthem and all (Strobl 2005, 307– 316). Thomas Mann was fully justified in speaking of Hitler’s Hoftheater [Court Theatre]. Things might have stopped there but then, in 1938, the Reich’s territorial expansion began. The Anschluss provided the public with the spectacle of Hitler journeying back to his roots, including the theatres that had shaped him. Goebbels rose to the occasion. In Vienna, he pronounced Hitler Schirmherr der Künste—‘the Protector of the Arts’. That reflected Hitler’s self-image (Trever-Roper 2000, 83). And Goebbels 14 ‘Denn es gibt auf der Erde nichts […] Erhabeneres, als zu sehen, wie unter uns Sterblichen die unsterbliche Gottheit im Künstler Gestalt gewinnt!’

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read his Führer particularly well in proclaiming that ‘we have never sought to play, in German theatre, the role of an intellectual or artistic dictator’; instead, he added, ‘we have always felt happy in the role of Patrons of the Arts, for whom the theatre was a Herzensangelegenheit ’—something governed by the heart (Die Bühne 7, 5 July 1938). And in response to the charge by ‘the émigrés ’ that the loss of freedom had destroyed German culture, Goebbels boldly claimed, ‘we have not put the Arts in chains, we have actually freed the Arts from the chains of Unkunst ’. That spontaneous and untranslated term, literally ‘non-art’ or ‘anti-art’, was aimed at the cultural experimentation of the Weimar years. It resonated with Hitler—and also, it is fair to say, with a significant proportion of Austro-German audiences. It could, however, also be read as a swipe at the artless ideologues who, with Rosenberg’s support, had overrun German theatres in 1933 (at the time, Goebbels had called those Nazi activists Nichtskönner—people of zero ability) (Heiber 1971, 138). That, too, resonated both with Hitler and the theatre audiences. And Goebbels completed his public rejection of all dramaturgical ambition a year later, at the final Reich Theatre Festival Week before the war, when he declared that there was no such thing as ‘Nazi Art’, there was only German Art (Rühle 2007, 819). Goebbels’s shamelessness should not blind us to the fact that there was an element of truth to his remarks. By devolving the running of theatre to an underling in his Ministry, he kept both the Führer and himself out of the sordid business of censoring the stage. There is a notable contrast here to the cinema, where Goebbels chose to involve himself deeply in the production (and censoring) of the German film output, and frequently, involved Hitler too (Moeller 2000; Tegel 2007). That no doubt owed something to Hitler’s love of film (and lack of interest in plays); but it may also be due to the fact that Hitler was wedded to the idea (though not always the practice) of artistic freedom, while regarding cinema, like many of his generation, as mere entertainment. The net result of all this was that dramaturgy lacked from the start the cachet of something representing the Führer’s wishes. Any Gauleiter could theoretically trump Reichsdramaturg Schlösser: far from imaginary danger. Sauckel in Thuringia censored Johst (in the presence of Goebbels, no less); Munich banned Schlösser’s right-hand man Möller; in the Sudetenland the Reichsdramaturg ’s protegé Hymnen was even clapped in irons, and at the Mozart commemorations in Vienna in 1941, Schirach, as the Führer’s lieutenant, claimed precedence over a mere minister like

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Goebbels (Goebbels diary entry 12 February 1941, Fröhlich 1994, 138). The myriad inconsistencies noted by anyone who has ever studied the repertoire of the Third Reich’s theatres were thus structural in origin. The pressures, moreover, increased after the outbreak of war. In part, that was due to the sheer size of the theatre sector. By the end of 1938, as Günther Rühle has calculated, there were about 4,000 new theatre productions in the Reich annually (Rühle 2007, 818). There were simply not enough plays in the repertoire to sustain this. (And things, of course, kept getting worse, as more and more foreign authors became taboo because of the widening war.) It verged on the impossible, moreover, to exercise detailed dramaturgical oversight in a sector of that size—and that was before the Führer’s victories added yet more theatres to the tally. Schlösser was forced to prioritise. To some extent, he could rely on selfcensorship in the sector. The Intendanten, after all, did not set out to antagonise him when they submitted their repertoire plans (though the more prominent actor-managers became adept at asking for something they knew they would not get in the hope of getting instead something they would not otherwise have been given). In the provinces, occasional interventions were enough to keep everybody on their toes. Schlösser focused his fire on four areas. The first of these were the conquered lands. It was easier to dictate terms to theatres that were dependent on his favour. Moreover, Schlösser knew that these stages would be under particularly close observation by the ideologues within the Party (Heinrich 2017, 137–145). The second area watched with eagle eyes by the hardliners were the Berlin theatres (whether they would repair after a hard day’s back-stabbing in the office). Berlin, moreover, was Goebbels’s personal fiefdom: he was Gauleiter of the capital. It would pay dividends for Schlösser, therefore, to shield his minister from embarrassment. The third area given close attention was not a geographic one but a category: any Intendant who had incurred Schlösser’s displeasure could expect a level of attention that bordered on bullying: the classic case being that of Heinz Hilpert, whom Schlösser tried to break physically and psychologically. The final category was comprised of the preparations for high feast days in the Nazi calendar or the launching of new plays favoured by senior figures in the Nazi leadership (e.g. Herbert Reinecker’s anti-Bolshevik melodrama The Village near Odesa). In all these areas, Schlösser displayed considerable dramaturgical energies. So how effective was wartime dramaturgy? It depends where you look. The Reichsdramaturgie was, like Schrödinger’s cat, simultaneously dead

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and alive; and the act of looking seems to determine the outcome. Here is Goebbels, noting in his diary early in 1940, ‘I have not given it [i.e. Berlin theatre] sufficient attention, and as a result, it is running to seed’ (Goebbels diary entry 9 January 1940, Fröhlich 1994, 264). Something had clearly irked him, though it is not at all clear what caused his displeasure, which was in any case transient. There is no evidence of suspicion towards the Reichsdramaturg, and by December Goebbels was positively purring, ‘Schlösser arbeitet gut und zuverlässig’ [Schlösser is efficient and dependable] (Goebbels diary entry 24 December 1940, Fröhlich 1994, 445). What are we to make of all this? The irritation had been real. It resulted in Goebbels paying noticeably more attention to theatre matters throughout 1940 than he had done so in the autumn of 1939. But can Schlösser really have neglected theatre [‘verschlampt’] in the Reich capital, of all places? Is that credible? Or to phrase it differently, if fault there was, did it lie within or without the Reichsdramaturg ’s orbit? Things are not made any clearer by other evidence. In March 1941, for instance, the SD reported on the vexed subject of plays by George Bernard Shaw in wartime. This was, of course, at the height of the battle of Britain. Shaw’s sizeable oeuvre was popular with German audiences and formed an important part of the repertoire. Goebbels’s ministry had, therefore, sought to shield Shaw from Party zealots after the outbreak of war by publicly identifying him as an Irishman. Not everyone was convinced, however, as the SD made clear. Schlösser might have been content to ignore some low-level sniping on the subject. There were always Party malcontents. But the report of March 1941 also contained a genuinely explosive line, delivered in the SD’s trademark understatement. There had been ‘a degree of surprise’ that the theatre at Chemnitz, in Saxony, should have chosen to mark the anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power with a Festvorstellung of a foreign play: Shaw’s Saint Joan—in a translation, moreover, by ‘the Jew Siegfried Trebitsch’ (report 10 March 1941, Boberach 1984, 2096). This aimed squarely at the credibility of the Reichsdramaturgie. Five days later the Propaganda Ministry responded with a ‘temporary’ ban of Shaw (Rischbieter 2000, 442). The change of strategy, which amounted to a humiliation for the Ministry, is only explicable if one is aware of that SD report (which Rischbieter’s team, for one, were not). But this is not simply about deciphering events; it is also about how much control the Reichsdramaturg actually possessed at that point. Characteristically, the newly promulgated ban was not comprehensively enforced. And again, one might ask, did that constitute proof of

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Schlösser’s strength (by quietly sticking to his original position) or of his weakness (in failing to enforce his new one)? What is more, there is one final twist to this affair. After four months, the ban was actually rescinded: this time, on the orders of the ‘Protector of the Arts’ himself. Judgement on the effectiveness (or otherwise) of wartime dramaturgy is thus far from straightforward. In extreme cases, the conclusion can depend even upon which page of a single document is being examined. The lists drawn up for Schlösser of the proposed fare for the tenth anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power (30 January 1943), for instance, yields a substantial number of Nazi dramas; but it also features offerings, particularly of operas, where one struggles to detect an ideological dimension: The Flying Dutchman (at Nuremberg) perhaps, but The Abduction from the Seraglio (at Regensburg) (BArch R 55/20098, 340, 330)? Or take Hitler’s boyhood city of Linz, which submitted three options for its two venues: Schiller’s Wallenstein (in expectation of the promised Führer sets!), Ziehrer’s operetta Die Landstreicher [‘The Vagabonds’] and Puccini’s Tosca (BArch R 55/20098, 366). And Linz added, for good measure, that the decision would not be Schlösser’s, since the local Party leadership had reserved that right for themselves. Did Linz fail to get the message or did it in fact read the realities very well indeed, including the mind of its great benefactor? The Führer, after all, was not interested in dramaturgy. What mattered to Hitler was the expectant hush in the theatre before the music started and the curtain rose. That was as true in wartime as it had been in the years of peace. For the ‘Protector of the Arts’, as Schlösser surely realised, the medium was the message.

References Annuß, Evelyn. 2019. Volksschule des Theaters : Nationalsozialistische Massenspiele. Paderborn. Anonymous, ed. 1934. Sachsen umjubelt den Führer: Ein Bildbericht über den ersten Staatsbesuch Adolf Hitlers anläßlich der Reichs-Theaterfestwoche vom 27 bis 30. Mai 1934 in Dresden. Dresden: NS-Verlag für den Gau Sachsen. Anonymous. 1939. Der Führer in Augsburg: Festliche “Lohengrin”-Aufführung im neueröffneten Stadttheater. Völkischer Beobachter 25 May. Boberach, Heinz, ed. 1984. Meldungen aus dem Reich. Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1938–1945. Herrsching. Bollenbeck, Georg. 1996. ‘Bildung’ und ‘Kultur’: Glanz und Elend eines deutschen Deutungsmusters. Frankfurt am Main.

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Daiber, Hans. 1995. Schaufenster der Diktatur: Theater im Machtbereich Hitlers. Düsseldorf. Dienes, Gerhard, ed. 1999. Fellner & Helmer. Die Architekten der Illusion. Theaterbau und Bühnenbild in Europa. Graz: Stadtmuseum. Domarus, Max, ed. 1973. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945. Wiesbaden. Föllmer, Moritz. 2016. “Ein Leben wie ein Traum”: Kultur im Dritten Reich. Munich. Fontaine, Gérard. 2004. L’Opéra de Charles Garnier: Architecture et décor intérieur. Paris: Editions du patrimoine. Fröhlich, Elke, ed. 1993–1996. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Teil 1. Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941. Munich. Fröhlich, Elke, ed. 1993–96. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Teil 2. Diktate 1941–1945. Munich. Guthmann, Heinrich. 1942. Freilichtspiel im Kriege. Die Bühne 13, 15 June. von Haken, Boris. 2007. Der “Reichsdramaturg”: Rainer Schlösser und die Musiktheater-Politik in der NS-Zeit. Hamburg. Hamann, Brigitte. 1998. Hitlers Wien: Lehrjahre eines Diktators. Munich. Hartwich, Wolf-Daniel. 2000. ‘Deutsche Mythologie’: Die Erfindung einer nationalen Kunstreligion Berlin. Heiber, Helmut. 1971. Goebbels Reden: 1932–1939. Düsseldorf. Heinrich, Anselm. 2017. Theatre in Europe under German Occupation. Abingdon: Routledge. Hemmerle, Joachim. 2007. ‘Äußerlich mehr eine Bude als ein Musentempel …: umso strahlender der Glanz der Aufführungen!’ Das Mannheimer ApolloTheater in G 6 als Schaubühne der Weimarer Republik. In Spurensicherung : Mannheimer Emigrantenschicksale, ed. Hermann Jung, 301–336. Frankfurt am Main. Hertel, Ludwig. 2015. Zum Wagnerkult im Nationalsozialismus : ein Beitrag zur Rezeptionsgeschichte. Berlin. Hitler, Adolf. 1939. Mein Kampf , 434th–443rd ed. Munich. Kerr, Alfred. 1983. Mit Schleuder und Harfe: Theaterkritiken aus drei Jahrzehnten. Berlin. Kershaw, Ian. 2001a. Hitler: 1889–1936. London: Hubris. Kershaw, Ian. 2001b. Hitler: 1936–1945. London: Nemesis. Kriechbaumer, Robert. 2013. Zwischen Österreich und Großdeutschland. Eine politische Geschichte der Salzburger Festspiele 1933–1944. Vienna. Kuntze, Ingolf, ed. 1936. Festspielbuch: Reichsfestspiele Heidelberg. Heidelberg. Levi, Erik. 2010. Mozart and the Nazis: How the Third Reich abused a cultural icon. New Haven: Yale University Press. Longerich, Peter. 2015. Hitler: Biographie. Munich.

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Lühe, Irmela von der. 2018. “Hitlers Hoftheater”: Thomas Manns Auseinandersetzung mit Bayreuth. In Sündenfall der Künste? Richard Wagner, der Nationalsozialismus und die Folgen, ed. Katharina Wagner, et al., 9–15. Kassel. Maier, Albert, ed. 2011. Kunstreligion: Ein ästhetisches Konzept der Moderne in seiner historischen Entfaltung. Berlin. Moeller, Felix. 2000. The Film minister: Goebbels, cinema and the Third Reich. Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges. Müller, Sven Oliver. 2013. Richard Wagner und die Deutschen. Eine Geschichte von Hass und Hingabe. Munich. Nerdinger, Winfried, ed. 2012. Bauten erinnern: Augsburg in der NS-Zeit. Berlin. Niven, William. 2000. The birth of Nazi drama? Thing plays’. In Theatre under the Nazis, ed. John London, 54–95. London. Oberbürgermeister der Gauhauptstadt Augsburg, ed. 1939. Festschrift zur Eröffnung des Augsburger Stadttheaters. Augsburg. “Opéra Garnier: Un Palais pour l’Empire”. 2020. Documentary, Arte. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QDbDW0vsdk. Accessed 1 May 2023. Pyta, Wolfram. 2015. Hitler: Der Künstler als Politiker und Feldherr: Eine Herrschaftsanalyse. Stuttgart. Rathkolb, Oliver. 1991. Führertreu und gottbegnadet : Künstlereliten im Dritten Reich. Vienna. Reichel, Peter. 1992. Der schöne Schein des Dritten. Reiches : Faszination und Gewalt des Faschismus. Munich. Reichsjugendführung and Reichstheaterkammer, eds. 1938. Reichstheatertage der HJ in Hamburg, 21–23. Oktober 1938. Berlin. Rischbieter, Henning. 2000. NS-Theaterpolitik. In Theater im “Dritten Reich”. Theaterpolitik, Spielplanstruktur, NS-Dramatik, ed. Henning Rischbieter, 489–720. Seelze-Velber. Roessler, Peter. 2018. Im annektierten Garten. Das Schauspiel- und Regieseminar Schönbrunn in der Theaterlandschaft des NS-Regimes. In Theater unter NSHerrschaft: Theatre under Pressure, ed. Brigitte Dalinger and Veronika Zangl, 129–147. Vienna. Rühle, Günther. 2007. Theater in Deutschland 1887–1945: Seine Ereignisse, seine Menschen. Frankfurt am Main. Sandner, Harald. 2016. Hitler. Das Itinerar. Aufenthaltsorte und Reisen von 1889 bis 1945. Berlin. Sarlay, Ingo. 2008. Adolf Hitlers Linz: Architektonische Visionen einer Stadt. In Kulturhauptstadt des “Führers”, ed. Oberösterreichische Landesmuseen, 65–78. Weitra. Sarlay, Ingo. 1998. Linz an der Donau. In Bauen unterm Hakenkreuz: Architektur des Untergangs, ed. Helmut Weihsmann, 942–951. Vienna.

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Sprengel, Peter. 2009. Der Dichter stand auf hoher Küste: Gerhart Hauptmann im Dritten Reich. Berlin. Stolberg, Arne, et al., eds. 2017. Gefühlskraftwerke für Patrioten: Wagner und das Musiktheater zwischen Nationalismus und Globalisierung. Würzburg. Strobl, Gerwin. 2020a. The National Community under Open Skies: The Thing(spiel) movement and its arenas. In Thingstätten: The significance of the past in relation to the present day, ed. Katharina Bosse, 16–24. Bielefeld. Strobl, Gerwin. 2020b. Hitler, Wagner und die nationale Sinnsuche. In Hitler. Macht. Oper. Propaganda und Musiktheater in Nürnberg 1920–1950, ed. Silvia Bier, Anno Mungen, et al., 29–48. Würzburg. Strobl, Gerwin. 2013. Cultural continuities: Theatre and political power from the Holy Roman Empire to the Third Reich. Cultural and Social History 10 (3): 457–476. Strobl, Gerwin. 2007. The Swastika and the stage: German theatre and society, 1933–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strobl, Gerwin. 2005. Staging the Nazi assault on reason: ‘Hanns Johst’s “Schlageter” and the theatre of inner experience. New Theatre Quarterly 21 (4): 307–316. Tegel, Susan. 2007. Nazis and the cinema. London. Trever-Roper, Hugh, ed. 2000. Hitler’s Table talk 1941–1944: His private conversations. London. Vaszonyi, Nicholas. 2016. The play’s the thing: Schiller, Wagner and the “Gesamtkunstwerk”. In The total work of art, ed. David Imhoff, 28–33. New York. Wardetzky, Jutta. 1983. Theaterpolitik im faschistischen Deutschland: Studien und Dokumente. Berlin. Zweig, Stefan. n.d. Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers. In Bibliothek des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Walter Jens und Marcel Reich-Ranicki. Stuttgart.

Archival Sources Bundesarchiv/German Federal Archives, Berlin (BArch), R55/20098, R 55/ 20441, NS 10/44, NS 5/VI/6286, NS 5/VI/6287, R 56 I/89. Oberösterreichisches Landesarchiv (OÖLA), Landestheater, Sch. 2; LWA, Sch. 14: 44/303g. Programm des Landestheaters Linz 1938—1939.

Contemporary Journals and Newspapers Bausteine zum deutschen Nationaltheater. Die Bühne. Völkischer Beobachter.

CHAPTER 4

Implementing Germanic Repertoires: Institutional Dramaturgy After 1939 Anselm Heinrich

In 1920s Germany a rising number of right-wing dramatists, cultural politicians and scholars called for radical changes not only to theatre repertoires but also to frameworks of production. According to them theatre during the “decadent” Weimar Republic had produced “degenerate” fare in middle-class theatre spaces which did not reflect the spirit of a true German Volkstheater, a theatre for and of the people (Langenbeck 1939/40, 923–957; Hitler 1939, 284; Rosenberg 1935, 447).1 Theatre had been reduced to being a mere “panopticon” (Hitler 1939, 284) controlled by “the Jews” (Rosenberg 1935, 445) and had lost touch with German values. Rosenberg claimed that “bastards are the heroes of our time, the revues of whores and naked dancers were the art form of 1 We have to note, however, that a working definition of “Weimar culture” was never coined, rather it functioned as a symbol under which everything “un-German” could be subsumed. Right-wing commentators were united, however, in their claim that within the arts the theatre had been particularly affected by the “Weimar atmosphere”.

A. Heinrich (B) School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_4

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the November democracy” (Rosenberg 1935, 447). Commentators like him rejected Max Reinhardt’s “virtuoso star theatre” as well as “psychological” naturalism, Bertolt Brecht’s alienation effects, Erwin Piscator’s montages, and the stage designs of Oskar Schlemmer and Walter Gropius (Künkler 1944, 65; Hymnen 1939, 465). Naturalism was nothing more than a “constant lament over its lack of form” (Langenbeck 1940, 952), and Gerhart Hauptmann was part of a literary circle whose “impotent” members were contributing “to the decay of a time to which they really belonged themselves” (Rosenberg 1935, 444). But what Nazi theorists wanted to see in its place proved more difficult to agree upon. Early influences came from Paul Ernst who had called for a theatre of “formal neoclassicism”, a tightly structured, literary, almost religious drama (Ernst 1935, 528). His theatre of “elevated stylisation” was criticised, however, by theorists who looked for “symbolical reality” (Stumpfl 1937/38, 955). For some the future of German theatre lay with the “tragedy of fate” modelled on ancient Greek theatre, others called for a “drama of character” inspired by William Shakespeare (Langenbeck 1940, 936–954; Niessen 1940, 86). These debates were further complicated by discussions about performance practice and whether acting should be based on Mimus or Ethos. Critics of the mimic, which stressed the performative and individual, labelled it profane and unable to express the classical, austere and metaphysical. They called for ethos, the only form able to portray heroic and hyper-individual ideas (Bethge 1937, 350– 351). Passionate arguments consumed considerable energy and lasted for many years without arriving at any tangible resolution (Ketelsen 1968, 127–208). Despite the apparent failure to define an original National Socialist performance theory a few basic tenets of what an aesthetic relating to Nazi ideals might look like materialised over the years, and some of the leading German theatres were keen to prove their political allegiance by reflecting these aesthetic demands in signature productions. Relating to the theatre’s political role and its representational function the onus on lavishly appointed productions was significant with a particular emphasis on costume, lighting and setting (Kindermann 1944, 6). Photographs of productions at the leading German theatres after 1933 show large clearly ordered performance spaces, substantial pillars and heavy furniture. Even set designs for productions of drawing-room comedies or operetta rarely looked light and playful but appeared heavy, almost leaden,

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as the leading directors linked a return to realist vocabularies to monumental aesthetics. Oskar Walleck’s productions in occupied Prague, for example, and particularly of the classics, were characterised by his desire to represent historical greatness, more-than-human forces, individual and collective heroism, and events driven by fate (Ludová 2011, 82). In doing so he related to a wider discourse on aesthetics on the stage. In discussing Hölderlin’s Empedokles in 1943, for example, leading theatre scholar Heinz Kindermann praised the “monumental style” of recent productions as “unsentimental”, as metaphysical and mythical in their searching for an inner truth. For Kindermann, this “heroic- monumental” theatre was the true heir of ancient Greek tragedy and was giving expression to the classical German spirit “in the midst of all the battles for the highest good of the occident” (Kindermann 1943b, 38–39). The focus on representation meant that even in the later stages of the war German language theatres across occupied Europe put considerable effort into improving their technical facilities, extending their workshops and adding to costumes, properties and scenery (Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 25 July 1943). Rudolf Zloch, head of administration at Lille’s theatre in occupied France, suggested in 1944 to purchase an expansive collection from Charleroi to add to the theatre’s stock of costumes (Abbey and Havekamp 2000, 281). Even if a theatre’s equipment was lost due to enemy action, this did not mean it stopped performing. After a particularly devastating air raid had destroyed the costume store at Essen’s municipal theatre in March 1943, for example, the décor and costumes were immediately supplied by other theatres: Strasbourg equipped Beethoven’s Fidelio, Darmstadt Calderon’s Life Is a Dream, and Chemnitz Oskar Nedbal’s Erntebraut (Waidelich 1994, 149). The emphasis on material conditions, on costumes, settings and equipment, and a lively discourse around theoretical questions, however, could not mask the fact that—away from the leading metropolitan stages— average productions at German theatres after 1933 did not display radical new approaches to stage design, acting techniques or performance theory. Often unwittingly they were characterised by an aesthetic rooted in nineteenth-century realism. Even at larger theatres and even with companies and audiences kindly disposed towards the regime, a specific National Socialist aesthetic would have been difficult to detect. The leading German set designer Benno von Arent (who had received the pompous title Reichsbühnenbildner [National Set Designer]) candidly admitted in 1942 that to a lay audience it probably was not obvious to

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see what had changed “in the art of theatre” since the Nazis had come to power (von Arent 1941/42, 125). Even worse for the regime German language theatres in occupied Europe, which were meant to showcase the “superior German culture” across the continent, only rarely performed the “holy truths” of the eternal classics or serious playwriting but relied instead on quite un-heroic comedies and farces (Fig. 4.1). The pedestrian performance aesthetic at The Hagues’s German theatre was replicated across occupied Europe. The German theatre in the former Polish capital Warsaw almost entirely presented operettas and contemporary comedies. Among the 187 performances of the 1940/ 41 season, for example, was not a single drama (Gollert 1942, 287). At Lille, in northern France, where a German military theatre had already existed during the First World War, and where the occupiers seemed desperate to show off superior German theatre art, most of the officially supported classical dramatists such as Grabbe, Hebbel or Grillparzer were never performed. A cursory look at the 1941 repertoire instead suggests that Lille featured one classical play for every four comedies it produced. A shortened version of Schiller’s Wallenstein received only nine performances (five of which on tour in Brussels and Paris), and Maria Stuart was dropped after six (Abbey and Havekamp 2000, 273– 274). Otherwise, the theatre presented a string of comedies and farces by the popular playwrights of the day, such as Ralph Benatzky, August Hinrichs or Curt Goetz. Examples from 1941 are Bezauberndes Fräulein, Frischer Wind aus Sumatra, Besuch am Abend, Trockenkursus, Flitterwochen, Ingeborg, Krach um Jolanthe (BArch R55/20513a, 458–460). In Prague, which the Nazis intended to turn into a German city and where they were keenly aware of the high quality of fare produced at the Czech National Theatre, the German theatres largely produced plays which did not support any political reading such as Rudolf Kremser’s Spiel mit dem Feuer (Play with Fire), Hans Jüngst’s Achill unter den Weibern (Achilles Among Girls ), Coubier’s Aimee and Schäfer’s Reise nach Paris (Trip to Paris ). In 1941/42 the Ständetheater produced a single serious political play, Eberhard Wolfgang Möller’s Struensee drama Der Sturz des Ministers (The Minister’s Fall ), although this was a historical drama rather than a contemporary call to arms (Panse 2000, 659–661). Paul Ernst, the “visionary” of the völkisch drama, was only represented with his comedy Pantalon und seine Söhne. Other hits of the season were farces such as Impekoven’s Das kleine Hofkonzert (The Little Court Concert ), Raimund’s Der Bauer als Millionär (Peasant as

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Fig. 4.1 Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro as produced by the German Theatre at The Hague (Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies)

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Millionnaire) and Friedrich Michael’s Der blaue Strohhut (The Blue Straw Hat ) (Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 reports from German theatres, 52–55, 63–66, 110–115, 129–132, 163–165). Although the German theatre in the formerly Polish city of Posen (Poznan) did offer a number of classical plays and operas, the purely entertaining fare was vastly more successful. Whereas Goethe’s worthy Clavigo reached nine performances during 1941/42, Lippl’s peasant comedy Der Holledauer Schimmel (The Holledau White Horse) was played 20 times and Lehàr’s Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) 40 times (Reichsgautheater Posen 1941/42, review of 1941/42 season, 203–205; Reichsgautheater Posen 1942/43, review of 1942/43 season, 276–280). The moderately successful run of Heinz Ortner’s historical drama Isabella of Spain during the 1939/40 season at Danzig (Gdansk) was the only significant contribution of the völkisch—nationalistic drama the regime so fervently fostered. Otherwise, Danzig’s repertoire was dominated by comedies, farces and operettas. The most successful play of the 1941/42 season was Karl Lerbs’ comedy A Man in the Prime of his Life, and one of the overall hits with a total of 45 performances throughout the war years was Leoncavallo’s popular classic Der Bajazzo/ Cavalleria Rusticana. Neither Schiller or Shakespeare nor the nationalistic drama by Guido Erwin Kolbenheyer or Eberhard Wolfgang Möller provided Danzig’s theatre with the greatest successes, but the operettas of Franz Lehár. Stephan Wolting assumes that during the war the Danzig theatre featured at least one operetta performance every two days (Wolting 2003, 174, 178, 191–194). Similarly, the share of the operetta repertoire at Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) grew steadily and significantly over the years. Not surprisingly the most successful theatre productions of the entire period were Carl Millöcker’s Der Bettelstudent with 28 and Fred Raymond’s Die Perle von Tokay with 26 performances (Nowikiewicz 2007, 247, 249). The situation at the other German theatres across occupied Europe was similar. They stayed clear of the celebrated völkisch drama by playwrights, such as Kolbenheyer, Johst, Euringer, Billinger, Möller, Langenbeck, Rehberg or Bethge, as the vast majority of the plays produced were contemporary comedies and farces such Leo Lenz’ Der Mann mit den grauen Schläfen (A Touch of Grey) or Heinrich Zerkaulen’s Der Sprung aus dem Alltag (A Break from Routine) with both Lenz and Zerkaulen counting among the most popular playwrights of the Nazi years with thousands of performances between them. In addition to a busy programme of comedies, farces and operettas German language

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theatres in occupied Europe offered countless smaller productions of songs, revues, dances and humorous readings including dance shows entitled “Colourful Christmas Plate” (Bunter Weihnachtsteller) or “Colourful Operetta Whirl” (Bunter Operettenwirbel ) (Abbey and Havekamp 2000, 277). This was a real challenge for a regime which placed such belief in theatre’s cultural mission and transformative powers—a belief that only increased after war had started in 1939 and led to the opening of a string of German language theatres all over occupied Europe. “The composition of repertoires in these regions [i.e. the annexed and occupied areas – A.H.] requires particular attention”, Karl Künkler claimed in 1942 (Künkler 1941/42, 107). Celebrating the efforts to set up theatres all over Europe immediately following Germany’s advancing armies, Heinz Kindermann added that “there was a lot more at stake here than mere ‘diversion’” (Kindermann 1944, 5). Theatres were required to present a programme of heroic classical drama, völkisch plays, and German dance/ ballet, music, operetta and opera. A repertoire based on entertainment instead of uplift was not what the regime wished to see. Even “a well made comedy” was not justifiable because one will have to apply the highest standards with performances of comedies […] if these theatres are to fulfil the task set before them as outposts of German culture. (Künkler 1941/42, 108)

Instead of cutting down on spending on the performing arts during the war the Nazis substantially extended state subsidies in a bid to advance Germany’s war effort, to increase and substantiate Germany’s hold on Europe. The spreading of German language theatre across the continent was, therefore, seen as crucial for the regime to establish a foothold in these areas and make them susceptible to and appreciative of German domination. Germany was, after all, the nation of “poets and thinkers”, and the regime was fiercely proud of Germany’s artistic credentials. The Nazis expected that their substantial and continuous investment in the arts was valued as a serious commitment to the newly acquired territories and their inhabitants and read both as a sign of confidence and a signal of permanence (Abbey and Havekamp 2000, 263). For the Nazi regime, then, theatre was not only an expression of a superior Germany which had rightfully conquered Europe, it was also charged to uplift, encourage and equip German minority populations (and those deemed fit to belong

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to them in the future) with the necessary ammunition to continue their struggle once the German armies had moved on. Witnessing productions of the German classics, for example, was deemed to help audiences detect and strengthen their German identity, and ultimately fight to protect it. The Nazi investment in the performing arts, therefore, reflected a real faith in the power of theatre. This faith in turn justified the substantial involvement of the state in cultural matters as expressed in its cultural policy. John Willett rightly posited that this “whole principle of cultural policy or Kulturpolitik […] comes from an acceptance of the somewhat un- English notion that the arts have a social and political role and can make an impact on the world” (Willett 1998, 221–222; Weber 1924, 155). According to this reading theatre could influence and change people’s beliefs, political convictions and preconceptions. The chief “political goal” of the Oslo German theatre, for example, was the “strengthening of the cultural ties between the Reich and Norway” (BArch R55/155, 5)— quite a task for one theatre. In Slovenia, the theatre was charged to change people’s perceptions of their own nationality and turn them into German citizens. The guest performances by the Lille theatre in Belgium supposedly strengthened Flemish nationalism and made the population susceptible to the idea of a separate Flemish state under German “protection”, and the German theatre in The Hague allegedly persuaded Dutch audiences of the need for a Germanic super-state. Thus Germany’s supremacy in the theatre was not only meant to find expression in superbly crafted and expensively produced performances of an established canon proving to the world that the leading theatre ensembles, orchestras, soloists and conductors remained German, but also that wherever these prime cultural exports went they had an immediate effect on even the most stubborn of audiences. Norwegian audiences mellowed after having witnessed the tours of the brilliant Hamburg state opera and theatre in 1940, Hungarian and Romanian audiences were steeled in preparation of the joined offensive against the Soviet Union by Wagnerian opera performed by the Berlin state opera in early 1941, and possible doubts about the progress of the war vanished in late 1943 after having witnessed Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro as performed by the world-famous Vienna state opera conducted by Karl Böhm in Croatia. Joseph Goebbels contentedly noted in his diaries that the German cultural endeavours were appreciated by the Norwegian population and that the foundation of a

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German theatre in Oslo would have “a strong impact” (Goebbels 15 November 1940, 420; 22 December 1940, 65).

Dramaturgy This means that Nazi politicians, cultural practitioners and theorists faced a real dilemma as to how to address the discrepancy between high expectations vis a vis the theatre as an educational and political institution with necessarily uplifting repertoires, and the reality of largely shallow and populist theatre programmes and mediocre productions oblivious to theoretical discourses. The dramaturg as both theorist and practitioner emerged as key expert to bridge this gap. I would argue that the specific situation theatre under the Nazis found itself in (and very quickly after 1933 as well) was the real reason for the meteoric rise of institutional dramaturgy in Germany. This was the hour of the dramaturg, as only the dramaturg seemed able to provide the “necessary” frame to facilitate the “correct” readings of even the most pedestrian productions, and locate them in a National Socialist discourse—both internally as someone responsible (among others, of course) for shaping the repertoire and contributing to rehearsal processes, as well as externally via programme notes and press releases. And indeed, the role of the dramaturg received a significant boost during the Third Reich. Goebbels founded the Reichsdramaturgie (the office of the National Dramaturg) to “guide” and control German theatres centrally, accompanied by a spate of related publications (Laubinger 1933, 4–6).2 The question of the actual powers of the National Dramaturg is still contested. Some have claimed that his influence had been “extraordinary” (Eicher 2000, 484; Rischbieter 2004, 218; Deutsch-Schreiner 2016, 158–159) others have pointed to the fact the central office was understaffed, total control of repertoires proved impossible to achieve and theatres continued to ignore the National Dramaturg’s “advice” (Dussel 1988, 89–100; Heinrich 2012, 128–129). Still, the system by and large proved efficient as most managers were anxious to avoid problems with the authorities (not least to safeguard their own careers) and presented a programme they considered safe (von Haken 2007; Hüpping 2012). And at the theatres themselves dramaturgy departments were extended, some of the leading right-wing writers 2 Otto Laubinger was the first president of the Reich Theatre Chamber. Rainer Schlösser was National Dramaturg between 1933 and 1945.

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received prestigious posts, and even the role of the “chief dramaturg” was a Nazi invention, as recently argued by Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner (Deutsch-Schreiner 2016, 154). Dramaturgs in Nazi Germany developed a number of strategies to assist the “reading” of repertoires. Following the failure to sufficiently develop an original Nazi performance theory dramaturgs started to justify the rejection of any kind of critical aesthetic frame by claiming this was too “academic” or as displaying a l’art pour l’art approach which had no place in the new Germany. When witnessing productions at the newly opened German theatre in Posen, for example, dramaturg Herbert Petersen stressed that audiences were not moved by “some elevated aesthetic experience” but by a basic feeling of belonging together (Petersen 1941/42, 63). Litzmannstadt’s dramaturg Hanns Merck tried to justify the theatre’s pedestrian repertoire by claiming that the many ethnic Germans who had moved to the city from further east still had to “negotiate their way in a new environment, which so far has been largely alien to German theatre”. This meant that the theatre necessarily had to avoid a programme which was too “heavy” and needed to “offer a mixed fare, and one which is palatable to people of every age, every class” (Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 17 March 1940). Another strategy was an attempt to read even the most basic comedies and farces as contributing to National Socialist discourses. The dramaturgy department at Posen’s theatre, for example, reprinted an article by Ernst Leopold Stahl in which he praised the “new German comedy” as rooted in German folk traditions (“stark im Volkstum verwurzelt”) (Stahl 1941/42, 134–135). The German language theatres in occupied Prague published a joined programme note, and one issue featured an article by well known playwright Werner von der Schulenburg, in which he claimed that comedies were superior to tragedies in their “life affirming” character. Thus the current surge in productions of comedies was not surprising and indeed indicative of Germany’s power and energy (Schulenburg 1941/42, 4–5; Baumann 1942/43, 37–55). After years of claims that a National Socialist repertoire needed to be dominated by the classics and serious drama this new approach seemed to provide artistic directors with a licence to let their programmes being taken up by comedies and other largely entertaining fare. Heinz Kindermann provided further academic justification. In 1943 he published a profusely illustrated book of sixteenth-century German comical tales

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(Schwänke), some of which with anti-Semitic undertones, and interpreted them as being rooted in a sense of “blood and soil” (Kindermann 1943a). Another way dramaturgs attempted to justify repertoires which fell way short of earlier proclamations in terms of their missing focus on serious drama and völkisch playwrights was to stress their role for the entertainment of troops. Interviews carried out with former members of the German language theatre company in occupied Lille in Northern France intimated that “the overriding consideration was that the repertoire should be neither too intellectually demanding nor too boring” (Abbey and Havekamp 2000, 269). These kinds of plays often toured widely. Heinrich Zerkaulen’s popular comedy Der Sprung aus dem Alltag (A Break from Routine—see above), for example, was toured throughout occupied France and put on in Paris, Bordeaux, Dax, Biarritz and Bayonne (BArch R55/20513a, 687). And, finally, dramaturgs resorted to presenting “alternative facts”. Although most German language theatres in occupied Europe were clearly reluctant to produce the classical repertoire, many dramaturgs claimed that they did as “wishes for entertainment, box office successes even” were out of place (Deutsche Rundschau [Bromberg], 5 April 1943). Instead, theatres were obliged “to represent the perfected art of national and cultural education” and “to lead the German people to the eternal sources of its strength” (Schrade 1943, 2). The repertoire at Posen’s German theatre after 1939, for example, did not support its widely publicised claims of being an “outpost of German culture”. Undeterred, its dramaturg Karl Georg Pohl claimed the opposite. He stated that it was vital for wartime theatre to present repertoires which were based on “Shakespeare, Schiller and Goethe, Verdi and Wagner […] in perfectly accomplished productions” (Pohl 1942/43, 225, 228). Pohl thus suggested to audiences not familiar with Posen’s actual programme that this was indeed based on the established classical repertoire in signature productions. This was of course not the case as this typical weekly repertoire indicates (Fig. 4.2). 140 miles east of Posen, in Lodz/Lodsch/Litzmannstadt, the German mayor Schiffer expressed similar truths. He claimed that Litzmannstadt’s German theatre had turned the city “into a fortress of German spirit and German culture here in the east of the Reich” (Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 14 January 1940). But, again, the municipal theatre programmes hardly conformed to this demand—and this should have been for all to see Fig. 4.3.

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Fig. 4.2 Weekly theatre programme Gautheater Posen, 1–9 March 1943

At the German language theatre in the Dutch capital The Hague— which presented a largely unexciting repertoire dominated by farces and musical comedies—dramaturg Biltz stated that wartime theatres fulfilled moral, political and artistic demands, and these demands were expressed in each theatre’s repertoire. “Theatre repertoires are never random, they have an obligation”, he added, and the particular obligations of The Hague’s theatre were determined by its geographical position “in the

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Fig. 4.3 Theatre programme Litzmannstadt theatre, 20 October–2 November 1940

upper north-west of the Germanic space” (BArch R55/20545, 194). In occupied Poland, in the so-called Wartheland, Gauleiter Arthur Greiser regarded the performing arts as an important “weapon in our ethnic struggle”, especially high-brow German culture which he saw as infinitely superior to “gauche Polish entertainment” (Epstein 2010, 232, 247). In Thorn, in Western Prussia, the new Nazi administration claimed in late

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1939 that the Polish administration had turned the old German theatre into a “place for cheap entertainment” after the city had become Polish in 1918, and that it needed German intervention to “return the theatre to its great original mission”—a clear statement of programmatic intent and, again, one which did not translate into the repertoire (Podlasiak 2008, 139). Dramaturgs across occupied Europe put forward similar claims, establishing a reading of high culture institutions offering a repertoire commensurate with Germany’s claims of cultural leadership although this hardly related to the actual situation.

Programme Notes The main medium to put these readings across were the programme notes which every German language theatre published. They were an important means of communication between the theatre management and existing as well as future audiences. Many of these notes took the form of journals which were published at least once a month and comprised 15 to 20 pages. They informed the reader not only about particular plays, productions and playwrights, ensemble members and the theatre’s history, but they also provided conceptual and contextual input about the season on the whole or the longer term vision of the theatre. In many ways, these notes went far beyond the task of providing information as they put forward a particular ideological stance or aesthetic approach to distinguish the theatre from others in the same city or region. For the German language theatres in occupied Europe programme notes provided an important platform for political messages, cultural propaganda and theoretical approaches to repertoire planning and programme choices. Not surprisingly, these opportunities were used to the full with the production of lavish, profusely illustrated and expensively appointed programme notes with substantial print runs.3 Special events were marked by special issues of the programme notes. On occasion of the opening production of the German theatre in Prague in the baroque Ständetheater in October 1939, for example, a special issue of the programme notes appeared which featured a number of dramaturgical contributions and quotes by leading officials. It immediately placed the theatre in the context of Nazi cultural politics and

3 At Litzmannstadt the programme notes had a print run of 5,000, for example.

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attempted to establish Prague as a German city—one which “shall sustain national socialist places of edification, cultural education and German cheerfulness” as Nazi district leader Konstantin Höss confirmed (Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag, Ständetheater [Deutsches Schauspielhaus] 1939/40). Special editions of programme notes were also published as substantial season reviews. In one of these, and looking back at the 1941/ 42 season in Posen, the editors presented a volume of almost programmatic character formulating the ideals of a truly National Socialist theatre. Separate essays were dedicated to different theatrical genres. In one of these contributions Wilhelm von Scholz discussed the “art of directing” and stressed the fact that the director needed to be invisible. Not surprisingly Scholz turned against Regietheater here as directors were solely required to serve the text (Reichsgautheater Posen 1941/42, 173–184). Benno von Arent discussed the question of set design and arrived at a similar conclusion, i.e. that the design of a play (he included costumes, stage properties, lighting, make-up and movement) was subservient to the text and not an end in itself (von Arent 1941/42, 130) (Fig. 4.4). Even ordinary programme notes could take the form of glossy booklets, which did not only inform about specific productions but put these in a wider cultural and political context. During the 1940/41 and 1941/ 42 seasons, the Prague Ständetheater produced elaborate programme notes of between 32 and 70 pages on high-quality paper and with many illustrations. Some issues were dedicated to individual playwrights or composers, such as Franz Grillparzer or Richard Wagner, others featured contributions by leading dramatists such as Gerhart Hauptmann and Richard Billinger. There were essays on theatre history as well as detailed dramaturgical essays with drawings, illustrations and photographs. References to Prague’s significant theatrical past in particular afforded the Nazi regime additional legitimisation—but also with an onus to deliver. Elaborate production photography aimed to show a theatre accepting its role in the Nazi regime. Images showed performances aspiring to a heroic aesthetic with large empty spaces framed by massive stone walls and substantial pillars and stairs. The set designs for all featured productions were elaborate and costly, and even if most of the fare produced at Prague did not relate to this aesthetic the theatre’s dramaturgs producing the programme notes presented it as a worthy state theatre. Even smaller stages produced detailed programme notes, and they even did so in the later stages of the war when shortages had already led to significant cuts elsewhere (Heinrich 2012, 167–168). During the 1942/43

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Fig. 4.4 A programmatic essay on Germany’s leading role for European theatre by Ernst Leopold Stahl (Reichsgautheater Posen 1942/43: 122–127)

season, for example, Posen’s notes still featured 14-page programme notes on high-quality paper with many photographs and programmatic articles, sometimes by leading commentators, such as theatre historian Carl Niessen. During the same season, Litzmannstadt continued to publish 16-page elegant programme notes with photographs, sketches and detailed articles. The size of the notes was only reduced during the 1943–1944 season, but was still published on four A5 pages with some basic information concerning play, production and actors (Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich 21/58. Programy przedstawien´ teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1943], 94–99). Dramaturgs also used the programme notes to create a sense of belonging both within their immediate communities and wider afield. That way they did not only place the theatre in a local discourse and established it as a civic enterprise, but they also attempted to illustrate that municipal theatres were part of a greater cultural undertaking. To achieve

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the former dramaturgs used the programme notes to introduce the inner workings of a theatre to audiences not necessarily familiar with large professionally run theatres. During the 1942/43 season, for example, Posen’s programme notes ran a series of articles on what happened behind the scenes—how ticket sales were organised, how the season was planned, how advertising worked, how properties were built, what happened in the different workshops, and how rehearsals were scheduled. The notes also informed readers about particular roles at the theatre which might need further explaining, such as the dramaturg, the technician or the carpenter. Here and elsewhere the educational impetus behind articles such as these was obvious, but they also illustrated the vast investment in spaces and manpower that had gone into renovating and re-opening numerous stages across the continent.4 In terms of the wider context dramaturgs at theatres across Europe used the programme notes to report on activities of other similar stages in annexed and occupied territories, and contributed to a sense of a network of German theatres across the continent. For example, in June 1942 Litzmannstadt’s programme notes featured an article on the Hermannstadt (today’s Cluj-Napoca in Romania) ensemble entertaining the armed forces on the Balkans (Heinrich 2014). What all these theatres seemed to have in common was their emphasis on the canonical classical literature with productions of plays by Goethe, Schiller and Grabbe, among others (Neumeyer 1942/43, 194). And, in fact, the repertoire performed at theatres across Europe was indeed very similar. Despite the attempts to stress the local rootedness of civic theatres as mentioned above, and instead of being seemingly interested to nurture local identities, theatres in “Lille and Krakau, Oslo and Litzmannstadt, The Hague and Prague, subscribed to a universal ‘German’ repertoire, which was in fact narrow and parochial” (Heinrich 2017, 230). At the same time, references to similar repertoire choices across the continent created a sense of belonging together, and dramaturgs were chiefly responsible for this. By using the programme notes dramaturgs situated theatres in a historical context and on a continuum which provided them with much needed legitimacy, even if their repertoires hardly provided anything to write home about. In Litzmannstadt, for example, which, even by the Nazis 4 A sense of local identity was also attempted at more mundane levels. The programme notes featured adverts by local businesses, photos of members of the ensembles, local theatre anecdotes and interviews with local party representatives and cultural politicians.

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own admission had never been a German city, the theatre’s dramaturg established a narrative of a historically German merchant city deserving of its German theatre. By doing so dramaturgs included their theatres in Germany’s theatrical tradition as a whole and largely avoided references to the contemporary less glamorous and often more complicated situation. Instead, they stressed a continuity from ancient Greece via Shakespeare and the classics to the present day. By doing so, the current situation appeared as the fulfilment of the promises of Germany’s great theatrical past. Put in a wider context dramaturgs provided legitimacy to the cultural ambitions of Nazi Germany, they put a gloss on unremarkable repertoires and masked the brutality of the regime in occupied Europe. In turn they were rewarded with unprecedented investment, rising salaries and recognition. I would even argue that without the Third Reich institutional dramaturgy in Germany might never have been properly established. Goebbels provided a fragile profession the wide-spread recognition it never achieved in Weimar Germany. An uncomfortable finding and probably a contested one, but certainly one which warrants further investigation.

References Abbey, William, and Katharina Havekamp. 2000. Nazi performances in the occupied territories: The German theatre in Lille. In Theatre under the Nazis, ed. John London, 262–290. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Baumann, Max. 1942. Großes Drama oder Unterhaltungstheater? Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1942/43): 37–55. Bethge, Friedrich. 1937. Rede bei der Theatertagung der H.J. in Bochum. Das Innere Reich 4: 335–354. Deutsch-Schreiner, Evelyn. 2016. Theaterdramaturgien von der Auklärung bis zur Gegenwart. Vienna: Böhlau. Dussel, Konrad. 1988. Ein neues, ein heroisches Theater? Nationalsozialistische Theaterpolitik und ihre Auswirkungen in der Provinz. Bonn: Bouvier. Eicher, Thomas. 2000. Spielplanstrukturen 1929–1944. In Theater im “Dritten Reich”. Theaterpolitik, Spielplanstruktur, NS- Dramatik, ed. Henning Rischbieter, 279–486. Seelze: Kallmeyer. Epstein, Catherine. 2010. Model Nazi. Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ernst, Paul. 1935. Das Drama in der Zeitenwende. Das Innere Reich 2: 522–533. Goebbels, Joseph. 1998–2008. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Teil 1: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, ed. Elke Fröhlich. Munich: Saur.

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Gollert, Friedrich. 1942. Warschau unter deutscher Herrschaft. Deutsche Aufbauarbeit im Distrikt Warschau. Krakau: Burgverlag. Haken, Boris von. 2007. Der “Reichsdramaturg”. Rainer Schlösser und die Musiktheater- Politik in der NS- Zeit. Hamburg: von Bockel. Heinrich, Anselm. 2012. Theater in der Region. Westfalen und Yorkshire 1918 – 1945. Paderborn: Schöningh. Heinrich, Anselm. 2014. Germanification, cultural mission, holocaust: Theatre in Łód´z during World War II. Theatre History Studies 33 (1): 83–107. Heinrich, Anselm. 2017. Theatre in Europe under German occupation. London: Routledge. Hepke, Marian. 1943. Die Aufgaben des Theaters. Zum Abschluss der Spielzeit 1941/42. Deutsche Rundschau [Bromberg], 5 April. Hitler, Adolf. 1939. Mein Kampf , 434th–443rd ed. Munich: Eher. Hüpping, Stefan. 2012. Rainer Schlösser (1899–1945): der “Reichsdramaturg”. Bielefeld: Aisthesis. Hymnen, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1939. Um ein neues Drama. Das Innere Reich 6: 463–470. Ketelsen, Uwe-Karsten. 1968. Heroisches Theater. Untersuchungen zur Dramentheorie des Dritten Reichs. Bonn: Bouvier. Kindermann, Heinz. 1943a. Wend Unmut. Das Buch der deutschen Schwänke. Vienna: Wiener Verlagsgesellschaft. Kindermann, Heinz. 1943b. Hölderlin und das deutsche Theater. Vienna: Wilhelm Frick. Kindermann, Heinz. 1944. Die europäische Sendung des deutschen Theaters. Wiener Wissenschaftliche Vorträge und Reden 10. Vienna: Rohrer. Künkler, Karl. 1941. Die kulturpolitische Aufgabe des deutschen Theaters in den neugewonnenen Gebieten. Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/42): 101–112. Künkler, Karl. 1944. Es sind immer dieselben. Deutsche Dramaturgie 3: 65–66. Langenbeck, Curt. 1940. Wiedergeburt des Dramas aus dem Geist der Zeit. Das Innere Reich 6 (1939/40): 923–957. Laubinger, Otto. 1933. Die Aufgaben der Reichsdramaturgen. Der Autor (September): 4–6. Ludová, Jitka. 2011. Die kleine Bühne in Prag. Geschichte eines Theaters in Dokumenten. Stifter-Jahrbuch N.F. 25: 57–85. Neumeyer, Hermann. 1942. Gestalt und Bild Posens. Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1942/43): 194–204. Niessen, Carl. 1940. Deutsches Theater und Immermanns Vermächtnis. Neue Papierfenster eines Eremiten. Emsdetten: Lechte. Nowikiewicz, Elzbieta. ˙ 2007. Das deutsche Theater in Bromberg in den Jahren 1939–44. In Alltag und Festtag im deutschen Theater im Ausland vom 17. – 20. Jahrhundert. Repertoirepolitik zwischen Wunschvorstellungen der Kritik

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und des Publikums, ed. Hort Fassel and Paul S. Ulrich, 209–250. Münster: LIT. Panse, Barbara. 2000. Zeitgenössische Dramatik 1933–44. Autoren, Themen, Zensurpraxis. In Theater im “Dritten Reich”. Theaterpolitik, Spielplanstruktur, NS- Dramatik, ed. Henning Rischbieter, 489–720. Seelze: Kallmeyer. Petersen, Herbert. 1941. Was wir uns erwarten. Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/42): 56–64. Podlasiak, Marek. 2008. Deutsches Theater in Thorn. Vom Wander- zum ständigen Berufstheater (17. – 20. Jahrhundert). Münster: LIT. Pohl, Karl Georg. 1943. Spielplangestaltung und Theaterwerbung. Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1942/43): 225–233. Rischbieter, Henning. 2004. ‘Schlageter – der erste Soldat des Dritten Reiches.’ Theater in der Nazizeit. In Hitlers Künstler. Die Kultur im Dienst des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Hans Sarkowicz, 210–244. Frankfurt: Insel. Rosenberg, Alfred. 1935. Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkämpfe unserer Zeit, 53rd–54th ed. Munich: Eher. Schrade, Hans Erich. 1943. Verpflichtung und Aufgabe der deutschen Theater. In Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch 1943, ed. Präsident. der Reichstheaterkammer, 2–5. Berlin: Reichstheaterkammer. Schulenburg, Werner von der. 1941. Das Lustspiel in diesem Krieg. Blätter der deutschen Theater Prag (1941/42): 4–5. Stahl, Ernst Leopold. 1941. Das neue deutsche Lustspiel. Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/42): 149–160. Stumpfl, Robert. 1938. Vom neuen deutschen Drama. Das Innere Reich 4 (1937/38): 951–956. von Arent, Benno. 1941. Das Theater im Neuen Deutschland mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Bühnenbildes. Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/42): 125–136. Waidelich, Jürgen-Dieter. 1994. Essen spielt Theater. 1000 und Einhundert Jahre. Zum 100. Geburtstag des Grillo- Theaters, vol. 2. Düsseldorf: Econ. Weber, Otto. 1924. Das deutsche Schauspiel in Prag. In Prager Theaterbuch. Gesammelte Aufsätze über deutsche Bühnenkunst, ed. Karl Schluderpacher, 155–159. Prague: Fanta. Willett, John. 1998. Brecht in context. Comparative approaches, rev. ed. London: Methuen. Wolting, Stephan. 2003. Bretter, die Kulturkulissen markierten. Das Danziger Theater am Kohlenmarkt, die Zoppoter Waldoper und andere Theaterinstitutionen im Danziger Kulturkosmos zur Zeit der Freien Stadt und in den Jahren des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Wroclaw: University of Wroclaw Press.

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Contemporary Newspapers Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag, Ständetheater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen Deutsche Zeitung in Norwegen Deutsche Rundschau [Bromberg] Litzmannstädter Zeitung

Archival Material Archiwum Panstwowe ´ w Łodzi (Municipal Archives Lodz), Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58, Programy przedstawien´ teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1943] Bundesarchiv/German Federal Archives, Berlin (BArch), Propaganda Ministry, R55/20513a, R55/20545, R55/155 Národní archiv (Czech National Archives, Prague), Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400, T 5411 National Archives of Norway, Oslo, RAFA-2174 Tyske archiver: Reichskommissariat, series Ed, Hauptabteilung Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, box 57

CHAPTER 5

Cold War Theatres: Theatre Criticism and the Institutional Matrix of Dramaturgy in Post-War Germany Michael Bachmann

This chapter proposes an expanded model of institutional dramaturgy to analyse the role of East and West German theatre in the emerging Cold War from 1945 to the mid-1950s. Its focus is not on individual theatres and productions, but on a broader matrix of dramaturgical work that includes arts criticism, cultural policy, dramaturgical and literary societies, and public debates about the role of theatre. As I will argue, this institutional matrix has particular relevance for post-war Germany, where its different nodes—in particular theatre and arts criticism—support competing visions of the post-war state. The site of my research is the divided Berlin, as epitome not only of a Cold War city, but a city that itself was cast as a kind of theatre, a “stage

M. Bachmann (B) School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_5

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for the Cold War” (Steinkamp 2010, 31).1 The proximity of the occupying powers in the Berlin-Brandenburg region and the relative ease with which zonal sectors could be crossed in the first post-war decade turned Berlin into an unusual “showcase [Schaufenster]” for the competition between political and economic systems (Lemke 2006). For theatre— and even more so for thinking, writing, and talking about theatre—the emerging Cold War conflict meant a pronounced awareness of its political dimension. This goes far beyond plays with explicitly political content, such as Konstantin Simonov’s The Russian Question (Russkii vopros ), a direct critique by a Soviet playwright of American media capitalism. The play’s German premiere at the renowned Deutsches Theater in May 1947 has been understood as “an unprecedented act of cultural aggression by one former ally against another” (Caute 2003, 107). Only two months earlier, the Truman Doctrine, first announced to US Congress on 12 March, had begun to formalise the shift in American foreign policy towards the “containment” of Soviet expansion. In this context, The Russian Question appeared as a continuation of war with theatrical means. Importantly, the production’s impact in Berlin cannot be reduced to its content or staging. Indeed, the perceived weakness of the play—even Communist reviewers felt that “in the performance it was precisely the theatrical rendering [of the content] that sometimes failed” (Rilla 1978, 195)2 —contributes to its understanding as Cold War propaganda. For the US-licensed Neue Zeitung (6.5.1947), any “anticipation and excitement […] immediately subsided with the first act, to give way more and more throughout the long evening to a boredom only rarely interrupted by involuntary comedy” (Luft 1965, 22). Therefore, a mere theatre review of the performance “could have been brief” (Luft 1965, 22). Nevertheless, the production needs to be written about in length because it is not “possible to report on this theatre evening as [just] a theatre evening” (Luft 1965, 22). The Russian Question’s importance lies not in the play itself but in its choice for Berlin. According to the reviewer, this choice threatens to prepare the separation of Germany by 1 As Charlotte Canning and others have noted, “the Cold War was defined from the start as theatre”, most notably in Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech from 1946 (Canning 2015, 13f.). 2 Unless otherwise stated, all translations from the German are mine. Paul Rilla’s review was published in the Berliner Zeitung on 6 May 1947.

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relocating the mental Elbe line,3 which is always to be lamented anew, directly and with the claim of an undue necessity into this city. The accursed gulf that is opening up ever more threateningly between people of good will and of the same language. And of which one should never tire of warning. (Luft 1965, 23)

Although it is a political (propaganda) play, the political significance of The Russian Question for post-war Germany is to be found, as it were, outside the production: in its “siting” at the Deutsches Theater, in the reviews of the play, and in its impact on interzonal cultural relations. The work of dramaturgy goes beyond the production and extends to the nodes of a broader institutional matrix. Therein lies its Cold War political relevance with regard to explicit Cold War plays, such as The Russian Question but even more so in relation to productions of “the classics” so dear to German theatre. I will make this argument through an analysis of theatre reviews by East and West German critics, focusing on the dramaturgical and sociocultural figures that permeate these texts, as well as on the ways in which theatre criticism intersects with other nodes in the institutional matrix of dramaturgy (e.g. programme notes and the work of literary societies). As I will show, post-war theatre criticism in Berlin sees itself as carrying historiographical, dramaturgical and political functions with which it supports the reconstruction of the nation through theatre.

The “Future Task” of German Theatre: Politics and Art While the Cold War was primarily a military and ideological conflict, it had an important cultural aspect. In the competition between political and economic systems, art was used as a form of “psychological warfare” to influence people’s ways of thinking and to claim cultural superiority (Canning 2015; Balme and Szymanski-Düll 2017). The German postwar situation is particularly complex in this regard, not only due to the impending partition of the state.

3 The Elbe line (Elbelinie) refers to the inner German border and, historically, to the division between Prussia in the East and the Western German states. In this sense, it precedes the post-war partition of Germany.

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The Cold War political relevance of art emerges within a broader understanding, agreed upon by all Allies, that culture was essential to the “spiritual” and educational reconstruction of Germany. Both OMGUS and SMAD, the US and Soviet military administrations, respectively, pursued the goal of establishing “an affirmative program of reorientation […] designed completely to eliminate Nazi and militaristic doctrines and to encourage the development of democratic ideas”, according to US directive JCS 1067 (Department of State 1950, 26).4 On the Soviet side, SMAD Order 51/1945 (4.9.1945) instructed cultural institutions to “actively use the means of art in the struggle against fascism and for the re-education of the German people in the spirit of consistent democracy” (qtd. in Müller 1981, 28). In early 1947, the year of The Russian Question, US cultural officer Benno Frank still believed in an internal memo that despite “all existing political differences between the East and the West, […] in the field of Theatre and Music complete understanding can be reached with the Russians” (qtd. in Thacker 2007, 100). The use of culture as a means of fighting the Cold War, which became increasingly dominant from 1947 onwards, cannot be completely separated from such hopes. To make matters even more complex, the Allied support of culture met with the German understanding, across the political spectrum, of Germany as a cultural nation “perverted” by National Socialism. Theatre was seen as an important means to reconnect to a German Enlightenment heritage supposedly untarnished by the previous twelve years. It is no coincidence that many theatres reopened with Gottfried E. Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, which had been prohibited under National Socialism. The Deutsches Theater showed Friedrich Schiller’s The Parasite in June 1945 and a short-lived production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Little Town in August. However, Fritz Wisten’s production of Nathan in September was proclaimed the “official” re-opening of the most prestigious working theatre in Berlin. Reviews from East and West emphasised that Lessing’s play was the right choice for the times. It made “the demand to make the spirit of humanity a German sentiment again - this is truly the future task of German art, of German theatre” (Rilla 1978, 27). Lessing’s play teaches us “that the first step towards a brighter German future must be 4 JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff) directive 1067 was in place until July 1947, when it was replaced by JCS 1779. For the full text of both directives see Department of State (1950, 21–41).

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to finally, finally, begin to transfer its ethical and moral content from the realm of beautiful appearances into the world of our real being” (Erpenbeck 1980, 185f.; emphasis in original).5 The claim that theatre should lead to a “brighter” future through the example of the classics is typical of the German post-war situation. In a 1946 pamphlet “On the Meaning and Character of Theatre in Our Time”, director Heinz Hilpert defines its main task as taking on “pastoral” duties in order to “prepare the way for a new human dignity” (Hilpert 1951, 50). The “confusion” of the time, according to Hilpert, could not yet be grasped by new writing, but Germans would find “the reflection of our experience in the Greeks, in Shakespeare, in Goethe, in Hauptmann” (Hilpert 1951, 59). The claim that this theatrical legacy should be untarnished by National Socialism is dubious at best, not only because Hilpert is one of many directors—the most famous example being Gustaf Gründgens—whose successful careers in the “Third Reich” continued with only minimal interruptions after 1945. In post-war writings by Gründgens, Hilpert, and others, theatre’s innocence is maintained through the distinction between art and politics. For National Socialism, Hilpert distinguishes between political (propaganda) theatre and a theatre that was “consolation on the edge of spiritual despair […], help and pastoral care for those walking between graves” (Hilpert 1951, 49). Gründgens, in a 1946 article on “The Sociology of the German Actor”, argues that “[t]he German actor as a whole was politically uninterested. Art has been the centre of attention for the actor […]. The German actor shares this lack of political education with the entire German people” (Gründgens 1970, 58; emphasis in original). Here, the “lack of political education” appears as a reason for the rise of National Socialism; at the same time, the preoccupation with art is presented as that which prevented the German actor and indeed “the entire German people” from ever truly becoming Nazis: National Socialism “was a teaching of the surface and only worked with mass psychosis” (Gründgens 1970, 60). As for theatre itself, “even the last twelve years have not been able to touch the eternal values of the theatre; and Lessing and Goethe, Schiller and Kleist have resisted

5 The quotes are from Paul Rilla’s review in the Berliner Zeitung (9.9.1945) and Fritz Erpenbeck’s review in the Deutsche Volkszeitung (9.9.1945). The production was very successful with 245 performances, although the directing style was derided as oldfashioned (Weigel 1999, 217).

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all attempts to falsify them or break them through an inappropriate ideology” (Gründgens 1953, 157).6 The paradoxical distinction and reciprocal relationship between art and politics is decisive for the German theatre discourse of the postwar period. It is particularly pronounced in the four-zone city of Berlin, where East and West German observers agree that there can be no theatre without politics. Writing in the Soviet-licensed Berliner Zeitung (23.8.1945), Communist theatre critic Paul Rilla is one of many to insist that “in the present situation, no intellectual [geistiges ], no artistic event can or may be viewed as being apolitical” (Rilla 1978, 20). Likewise, West German critic Friedrich Luft, well known for his weekly “Stimme der Kritik [Voice of Criticism]” broadcasts on RIAS (Radio in the American Sector), prefaces a 1961 collection of theatre reviews with the observation that “Berlin was and is a sore spot of politics. Berlin’s theatre was and is (again, whether one likes it or not) political theatre, even where it presents itself as completely apolitical” (Luft 1965, 7).7 Despite agreeing on the political nature of theatre, these statements differ in their assessment of the relationship between politics and art. In Rilla, who largely represents the East German position, theatre productions are judged by their political value for the present. Thus the object of his criticism—the Hebbel Theatre’s staging of Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera in August 1945—is not the right theatre for the times because it conveys the wrong message. According to Rilla, the play’s assertion that “food comes first, then the morals” was valid as a Socialist critique of the ruling classes when it premiered in 1928, but is dangerous for the construction of a post-war society governed by the “morals of a new social will” (Rilla 1978, 20). For another reviewer, the Threepenny Opera cannot contribute to the “ideological and moral re-education of

6 The alleged resistance of the classics against their appropriation by National Socialism is a prevalent narrative in East German discourse as well. In his Nathan review, Erpenbeck writes that National Socialism’s “un-German and anti-German attitudes” stand in contrast “to the tradition of our classical poetry and philosophy. […] Never has historical truth been lied into its opposite as in National Socialism’s insolent invocation of [the] national tradition” of Lessing, Herder, Kant, Schiller and Goethe (Erpenbeck 1980, 24). 7 Luft’s importance as a theatre critic for (primarily) West Berlin cannot be overstated. His weekly 15-minute programme was broadcast for almost the entire existence of the divided Germany, from February 1946 until October 1990. See Kohse (1998).

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our people” as a means of the necessary anti-fascist struggle (qtd. in Pike 1992, 191).8 In contrast, the West German position sees the political as a kind of contamination, with two seemingly contradictory consequences. On the one hand, even theatre that “presents itself as completely apolitical” (Luft 1965, 7) is understood as political through a Cold War lens. Thus, from 1947 onwards, East German productions are increasingly considered vehicles of Communist ideology, regardless of whether or not they carry a party-political message (Müller 1981). On the other hand, theatre is asked to transcend the everyday politics of the Cold War situation. As actor Will Quadflieg puts it in 1955, “Everything in the present has become politics, and we are always trying to separate art from it” (Vietta 1955, 284). The artist’s “deepest task [is] to separate the image of the human being, the free human being, in an artistically proper and precise way, […] from the concept of the political human being” (Vietta 1955, 284; emphasis mine). It should not be ignored that ten years lie between Rilla’s review and Quadflieg’s contribution (to the Darmstadt Conversation on Theatre). In 1945, all Allied powers were largely in agreement on the primacy of re-education, not least by cleansing culture from National Socialist elements and actively embracing Germany’s Enlightenment heritage. The East German side believed that a democratic anti-fascist reorientation was necessary before a Socialist revolution could happen (Kirschstein 2014, 192); and the call for art to contribute to the “ideological and moral re-education” of Germany, as in the Brecht/Weill review, would not have been out of place in a Westlicensed newspaper. Quadflieg’s distinction between art as a signifier of the “free” human being and politics as a signifier of oppression occurs in a different context: after the Truman Doctrine and the Soviet rejection of the Marshall Plan (1947), the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the founding of the two Germanys (1949), the beginnings of West German 8 The Hebbel Theatre was located in the American sector, but its manager and artistic director, Karl Heinz Martin was partial to the Socialist cause, in particular the People’s Theatre Movement (Volksbühnenbewegung ). In January 1947, Martin (together with Heinz Litten and Alfred Lindemann) received a Soviet licence to begin rebuilding the Volksbühne on Karl-Liebknecht-(now: Rosa-Luxemburg)-Platz. The criticism of the Threepenny Opera, as directed by Martin in August 1945, was an early indication of the complexity of Brecht’s position in East German theatre rather than interzonal competition. On the controversy surrounding the production and on Martin’s contribution to the Volksbühne movement see Pike (1992, 188–195 and 333–356).

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rearmament and the East German uprising of 17 June 1953—to name but a few important events in the intensification of the Cold War conflict.

Between Two Systems: Reciprocal Accusations of Ideology The temporal difference between 1945 and 1955 merely reinforces the fundamental tension inherent in the distinction and reciprocal relationship between art and politics in the context of the Cold War. For both sides, theatre has a positive social function, the task of building a better future. In Hilpert’s words, “[w]e hardly have time for mere entertainment now. We have to engage and transform people” (Hilpert 1951, 59; emphasis in original). The crucial difference between the East and West German position is what such a transformation entails. As in the Quadflieg quote, the West understands “politics” in art as oppression and ideology. Transformation is thus based on “eternal laws”—reflected in the classical repertoire—rather than on the politics of the time; if humans are once more “free” and their “inner being in harmony with the divine […], then the external conditions around us will also harmonise again” (Hilpert 1951, 45). In terms of content, this means a preference for existential and allegorical approaches, either in staging new plays such as Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, a huge success in post-war Germany, or in applying these readings to the classics.9 For example, the programme note for a production of Schiller’s The Robbers at the Hebbel Theatre in October 1946 understands the protagonists “Karl and Franz [as] types for the two basic relationships of God to mankind” and locates them outside “social developments and the history of ideas” (qtd. in Rilla 1978, 127).10 The theatrical form corresponding to such de-politicised readings is epitomised in often abstract and vaguely modernist set designs. Rather than merely an aesthetic choice, this “all-embracing formalism” 9 There were almost fifty West German productions of The Skin of Our Teeth between 1945 and 1961, with a total of 675 performances (Brauneck 2007, 199). 10 The religious framing of this and of Hilpert’s quote on the function of theatre is not unusual for the post-war situation. Jost Hermand distinguishes three types of humanism that gain traction in Germany during the 1940s and 1950s: Pseudo-religious humanism, prevalent in the West, reads National Socialism as a fall from God and calls for an inward-looking return to the human as mirror of the divine. “Goethean (goethezeitliche)” humanism, which is prominent in both parts of Germany, understands Goethe—and with him Weimar Classicism—as embodying the better, more humane Germany, of which

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and non-committal—supposedly timeless—style was meant to express a “profound mistrust of ideology” (Girshausen 1992, 63f.). For the West, the assumed “universality” of the classics and of formal abstraction signified freedom, as opposed to the political (propagandistic) use of theatre. From this perspective, it was easy to draw a parallel between National Socialist and East German theatrical culture: if all politics is ideological contamination, then any dramaturgical investment in the political value of theatre for building a “new” nation is always already oppression. Of course, such a view is blind towards its own ideological assumptions, especially that the primacy of “non-ideology” and supposedly universal “human values” is also an ideological position (Girshausen 1992, 64; Hermand 1986, 251–262). Like abstract art, the dominant theatrical style of post-war West Germany possessed “Cold War instrumentality” precisely because of its alleged autonomy from politics (McCloskey 2009, 105). Amongst other things, this serves an exculpatory function and allows for an easier reintegration of West Germany into the Western community of nations. There is less need for re-education if National Socialism, as per the Gründgens quote above, only touched the “surface” and blinded a basically “apolitical” people, as reflected in the situation of the German actor (Gründgens 1970, 60). For West German post-war theatre, this legitimisation myth allows to build on a seemingly uninterrupted cultural tradition of the educated middle classes, marginalising the political theatre of the Weimar Republic and investing in an aesthetic as well as institutional continuity to National Socialism. Paradoxically, West German observers saw theatre in East Germany as increasingly tarnished by the system it supported—although it also favoured classicism (in the form of Stanislavski and Socialist Realism) over more overt political forms (hence Brecht’s complicated position)—but at the same time claimed an autonomous space for bourgeois theatre under National Socialism. The notion of “apolitical” theatre meant turning away from any specific analysis of recent history; for the future of Germany, it used the parallel of artistic and political “freedom” to support neoliberal positions of individual rather than communal fulfilment (Kraus 2007, 40–58).

National Socialism was a mere perversion. In its dominant West German variant, Existentialist humanism sought shelter and solace through re-establishing a connection to human’s existential “being”, e.g. in nature (Hermand 1986, 63–88).

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From an East German perspective, this made West German theatre and its production choices highly ideological, as can be seen—for instance— in the rejection of Existentialist theatre and philosophy. Rilla’s review of Sartre’s The Flies, directed by Jürgen Fehling at the Hebbel Theatre, summarises the accusation as follows (Berliner Zeitung, 9.1.1948): “The existentialist does not ask: Free for what? (To achieve something for humankind.) He asks: Free from what? (From all human bonds)” (Rilla 1978, 272). It matters less if this observation is accurate for Sartre’s work and how it was produced in the Western zones. The two types of freedom clearly resonate with the “post-ideological” (West German) and “political” (East German) function of art. The freedom to progress humankind is opposed to what the East sees as a “decadent” position, the withdrawal from society that in its indifference to politics enables Fascism. As in this example, the reciprocal accusations of ideology between East and West Germany need not always be spelled out explicitly, especially in the early post-war years. Fehling’s production is used, as it were, for a philosophical critique that is nevertheless permeated by opposing visions about the social function of theatre. A shared understanding that theatre must be more than “mere entertainment” (Hilpert 1951, 59), but diverging ideas about what that means, is one of the reasons for the importance of the broader institutional matrix of dramaturgy in the postwar years. If theatre is to be more than “just” theatre, it cannot make that case on its own.

The Institutional Matrix of Dramaturgy: An Expanded Model In dramaturgical research, the term expansion has been used to designate the move beyond the traditions and practices of text-based theatre (Eckersall 2006; Bleeker 2023). It also refers to a redefinition of dramaturgy “beyond the solely artistic domain into the infrastructural one” (Georgelou et al. 2017, 3), pointing to “the material conditions, economies and infrastructures in which it operates” (Georgelou et al. 2017, 79). The expanded model of dramaturgy I propose in this chapter is informed by such an institutional perspective, but focuses on its publicfacing rather than its infrastructural aspects. This is particularly apt for the German post-war situation in which there was “no or little ideological dissent on a systemic level: both Germanys retained and financed an arrangement” of public theatre funding “inherited from the Weimar

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Republic and Nazi Germany” (Balme and Szymanski-Düll 2017, 9). Hence, as the previous sections of this chapter have shown, the competition between cultural and political systems manifests itself in institutional practices of publicly talking, thinking and writing about theatre. Such practices have traditionally been seen as part of institutional dramaturgy, which includes “reaching out to the audience and helping in the understanding and interpretation of the theatre’s work” (Trencsényi 2015, 31), e.g. through programme notes, pre- or post-performance talks and the production of marketing material. My expanded model emphasises that this occurs within a broader institutional matrix and is significant beyond individual productions: the idea that Karl and Franz Mohr represent types of the divine-human relationship, as suggested in the programme notes for the 1946 Hebbel production of The Robbers, is more important for what it contributes to West German socio-cultural discourse than for its interpretation of Schiller and this particular staging. The programme notes are also embedded within the broader institutional matrix by becoming an object of criticism in their own right. Rilla devotes half of his review for the Berliner Zeitung (2.11.1946) to the programme notes before turning his attention to the production. His argument is that their de-politicised reading of the play uses “programmatic phrases” to obstruct “access to a Robbers performance” that, in contrast to the programme notes, shows Schiller’s “revolutionary pathos […] in its social origins” (Rilla 1978, 129).11 Focusing on the institutional matrix of dramaturgy means a shift from the production itself to how individual nodes of this matrix mediate access to the performance. Starting from one and the same production, they negotiate larger dramaturgical and political questions and place their respective answers in the service of competing visions for the future of Germany. The concept of an institutional matrix of dramaturgy, as proposed here, distinguishes between institutions, organisations and institutional practices. This approach is informed by Christopher Balme’s use of neoinstitutionalist theory to analyse international theatre developments after the Second World War (Balme 2017). Within this framework, institutions

11 The Hebbel Theatre’s Robbers production was directed by Walter Felsenstein, who founded the Komische Oper in East Berlin in 1947 and whose redefinition of opera as “Musiktheater” (music theatre) gained great influence beyond the borders of the GDR (Felsenstein 1991).

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refer to the more abstract “rules of the game” enacted through organisations, but also shaped by them. There is a certain similarity here to the distinction made by Peter and Christa Bürger, from the perspective of critical theory, between the institution of art as “the epochal functional determinants of art within the bounds of society” and “social formations such as publishers, bookstores, theaters, and museums” (Bürger 1992, 4). In the institutional matrix of dramaturgy, institution refers to the highest level of abstraction, concerning competing ideas about what theatre, art, culture, etc. mean for a particular time and context. Organisation refers to the social formations that implement and shape these ideas. These organisations include—but are not limited to—theatres, dramaturgical societies, newspapers, theatre magazines and universities. Institutional practices are what happens within and between these organisations, as for instance public debates, the practice of theatre criticism and the production of programme notes. Understood from this expanded institutional perspective, dramaturgy becomes a discursive practice in Foucault’s sense (Foucault 2019) insofar as it aims to control meaning—e.g. in its divergent readings of a production—and to regulate the type of theatre that is appropriate for the times. Importantly for the German post-war situation, it rarely does so through direct political intervention, for instance in the form of censorship or of a centralised dramaturgical office similar to the National Socialist “Reichsdramaturgie” (Bradley 2010, 10; Deutsch-Schreiner 2018). The German Democratic Republic (GDR) did have an informal system of censorship in place and used the administrative centralisation of cultural affairs to varying degrees throughout its existence (Bradley 2010). For instance, the Staatliche Kommission für Kunstangelegenheiten (State Commission for Artistic Affairs) controlled the artistic programming of all GDR theatres from 1951 to 1953 (Stuber 2000, 178). After the death of Stalin and the June 1953 uprising, however, a “New Course [Neuer Kurs ]” of cultural policy was announced. The prestigious theatre journal Theater der Zeit (Theatre of the Times) explained that “the method of commanding” was over (qtd. in Stuber 2000, 178). The articles of this period, which ultimately lasted only until 1956, emphasised that cultural policy was not to be imposed by “binding” rules. Rather, it was about the struggle “that all artists of our Republic be more and more encompassed by this artistic creation oriented towards the party, towards the working class” (Erpenbeck 1955, 1). There is a continuum between state-led regulation and this type of persuasion. Here too the broader institutional matrix

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of dramaturgy becomes important for the post-war years, in particular the practice of theatre criticism as a site of—sometimes more, sometimes less—open debate.

Theatre Criticism in Post-War Germany Theatre criticism in post-war Germany, and especially in Berlin, understood itself as having a direct political, dramaturgical and historiographical function. One might say that it confidently took its place on the institutional matrix of dramaturgy. Already before the end of the war, on 25 September 1944, a group of German emigrants met in the Moscow hotel room of Wilhelm Pieck, President of the GDR from 1949 until his death in 1960 (Stuber 2000, 12–18). They discussed “Cultural Issues in the New Germany”, including guidelines “for the establishment of a new German theatre culture” (Vallentin 2000, 260). These were proposed by Maxim Vallentin, who would later be instrumental in propagating the Stanislavski method as the norm for East German theatre, as artistic director of the Maxim Gorki Theatre and through his role as director of the German Theatre Institute Weimar (DTI). For him, theatre criticism— understood to include “programme notes, theatre magazines, [and] the press” (Vallentin 2000, 258)—was to play a crucial role in (re-)building that theatre culture, “as a helper and supplement to the stage in the education of the masses” (Vallentin 2000, 258; emphasis in original). On the continuum between open and closed debate, state-led regulation and persuasion, Vallentin’s position is rather dogmatic. His national theatre concept relies on the classics as much as on Socialist Realism. Adopted as the official style of Soviet art at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, Socialist Realism advocated a class-based, representational and partisan—in support of party and state—type of art that was meant to be popular, in the sense of easily understandable and stemming from “the people”. The exclusion of other approaches to Socialist art, and the brutal elimination of their representatives during the Stalinist purges, finds its echo in Vallentin’s warning against “bringing sectarian elements in our views [of theatre] back to Germany” (Vallentin 2000, 258; emphasis in original). In 1938, writing a series of articles “On the Experiences of the Soviet Theatre [Aus den Erfahrungen des Sowjettheaters ]”, he and his co-author, the playwright Julius Hay (Gyula Háy) had put it even more bluntly: “on the basis of the rejection of formalism in art by the masses of the Soviet people, certain views regarding the theater

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were theoretically and practically liquidated” from the Soviet stage, “following several years of experiments and thorough discussion” (qtd. in Pike 1992, 196; emphasis mine). When the articles were reprinted as a brochure in 1945, the argument that the new German theatre should be modelled on these principles was rebuked in the SMAD-run paper Tägliche Rundschau (22.11.1945): “the German stage must evolve freely in accord with its own laws”, and the “practical application [of Socialist Realism] to the German stage ought not to be automatically accepted” (qtd. in Pike 1992, 197).12 On the one hand, this rebuttal points towards the increasing regulation of art in East Germany during the first post-war decade. Vallentin and Hay’s dogmatic insistence on Socialist Realism as the only valid form of theatre would then merely be premature, coming six years before the official 1951 resolution “against Formalism in Art and Literature, for a Progressive German Culture”, issued by the Central Committee (ZK) of the ruling Socialist Unity party (SED). On the other hand, it points towards the continuum between regulation and open debate in German theatre criticism after 1945. In the early post-war years, the tension between regulation and debate primarily plays out as a question of repertoire. Questions of Repertoire The East German discussion of the Hebbel Theatre’s Threepenny Opera in August 1945 focused on the question as to whether the play’s message was the right one for the times; similarly, West German critics understood The Russian Question at the Deutsches Theater in May 1947 almost as if it was an act of war. In contrast, both East and West German critics agreed on the appropriateness of choosing Nathan the Wise as the official re-opening of the Deutsches Theater after the war. These instances, cited earlier in this chapter, belong to a broader discussion about the historiographical and dramaturgical function of theatre criticism.

12 Whereas most newspapers during the post-war occupation of Germany were licensed by the different Allied powers (including in the Soviet zone), the Tägliche Rundschau was edited and published directly by the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD). This is also true for the Berliner Zeitung, but only for the first month of its existence (May/June 1945).

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In 1949, a selection of East German critic Fritz Erpenbeck’s writings was published as a book, containing theatre reviews as well as essays from the pages of Theater der Zeit, the influential East German theatre magazine of which Erpenbeck was the founding editor. According to the book’s preface, the collection had a historiographical function, namely to draw “a picture of Berlin theatre in the years 1946 to 1949” (Erpenbeck 1949, 4). In doing so, it aimed to provide “the basis of the broadest possible discussion, the results of which may become the building blocks of a new, progressive aesthetic of art” (Erpenbeck 1949, 4). This is the dramaturgical function of theatre criticism in Germany after 1945: to critically describe current productions, not just to “draw a picture” (historiographical function), but to develop through discussion appropriate dramaturgical guidelines for the post-war situation. Theatre critic Herbert Ihering, who worked as a dramaturg at the Deutsches Theater from 1945–1953, makes a similar point in his 1947 collection Berliner Dramaturgie (Berlin Dramaturgy). Looking back on his time as one of the most important theatre critics of the Weimar Republic, he claims that in the 1920s “it was possible to derive the essentials from dramatic works and their performances, and to condense individual occasions into [dramaturgical] principles” (Ihering 1947, 61). Ihering hopes that postwar Berlin can once again become a marketplace for dramaturgical ideas and concepts. For him, the new German theatre can only emerge on the basis of experimentation and discovery: “The audience must first know what has been played [outside Germany] in all the years [of National Socialism], what problems moved people, how they sought to overcome them, what diversity of opinion resulted” (Ihering 1947, 124f.). The critic’s “yes or no is only spoken” after seeing all the possibilities (Ihering 1947, 94f.). As a supporter of Brecht, Ihering is more open to formal experimentation than his East German contemporaries Rilla and Erpenbeck. Both claim “openness”, as in the preface to the Erpenbeck book, but insist that there is “no time for experiments” (Rilla 1978, 149). Already in August 1945, Rilla urges to move on from “those first weeks of experiments, of random productions and accidental achievements […]. [T]he fronts on which the battle for the new Berlin theatre must be fought begin to emerge more clearly” (Rilla 1978, 18). Wilder’s Our Little Town at the Deutsches Theater “would have been debatable as an occasional experiment in quieter times: as the first and so far only new play in Berlin’s current theatre schedule [Spielplan] […] it was not possible” (Rilla 1978,

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18). West German critics such as Friedrich Luft agree on the importance of criticism to assess the “chaotic situation” of post-war Berlin theatre and to develop dramaturgical principles for the time: “There is no proportion, or at least not the right one, between the contemporary stage and our lives” (Luft 1948, 61). Hence, “[w]hat is urgently lacking, in today’s theatre, is the competent response of criticism” (Luft 1948, 64). All four critics share an understanding that criticism has a dramaturgical function—it helps develop the right theatre for the times—but disagree on how open the debate should be. Objective and Partisan Criticism The question of repertoire is so important for post-war Germany because critics and theatre-makers on both sides of the divide agree that a nonexperimental approach to the classics is the backbone of German theatre. Brecht’s dissenting position is made possible on the one hand by his success as a playwright and director, and on the other by the GDR’s attempt to claim him as proof of the cultural supremacy of East German theatre. Nevertheless, Erpenbeck’s warning against the use of Brecht as a dramaturgical model is typical of the internal GDR situation in the first post-war decade. In a 1949 review of Mother Courage, Erpenbeck claims that the play succeeds despite its own dramaturgical principles, as “a victory of ‘dramatic’ over ‘epic’ theatre”, thanks to the skills of its author (Erpenbeck 1998, 47). However, the critic’s task—in line with the dramaturgical function of criticism—is to deliver a “fundamental statement” because Brecht “consciously seeks to realise in his work a dramaturgical principle that he has set up” (Erpenbeck 1998, 45). It is with regard to this dramaturgical principle rather than the individual production that Erpenbeck rejects Brecht as a model for Socialist theatre. He claims that the latter’s work leads away from the “urgently needed recovery [Gesundung ] of our drama” into a “decadence alien to the people [volksfremde Dekadenz]” (Erpenbeck 1998, 47). This is decidedly “partisan” criticism, using the figure of the popular (Volkstümlichkeit ) in a similar way to Vallentin’s rejection of “sectarian elements” (Vallentin 2000, 258). It claims that one form—Socialist realism—is grounded in the masses, whereas all formal experimentation is ultimately “decadent” and elitist. Erpenbeck applies this view to productions of the classics as well. Writing about the 1945 Nathan production, Erpenbeck insists that not only an “updating” of Lessing’s text, but

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even an “overemphasis on topical passages ” would be “artistic sacrilege” (Erpenbeck 1980, 185f.). The repertoire becomes so important because the timeliness of a production cannot be achieved through adaptation or directorial experimentation. It must lie in the play itself: Nathan teaches the “ethic and moral” principles of German Enlightenment culture; The Robbers show the “social origins” of Schiller’s “revolutionary pathos” (Rilla 1978, 129). Such a sentiment chimes with the West German insistence on Werktreue or faithfulness to the work, which asks directors to only “let the voice of the poet speak, unadulterated, without concealing anything and without adding anything” (Gründgens 1953, 177). Directing is still understood as a creative process, with the aim of “clarifying or even enhancing what the poet has […] intended” (Gründgens 1953, 186). The critical equivalence to this production style is what could be called “objective” criticism. In a 1947 talk for theatre critics, Gründgens reminds them that “[t]he best service for theatre and audience consists […] in the most objective rendering of the impression the critic has gained in the performance” (Gründgens 1953, 165). Like “faithful” directing, criticism should not arbitrarily apply its own standards, but help the audience achieve a “genuine understanding” of the play through “objective interpretation” (Gründgens 1953, 177). The main difference between this and the “partisan” approach is that one insists on the “universal” and “timeless” values of (de-politicised) art, whereas the other attempts to tease out the “political” and “progressive” core of German Classicism. The Cold War Instrumentality of Meta-Criticism As I have shown, East and West German theatre and theatre criticism are closely linked in a paradoxical mirror image: through shared assumptions that lead to different practices (in relation to the “dramaturgical” function of criticism), as well as through binary assumptions that lead to shared practices (in relation to “objective” and “partisan” criticism). However, from 1947 onwards, the emerging Cold War conflict increasingly demands clear-cut “battle lines”. German post-war theatre criticism in both East and West seeks to achieve such clarity through practices of what I call meta-criticism. The first form of meta-criticism is the intertextual reference to other reviews of the same production. For instance, Rilla is less concerned with writing about The Russian Question itself than with arguing that a review

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in the British-licensed Telegraf intentionally misreads the Soviet play. For Rilla, the Telegraf review thus proves that “the depraved journalistic practices that the play opposes”—it is about media capitalism—“are not the only ones that need to be fought, and that the issue is not limited to one country [the US]” (Rilla 1978, 194). A related practice by which theatre criticism intersects with other nodes on the institutional matrix of dramaturgy is the reference to programme notes, as in the Rilla review on The Robbers. Hans Weigel combines both practices from a West German perspective when he measures two productions at the Deutsche Theater against their programme notes and the “praising hymns to nothingness […] in the controlled [i.e., East German] press” (Weigel 1952, 214). Ironically, his own review appeared in the (secretly) CIA-funded cultural magazine Der Monat. A second form of meta-criticism is the survey of reviews (Kritikenquerschnitt ) as practised, for instance, by Theater der Zeit. Responding to the accusation that such a survey was too objective, the magazine replaced it with “more partisan criticism” from 1952 onwards (Erpenbeck 1952, 1). However, even the supposedly “objective” survey makes “partisan” arguments by way of how it selects and orders citations from the different reviews of a production. A variation of this meta-critical approach can be found in Theaterarbeit, a 1952 book surveying the work of Brecht’s Berlin Ensemble (BE). It introduces a supposedly analytical voice in its presentation of theatre criticism, claiming that East German reviewers of the BE’s Wassa Schlesnowa production “underlined the intention of the play and of the performance” (Berlau et al. 1952, 65). When it was shown in West Germany (in June 1950), however, “the press polemicised against the guest performance of an ‘Eastern’ stage” and “tried to deflect [the] political impact” of the Gorki play (Berlau et al. 1952, 65). Similarly to Rilla’s Robbers review, Theaterarbeit makes the claim that Western authors use programme notes and theatre reviews to obstruct access to the “truth” of a performance. In contrast, the West German reviews of two Puntila productions in Hamburg and Nuremberg (both 1948) are accepted as objective criticism: “The reviews show how wrong performances blur the meaning of a play” (Berlau et al. 1952, 289). A third form of meta-criticism is aimed at education. This can be a passing remark, as in Luft’s observation that “[o]ne need only overhear the helplessness and randomness of the almost twenty daily critical voices about a production to recognise the malaise on this side of the stage” (Luft 1948, 64). A more sustained version can be found in

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Theater der Zeit which, from late 1951 through 1952, publishes an article series “Criticism of a New Type?” As opposed to the other forms of meta-criticism, this is mostly aimed at internal regulation, quoting typical theatre reviews and assessing their value for the progression of dramaturgical principles. Meta-criticism is only the most pronounced form with which postwar theatre criticism participates in the emerging Cold War conflict, contributing to both internal regulation and systemic competition. As part of the institutional matrix of dramaturgy, it continuously intervenes in the development of dramaturgical principles and their political function for a new Germany.

References Balme, Christopher. 2017. Theatrical institutions in motion: Developing theatre in the postcolonial era. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 31 (2): 125–140. Balme, Christopher, and Berenika Szymanski-Düll. 2017. Introduction. In Theatre, globalization and the Cold War, ed. Christopher Balme and Berenika Szymanski-Düll, 1–22. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Berlau, Ruth, Bertolt Brecht, and Helene Weigel. 1952. Theaterarbeit: 6 Aufführungen des Berliner Ensembles. Berlin: Henschel. Bleeker, Maaike. 2023. Doing dramaturgy: Thinking through practice, new dramaturgies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bradley, Laura. 2010. Cooperation and conflict: GDR theatre censorship, 1961– 1989. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Brauneck, Manfred. 2007. Die Welt als Bühne: Geschichte des europäischen Theaters, vol. 5. Stuttgart: Metzler. Bürger, Peter, and Christa Bürger. 1992. The institutions of art. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Canning, Charlotte. 2015. On the performance front: US theatre and internationalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Caute, David. 2003. The dancer defects: The struggle for cultural supremacy during the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Department of State, ed. 1950. Germany 1947–1949: The story in documents. Washington: US Government Printing Office. Deutsch-Schreiner, Evelyn. 2018. Reichsdramaturg Rainer Schlösser: Praxis einer beispiellosen Theaterkarriere im ‘Dritten Reich.’ In Theater unter NSHerrschaft: Theatre under Pressure, ed. Brigitte Dalinger and Veronika Zangl, 217–238. Vienna: Vienna University Press.

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Eckersall, Peter. 2006. Towards an expanded dramaturgical practice: A report on ‘the dramaturgy and cultural intervention project.’ Theatre Research International 31 (3): 83–297. Erpenbeck, Fritz. 1949. Lebendiges Theater: Aufsätze und Kritiken. Berlin: Henschel. Erpenbeck, Fritz. 1952. Neue Wege. Theater der Zeit 24: 1–3. Erpenbeck, Fritz. 1955. Woran wir uns halten können. Theater der Zeit 9: 1–3. Erpenbeck, Fritz. 1980. Nathan der Weise. In Lessing im Spiegel der Theaterkritik 1945–1979, ed. Diedrich Diederichsen and Bärbel Rudin, 185–186. Berlin: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte. Erpenbeck, Fritz. 1998. Einige Bemerkungen zu Brechts ‘Mutter Courage’. In Dramaturgie in der DDR (1945–1990), ed. Helmut Kreuzer and KarlWilhelm Schmidt, 45–47. Heidelberg: Winter. Felsenstein, Walter. 1991. The music theatre of Walter Felsenstein: Collected articles, speeches and interviews, trans. and ed. Peter Paul Fuchs. London: Quartet Books. Foucault, Michel. 2019. The order of discourse. In Archives of infamy: Foucault on state power in the lives of ordinary citizens, ed. Nancy Luxon, 141–174. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Georgelou, Konstantina, Efrosini Protopapa, and Danae Theodoridou. 2017. The practice of dramaturgy: Working on actions in performance. Amsterdam: Valiz. Girshausen, Theo. 1992. West Germany. In European theatre 1960–1990: Crosscultural perspectives, ed. Ralph Yarrow, 61–95. London and New York: Routledge. Gründgens, Gustaf. 1953. Wirklichkeit des Theaters. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Gründgens, Gustaf. 1970. Briefe, Aufsätze, Reden, ed. Rolf Badenhausen and Peter Gründgens-Gorski. München: dtv. Hermand, Jost. 1986. Kultur im Wiederaufbau: Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1945–1965. München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung. Hilpert, Heinz. 1951. Gedanken zum Theater. Göttingen: Hainbund-Verlag. Ihering, Herbert. 1947. Berliner Dramaturgie. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag. Kirschstein, Corinna. 2014. Hamlet in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone und in der DDR. In Hamlet Handbuch: Stoffe, Aneignungen, Deutungen, ed. Peter W. Marx, 190–201. Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler. Kohse, Petra. 1998. Gleiche Stelle, gleiche Welle: Friedrich Luft und seine Zeit. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag. Kraus, Dorothea. 2007. Theater-Proteste: Zur Politisierung von Straße und Bühne in den 1960er Jahren. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus-Verlag. Lemke, Michael, ed. 2006. Schaufenster der Systemkonkurrenz: Die Region BerlinBrandenburg im Kalten Krieg. Köln: Böhlau.

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Luft, Friedrich. 1948. Was fehlt? In Theaterstadt Berlin: Ein Almanach, ed. Herbert Ihering, 59–65. Berlin: Henschel. Luft, Friedrich. 1965. Stimme der Kritik: Berliner Theater seit 1945, 3rd rev. and exp. ed. Velber b. Hannover: Friedrich. McCloskey, Barbara. 2009. Dialectic at a standstill: East German socialist realism in the Stalin era. In Art of two Germanys: Cold War cultures, ed. Stephanie Barron and Sabine Eckmann, 105–116. New York and Los Angeles: Abrams. Müller, Henning. 1981. Theater der Restauration: Westberliner Bühnen, Kultur und Politik im Kalten Krieg. Berlin: Edition Neue Wege. Pike, David. 1992. The politics of culture in Soviet-occupied Germany, 1945–1949. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rilla, Paul. 1978. Theaterkritiken, ed. Liane Pfelling. Berlin: Henschel. Steinkamp, Maike. 2010. The propagandistic role of modern art in postwar Berlin. In Berlin divided city, 1945–1989, ed. Philip Broadbent and Sabine Hake, 23–33. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Stuber, Petra. 2000. Spielräume und Grenzen: Studien zum DDR-Theater. Berlin: Links. Thacker, Toby. 2007. Music after Hitler, 1945–1955. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Trencsényi, Katalin. 2015. Dramaturgy in the making: A user’s guide for theatre practitioners. London: Bloomsbury. Weigel, Hans. 1952. Theaterstadt Berlin: Ein Brief aus und an Berlin. Der Monat: Eine internationale Zeitschrift 50: 207–224. Weigel, Alexander. 1999. Das Deutsche Theater: Eine Geschichte in Bildern, ed. The Deutsche Theater. Berlin: Propyläen. Vallentin, Maxim. 2000. Einleitende Bemerkungen zur Ausarbeitung von Richtlinien (Theater): Besprechung bei Wilhelm Pieck am 25.9.1944, Hotel Lux, Sitzung mit Schriftstellern über Kulturfragen im neuen Deutschland. In Spielräume und Grenzen: Studien zum DDR-Theater, ed. Petra Stuber, 257–261. Berlin: Links. Vietta, Egon, ed. 1955. Darmstädter Gespräch: Theater. Darmstadt: Neue Darmstädter Verlagsanstalt.

PART II

Institutional Infrastructures: Theatres of Oppression

CHAPTER 6

Theatre in Occupied Poland Alexander Weigel and Anselm Heinrich

Introduction by Anselm Heinrich Discourses The occupation of Poland in September 1939 brought large geographical areas under German rule and extended Germany’s political and cultural reach significantly towards “the East”. Some of these areas had formerly been part of the German Empire but in 1919, following the Versailles Treaty after the end of the First World War, had come under the rule of the now independent Poland. The population in most of these areas (such as Western Prussia or parts of Silesia) had always featured a multinational, multi-faith population, but after 1919 many of the German citizens moved westwards. The so-called Warthe and Weichsel regions in central Poland, for example, by 1939 only featured small and decreasing German minorities. Whereas, in 1910, 42% of Posen’s population had been German this figure decreased to 2% in 1931. Similar developments appeared in Upper Silesia with only 7% German nationals in 1931, and across the region of Pomeralia (Eastern Pomerania), albeit with a stronger

A. Weigel (Deceased) · A. Heinrich (B) School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_6

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decrease in urban rather than rural areas. Bromberg had featured 75% Germans in 1910 but only 8.5% in 1931. In Thorn, the relevant figure decreased from 66 to 4%, and in Graudenz from 85% to 7.5% (Krekeler 2000, 26–27; Drewniak 1999, 188). Despite the decrease of the German population and significant attempts by the Polish authorities to increase their influence after 1919, many German commentators argued that these territories had retained their German character. This line of argument only grew stronger after the Nazi take-over of power in 1933 and intensified further after 1939. The fact that these regions breathed a “centuries long German history”, as Emil Hoffmann claimed, seemed to justify both the German attack on Poland in September as well as an aggressive policy of Germanification thereafter (Hoffmann 1940, 9). Other commentators argued along similar lines. Friedrich Lange asserted that the whole region was “old German homeland. The Germanic tribes already ploughed, cultivated and harvested in the East […] a thousand years before the first Pole appeared out of the Pripet marshes” (Lange 1940, 7). In his anthology of “young German poetry” originating from the Warthe and Weichsel regions, Heinz Kindermann gave the impression that theirs was an important presence in the region (Kindermann 1938a, 1939). Adolf Kargel and Eduard Kneifel in 1942 strengthened these claims by positing that all major achievements of the Wartheland region (agricultural, cultural, economic, legal, etc.) were based on the historical German influence (Kargel 1942, 228–233; Reiser 1941). In an essay for Posen’s theatre programmes, Heinz Günther Beckmann stressed the city’s Germanic roots. In the Middle Ages, the city had been founded on “superior German culture” and had been ready to “defend its German heritage” (Beckmann 1941, 11–12). Theatre scholar Hans Knudsen reminded his readers that the history of Posen’s professional company began with Prussian rule in 1793 (Knudsen 1941, 27–55). Publications such as Bruno Satori-Neumann’s three volume history of 300 years of theatre in the small town of Elbing (now Elblag, in former Western Prussia) placed the playhouse in the context of German regional theatre more generally. The scale of this publication is astonishing as Elbing was a relatively small town

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with only 32,000 inhabitants in the 1870s, and not all of them spoke German (Satori-Neumann 1962).1 Overall, these were certainly surprising claims in a region which by 1939 only featured a negligible German population. The city of Łód´z, for example, which was designated as the capital of what was to become the Wartheland region had never been German. In a letter to the Propaganda Ministry in relation to proposed subsidies from July 1940 Litzmannstadt’s mayor Werner Ventzki himself referred to Łód´z as a “Russian-Polish” city (BArch R55/20389, 47). This did not deter Nazi authors to assert that the region around Łód´z was “old Germanic homeland” (Gissibl 1941, 30–35). Leo Müller neglected the significant Polish, Russian and Jewish theatre traditions altogether to claim that the German playhouse had always been the main theatre in Łód´z (Müller 1942, 215). Thus the reopened German theatre in Łód´z (renamed Litzmannstadt in 1940) played a significant role in re-establishing the city as German. Theatre scholar Heinz Kindermann in a string of publications did not only argue for the leading role German theatre played across Europe but also for its ability to foster an atmosphere susceptible to German influence and create German audiences (Kindermann 1943a, 1943b, 1944, 51–55). The expectations of what theatres in the occupied territories could achieve for the “German course”, therefore, were substantial. The overall thrust of the publications on the role of German art and German theatre during the war went beyond the representation of German cultural superiority and the “signal of permanence” that William Abbey and Katharina Havekamp propose as a hallmark of German language theatres in occupied Europe (Abbey and Havekamp 2000, 263). In Eastern Europe, in particular, German theatres were meant to provide the ground for these areas to truly become German. In cities which had never been German or which only featured relatively small German minorities the regime looked to theatres to be at the vanguard of a radical and lasting cultural change, a “means of national education” (Petersen 1941, 64). In a letter to the Propaganda Ministry from February 1940, for example, Herr Schiffer at Lodsch’s city council argued for a costly new theatre building. To illustrate the need for this he did not primarily highlight structural problems with the existing playhouse or the need for larger facilities but he pointed 1 This is the second volume, the first was published in 1936, and the third was never completed due to the author’s death in air raid in 1943 (so this second volume was published posthumously).

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to the fact that the city was in desperate need of becoming truly German. As a place “which had never been under German rule […] there is a pressing need for a cultural strengthening of all things German” (BArch R55/20389, 25–26). Similarly, on occasion of the opening of the new German state theatre in Krakau (Kraków) governor general Hans Frank reminded the theatre of its role: In Krakau […] the state theatre has to fulfil its particular role as an outpost of Germany’s cultural might. (Drewniak 1983, 102)

Hans Knudsen discussed the opening of the Posen Poznan´ theatre in 1941 not only in the context of Nazi ideology in general but also specifically alluded to the theatre’s “duties” concerning the establishment of a new Germanic world order. The playhouse starts a new development today and falls in line with a new ideology, a new world order, and therefore with new duties of a national socialist art. (Knudsen 1941, 55)

In a development similar to the late Middle Ages when German artists moved eastwards German theatre was now cultivating vast sways of culturally “inferior” Eastern Europe to prepare these areas to become part of the German empire—as “art is the most unerring and least transient witness of the range, power and beauty of the German will to live” (Barthel 1944, 12).

Heinrich von Kleist and the German Classics Apart from significant investment in material conditions (new theatre buildings, professional companies, rising subsidies, etc.), it was theatre repertoires the Nazis looked upon to showcase German culture. Nazi theatre critic Hermann Christian Mettin’s claim that “the character of the repertoire determines the nature of theatre” rang true in occupied Poland where the Germans throughout the war remained concerned with the quality of theatre programmes (Mettin 1942, 29).2 According to many critics and cultural politicians, this showcasing of German culture was best 2 Mettin was dramaturge at the Vienna Burgtheater and a leading cultural commentator in the Third Reich.

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achieved by productions of German classical drama. Plays by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Heinrich von Kleist, and many others had come to be seen—not only by the Nazis, but also by a general consensus among the German educated middle classes, the so-called Bildungsbürgertum—as central to everyone’s education. Additional qualities ascribed to the classics, such as their alleged role in nation-building and the establishment of a German identity, made their use particularly attractive to the Nazis. In essence, going to see a production of a classical play had as much to do with personal enjoyment and edification as with one’s support of the national cause, of German values, and of German identity. Indeed, a repertoire based on amusement instead of uplift was not what the regime wished to see as “wishes for entertainment, box office successes even” were out of place (Hepke 1943). Instead, it was vital for repertoires to be based on “Shakespeare, Schiller and Goethe, Verdi and Wagner […] in perfectly accomplished productions” (Pohl 1943, 225, 228) as theatres were “obliged to represent the perfected art of national and cultural education” and “to lead the German people to the eternal sources of its strength” (Schrade 1943, 2). Not surprisingly, therefore, across occupied Poland German language theatres staged grand productions of the classics in elaborate costumes and expansive settings—as if to follow Karl Künkler’s “advice” that, as a “matter of course, the classical repertoire demands the foremost attention of every responsible theatre director” (Künkler 1941, 107). Posen’s theatre opened in March 1941 with Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio and Kleist’s Prince of Homburg (see below), Krakau presented Friedrich Hebbel’s Agnes Bernauer after Beethoven’s Coriolan overture, and Danzig (Gdansk) opened the 1939/40 season with five new productions in the first eight days with Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen und Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin as highlights (the beginning of the season also marked the return of the formerly independent city state into the German Reich). The Doppeltheater Kattowitz/Königshütte (Katowice/Chorzów) opened with Friedrich Schiller’s Maria Stuart, and in 1943 produced Wagner’s entire Ring cycle (Drewniak 1983, 99). The small theatre in Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) produced Hebbel’s mighty Nibelungen in 1942/43. During the 1941/42 season, Posen produced classical plays by Goethe (two productions), Kleist, Lessing, and Schiller, and some of the classics of the operatic literature, including Mozart, Donizetti, Wagner, Weber, Verdi, Rossini, and Puccini (Reichsgautheater

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Posen 1941/42, 203–205). The Theater der Stadt Lodsch (the municipal theatre in Łód´z), as it was called until the city received its new name Litzmannstadt, also opened with a German classic: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm in January 1940. This was followed by productions of Shakespearean drama (Measure for Measure, As You Like It, Hamlet ) as well as Schiller (The Robbers, Wallenstein’s Camp, Don Carlos ), Kleist (The Broken Jug ), Lessing (Emilia Galotti), and Hebbel (Maria Magadalena). It performed Goethe’s epic Faust I in a production, which was staged seven times in ten days in Spring 1943 (Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/56). Although the Nazis overall failed to establish classical drama as the backbone of repertoires (mainly because musical comedies and farces proved more popular in a system not entirely removed from economic considerations), the number of high-profile productions is noteworthy. Heinrich von Kleist’s Prince of Homburg proved a particularly popular choice with many theatres in occupied Europe, and a good number of them (Krakau, Posen, Bromberg, and Lille, among others) chose Kleist’s “Prussian play” as their season opener. Homburg had always been Kleist’s most performed play in Germany, but its interpretation changed markedly after 1933 (Eicher 2000, 336). The Kleist scholar Georg Minde-Pouet claimed in 1935 that Kleist has turned into the classical author of the national-socialist Germany. Nobody calls on us more powerfully than him to examine ourselves and to apply our strength more audaciously. […] Kleist sensed the power of his fatherland, a power that we presently fight to preserve again. […] To stand by Kleist means to be German. (Minde-Pouet 1935, 91–93)

In Eastern Europe, in particular, Kleist was interpreted as the “poet of the German East”, and Homburg as a play in which the Elector educated Germany’s youth and led them to achieve great things (Weigel 2015, 240–249). Like the young prince Homburg, a new generation followed their Führer’s leadership, accepted his judgement, and obeyed his orders unfailingly. The play was, therefore, interpreted as both supporting established Prussian ideals of discipline and the fulfilment of one’s duties as well as propagating the idea of a national leader who was not bound by laws but represented these laws himself. The following essay by Alexander Weigel discusses the opening production of Prince of Homburg at the Gautheater Posen and in the context of an aggressive Germanification.

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Weigel focuses on the festival “East German Days of Culture” held in Posen in March 1941 and highlights the role institutionalised German language theatre was envisaged to play in this process. Homburg as Conqueror Alexander Weigel.3 On 25 September 1939, almost a month after the start of the war and the German attack on Poland, Reich propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and the “Reich Culture Chamber” in collaboration with Robert Ley, National Organisational Leader (Reichsorganisationsleiter), invited 3,000 soldiers, workers, and artists to attend a “colourful afternoon” of performances and events in Berlin. The appeal which Dr Goebbels addressed at the whole nation from the Theater des Volkes [the Berlin theatre in which the event took place – A.H.] suggested that art is no pastime for peace but a sharp intellectual weapon for times of war, too.

Goebbels continued: Without optimism no war can be won; it is as essential as canons and rifles.

Despite the war, Goebbels claimed “followed by strong applause”, “we eagerly attempt to not only uphold the artistic and cultural life of our nation but to extend it in all possible directions” (Völkischer Beobachter, 28 September 1939).4 This “extension” had already started with the quasi annexation of Austria on 12 March 1938 following the invasion of German army, SS, and police units. In its wake, all Austrian theatres—the Burgtheater, the Deutsches Volkstheater, and the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna, as well as regional playhouses—were incorporated in the national-socialist 3 This article is based on Alexander Weigel’s talk at the “Dramaturgies of War” symposium at Glasgow in January 2018. He edited it slightly for publication in this volume. It has been translated by Anselm Heinrich but not altered in any other way. 4 The Nazis took over Max Reinhardt’s former Großes Schauspielhaus in 1933, changed its name to Theater des Volkes (People’s Theatre), and installed a large VIP box for the Führer. The theatre was mainly used for operetta performances and large events organised by the organisation Kraft durch Freude (“Strength Through Joy”).

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cultural and theatre organisation. Shortly afterwards, the German army also invaded the so-called Sudetenland (October 1938), followed by the “destruction” of the rest of rest of Czechoslovakia and the foundation of the “Reich protectorate Bohemia and Moravia” in March 1939. On 31 October 1939, and in the presence of “Reich protector” Konstantin von Neurath, the Starovské Divadlo theatre (which had been the German Ständetheater until 1919) opened as the “New German Theatre”.5 The opening production of Heinrich von Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg offered the Nazis the possibility for some particularly aggressive misinterpretation to enhance the play’s propagandistic use. During the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the armed forces were quickly followed by cultural and artistic “experts” from the Reich propaganda ministry. Poland’s occupation resulted in a “net gain” of nine “returned” theatres with 8,657 seats. The theatres in Bielitz, Bromberg, Graudenz, Kattowitz, Königshütte, Krakau, Lodz, Posen, and Thorn were already featured in the 1940 German Theatre Year Book (Daiber 1995, 282–283).6 Posen’s municipal theatre had been opened in 1910, but after the end of the First War and following the Treaty of Versailles, the city became Polish and the theatre was renamed in Teatr Wielki. In 1923, the theatre was turned into an opera house, and together with the smaller Teatr Polski it was incorporated in the Teatry Miejskie in Poznan. ´ The German armed forces (Wehrmacht ) occupied Poznan´ on 10 September 1939 and the city became the capital of the newly formed administrative region Reichsgau Wartheland. From early September 1939, the Polish inhabitants became subject to systematic terror with mass arrests, trials with numerous death sentences, and killings. Against this background, the Nazis strengthened German culture with visiting theatre companies in the first instance. The first such occasion was the “magnificent performance of Calderon’s The Mayor of Zalamea by the ensemble of the Schiller theatre in the Reich capital with Heinrich George in the lead” (Völkischer Beobachter, 8 November 1939).

5 Konstantin Hermann Karl Freiherr von Neurath (1873–1956) was German foreign secretary between 1932 and 1938 and acted as “Reich protector in Bohemia and Moravia” between 1939 and 1941. 6 In the chapter entitled “Theatres Gained” (Gewonnene Theater, pp. 282–311) Daiber provides an overview of theatre politics during the Third Reich in other occupied countries, too.

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The Nazi leadership had great plans for the new “capital of the Gau” Posen. Apart from the conversion of the castle for the “Gau leader and Governor of the Warthegau” Arthur Greiser, and the “Germanification” of the university, the Nazi leadership concentrated mainly on the theatre.7 The main theatre space, the Großes Haus, was “consecrated” with pomp and circumstance on 18 March 1941 as “monumental new built” and after “all Polish defacements had been cleaned up” (Ostdeutscher Beobachter, 19 March 1941).8 The ceremony featured speeches by Greiser and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who awarded the theatre (with both performances spaces, the main theatre and the studio) the title Reichsgautheater (Ostdeutscher Beobachter, 19 March 1941). The event took place during the “East German Days of Culture” (Ostdeutsche Kulturtage) between 16 and 23 March 1941. In a clever propagandistic move, the opening was sandwiched between the menacing Heldengedenktag (literally the day of remembering the war heroes) on 18 March and the “Day of the German Wehrmacht” on 23 March 1941. Introduced by headlines such as “All of the Empire’s Might for the East” and “Theatres and Schools Are Political Bulwarks”, printed in large letters, the paper (a subsidiary in occupied Poland of the infamous Völkischer Beobachter) reported emphatically from the “great event” which carried so much importance for the “German East”: Posen 18 March. With the consecration of the main house of the theatre in Posen by Reich minister Dr Goebbels with Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter Greiser and field marshall von Bock in attendance, too,9 as well as many influential leaders from across the Reich, and the gala performance of Kleist’s drama The Prince of Homburg, the East German Days of Culture reached their climax. (Ostdeutscher Beobachter, 18, 19, and 20 March 1941)

7 Arthur Greiser (German job title: Reichsstatthalter und Gauleiter), Nazi leader in the German occupied Gau Wartheland between 1939 and 1945. He was put on trial as war criminal for being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, for the mass deportation of Polish citizens to carry out slave labour, and for the plundering of the Polish people. Greiser was sentenced to death and executed in Poznan´ on 21 July 1946. 8 The Ostdeutscher Beobachter was the official German language regional newspaper during the German occupation. 9 Fedor von Bock (1880–1945) was the Wehrmacht general in charge of the army group North (Heeresgruppe Nord) during the attack on Poland. He led the group as colonel general and was promoted to field marshall in July 1940.

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In his address—which the newspaper coined “classical”—Goebbels formulated a “great commitment by the Reich to the German East”. Through the “liberating dead of the Führer and the sacrifices of the whole nation [the German East] has now finally returned into the union of the great German empire”. Followed by emphatic applause of the audience Dr Goebbels declared that all theatres and schools in this land are Ordensburgen 10 and solid bulwarks testifying to our will to colonise [this land]. To achieve the future task of keeping the peace in the East generations of hardened peasant folk would keep watch, and a rich and productive cultural life would develop here. (Ostdeutscher Beobachter, 19 March 1941)

The gala performance of Kleist’s The Prince of Homburg seemed to have fulfilled the expectations of the Nazis and the press in attendance in its entirety. One could not have thought of a more important poet and his work to be featured at the outset and as the starting point of the “Days of East German Culture” and at the beginning of the great cultural development of our Wartheland, than this Brandenburg-Prussian drama of the East German Heinrich von Kleist, the truly topical The Prince of Homburg. Depicted in this play is life from our life, blood from our blood. Here we recognise ourselves in manifold German character traits, in the great action of war focussed on the Brandenburg soil, and the heroic characters made and sustained by this soil, and their destiny as leading example for the people around them. By doing so the poet shows us who we are and who has come before us to influence us. Events of our time come to life in this play.

The critic Herbert Petersen (strictly speaking the term “critic” was not used anymore by this stage as the Nazis had substituted “art criticism” with “art appreciation”—A.H.) also added a few comments on how Kleist was to be read and applied in contemporary Germany:

10 The Nazis built a number of Ordensburgen across Germany. Modelled on medieval castles these were building complexes (often on hills and in the countryside) aimed to educate and literally breed a new generation of elite Aryan party soldiers. The most famous of the Ordensburgen was located in Sonthofen in Southern Bavaria where it can be visited today [A.H.].

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The still young prince of Homburg has not yet established a close connection to the law. He is faced with this law in the person of the elector [Kurfürst –A.H.]. Kleist introduces the elector to us as teacher of the inexperienced youth. The personality of the great educator forms people, whom he leads to achieve the utmost. And this is the most important thing for Kleist: The natural human being, who is willing to achieve in life and who expects a lot from his life, is also faced with a natural fear of death. And this is what it is all about: to overcome this fear of death and to rise above it. Just as Kleist in his writing and his personal development rose from the cosmopolitan-humanistic to the national ideal, Homburg accepts […] the state’s will as law and places himself under this law. […] As he has put himself at the state’s disposal the fatherland gifts him in turn the fulfilment of all his wishes, it grants him the freedom […] to partake in the full scale of German power, German wealth and German duties.

Following this blatant distortion of the poet and his work, the discussion of the performance itself was only ignorant blather. The tragic conflict in the young man’s soul was absorbingly portrayed by the talented Hans Krull. Marie Luise Holtz portrayed the courageous woman in a lively manner. […] The production was directed by a guest, Richard Weichert,11 from the Volksbühne Berlin […]. Through his polishing of even the smallest pieces, his arduous detailed work, we have been able to witness a Prince of Homburg, whose style shows the most careful moulding and harmonises the entire piece. […] It appears as if everything [Kleist] wrote directly originated from our time.

The “great finale […], more lively and naturalistic than ever before” gives Petersen the opportunity to return to the suitable language:

11 Richard Weichert (1880–1961), director and theatre manager, was particularly successful in the 1920s. Between 1919 and 1929 theatre director in Frankfurt a. M. where he was acknowledged not only as supporter of young talent but also as heading the best ensemble in Germany. In 1932, he became director at the Bayrisches Staatsschauspiel in Munich. Although he was heavily criticised by the Nazi Reich Theatre Chamber after the Nazi take over he directed again at the Volksbühne Berlin from 1935 under Eugen Klöpfer’s management. The stage was designed by the Berlin painter and theatre designer César Klein (1876–1954). Klein had been banned from painting in 1933 and some of his work was exhibited in the 1937 “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Munich.

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The great battle call of a society which has grown together through fight and suffering from the time of the great elector: ‘In the dust with all enemies of Brandenburg!’ (Ostdeutscher Beobachter, 19 March 1941)

Despite this praise commentators did not seem entirely convinced of the artistic achievement, but the attraction [of the production A.H.] was also due to the fact that it did rely on actors which are known everywhere [but on less experienced ones A.H.] who introduced themselves in an admirable manner which deserves honest recognition. […] In this way the performance became a first highlight of the Warthegau’s Days of Culture. First and foremost it is the beginning of a development which – and we all wish this from the bottom of our hearts – will provide a fundamental piece of their homeland to the Germans living in this advanced outpost. (Völkischer Beobachter, 20 March 1941)

Apart from a multitude of entertaining and militaristic events, the Kulturtage also featured science and research. The main auditorium of Posen’s University hosted a lecture by Professor Minde-Pouet, chairman of the Kleist society, entitled “Kleist as poet of the German East”. This lecture was apparently meant as both introduction and orientation in all matters Kleist. To be on the safe side, the aforementioned critic Herbert Petersen used Minde-Pouet’s interpretation almost word for word. Minde-Pouet also suitably referred to Kleist’s “war poems”, his play Die Hermannsschlacht (Battle of the Teutoburg Forest ), which “does not discuss the general human fate but constitutes our own very personal affair. How magnificent are the parallels to our present time, what a wellnigh prophetic vision”. Then Minde-Pouet also turned to The Prince of Homburg: Kleist understood the fatherland, the national state, and the personal feeling of Heimat, as a unity. The result is ensoulment. There is no place more beautiful than the national community, from where to take the energy, which this ensoulment creates. (Ostdeutscher Beobachter, 18 March 1941)

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At the conclusion of the cultural events in Posen, on its penultimate evening and with Greiser, as well as two other Gauleiter in attendance (Karl Hanke12 of Silesia and Schwede-Coburg13 of Pomerania), the theatre performed the operetta Wiener Blut. In the production “the colourful, careless exhilaration of the Viennese operetta atmosphere comes alive”. On the following morning, at the festival’s conclusion, “the young generation [gathered] with their Gauleiter in a morning event” in the main auditorium of the newly christened Gautheater. The event’s guiding idea was the “military as well as musical education of the young generation”. Later that day, the so called NS-Reichssymphonieorchester “performed for the Wehrmacht and later for the German public […]. Events were concluded with a Grand Tattoo (Großer Zapfenstreich) by the Wehrmacht ” (Völkischer Beobachter, 24 March 1941).

References Abbey, William, and Katharina Havekamp. 2000. Nazi performances in the occupied territories: The German theatre in Lille. In Theatre under the Nazis, ed. John London, 262–290. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Barthel, Gustav. 1944. Die Ausstrahlungen der Kunst des Veit Stoss im Osten. München: Bruckmann. Beckmann, Heinz Günther. 1941. Zur Geschichte der Stadt Posen. Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/42): 10–19. Daiber, Hans. 1995. Schaufenster der Diktatur. Theater im Machtbereich Hitlers. Stuttgart: Neske. Drewniak, Boguslaw. 1983. Das Theater im NS-Staat. Szenarium deutscher Zeitgeschichte 1933–1945. Düsseldorf: Droste. Drewniak, Boguslaw. 1999. Polen und Deutschland 1919–1939. Wege und Irrwege kultureller Zusammenarbeit. Düsseldorf: Droste. Eicher, Thomas. 2000. Spielplanstrukturen 1929 – 1944. In Theater im “Dritten Reich”. Theaterpolitik, Spielplanstruktur, NS- Dramatik, ed. Henning Rischbieter. Seelze: Kallmeyer. 12 Karl Hanke (1903–1945), SS lieutenant general, in 1941 (he was labelled “Breslau’s Hangman” when “defended to the last man” against the approaching complete destruction—A.H.). Right at the end of the of the SS (Reichsführer SS).

Hitler made him Gauleiter of Silesia declaring the city a “fortress” to be Red Army, which led to its almost war, Hitler made him the last leader

13 Franz Schwede (1888–1960), 1934–1945 Gauleiter in Pomerania. In 1939, he ordered the closure of social care institutions in several towns and cities with patients being shot or gassed by special police units (Sonderkommandos ) in Western Prussia.

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Fassel, Horst, Malgorzata Leyko, and Paul S. Ulrich, eds. 2005. Polen und Europa. Deutschsprachiges Theater in Polen und deutsches Minderheitentheater in Europa. Lodz/Tübingen: Lodz University Press. Gissibl, Fritz, ed. 1941. Der Osten des Warthelandes. Stuttgart: Stähle und Friedel. Hepke, Marian. 1943. Die Aufgaben des Theaters. Zum Abschluss der Spielzeit 1941/42. Deutsche Rundschau [Bromberg], 5 April. Hoffmann, Emil. 1940. Neue Heimat Posen (Volksdeutsche Heimkehr, vol. 3). Berlin: Nibelungen. Kargel, Adolf. 1942. Bildende Künstler aus Litzmannstadt. In Deutschtum im Aufbruch. Vom Volkstumskampf der Deutschen im östlichen Wartheland, ed. Adolf Kargel and Eduard Kneifel, 228–233. Leipzig: Hirzel. Kindermann, Heinz. 1938a. Rufe über Grenzen. Antlitz und Lebensraum der Grenz- und Auslanddeutschen in ihrer Dichtung. Berlin: Junge Generation. Kindermann, Heinz. 1938b. Heimkehr ins Reich. Großdeutsche Dichtung aus Ostmark und Sudetenland 1866–1938. Leipzig: Reclam. Kindermann, Heinz. 1939. Du stehst in großer Schar. Junge deutsche Dichtung aus dem Warthe- und Weichselland. Breslau: Hirt. Kindermann, Heinz. 1943a. Theater und Nation. Leipzig: Reclam. Kindermann, Heinz. 1943b. Deutsche Theater in Europa. Von Drontheim bis Athen, von Paris bis Lublin. Das Reich, 7 March. Kindermann, Heinz. 1944. Die europäische Sendung des deutschen Theaters. Wiener Wissenschaftliche Vorträge und Reden 10. Wien: Rohrer. Knudsen, Hans. 1941. Die Entwicklung der deutschen Theaterkunst in Posen. Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/42): 27–55. Krekeler, Norbert. 2000. Die deutsche Minderheit in Polen 1919–1933. In Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten. Ursachen, Ereignisse, Folgen, ed. Wolfgang Benz, 16–32. Frankfurt: Fischer. Künkler, Karl. 1941. Kulturpolitische Aufgabe des deutschen Theaters. Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/42): 101–112. Lange, Friedrich. 1940. Ostland kehrt heim (Volksdeutsche Heimkehr, vol. 5). Berlin: Nibelungen. Mettin, Hermann Christian. 1942. Die Situation des Theaters. Wien: Sexl. Minde-Pouet, Georg. 1935. Die Kleist-Gesellschaft. Deutscher Kulturwart (March/April): 91–93. Müller, Leo. 1942. Das deutsche Theater in Lodsch. In Deutschtum im Aufbruch. Vom Volkstumskampf der Deutschen im östlichen Wartheland, ed. Adolf Kargel and Eduard Kneifel, 204–215. Petersen, Herbert. 1941. Was wir uns erwarten. Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/42): 56–64. Pohl, Georg Karl. 1943. Zur Spielplangestaltung und Theaterwerbung. Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1942/43): 225–233.

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Reichsgautheater Posen. 1942. Review of 1941/42 Season. Posen. Reiser, Dietrich. 1941. Lebensraum der Deutschen im Kalischer Land. Leipzig: Hirzel. Satori-Neumann, Bruno. 1962. Dreihundert Jahre berufsständisches Theater in Elbing: die Geschichte einer ostdeutschen Provinzialbühne. 1846–1888. Marburg: Elwert. Schrade, Hans Erich. 1943. Verpflichtung und Aufgabe der deutschen Theater. In Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch 1943, ed. Präsident der Reichstheaterkammer, 2. Berlin: Reichstheaterkammer. Weigel, Alexander. 2015. Das imaginäre Theater Heinrich von Kleists. Heilbronn: Kleist-Archiv Sembdner.

Newspapers Ostdeutscher Beobachter Völkischer Beobachter

Archival Material German Federal Archives Berlin/Bundesarchiv Berlin (BArch): Propaganda Ministry files (R55/20389) Herder Institut Marburg: Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (34 VIII P120 Z23) Municipal Archives Lodz/Archiwum Panstwowe ´ w Łodzi, Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/56. Repertuary przedstawien´ teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1945]

CHAPTER 7

Masked Messaging: German theatre in Maribor under the Nazis as reflected in the Marburger Zeitung Matjaž Birk

Introduction In spring 1941, Slovenian Styria—then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia—was annexed by the German Reich. On 26 April 1941, Adolf Hitler paid a visit to the capital, Maribor (or Marburg in German), where, according to the Marburger Zeitung, the leading regional Germanlanguage newspaper, he received a rapturous welcome from the local population:

This article was written in the context of the group of programmes “Intercultural Literary Studies (P6-0265)” sponsored by the Slovenian research agency ARRS. M. Birk (B) Faculty of Arts, Department of German, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_7

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The Marburgers came in their droves from shops, stalls, wherever they happened to be, and were soon lining the streets along the Führer’s route, greeting him with cries of “Heil Hitler!” expressive of their overwhelming joy. … Facing the massed ranks of Volkstumskämpfer, the Führer first turned to Hans Baron [Maribor’s Protestant pastor and President of the Heimatbund or Homeland Association; M.B.], who had led the lowland offensive until the arrival of the conquering German army. … The Führer was in our midst, looking us in the eye! This awareness, this deep, heartfelt sense of elation overcame everyone the Führer spoke to at Marburg Castle. (Marburger Zeitung 26/27 April 1941, 1)1

Prior to the attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Adolf Hitler received the later Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of the region of Styria Sigfried Uiberreither in Berlin. During the reception, Hitler is said to have addressed his guest with the words “Make this country German again” (Ferenc 1968, 142). The words attributed to the dictator by the collective memory of socialist Yugoslavia reveal the new authorities’ top priority in the strip of land designated “Lower Styria”. The (re-)Germanisation of this territory was to be led by Gauleiter and Reich Governor Siegfried Uiberreither. That it was to be achieved by force, with the aim of wiping out the Slovenian identity—a project referred to at the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda as the “eradication of the primitive Slovenian and Serbian culture[…]” in a letter to the Minister of Finance from August 1941 in support of a request for generous subsidies (BArch R55/864, 6)2 —was evident from the Marburger Zeitung ’s exhortations to its readers to speak and learn German, in a blatant piece of Nazi racial ideology: “Citizens of Lower Styria! You belong to the German ethnic community! Therefore you must only speak German!” (MZ 17/18 October 1942, 6). This Germanisation policy already manifested itself with unashamed brutality in the first weeks and months following the invasion by Hitler’s troops, when the new regime began to forcibly resettle the Slovenian intelligentsia—deemed “unGermanisable”—to Serbia, and to deport Slovenian patriots—identified as anti-Nazi—to concentration camps in Austria and Germany.

1 From here on, quotations from the Marburger Zeitung are identified by the abbreviation MZ. 2 The author is obliged to Prof. Dr. Anselm Heinrich for kindly providing access to the relevant archive documents.

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Of the region’s cultural institutions, it was the theatre—traditionally perceived in the former Habsburg countries as the most expressive form of media—that was felt to be key to implementing the (re-)Germanisation agenda.3 The theatre engaged a large sector of the public, consisting of both theatregoers (including, by definition, members of the theatre critics guild) and theatre-makers, in this case, amateur actors. In addition to a professional theatre landscape, with venues in Maribor, Celje (a dilapidated building that was renovated during the war years and stood empty for a time [BArch R 55/864, 2]) and Ptuj, there were also amateur stages or Volksbühnen in Lower Styria during the war. These provided a focus for native Slovenian speakers who were notable for their enthusiasm both for acting and for learning German as the “language of culture”. Among the amateur groups, the Frankl-Bühne was held in particularly high regard. This was a group of Slovenian players based in the mining town of Trbovlje. According to the Marburger Zeitung, its members successfully completed the language courses organised by the authorities before the premiere, thereby earning the paper’s praise irrespective of the quality of the performance. The reviewer lauded the success “accomplished through the German language courses”, alluding in the same breath to the “unjust fate … that caused these sterling individuals to miss out on twenty-three years of German culture and heritage” (MZ 8 June 1942, 4; MZ 27 May 1943, 4). The participation of Slovenian-speaking amateur actors in German-language theatre productions—an anomaly in the theatre practice of Nazi-occupied Central Europe—is a clear indication of how strongly part of the Slovenian population identified with German culture. This identification, rooted in the centuries-old affiliation of Southern Styria with the Habsburg Empire, was—as we shall see—shrewdly exploited by Nazi cultural policymakers in the interests of Germanisation.

3 On the history of the German theatre landscape in the German-speaking territories of Central and Eastern Europe during the interwar period and under the Nazis, and the functionalisation of the theatre as a means of (re-)Germanising these territories, see Heinrich (2020).

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German Theatre and Press in Maribor German-language theatre performances had a long tradition in Maribor and its environs, dating back to the second half of the seventeenth century (Hartman 2001, 257). According to a historical chronicle, the first one took place in September 1680 in the suburb of Ruše (Taufar 1982, 3). In the city itself, plays were performed in various locations by troupes of travelling players: under the roof of the Viktringer Hof in 1785, and later in the converted Spitalskirche, a disused church that had once belonged to the city hospital. The theatre was finally institutionalised in 1847, at the initiative of the Maribor Theatre and Casino Society, which commissioned the construction of a specially designed building for theatre productions. The project was financed from funds contributed by society members and other wealthy inhabitants of the city, as well as theatre lovers from the surrounding area. Membership of the Slovenian-speaking community was no obstacle to participation in the city’s cultural and social activities at that time, as the Slovenian educated class was socialised into German culture and shared strongly middle-class notions of education with its German fellow citizens (Birk 2008). The new theatre was officially opened in 1852 and, over time, became one of the most effective vehicles for German culture in the region—with the exception of the oldest German theatre in the Slovenian ethnic territory, the Estates Theatre (Ständetheater) in Ljubljana, which was built in 1765 and named after its founders, the Carniolan Estates (Ludvik 1957, 36). The Maribor Stadttheater (Municipal theatre) remained in use until the 1918–1919 season. The last performance, Schneewittchen (“Snow White”) by Carl August Görner, took place on 24 May 1919. In September 1919, the same building became home to the Slovenian National Theatre, which had been created in the wake of the newly established Kingdom of South Slavs (see Hartman 2001, 261), thereby completing the institutionalisation of Slovenian drama that had begun in 1909 with the founding of the Drama Association (Dramatiˇcno društvo). As the mediatisation of political and cultural life in the city and surrounding region clearly shows, the other key instrument of Germanisation besides the theatre was the press. The Stadttheater and the Marburger Zeitung worked hand in hand to gather the public (back) to the “bosom” of German culture. The newspaper targeted an even wider

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audience than the theatre, again with the aim of exploiting it for political ends. Published from 1862 to 1945 under various names, it was one of the most important levers of the German press in the Slovene lands. Its origins date back to 1778, to the foundation of the Laibacher Zeitung (“Ljubljana News”), the most influential and long-lived German-language press organ (Žigon 2001, 22–33, 69f.). On 14 May 1941, the German theatre celebrated its return to Maribor, to great fanfare in the press (see MZ 15 May 1941, 5). The first season’s offering relied on guest ensembles from the neighbouring city of Graz, normally based at the Styrian Landestheater (regional theatre for drama and opera) and Graz’s own municipal theatre. Especially popular at first were music productions—naturally enough given that the man at the helm was Graz-born opera singer Robert Falzari (see MZ 18/19 July 1942, 4). The theatre season was officially opened in September 1941, setting a suitably high artistic standard with Ludwig van Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. The first play was staged in October, in the shape of Otto Ludwig’s popular home-grown drama Erbförster (“The Hereditary Forester”) (see MZ 16 October 1941, 5). The period from mid-September 1941 to the end of January 1942 was a successful one for music productions, attracting overall capacities of around 83%. The spoken theatre, by contrast, commanded much smaller audiences, with capacities of just 42%, even accounting for free tickets and concessions. This relative lack of interest may have been partly due to the fact that only a small percentage of the public spoke German (BArch R55/21761). Initially, these low attendances do not seem to have mattered very much: the theatre’s propaganda function, its German-language repertoire and the dramatic expression of Slovenia’s allegedly German character were far more important. Indeed, it enjoyed much greater status than in the period up to 1919, benefiting from generous grants from various sources—both funding from the theatre department of the Reich Chamber of Culture in Berlin and subsidies from Maribor city council. Although Maribor’s theatre was generally regarded as small, relatively insignificant and peripheral by comparison with the major theatres of the Reich, its “special national political role in restoring the Lower Styrian territory to its German origins” was reiterated on various occasions at the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Berlin (BArch R55/20406, 34). It is therefore unsurprising that the Reich chose to subsidise the venue to the tune of RM 400,000 in its first season— albeit only around 57% of the total funding request submitted by the

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commercial director. The city council, which owned the building, was no less generous, contributing an initial RM 34,000, and as much as RM 100,000 by the third season—again only about a tenth of the total requirement, which ran to no less than RM 900,000. The budget and Reich subsidy remained unchanged for the 1942/1943 season. Beyond this, however, separate additional payments of RM 134,200 were made in order to at least meet director Falzari and his ambitious plans halfway. For despite the tight financial situation, Falzari was keen to stage grand operas and direct them himself—to the detriment of other genres, which seem to have been duly marginalised. The quality of spoken drama, in particular, was criticised repeatedly by the relevant bodies as no more than average, or even poor, for example in an internal note by Mr Scherzer in the Propaganda Ministry dated 10 February 1944 (BArch R55/20406, 274). The Ministry of Propaganda complained repeatedly about the extravagance of Maribor’s theatre, and concerns regarding its income to expense ratio were also voiced by the Reich audit office. Despite these reservations and the mismatch between revenue and expenditure, the city council paid comparatively good salaries for a smallish provincial theatre. Artistic director Falzari received RM 930, the executive director RM 690, the operetta tenor RM 1,000, the musicians an average of approx. RM 300, the members of the chorus and cashier around RM 200, and so on. The theatre invested in improved equipment, the orchestra pit was enlarged and plans were made for extensive building work. Although this work was officially commissioned by Maribor city council and its political commissar, the bulk of the money came from the Ministry of Finance in Berlin, which had already pledged RM 800,000 in September 1941 without having seen any detailed renovation plans (BArch R55/864, 9). Whether the work was completed by the time all theatres within the German sphere of influence were closed on 1 September 1944 is unclear, but it was certainly still in progress in the spring of 1944—at least this is what a letter from the Regional Propaganda Office Styria suggested in April (BArch R55/864, 71ff). Despite the renovation work, Maribor theatre—unlike that of Celje—did not interrupt its programme. Artistic director Robert Falzari soon proved a major thorn in the side of the Nazi regime. Falzari seemed to regard Maribor theatre as his own pet project—a vehicle for his dramaturgical vision of turning a provincial theatre into the home of grand opera. Falzari harboured ambitious

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plans right from the first season, announcing his intention to stage thirteen operas and twenty operettas (BArch R55/20406, 103). Despite mounting complaints in Berlin about the “embarrassingly” extravagant director, Falzari’s contract was renewed in November 1943. The Reich subsidy of RM 700,000 was also confirmed, and for the following two seasons. Notes by officials within the Ministry of Propaganda’s theatre department reveal their belief that Falzari had “probably been granted the directorship mainly for political reasons”. Attempts to unseat him were evidently unsuccessful, however, due to fears in Berlin of being unable to find a suitable replacement for this “absolutely solid National Socialist” (BArch R55/20406, 34, 63, 169ff., 193, 196, 218, 225 and 274). To bring in extra funds and top up the budget without further support from Berlin, but more importantly to strengthen the relationship with the audience, a subscription system—as a tried-and-tested form of public ownership—was introduced. The management advertised a series of subscription performances, thereby creating a cultural product which—by fulfilling the expectations of different social structures, including organisations, associations, businesses, firms and the military—offered significant identity-building potential, as frequently highlighted by the Marburger Zeitung: The Office for Public Education, together with the management of Maribor municipal theatre, can count the subscription series as a tremendous success. Above all, they have absolutely fulfilled their purpose: to reconnect our Lower Styrian brethren with German art, expose them to the words and music of the German masters and convey the lightness, gaiety and joie de vivre of the comic muse. As such, these performances have formed no small part of the diligent cultural work by the Styrian Homeland Association. (MZ 1 June 1942, 4)

To remind its readers of the intellectual and cultural stature and the sphere of influence of German culture, the paper laced its theatrical discourse with familiar identity-building concepts, which we will come to later. Such discourse can be found in reviews from the “Maribor Theatre” section and articles on German-language culture—notably literature, drama and theatre—and we will therefore focus in the following on these two forms of mediatisation.

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Theatrical discourse as a veiled medium for the ‘new politics’ It is clear from theatre reviews that audience response was a key factor in the choice of repertoire. As previously noted, pre-1918 audiences were introduced to the theatre largely through the medium of German-language culture, hence the predominance of works from the classical canon of dramatic literature, represented—alongside the abovementioned work of Otto Ludwig—by the dramas of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (Minna von Barnhelm), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Iphigenie auf Tauris, Egmont and Faust ), Friedrich Schiller (Kabale und Liebe), Franz Grillparzer (Der Traum ein Leben und Sappho), Johann Nestroy (Unverhofft und Lumpazivagabundus ), Ludwig Anzengruber (Der G’wissenswurm), Gerhart Hauptmann (Michael Kramer), Max Halbe (Der Strom), Carlo Goldoni (Il Bugiardo), Molière (Le Malade Imaginaire), Pedro Calderon de la Barca (El Alcarde de Zalamea), Henrik Ibsen (Ghosts ), etc. The theatre also produced plays with a regional connection. These were complemented by contemporary dramas influenced by Nazi ideology, including Herbert Reinecker’s Das Dorf bei Odessa, a propagandist play about the Russian offensive which theatre historians have described as a huge success (see Eicher et al. 2000, 505).4 Public reaction was equally central to the choice of foreign drama, and here too, old and new classics such as those by Calderon, Goldoni, Molière und Henrik Ibsen were particularly popular. Excluded from the repertoire, however, were exponents of British and Russian drama, as well as certain genres such as the social drama favoured by Maribor’s theatregoing public since the turn of the century.5 When it came to key ideological positions, therefore, the criterion of audience response evidently ceased to hold sway over the choice of material, and the theatre reverted instead to an institutional style of dramaturgy following a political line. The importance of these ideological paradigms can be seen from the treatment of works by Slovenian dramatists, which were excluded from the repertoire—including those written in German. 4 This play was performed at the Maribor theatre from April to June 1943 (see MZ 23 April 1943, 6). 5 The drama The Lower Depths —the most famous of Maxim Gorky’s plays—had been performed in Maribor back in January 1905, just two years after its German premiere at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin (see MZ 13 January 1905, 2).

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One example is the tragedy Miss Jenny Love by Anton Tomaž Linhart, inspired by the spirit of the Enlightenment. Why the propaganda potential of this play, published in 1780, was not exploited, bears closer investigation. Miss Jenny Love was modelled on German drama, its title, plot and motifs paying homage to Lessing’s Miss Sara Sampson and Emilia Galotti; it was published by a German publisher (the Augsburg-based C. H. Stage) and it appeared in the annals of German literary history, namely in Karl Goedeke’s famous work of 1893, Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung aus den Quellen (Mihurko Poniž 2012, 4). Given all this, it is astonishing that Linhart’s tragedy never made it onto the stage. Equally astonishing is the failure of theatre critics to respond to this omission: after all, they were otherwise quick to comment on the repertoire, native to the city and wider region, well acquainted with the cultural scene and, not least—as we will see—only too keen to promote objectivity in theatrical discourse. Most prominent among the circle of theatre critics was Marianne von Vesteneck, a native of Novo mesto who studied at the University of Vienna (Cindriˇc 2013, 80). She was a writer and journalist (Gradwohl 2018, 863f.) who made a name for herself in the region as a film critic, and whose reviews of theatre productions were notable for their objective assessments of the actors’ performances (see MZ 16 June 1941, 5). Theatre reviews suggest that identification with German cultural heritage and the reinforcement of a sense of regional and cultural affiliation were closely interwoven themes in theatrical discourse, and followed a precisely defined script. The coupling of local and national patriotism was one of the key Germanisation strategies used in this context (see MZ 14 December 1942, 4),6 along with the attempt to show how culture links the present with the past—something which comes across particularly clearly in articles on the German theatre landscape in occupied countries. Reports on current productions in Zagreb (see MZ 23 September 1942; Bobinac 2013), Paris (see MZ 7 October 1941, 4), The Netherlands (see MZ 17 August 1943, 6), etc. were peppered with themes from German drama and theatre history. This generated a meta-level which—by conforming to the expectations of an educated middle-class readership and thereby maximising the potential for identity 6 The linking of regional and national consciousness in theatrical discourse is also discussed in the review of the popular play Trieschübel by the Graz-based writer Franz Nabel (see MZ 12 December 1941), and that of the children’s play Der Goldschatz im Bachern by Otto Welte (see MZ 23 December 1941).

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building—served to mask the ideological bias of the theatre, as this review of the much-feted opening night clearly illustrates: Yesterday’s splendid reopening marks a special day for the German city of Marburg and its newly re-Germanised municipal theatre, and one that will go down in the annals of theatre history. The historic city on the Drau was treated by the visiting Graz Opera to a consummate performance of Weber’s Der Freischütz, the chef d’oeuvre of German Romanticism. (MZ 15 May 1941, 5)

There is a basic distinction to be made here between the following complementary masking strategies. The first presents German theatre from an ideational, the second from a historical and the third from an academic and occupational perspective. These complementary methods of disguising the political nature of the theatre as an institution rely—as we shall see—on a consciously constructed symbolic network consisting of names, works, institutions and ideational/ideological, aesthetic and cultural concepts that are associated with clearly defined values. Concepts which appear embedded in themes relating to the theory and history of theatre come to dominate the meta-level of theatrical discourse as articles in their own right. In essays of a theoretical and historical nature, the masking of ideological bias in the theatre and the attendant claim to objectivity is taken to extremes. We see this in threads of discourse emphasising German literature’s connection with “world literature” and, in this context, the role of German culture in human development. To this end, the German literary and dramatic arts, both past and present, are presented to the readership in an exaggeratedly romantic, even mythical light: As in the age of Classicism, it [German theatre; M.B.] once again seeks to present the profound humanity of the German worldview and the high moral ideals to which Germans aspire, thereby constituting an important link within the new European order. (MZ 2 February 1944, 6)

Icons of German and foreign literature meet “on equal terms”, whereby French authors are considered the benchmark. In this context, we are referred to Goethe’s role in the international popularisation of a genius like Molière: according to the reviewer, it was Germany’s “prince of poets” who was responsible for the classic French writer’s celebrity in the German-speaking region (see MZ 27 April 1944, 6).

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At the same time, among many references to the notion of intercultural exchange and reciprocity, Madame de Staël is praised—conversely, as it were—for her part in the internationalisation of German culture; here, the writer makes critical reference to the lack of autonomy and unity of the “German intellect” in the past—something which would, of course, fare better in the present “within a Europe united on a new basis” (MZ 13 July 1942, 4). The ideological context hinted at here is legitimised by linking it to the classical purpose of art and hence of the theatre. The Maribor press artfully refers to the central role of the theatre as a seat of moral education, ideationally located at the interface between universal idealisation and, as in this instance, provincial nostalgia: For now, the single most important thing is to endeavour by this means to reconnect our people, where possible, through joy and beauty to the sublime. The time will surely come when we will stage the great comedies of our master dramatists Anzengruber, Schönherr and Kranewitter [exponents of Austrian regional drama; M. B.] in our very own Lower Styria. Perhaps then we will have fulfilled our mission. (MZ 8 June 1942, 4)

In order not to contradict the educational ideal cherished by the public, wherever the ideological imperative of the time called for overt criticism, the paper resorted—except in the case of Anglophone and Russian play cycles—to verbal evasion, albeit with many a “faux pas”. Such instances are found wherever assumptions about education and moral instruction are underpinned by paradigms and national stereotypes rooted in racial ideology. Characteristics such as deceit and hypocrisy were attributed to the American morality, for example (see MZ 16 March 1942, 5). In its attempt to disguise the political mission of the theatrical medium, the paper also draws on the other key aspect classically associated with the theatre: its entertainment value. This is granted its contemporary legitimacy on the basis that the shortest route to restoring German culture and its comic muse—which is to be “preserved for many hitherto nontheatregoing sections of the public now flocking to the theatres” (MZ 16 December 1942, 4)—was via laughter. In support of this claim, the paper cites no lesser a figure than Heinrich Laube, a “seasoned observer of audiences”, according to whom “two thirds of the public … consider the pure arousal of amusement to be a principal function of art” (MZ 5 June 1941, 5).

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At this point in the theatrical discourse, we encounter the third and final means of disguising the political role of the stage: the recourse to occupational or academic arguments. While the former invokes the above-mentioned theatre practitioner Laube, in his capacity as dramatist and long-time director of the Vienna Burgtheater, the academic argument takes its cue from none other than Heinz Kindermann, the icon of German-language theatre scholarship at the time. Readers are introduced to Kindermann’s monumental work Die europäische Sendung des deutschen Theaters (“The European Mission of German Drama”, 1944), and its idealisation of the Austrian stage as the cradle of world theatre in the German language. Here, Kindermann is placed on an equal footing with his counterpart in Nazi theatrical practice, Reichsdramaturg (Reich Drama Adviser/National Dramaturge) Rainer Schlösser. Schlösser is presented as the strategist behind the contemporary development of German theatre and the implementation and optimisation of its social function. In addition to Germanisation, this also comprised the aspect of “entertaining the troops”, for which serious and comic plays from the classic and modern repertoire were used. The newspaper’s theatrical discourse generates similar “cultural syntheses” in allowing Kindermann and Schlösser to take their place among classic authors such as Goethe, Molière, de Staël and not least alongside Grillparzer, praised by Austrian Nazis in particular as a “prince among poets” (MZ 21 January 1942, 4). Together with these, they become instruments of the ideological appropriation of literature. And it goes without saying that it falls to the Nazi ideologues, as the supposed guardians of bourgeois cultural heritage, to secure a worthy legacy for the “old masters” of drama and poetry. The final 1943/1944 season bore out the status of Maribor’s German theatre as “functional drama of a reasonably average standard”, according to the judgement of the Regional Propaganda Office in summer 1942 (letter dated 24 July 1942, BArch R 55/21761). At the same time, the recourse—under the cloak of objectivity—to the theory and practice of German theatre, and with it the emphasis on education and entertainment, served merely to disguise the political character of the medium. During the months when the “total wartime deployment of cultural workers” (BArch R 56 III/217) was in force, the practice of harking back to the “great” tradition of German theatre was used to conceal the increasingly hopeless situation of Nazi Germany in the “fields of honour”. In the end, however, it was this desperate military situation and the approach of

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the Soviet Red Army that were chiefly responsible for the abrupt end of German theatre in Maribor after just three seasons.

Conclusion As the course of the war turned against Nazi Germany, the political function of the theatre was openly revealed and legitimised with reference to the changing situation. Thus, the Marburger Zeitung quoted the National Dramaturg’s political endorsement of National Socialism and deferred to the supreme authority—disguised as paternalism—of the Führer. As a “substantive basis” for the exposure and legitimisation of the theatre’s political character, the editors included a statement by Rainer Schlösser in which he nails his political colours to the mast (see MZ 3 November 1943, 6). Drawing on an established theatrical discourse, all aspects of political theatre-making—ideational/aesthetic, occupational and academic—were explored, linked and at the same time transcended in order to legitimise the overall political situation at the time. To return to the historical context of the methods of disguising reality described above: in the Pohorje mountains around Maribor, the brutal repulsion of the “gangs”, as the Nazis called Slovenian resistance fighters or partisans—an action in which theatre director Falzari is also said to have been involved (BArch R55/20406, 274)—was executed with the same consistency as the measures imposed on Slovenia’s civilian population under Nazi racist policies, as mentioned in the introduction. Thus, the strategy of concealing the reality (and its brutality) is revealed as the perverted cultural practice of a dictatorial regime whose days were numbered in autumn 1944, in Slovenian Styria as elsewhere. That said, history has injected a note of tragedy into this essentially positive turn of events, as after the partisans’ liberation of their city and country, the liberators turned into executioners who, like their Nazi predecessors, subjected dissidents and their families to persecution. Only this time, one would be tempted to say, there was a “subtle” difference: this time, the “free world” watched the bloodbath without batting an eyelid, so as not to upset the fragile balance of power in this latest, post-war incarnation of the “new European order”.

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References Birk, Matjaž. 2008. “Man geht in Marburg damit um, ein neues Theater zu bauen --- Die Einwohner und Begüterten der Umgebung steuern freiwillig dazu bei ---”: Literatursoziologisches zu Wechselbeziehungen zwischen der deutschen und der slowenischen Bühne in den 40er Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts. In Gedächtnis – Identität – Differenz: Zur kulturellen Konstruktion des südosteuropäischen Raumes und ihrem deutschsprachigen Kontext. Beiträge des gleichnamigen Symposiums in Lovran/Kroatien, 4–7 October 2007, ed. Marijan Bobinac and Wolfgang Müller-Funk, 85–94. Tübingen: Francke. Bobinac, Marijan. 2013. Nation(en) auf der Bühne. Zu den Anfängen des neueren kroatischen Theaters im Kontext der dominanten deutschsprachigen Kultur. In Die Lust an der Kultur/Theorie. Transdisziplinäre Interventionen für Wolfgang Müller-Funk, ed. Anna Babka, Daniela Finzi, and Clemens Ruthner, 401–412. Vienna and Berlin: Turia + Kant. Cindriˇc, Alojz. 2013. Študentke s Kranjske na dunajski univerzi 1897–1918. Zgodovinski cˇasopis 67 (147) (1–2): 60–85. Eicher, Thomas, Barbara Panse, and Henning Rischbieter. 2000. Theater im ‘Dritten Reich’: Theaterpolitik, Spielplanstruktur, NS-Dramatik. Seelze-Velber: Kallmeyer. Ferenc, Tone. 1968. Nacistiˇcna raznarodovalna politik v Sloveniji 1941–1945. Maribor: Obzorja. Gradwohl Schlacher, Karin. 2018. Literatur in Österreich 1938–1945. Handbuch eines literarischen Systems. Band 4. Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau. Hartman, Bruno. 2001. Kultura v Mariboru. Gibanja, zvrsti, osebnosti. Maribor: Založba Obzorja. Heinrich, Anselm. 2020. Von der Minderheitenbühne zur “Europäischen Sendung des deutschen Theaters”. Linguistica 60 (2): 299–312. Ludvik, Dušan. 1957. Nemško gledališˇce v Ljubljani do leta 1790. Disertacija. Filozofska fakulteta Univerze v Ljubljani, Ljubljana. Mihurko Poniž, Katja. 2012. Nekaj ugotovitev o Linhartovi Miss Jenny Love. ˇ Slavistiˇcna revija. Casopis za jezikoslovje in literarne vede 60 (1): 1–13. Taufar, Walter. 1982. Das deutschsprachige Theater in Marburg an der Drau. Typologie eines Provinztheaters. Dissertation. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Vienna. Žigon, Tanja. 2001. Nemško cˇasopisje na Slovenskem. Ljubljana: Scripta.

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Archival Material German Federal Archives/Bundesarchiv [BArch] Berlin-Lichterfelde: Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda R55/20406, R55/ 21761, R 56 III/217. Reich Finance Ministry R55/864.

Newspaper Articles Annelinus: Bühne auf Vorposten. Marburger Zeitung. 17.8.1943: 6. Gerschack, Anton. Der Steirische Hammerherr. Marburger Zeitung. 14.12.1942: 4. Golob, Friedrich. Der Erbförster. Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzügen von Otto Ludwig. Marburger Zeitung. 16.10.1941: 5. Golob, Friedrich. Das hässliche Entlein. Marburger Zeitung. 16.3.1942: 5. h.a. Das Stadttheater Marburg Mittler deutscher Kultur. Marburger Zeitung. 1.6.1942: 4. Krauth, Hermann. Der Graf von Luxemburg. Marburger Zeitung. 5.6.1941: 5. Lenz, Werner. Grillparzer, der Klassiker der Ostmark. Marburger Zeitung. 21.1.1942: 4. Matzak, Kurt Hildebrand. “Freischütz” in Marburg. Marburger Zeitung. 15.5.1941: 5. N.N. Vom Theater. Marburger Zeitung. 13.1.1905: 2. N.N. Der Führer in Marburg. Marburger Zeitung. 26/27.4.1941: 1–2. N.N. Deutsches Theater in Paris. Marburger Zeitung. 7.10.1941: 4. N.N. Vorhang auf – in den Städten und Dörfern der Untersteiermark. Marburger Zeitung. 8.6.1942: 4. N.N. Das Marburger Stadttheater im ersten Spieljahr. Marburger Zeitung. 18/ 19.7.1942: 4. N.N.: Das deutsche Theater in Agram. Marburger Zeitung. 23.9.1942: 4. N.N. Untersteirer! Marburger Zeitung. 17/18.10.1942: 6. N.N. Die Aufgaben des Theaters im Kriege. Marburger Zeitung. 16.12.1942: 4. N.N. Stadttheater Marburg-Drau. Marburger Zeitung. 23.4.1943: 5. N.N. Das Theater als Waffe zum Sieg. Marburger Zeitung. 3.11.1943: 6. N.N. Bindeglied des neuen Europas. Marburger Zeitung. 2.2.1944: 6. N.N. Der Dichter des “Eingebildeten Kranken”. Marburger Zeitung. 27.4.1944: 6. Schultz: Bergmänner spielen Theater. Marburger Zeitung. 27.5.1943: 4. Vesteneck, Marianne von: Stadttheater Marburg. Marburger Zeitung. 16.6.1941: 5. Zimmer, F. A. Eine Französin als Freundin der Deutschen. Marburger Zeitung. 13.7.1942: 4.

CHAPTER 8

The Prague Theatre Scene During the German Occupation (1939–1945) Volker Mohn

Even the leading theatrical circles [...] have completely abandoned their former cultural Bolshevism and are now seeking to strengthen the Czechs’ spirit of resistance and national pride through the ceaseless glorification of independent Czech culture. And it must be said that the Czechs are masterly at using every available means in terms of word and gesture to achieve the desired propaganda effect among the audience. (Annual Report of 15.3.1940 by the Prague HQ of the SS Security Service, 23)

In its report on the first year of German rule in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Prague HQ of the SS Security Service (SD) painted a remarkable picture of the Czech theatre scene, in which there was no question of comprehensive monitoring or control in accordance with the wishes of the occupying power. Rather, it seems that directors, actors and audience alike were using theatrical performances to express—if not openly, then at least in a manner comprehensible to all

V. Mohn (B) Volkshochschule-Musikschule Bad Homburg, Bad Homburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_8

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concerned—their rejection of the German occupation. Other assessments by German authorities at the time point to a similar conclusion. But how far was the theatre within the Protectorate really controlled? What freedoms did Czech directors, actors and audiences have despite all the restrictions—and for what reasons? How did theatre-makers make use of those freedoms? To what extent did they make conscious choices in the development of their theatres and ensembles under German occupation in order to position themselves and their institutions beyond the purely artistic aspect of their work? What was the role of the German-language theatre scene within the Protectorate at this time? While the theatre was hardly central to the German occupation policy, all the relevant stakeholders were nevertheless aware that the major theatres, especially those in Prague, were places with a rich tradition, but also an emotionally charged history: even in the interwar period, the National Theatre and the Estates Theatre in particular had become embroiled in national conflicts between Germans and Czechs. What consequences did this have for the actions of the occupying power from March 1939 onwards? And what were the aims of German theatre policy in Prague and other cities of the Protectorate more generally?

German Occupation Policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Role of Cultural Policy In order to understand the unique situation of Prague’s cultural life, it is helpful to consider the events shortly before and during the invasion and the early days of German occupation policy. On 14 March 1939, Hitler informed the Czechoslovakian President Emil Hácha during the latter’s visit to Berlin that he had already ordered German troops to march on the city the following day. The only question was where this would lead. In the event of a “tolerable” scenario, Hitler promised the President “a generous amount of independence, autonomy and a degree of national freedom” (Brandes 2001, 119). In view of the hopeless military situation, Hácha yielded to this obvious blackmail, so that the Wehrmacht was able to advance with negligible resistance. At no point was there any question in Hitler’s mind of genuine Czech autonomy. Nevertheless, the state and party leadership in Berlin did at

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least make a show of accommodating the Czechs on this point. The “Decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor concerning the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” issued on 16 March 1939 covered, among other things, the “degree of national freedom” proposed by Hitler, in that the Czechs were promised their own administration. However, this document never amounted to anything more than the appearance of Czech autonomy: in reality, the self-governing administration was counterbalanced by the Office of the Reich Protector who, as “guardian of the Reich’s interests” could always veto the orders of Czech authorities and issue its own instructions in the event of “imminent danger”. This phrase was a deliberately vague one, leaving the door wide open to German interference in the work of Czech officials (Fauth 2004, 8–10). Nonetheless, the decree of 16 March had notable consequences for the subsequent course of events. Significant parts of the administration were left unchanged, with Hácha’s presidency and the existing ministries (apart from foreign affairs and defence) remaining in place. Nor were there any major personnel changes to other authorities at this stage. In this context, cultural policy was accorded particular importance. For all its interventions, controls and restrictions, the Reich Protector’s Office did grant the Czechs a relatively high level of freedom in the cultural sphere. People could still see Czech performances at Prague’s National Theatre or hear the music of Antonín Dvoˇrák and Bedˇrich Smetana at concerts by the Philharmonic Orchestra. The cultural policy instruments used by the occupying power were a combination of sticks and carrots, ranging from financial incentives and awards to threats, arrests and murder. To make sense of Nazi cultural policy within the Protectorate, it needs to be viewed in relation to the occupiers’ wider goals. For the Nazi regime, the key imperative in the Protectorate was to ensure the unhindered use of local industry for the German war economy. While the importance of cultural policy in this context is not immediately obvious, the cultural sector represented a means to an end for the regime. Cultural policy was designed to “prevent unrest” and, as Tim Fauth rightly remarks, “to suppress criticism and resistance to the occupying force from the general public” (Fauth 2004, 88). Openly nationalistic performances could also serve as an outlet through which the Czechs could vent their dissatisfaction with the German occupation in a way that posed no direct risk in the eyes of the occupiers. They were tolerated as long as they refrained from direct criticism (Mohn 2014, 451).

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Despite all the restrictions, the regime continued to allow certain freedoms for tactical reasons. The uniqueness of this situation becomes all the more apparent if we compare the Protectorate with other occupied territories. German cultural policy here can best be likened to that of occupied northern and western European countries such as Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. In the General Government zone, on the other hand, things were very different. Polish intellectuals were treated with brutality from the outset. Polish culture was only tolerated—if at all—at a minimal level. And there was certainly no question of renowned Polish theatres being allowed to remain in operation (Broszat 1972, 272–276; Szarota 2007, 48).

The Development of Prague’s Theatre Scene from the Perspective of the Occupying Regime On the face of it, the theatre was not an easy medium to tackle from the regime’s perspective. Firstly, theatre performances were not as effective as film at transmitting propagandist content. Secondly, while films allowed every stage of production from shooting to screening to be centrally controlled, this was much harder in the case of the theatre. Even if it proved possible to influence the repertoire and personnel appointments, and to censor all scripts thoroughly in advance, there was no guarantee that every performance would turn out as envisaged by the regime. Even if the actors kept to the script approved by the censors, they could lend a whole new meaning to a play simply through facial expressions, gestures or other forms of emphasis. In these circumstances, there was little chance of comprehensive monitoring. This did not deter the Nazi authorities, however: on the contrary, they sought to exploit the potential of the stage as a propaganda medium. Such considerations also shaped the development of the theatre in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and especially Prague. As far as the city’s German theatre scene was concerned, there were at first sight plenty of opportunities for German propaganda: for one thing, the propagandists could point to a rich tradition of renowned German-language theatres in the city, thereby reinforcing the much-touted claim that German culture already boasted a long and successful history in Bohemia and Moravia (Mohn 2014, 51–52). The same goes for the notion of the theatre as the scene of persistent national conflicts. The disputes over major Prague theatres in particular

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could be exploited for this interpretation. The Estates Theatre had first opened its doors in 1783, staging productions mainly in German, but also in Czech. At that time, the national divisions that were to develop later on did not yet exist. Instead, the differences were mostly social: under Habsburg rule, German was the language of the senior bureaucracy, wealthy middle classes and, not least, the nobility. As Sabine Stach notes, Czech performances at the Estates Theatre were chiefly attended by “manual workers, maids and students”, while Czechs of a higher social class, who generally spoke both languages, favoured German-language performances (Stach 2011, 392–393). When calls for a dedicated Czech-language theatre were first raised in the late eighteenth century, they were motivated in no small part by the desire to elevate the status of the language and promote works in Czech. The Czech National Theatre (then known as the Královské cˇ eské zemské a národní divadlo or Royal Bohemian Regional and National Theatre) was eventually opened in 1883, coinciding with a phase of increasing national rivalry and conflict between Germans and Czechs. The reaction from the German-speaking section of the population was swift: in the very same year, the “German Theatre Association” was set up to push for another exclusively German-language theatre. That venue opened its doors in 1888, in the shape of the Neues Deutsches Theater (New German Theatre). Between this period and the turn of the century, as Sabine Stach aptly puts it, “the division between the national theatres had eventually become so entrenched that it was considered unadvisable for a ‘good’ Czech or German to visit the ‘other’ theatre” (Stach 2011, 394). While the German-language cultural scene in Prague had enjoyed numerous privileges prior to 1918/1919, things changed abruptly after the end of the First World War, with the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic. This affected—among other things—the financial situation of the German-language theatre, which now had to make do with much reduced state subsidies while continuing to maintain two major venues, the Neues Deutsches Theater and the Estates Theatre (Stach 2011, 396). This state of affairs did not last for long, however, as there were soon calls within the newly established republic for the Estates Theatre to be annexed to the National Theatre as a second venue. After the initial failure of these negotiations, the national conflicts in Prague reached a new pitch with the occupation and confiscation of the Estates Theatre. On 16 November 1920, a rally by the Czech National Democrats had

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led to riots. Along with other places including the Deutsches Haus (German social centre) and the editorial offices of the German daily Prager Tagblatt, the building was stormed by an angry mob. That evening saw a defiant performance of Bedˇrich Smetana’s Bartered Bride— a work of totemic importance for Czech national culture (Becher 1994, 122–125). The conflicts between the city’s German and Czech theatre cultures persisted over the following years. Not only did a large part of the theatregoing public remain almost exclusively within its own camp, but many directors also largely ignored the artistic work of their counterparts. Such points of conflict were a mainstay of German propaganda during the occupation whenever it harked back to the situation prior to 15 March 1939. According to the regime, German culture in the region boasted a millennia-old tradition, while Czech culture was a much more recent phenomenon. Despite this, the shift in power relations after the First World War had led to regular attempts by the Czechs to suppress this established tradition. Often cited in this context—besides the occupation and confiscation of the Estates Theatre—was the “talkies affair” of autumn 1930, when plans to screen a number of German-language sound films at Prague cinemas sparked anti-German rallies outside the venues concerned. Several big cinemas caved in to the protests and removed the films from their programmes (Koeltzsch 2010, 293–294). In addition to these old sores, the Nazi propagandists also criticised state regulations introduced in the years following the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic which had since put German culture at a severe disadvantage. The main focus of their criticism was a law passed by the National Assembly on 29 February 1920 making “Czechoslovak” the sole national language. One outcome of this development was indeed a reduction in subsidies for German-language ensembles. As the centre of German cultural life in Bohemia and Moravia, Prague was particularly affected by this (Ludvová 2010, 127–128). Although the Nazi propaganda was built around genuine points of conflict, it presented them in a grossly simplified and tendentious manner. Thus, the “Prague HQ of the SS Security Service (SD)” referred to the “cultural emergency” facing the German minority in the 1920s and 1930s: “German culture was suppressed for twenty years by the Czech ruling powers and placed at its mercy in every respect. The aim was to prepare all Germans for denationalisation by means of terror and violence”. Despite this, “German culture” had “closed ranks” and “fought with all available means against disenfranchisement and violation”

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(SD report of 15.3.1940, “Political developments in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia since 15 March 1939”, 8). According to this reading, all conflicts throughout the interwar period had been played out between entirely separate German and Czech cultural spheres. Even so, the propaganda trick of appropriating the existing Germanlanguage theatre scene in Bohemia and Moravia was not an easy one to pull off. There were two main reasons for this: firstly, the Germanspeaking cultural life of interwar Prague had, for the most part, borne absolutely no resemblance to the Nazi concept of “German culture”. This applied not only to modern stylistic trends, but notably also to the participation of Jewish artists and the performance of works defined as “Jewish” by the regime. Since numerous artists of Prague’s Germanspeaking cultural scene in the interwar period were in fact of Jewish origin, the propaganda remained inherently contradictory. Could cultural institutions be cited as an example of German cultural production when their international success was built on the work of Jewish artists? This posed a real problem for the propagandists when it came to Prague’s German theatre. Just a few weeks before the invasion, the news agency “Prager Zeitungsdienst” (PZD) for example praised the theatre’s leading role in the city’s German cultural life while simultaneously piling criticism on the ensemble, most of whose soloists belonged to “the Jewish race”. The same went for the repertoire, which, it claimed, was dominated by plays that “contradicted the healthy sentiments of nonJewish audience members” (report of 20.1.1939 by the Prague News Agency [PZD]). Secondly, if we take a closer look at the situation in the interwar years, we see that conflict was by no means the whole story, even in the case of contested objects such as the Estates Theatre. The occupation of the theatre in November 1920 was already far from uncontroversial: President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, for one, criticised it as anti-constitutional and declined to attend any further performances, and the episode provoked a similarly mixed response in the Czech-language press (Stach 2011, 397– 398). Conversely, there were voices of moderation on the German side: Hans Demetz, for example—who, as drama advisor, had been at the theatre when it was stormed and, as his son Peter Demetz later recorded in his memoirs, “was removed with brute force from his office”—refused to be co-opted by the radical elements of his own camp. Soon afterwards—to the dismay of Prague’s theatre critics—Demetz moved to

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Brno. There, as director of the Vereinigte Deutsche Bühnen (Associated German Theatres), he remained true to his principles, staging not only plays by German authors, but also contemporary Czech works such ˇ as those of Karel Capek (Wessely 2011, 122–123). This in itself constituted a political stand against fascism and the takeover of the theatre by radical forces. In the face of much opposition, Demetz even staged a gala performance in October 1928 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Czechoslovak Republic—a clear gesture of support for the republic and willingness to cooperate with the government in Prague. In his memoirs, Peter Demetz describes how his father insisted on going ahead with the event in spite of resistance, especially from nationalist German students and tells of the boisterous disruption of the Czechoslovakian national anthem during the performance. After the theatre in Brno declined to renew his contract in 1933 and faced with intensifying criticism from radical nationalists since his appointment, Hans Demetz moved to the Wiener Komödie (Vienna Comedy Theatre) (Demetz 2008, 150–151; Wessely 2006, 117). After 1933, the Nazi seizure of power in Germany led—paradoxically—to some astonishing forms of cooperation between several German and Czech-language theatres in Czechoslovakia. A prime example of this in Prague was the Neues Deutsches Theater. Paul Eger, director of the venue from 1932 to 1938 and chairman of the Association of German Theatre Directors in Czechoslovakia, was on the one hand conscious of the intense scrutiny, and hence the pressure, that his profession was under in this emotionally charged environment, and therefore insisted outwardly on the political neutrality of his theatre. On the other hand, it was clear where he stood, simply from his support for political refugees and his consequent drive to recruit as many emigrants from Germany as possible to the ensemble. Many of these were already familiar with the Prague theatre scene from past guest performances, and some were originally from Bohemia and Moravia themselves. Among the re-emigrants was Julius Gellner, whom Eger appointed his senior producer—one of the theatre’s most important roles after Eger’s own. The extent of Geller’s influence is clear from the chosen repertoire: under his direction, the Neues Deutsches Theater staged works by writers such as Arthur Schnitzler, Bertolt Brecht and Erich Kästner, who were already banned in Germany. Moreover, Eger and Gellner also included well-known plays ˇ by Czech authors in their programme, one example being Karel Capek’s

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The Mother (Matka)—a play with a clear anti-fascist message (Demetz 2008, 64–65; Stach 2011, 404–408; Ludvová 2012, 496–572). Paul Eger, and with him Julius Gellner, undoubtedly rank among the key personalities whose decisions not only shaped the artistic output of their theatres, but also positioned them visibly in the political arena. The directors of the Neues Deutsches Theater were not alone in supporting the political refugees arriving in Prague after 1933, however. Many artists and theatregoers on the Czech side also showed similar solidarity. As a result, theatres, actors and audiences from both camps came together in a way that would otherwise have been almost unthinkable. Step by step, the 1930s saw a remarkable cooperation develop between Prague’s German and Czech theatres, with the management on either side taking a stand against the growing pressure exerted by the Nazi regime on cultural activities in Bohemia and Moravia and resisting the increasing appropriation of the theatre for political ends. A key figure at the National Theatre in this respect was the then drama director Otokar Fischer, who ˇ regularly brought openly anti-fascist plays by Karel Capek to the stage. Before curtain up, he would often address the audience in person in order to emphasise the topical relevance of the performances (Stach 2011, 407). As such, he too belonged to the circle of people responsible for giving the theatre scene a whole new purpose and direction. Also striking ˇ is the prominent role of Karel Capek’s works on both the German and Czech side when it came to taking a stand against the emerging force of fascism. A significant collaboration also developed between the actors of Prague’s German and Czech-language theatres in the form of the “German and Czech Stage Artists Club” (Klub cˇ eských a nˇemeckých divadelních pracovníku) ˚ established in 1935. Its 300-plus members— many of whom were communists—were united by a fundamental opposition to fascism. Active on the Czech side were leading employees of the National Theatre, such as opera director Hanuš Thein and Václav Vydra Senior, who worked there as both director and actor. Other members of the club included prominent figures such as the actress Nataša Gollová, the actors and theatre owners Jiˇrí Voskovec and Jan Werich, and the entire theatre ensemble of Emil František Burian. Voskovec and Werich’s “Liberated Theatre” and that of Burian embodied the high standard of progressive drama and of the Czech avant-garde during this period (Stach 2011, 405–406).

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The performances organised by the Club consciously and consistently transcended national divisions and took a stand against national conflicts: ˇ when Jan N. Štˇepánek’s 1812 comedy Czechs and Germans (Cech a Nˇemec) was staged under the directorship of Václav Vydra, for example, it was performed in both German and Czech, with each actor using the respectively opposite language. The Club chose to premiere the play at the Estates Theatre, as a venue which—notably due to the events of 1920—had been emblematic of the conflict between German and Czechlanguage theatre. Taking part on the Czech side—no doubt as a deliberate gesture of conciliation—was an actor named Rudolf Deyl, who had been among the occupiers of the theatre in 1920. Further performances were then staged at both German and Czech theatres in Prague (Stach 2011, 406). Paradoxically, therefore, the wave of emigration to Czechoslovakia prompted by the Nazis’ seizure of power in Germany actually helped to heal the division between German and Czech theatre, with artists of both nationalities standing together in protest. This was only possible for a relatively short time, however: after the Munich Agreement, and certainly after the German invasion in March 1939, there was no longer any question of further collaboration. In autumn 1938, the German and Czech Stage Artists Club changed its name to the “Artists Club” (Klub umˇelcu), ˚ thereby effectively putting an end to its former activities (Dostal 1965). The Neues Deutsches Theater, too, was unable to survive for long in the increasingly tense situation and closed its doors at the beginning of November 1938. Paul Eger emigrated to Switzerland (Mohn 2014, 363). Some Czech theatres were likewise unable to continue operating as before, even during the Second Republic: the more progressive venues, such as Prague’s “Liberated Theatre” (Osvobozené divadlo) under the directorship of Jiˇrí Voskovec and Jan Werich, were also closed in November 1938, with both directors emigrating shortly afterwards. Even traditional venues such as the National Theatre were subject to radical interventions in personnel and artistic policy during this period. Under pressure from the new, national-conservative Czechoslovak government led by Rudolf Beran, young Jewish actors were dismissed and plays which ˇ failed to meet state approval, such as those of Karel Capek, were dropped from the programme (Udolph 2005, 283).

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Monitoring and Control of Czech Theatre During the Occupation Compared to other areas of occupation policy—particularly economic issues—the control of Czech theatre was not a top priority for the Reich Protector’s Office. Nevertheless, the German culture inspectors did take measures at various levels to keep it under surveillance. Their tool of first resort was the pre-censorship and approval of all works to be performed. The German cultural department pulled any plays it defined as “Jewish”, as well as those (with the exception of certain classics) written by British, French and later also Soviet and US authors. Although the regime did not view English or French plays as a threat, the “state of war with the Western powers” was in its eyes “sufficient justification, for purely foreign policy reasons, to curb Western influences on Czech culture, and hence to compel the Czech cultural class to focus more intensively on German cultural heritage than in the past and make it accessible to the Czech people” (Letter of 30.10.1940 from the Prague HQ of the Security Service to Secretary of State Karl Hermann Frank). Also banned were plays which the censors suspected of spreading propaganda against the occupying force. Criticism “between the lines” or anything that could be interpreted as such by the inspectors was duly censored. The implementation of these measures was entrusted to Czech authorities. Up to the end of 1941, responsibility for monitoring Czech theatre was in the hands of the Ministry for Schools and the Interior, supplemented at local level by the regional authorities in Prague and Brno. As a second step, the occupying force instituted a comprehensive surveillance of the productions themselves, with Czech authorities in charge of ensuring order during the performances (Císaˇr 2006, 295). The main purpose behind this, however, was to keep an eye on the actors’ delivery and the audience’s response. “Close attention” was to be paid to “the manner of performance of the whole play, and also in particular the audience reaction”, as the Prague Police Directorate emphasised in an officer briefing of June 1939 (bulletin of 2.6.1939 from the Prague Police Directorate to district police stations). A third important instrument of cultural policy was the granting and renewal of theatre licences. Such decisions rested primarily on the “political reliability” of the theatre in question: if the management adhered to German prescriptions in terms of repertoire and took measures to prevent

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the public from staging “inappropriate rallies”, it had a much better chance of obtaining a licence. Among the records of Prague city council’s theatre department are copious amounts of correspondence with the regional authority on this subject (Archiv hlavního mˇesta Prahy [Archive of the Capital City of Prague], Collection 344 (Divadelní referat [Theatre Department]), Box 24). Responsibility for the pre-censorship and monitoring of performances was also in Czech hands, in the shape of the regional authorities and police, along with other local offices. How far these organisations actually fulfilled the task entrusted to them is hard to judge, but sources indicate that the German authorities were not always happy with their work and repeatedly reminded them of their obligations. A common reproach concerned the Czech authorities’ lack of consistency in excluding authors from enemy nations (Mohn 2014, 366). Furthermore, with more and more of their staff being called up for military service, the German authorities simply did not have the manpower to maintain a comprehensive monitoring system. This did not stop them from making their own direct interventions, however. Checks by the German side were carried out randomly and usually on tip-offs from German security authorities or theatregoers who had taken exception to the allegedly “anti-Reich” bias of a play or observed a marked reaction among the Czech audience (Mohn 2014, 368). And there were other forms of scrutiny, too—not least the fact that the German culture inspectors held the directors of theatrical productions personally accountable for the content and execution of the performances, so that a large proportion of them shrank from the consequences of overly critical stagings (Mohn 2014, 364). A clear turning point in the scrutiny of the Czech theatre scene came in early 1942 when the appointment of Reinhard Heydrich as Deputy Reich Protector ushered in a reorganisation of the administration and autonomous government (Brandes 1969, 217–224). This also led to a change in the regime’s cultural objectives: as far as Karl Freiherr von Gregory, head of the German culture department within the Reich Protector’s Office, was concerned, the aim from now on was to develop Czech theatres into “an educational institution consistent with the Reich ethos” and “introduce a streamlined control policy” (letter of 27.1.1942 from Gregory to Under-Secretary of State Curt von Burgsdorff). To this end, key tasks in this area were transferred to the newly created office—later to become the Ministry for Public Enlightenment—under

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Emanuel Moravec. The censorship and monitoring of performances were stepped up and the inspection of theatre ensembles was greatly intensified. The Ministry concentrated most of the remaining personnel and financial resources that could be spared amid increasing wartime cuts on young Czechs and blue-collar workers—not least, presumably, in a bid to offer them entertainment and distraction from the wartime reality and create the illusion that the Nazi regime had their interests at heart. Incentives designed to win Czech workers and youngsters over to the theatre included concessionary ticket quotas and extra performances (Mohn 2014, 370–371).

“Anti-German Tendencies”: Czech Theatre in Prague During the Occupation Czech theatres faced numerous interventions under German occupation. Despite this, directors were well aware of the possibilities the stage still offered when it came to expressing at least symbolic opposition to German rule. And they realised that a large part of the audience expected critical references of this kind. At the same time, the desire to meet those expectations—particularly on the part of private theatre operators— could also be financially motivated, as performances with an overtly Czech nationalist content guaranteed full houses and a healthy income. The Prague HQ of the SS Security Service (SD) came to the same conclusion, noting that, even among the Czech population, there was a widespread sense that nationalist content allowed “any Czech cultural enterprise to survive nowadays, even if it has nothing of any great quality to offer”. In its view, many plays contained “anti-German” tendencies, regardless of whether critical content was identified in advance by the censors: even apparently innocuous folk songs could, according to the SD’s observations, quickly develop into a “signal to demonstrate” (1940 Annual Report by the Prague HQ of the SS Security Service, 21). When it came to the choice of plays and their style of production, the occupying authorities continued to grant a relatively high level of freedom: in itself, the performance of nineteenth-century classics with a strong Czech nationalist message posed no risk of conflict with German authorities. Indeed, in the theatre as elsewhere, it was a principle of German cultural policy in the Protectorate to leave certain “harmless” niches alone in order to create the illusion that Czech culture remained free to develop undisturbed. It was only when the public reaction grew

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all too loud and clear that German security authorities intervened. When, during Germany’s attack on Poland in September 1939, successive audiences greeted nationalist passages of Bedˇrich Smetana’s Libuše with loud cheers, in one case even unfurling a red-and-white flag across the rows, further performances of the work were immediately banned (status report of 5.10.1939 by the responsible department of the Reich Protector’s Office in Brno). As pressure grew on Czech theatres to increase their quota of German plays, directors generally favoured classical writers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Franz Grillparzer over contemporary works. Yet even in these performances, actors and audience alike found ways of signalling their opposition to the German occupation. This could be done via apparently innocuous passages: when the line “Frei will ich sein im Denken und im Dichten” (“My desire is to be free, free to think and free to write”) earned spontaneous applause at multiple performances of Goethe’s Torquato Tasso, this did not go unnoticed by the regime. The German theatre inspectors reacted by striking the passage abruptly from the script (Kohout 1965, 79). Despite all these controls, the audience “always found its level”, responding to certain passages with spontaneous applause, as the actor Zdenˇek Štˇepánek also records in his memoirs. As he recalls, when the words “The night is long that never finds the day” (IV.iii.272) were uttered at a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the National Theatre, the audience automatically associated them with the German occupation and their hope that it would soon be over. In this way, performances frequently assumed a very different meaning for the audience than that anticipated by the censoring authorities (Štˇepánek 1961, 221–222). In addition, actors used a range of methods to offer a critical “reading between the lines” and voice symbolic resistance, such as enunciation and emphasis, deliberate pauses between certain words and, not least, facial expression and gestures. Czech directors who made frequent and effective use of these techniques in their productions included Emil František Burian, Jindˇrich Honzl, Karel Dostál and Jiˇrí Frejka (Císaˇr 2006, 295). In Prague especially, the rich and vibrant Czech theatre scene was frequently subject to intervention by the German authorities. The main targets were renowned public venues such as the National Theatre. Not least because of the latter’s symbolic importance for the Czech national

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consciousness, the Nazi regime did not only interfere in matters of repertoire, but also reorganised the city’s stages to the detriment of the National Theatre, which could now no longer use the Estates Theatre as a second main venue. Following a temporary closure, the building was reopened in October 1939 as the “Deutsches Schauspielhaus”, and was used thereafter under the auspices of Prague’s German theatre. The occupying regime did not fail to exploit this opportunity for a propaganda coup in the media, presenting the move as “reparation” for the confiscation of the theatre in 1920. (Demetz 2008, 246). By way of compensation, the National Theatre was assigned the smaller, former variety theatre in Prague-Karlín, which it used from then on as an adjunct to the main venue on the banks of the Moldau. Pressure was also exerted on individual actors if they failed to adapt sufficiently to the official line. Zdenˇek Štˇepánek was among several actors whose memoirs recall the experience of being summoned to a personal interview and alerted to their “shortcomings” (Štˇepánek 1961, 232–235; Vydra 1965, 29). Nevertheless, even though the management of the National Theatre was constantly forced to make painful compromises in order to prevent the German culture czars at the Reich Protector’s Office from carrying out their persistent threat of closure, the theatre was able to remain in operation until the general closure of all cultural institutions at the beginning of September 1944. Another reason for this may have been the regime’s awareness that the National Theatre was one of the best tools in its arsenal when it came to demonstrating the allegedly great potential of Czech theatre and preserving the appearance of cultural autonomy (Mohn 2014, 348). Not all of Prague’s theatres were lucky enough to continue in this way, however: the Vinohrady Theatre (Vinohradské divadlo), for example, was closed until further notice under the state of emergency imposed following Reinhard Heydrich’s arrival in the city in autumn 1941. While the official reason given was a failure of personnel policy on the part of the management and an excessively critical attitude among elements of the ensemble towards the occupying power, the closure was in fact partly due to provisional plans by Reinhard Heydrich to replace the theatre with a large-scale German variety stage. The Vinohrady was not reopened until February 1943—and then in an entirely different form and under the direct supervision and control of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment or its agencies (Mohn 2014, 382).

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At the same time, Prague’s Czech theatre scene was also shaped by numerous private playhouses of various persuasions. One of the most artistically ambitious and progressive of these was Emil František Burian’s “Divadlo D”. This avant-garde venue had already become famous in the interwar period, mainly due to its combination of spoken text, light effects, music and film, as well as experimental modes of performance such as the so-called voiceband method. Burian’s choice of repertoire showed a preference for Czech prose works, which he adapted accordingly for his productions. Even under German occupation, his stagings remained progressive and were regularly peppered with thinly disguised political references. Burian’s production of Viktor Dyk’s The Ratcatcher (Krysaˇr ) features, as Peter Demetz recalls, a protagonist “closely resembling Hitler” (Demetz 2008, 247–248), and he never shied away from risk in his work. The reaction of the occupying regime followed in March 1941: the Divadlo D was closed and Burian was arrested along with several of his staff (Hais 1946, 93). His was not the only Prague theatre to favour modern, progressive productions during the occupation, however: private venues such as the Divadélko pro 99 (“Little Theatre for 99”) and the Vˇetrník (“Windmill”) were also part of this tradition (Císaˇr 2006, 297–298, 307–308). Most of these were started by young left-wing intellectuals, whose productions conformed neither in artistic form nor in content to the notions of the German authorities (Mohn 2014, 385).

Prestige Projects: The Promotion of a German Theatre Scene in Prague German theatre policy in the Protectorate was not only aimed at controlling the output of Czech theatres: it also sought to establish a German theatre scene in keeping with the artistic agenda of the regime. German theatres were supported with large subsidies in several cities of the Protectorate, though once again the main focus was on Prague. In the midst of the war, a large sum of money was invested with the aim of matching the internationally renowned Czech competition with German productions of at least equal quality. The occupying regime’s vision of German cultural advancement bore little resemblance to German cultural life in Prague during the interwar years. Actors of Jewish origin were excluded, along with anyone who had taken an overt political stance against National Socialism in the preceding years. The repertoire, too, underwent a rapid and radical upheaval, with

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works that were defined by the German authorities as “Jewish” or were simply inconsistent with the artistic agenda quickly disappearing from the programme. The cleansing of “Liberal Jewish and pro-Czech influences” was now complete, as the Prague Security Service HQ concluded as early as 1940 (Annual Report of the Prague Security Service HQ for 1940, 6). In Prague in particular, German theatres soon developed into a prestige object of cultural policy and were heavily invested in by the Reich, with subsidies for running costs alone virtually doubling between 1939 (RM 1.4 million) and 1943 (RM 2.6 million) (Drewniak 1983, 81). The main authority responsible for the monitoring, control and systematic advancement of German theatres was the German cultural department of the Reich Protector’s Office. There was also input from Berlin, however, in the shape of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. That is to say, Joseph Goebbels and his staff retained a say in key personnel decisions, as well as the last word in matters of repertoire (Mohn 2014, 391). In return, the theatres enjoyed handsome subsidies from the Reich. The activities of the Ministry were particularly extensive in Prague, whose theatres were formally designated as “Reich theatres” in September 1941, meaning, among other things, that their budget was then managed directly via the Berlin Ministry. In Prague, there were three venues available for German productions: the “Kleine Bühne” had served as a substitute for the Estates Theatre before the period of occupation, and was now used for plays. Musical events were held in the building of the Neues Deutsches Theater near the main station (now the Czech Opera House). Most important for the cultural planners in the Reich Protector’s Office however was the Estates Theatre which, as mentioned, operated under the name “Deutsches Schauspielhaus” from October 1939. In autumn 1939, the role of artistic director of Prague’s German theatres was assumed by Oskar Walleck, a native of Brno. With the support of the Propaganda Ministry, Walleck had made a name for himself in Germany in the 30s and, in addition to various positions at theatres in Braunschweig and Munich, had been appointed to the Presidential Council of the Reich Chamber of Culture’s theatre department by Goebbels in 1935 (Klee 2007, 642). From the outset, Walleck left neither his bosses nor the press in any doubt as to the scope of his vision for the future of German theatre in the Moldau metropolis. Before he had even finished building an operetta, he was already dreaming of a high-quality permanent opera. This would

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not only rival the quality of the city’s renowned Czech competition, but would go on to become the “foreign opera of the German Reich” for post-war touring purposes. Walleck was convinced that additional “overseas performances” were “likely to be required after the war”, and anticipated a demand in Japan and South America. Such notions did not appeal to Goebbels, however, who advised Walleck that this was “not the right path” and expressed his opposition to the establishment of a German opera in Prague (correspondence of October 1940 between Oskar Walleck and Joseph Goebbels, Národni archiv Praha). Instead, Walleck organised a range of guest performances by renowned international ensembles in Prague. The invitees came from venues such as La Scala Milan, the Vienna Opera and the Berlin Schauspielhaus (Demetz 2008, 255). Once again, considerable sums were invested in Prague’s German theatres. At first, Walleck’s superiors had no problem with this. But the director came increasingly into conflict with the Prague culture department in other matters beside the theatre. Above all, they saw him as frequently lacking in discernment on cultural policy. For one thing, Walleck failed to honour his obligation to exclude Czech ensembles. At the end of 1939, he spoke to the Prague news agency about his “excellent cooperative relationship” with Czech colleagues (“An Interview with Oskar Walleck”, 19.12.1939). What’s more—to his bosses’ surprise— Walleck followed up his words with action, planning guest performances at major Czech venues such as the regional theatre in Brno, as well as Prague’s National Theatre. In November 1941, after repeated criticisms from his Prague overlords had failed to deter Walleck from further attempts of this kind, the culture department of the Reich Protector’s Office warned him and all other German theatre directors in no uncertain terms that German artists were “strictly forbidden to work at Czech theatres, music halls or similar establishments” (bulletin of 29.11.1941 from the culture department to German theatre directors). Soon afterwards, these and other reproaches regarding personnel and budgetary matters saw Walleck finally fall into disfavour with his superiors (Fauth 2004, 79–80). All the same, the fact that the Reich Protector’s Office—instead of conferring with Goebbels and his staff—had taken it upon itself to pressurise Walleck into terminating his own contract at the end of the 1943/1944 season led to much ill feeling between the Office and the Ministry of Propaganda (Mohn 2014, 397). However, since the activities of Prague’s German theatres came to a halt anyway

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with the closure of most venues in September 1944, the reign of Walleck’s successor, Kinner von Dressler, proved extremely short and no longer carried any real significance. The fact that Oskar Walleck, as the leading figure in Prague’s German theatre scene during the occupation, contradicted his bosses on multiple occasions, and that his planned collaborations with Czech ensembles ran counter to their cultural policy agenda, did not necessarily spring from a concern about content or political message. At least, directors like Walleck were certainly not critical of the regime, but were instead largely guided by their own artistic interests. Exactly what motivated the then SS colonel’s behaviour, however, is not entirely clear from the available sources. That he was one of the prime movers of the Prague theatre scene during his tenure is beyond doubt. However different his circumstances from those of the other directors mentioned above, he too influenced the direction of his theatre, sometimes leading it down paths inconsistent with his superiors’ wishes. As for the division of roles between the Prague culture department and the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda on the other hand, a clearer picture emerges—not least in terms of the many conflicts of responsibility between the two authorities. While large sums were invested in the development of the city’s German theatres, there does not appear to have been a uniform line among cultural policymakers on the German side even on this prestige project. In any case, the separation between Czech and German ensembles proved harder to maintain than the officials in the Reich Protector’s Office had envisaged. For one thing, increasing conscription to the Wehrmacht made it virtually impossible to recruit the staff necessary for a further expansion of Prague’s cultural life. The same was true of flagship projects such as the establishment of a German operetta. In early April 1942—shortly before the approval of a RM 420,000 subsidy by the Reich Finance Ministry—Walleck had conceded that the chorus and ballet of the operetta would probably also have to “resort to Czech personnel, albeit under strictly German management”. Barely two months later— after the approval of the Reich subsidy—he was forced to change his tune, admitting to his bosses that the chorus and ballet had consisted almost exclusively of Czechs from the start. The 37-strong choir was “entirely Czech”, and the ballet—apart from two “female Reich German soloists”—had also been recruited solely from Czechs (see the records of

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the culture department of the Reich Protector’s Office for April to June 1942, Národní archiv Praha). The situation was a paradoxical one: in order to match the high standard of Czech cultural activity in Prague with German offerings of equal quality, German authorities had defied wartime restrictions and invested considerable funds in prestige projects. The majority of the artists performing to German audiences, however—apart from those in speaking and solo roles—were Czech (Fauth 2004, 76–78). Some of these same musicians and dancers also performed in the Czech ensembles that the occupying regime had sought to rival in the first place. In effect, therefore, the Reich Protector’s Office found itself veering ever further from its stated objective of minimising contact between German and Czech artists. Despite this, the performances were presented as a “success” by the German authorities—although German press reviews of events such as the “grand opening” of the German operetta in Prague only mentioned the names of the German soloists, not those of their Czech colleagues (Mohn 2014, 333–334). The problem was not just that the project to establish a German theatre scene failed to do justice to the investment poured into it: the achievements of German theatre policy in general were also patchy, often lacking a clear line. Despite the multi-layered control mechanisms, the sheer size of the theatre landscape made comprehensive scrutiny impossible. In the case of the numerous private Czech theatres in particular, some loopholes were inevitable, which their directors exploited in various ways. Some niches at least were deliberately left untouched for tactical reasons. A survey of the development of Prague’s theatre scene under German occupation reveals all too clearly the complexity and also the contradictions of German cultural policy, as well as the reactions it provoked.

Agenda Setting---The Role of Dramaturgical and Institutional Directors On both the German and Czech side, those responsible for programming also exerted a degree of influence that should not be underestimated, and which went beyond the artistic orientation of their establishments. Diverse as the above-given examples are, directors and drama advisors in key positions invariably succeeded in putting their own stamp on their respective theatres. This was already the case in the interwar period: Hans Demetz, for one, refused to be deterred from his course even after the

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1920 occupation of the Estates Theatre, which he experienced at first hand—or indeed to be co-opted by radical forces in his own camp. And in his subsequent post at the Vereinigte Deutsche Bühnen (Associated German Theatres) in Brno, he continued to make a conscious stand, notably through his choice of works and through events such as the gala performance on the tenth anniversary of the Czechoslovak Republic. As for Prague’s Neues Deutsches Theater, its director Paul Eger was particularly influential. While preserving an outward appearance of political neutrality and seeming at times to steer a rather cautious course between political positions, he actually pursued a consistent line: his clear endorsement of the Czechoslovak Republic, and not least his support for political refugees from Germany after 1933, already suggest that he made no secret of his views, and as such he shaped the development of the Neues Deutsches Theater at the time. This approach was no doubt very helpful in bringing about a rapprochement with the Czech theatre. Over at the National Theatre, a similar role was performed by figures such as the drama director Otokar Fischer. Fischer’s stance was clear from his choice of repertoire, as well as his practice of addressing the audience directly before the start of each performance. During this phase, directors on both the German and Czech side regularly used works such as those ˇ of Karel Capek to fly the flag of democracy and warn against the rising tide of fascism. Besides those at the helm of the traditional theatres, however, a key part was also played by the directors of smaller, avant-garde private venues, such as Emil František Burian or Voskovec and Werich. They not only positioned themselves through the content and style of their productions, but were also active in the German and Czech Stage Artists Club, banding together with their German-speaking colleagues to resist the monopolisation of the theatre, a fate which, in the case of Prague, they were indeed able to stave off until 1938—a comparatively long time. During the German occupation, fewer possibilities of this kind were open to those in positions of dramaturgical and institutional responsibility. Even so, Czech theatre directors found various ways of evading scrutiny: their choice of repertoire alone sent a visible message to theatregoers, while the gaps were filled in by actors and audience, so that even hints between the lines or a particular facial expression or gesture could be guaranteed to hit home. Often though, such liberties were deliberately allowed by the German authorities. More obvious instances of agendasetting by directors, drama advisors or owners of private theatres were

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far more risky in the Protectorate, and the authorities reacted—as in the case of Emil František Burian—by closing the theatre and arresting those responsible. Not to be underestimated is the fact that the decision-makers were made personally responsible for their actions by German officials, and could expect to be held to account if they overstepped the mark, thus ensuring—so the authorities hoped—a form of “self-censorship”. In this way, the occupation period became a balancing act for most of those in key positions at Czech theatres, as they attempted to give visible expression to their opposition to the regime without jeopardising their own ensembles and careers.

References Becher, Peter. 1994. Kulturpolitische Konfliktherde in der Ersten Republik. Der Streit um das Prager Ständetheater 1920 und die Prager Tonfilmaffäre 1930. In Das Scheitern der Verständigung. Tschechen, Deutsche und Slowaken in der Ersten Republik (1918–1938), ed. Jörg K. Hoensch and Dušan Kováˇc, 119– 134. Essen: Klartext. Brandes, Detlef. 1969. Die Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat. Besatzungspolitik, Kollaboration und Widerstand im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren bis Heydrichs Tod (1939–1942), Bd. 1. München: Oldenbourg. Brandes, Detlef. 2001. Nationalsozialistische Tschechenpolitik. In Begegnung und Konflikt. Schlaglichter auf das Verhältnis zwischen Tschechen, Slowaken und Deutschen 1818–1989, ed. Jörg K. Hoensch and Hans Lemberg, 119–136. Essen: Klartext. Broszat, Martin. 1972. Zweihundert Jahre deutsche Polenpolitik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Císaˇr, Jan. 2006. Pˇrehled d˘ejin cˇeského divadla. Praha: Akademie múzických umˇení. Demetz, Peter. 2008. Prague in danger. The years of German occupation, 1939– 45. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Dostal, Karel. 1965. Klub umˇelcu. ˚ In Theater – Divadlo: Vzpomínky cˇeských divadelníku˚ na nˇemeckou okupaci a druhou svˇetovou válku, ed. František ˇ Cerný, 81–85. Praha: Orbis. Drewniak, Bogusław. 1983. Das Theater im NS-Staat. Düsseldorf: Droste. Fauth, Tim. 2004. Deutsche Kulturpolitik im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren 1939 bis 1941. Göttingen: V&R unipress. Hais, František. 1946. Mˇestská divadla pražská za okupace. In Šest let okupace Prahy, ed. Václav Buben, 93–96. Praha: Osv˘etový odbor Hlavního m˘esta Prahy.

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Klee, Ernst. 2007. Das Kulturlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer. Koeltzsch, Ines. 2010. Tschechisch- und deutschsprachige Kinowelten im Prag der Zwischenkriegszeit an der Schnittstelle von Unterhaltungskultur, Wirtschaft und Politik. In Kultur als Vehikel und als Opponent politischer Absichten. Kulturkontakte zwischen Deutschen, Tschechen und Slowaken von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis in die 1980er Jahre, ed. Michaela Marek et al., 279–297. Essen: Klartext. Kohout, Eduard. 1965. Zápas s vlajkou hákového kˇríže. In Theater – Divadlo: Vzpomínky cˇeských divadelníku˚ na nˇemeckou okupaci a druhou svˇetovou válku, ˇ ed. František Cerný, 78–80. Praha: Orbis. Ludvová, Jitka. 2010. Die deutsche Literatur und der tschechoslowakische Staat. In Praha – Prag 1900–1945. Literaturstadt zweier Sprachen, ed. Peter Becher and Anna Knechtel, 125–142. Passau: Stutz. Ludvová, Jitka. 2012. Až k hoˇrkému konci: Pražské nˇemecké divadlo 1845–1945. Praha: Academia. Mohn, Volker. 2014. NS-Kulturpolitik im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren. Konzepte, Praktiken, Reaktionen. Essen: Klartext. Stach, Sabine. 2011. Theaterwelten zwischen Nation und Staat. Tschechisches und deutsches Theater in Prag in der Zwischenkriegszeit. Bohemia 51: 389– 415. Štˇepánek, Zdenˇek. 1961. Herec. Vzpomínky národního umˇelce Zdenka ˇ Štˇepánka. Praha: Mladá fronta. Szarota, Tomasz. 2007. Alltag in Warschau und anderen besetzten Hauptstädten. In Evropská velkomˇesta za druhé svˇetové války: Každodennost okupovaného velkomˇesta. Praha 1939–1945 v evropském srovnání, ed. Olga Fejtová, Václav Ledvinka, and Jiˇrí Pešek, 41–56. Praha: Archiv hlavního mˇesta Prahy/ Scriptorium. Udolph, Ludger. 2005. Zur tschechischen Literatur der Jahre 1939 bis 1945. In Literatur unter dem Hakenkreuz. Böhmen und Mähren 1938–1945, ed. Peter Becher and Ingeborg Fiala-Fürst, 283–306. Furth im Wald: Vitalis. Vydra, Václav. 1965. Tlak budil protitlak. In Theater – Divadlo: Vzpomínky cˇeských divadelníku˚ na nˇemeckou okupaci a druhou svˇetovou válku, ed. František ˇ Cerný, 28–31. Praha: Orbis. Wessely, Katharina. 2006. Die Wege der Schauspieler des Brünner deutschen Theaters nach 1938. Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente 13: 115–149. Wessely, Katharina. 2011. Theater der Identität. Das Brünner deutsche Theater in der Zwischenkriegszeit. Bielefeld: transcript.

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Archival Material Annual report by the Prague Security Service HQ “Political developments in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia since 15 March 1939” (15.3.1940) Národní archiv Praha, Fond 114 (Úˇrad ˇríšského protektora), 114-9-22. Annual report for 1940 by the Prague Security Service HQ. Národní archiv Praha, Fond 114 (Úˇrad ˇríšského protektora) 114-9-25. Bulletin of 2.6.1939 from the Prague Police Directorate to district police stations. Archiv hlavního mˇesta Prahy, Fond 344 (Divadelní referat), Box 2. Bulletin of 29.11.1941 from the culture department of the Reich Protector’s ˇ (Úˇrad Office to German theatre directors. Národní archiv Praha, Fond ÚRP ˇríšského protektora), Box 1135. Correspondence between Oskar Walleck and Joseph Goebbels, October 1940. ˇ (Úˇrad ˇríšského protektora), Box 1138. Národní archiv Praha, Fond ÚRP Letter of 30.10.1940 from the Prague Security Service HQ to Karl Hermann ˇ Frank. Národní archiv Praha, Fond ÚRP (Úˇrad ˇríšského protektora), Box 1134, pp. 431–432. Letter of 27.1.1942 from Karl Freiherr von Gregory to Under-Secretary of State Curt von Burgsdorff. Národní archiv Praha, Fond 109 (Státní tajemník u ˇríšského protektora), 109-4-1503, p. 58 f. Prager Zeitungsdienst (PZD), report of 20.1.1939. Národní archiv Praha, Fond ˇ (Úˇrad ˇríšského protektora), Box 1157. ÚRP Prager Zeitungsdienst (PZD), interview of 19.12.1939 with Oskar Walleck. ˇ (Úˇrad ˇríšského protektora, Box 1157. Národní archiv Praha, Fond ÚRP Records of the theatre department of Prague City Council: Archiv hlavního mˇesta Prahy, Fond 344 (Divadelní referat), Box 24. Records of the culture department of the Reich Protector’s Office, April to ˇ (Úˇrad ˇríšského protektora), June 1942. Národní archiv Praha, Fond ÚRP Box 1138. Report of 15.3.1940 by the Prague Security Service HQ on “political developments in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia since 15 March 1939”. Národní archiv Praha, Fond 114 (Úˇrad ˇríšského protektora), 114-9-22. Status report of 5.10.1939 by the responsible unit of the Reich Protector’s Office in Brno regarding the performance of 19 September by the Brno ˇ (Úˇrad ˇríšského protektora), regional theatre. Národní archiv Praha, Fond ÚRP Box 279, pp. 7–17.

CHAPTER 9

The German Theatre in Oslo Anselm Heinrich

Scandinavia held an important place in National Socialist propaganda, and Norway appeared to be particularly close to Germany. According to racial theorists such as Hans F. K. Günther Germans and Scandinavians shared many characteristics and belonged to the same “Nordic race”. This “Aryan” race was superior to any other and rightly claimed global dominance. Norwegians in particular displayed positive characteristics (“ability to judge, truthfulness, energy” [Günther 1933, 192]) and an appearance of natural superiority, according to Günther. The non- Scandinavian regularly encounters people (in Norway and Sweden – A.H.) which he assumes to belong to a higher social class (than they actually are – A.H.)”, for example, “a chamber maid that based on her looks, attitude, and appearance, he would naturally assume to be a lady”. (Günther 1927, 77–78)

A. Heinrich (B) School of Culture and Creative Arts, Glasgow University, Glasgow, Scotland, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_9

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A race in fact, which had supplied “western civilization with its ruling classes during its most productive times” (Günther 1927, 79). Norway was also seen as a model because the process of Entnordung (a process of becoming less Nordic according to Günther) had not yet taken place there. By contrast, Germany was in danger of losing its “Nordic” character due to a growing influence of Slavs and other “inferior Eastern races”. The loss of its Aryan identity was, according to Günther, doubly dangerous because the “racial deterioration” would be followed by a social one as race did not only determine a society’s physiognomy but also more general characteristics and behaviours. Not surprisingly, Günther concluded that in the past nations had always faced decline as soon as the proportion of the Nordic influence in their bloodstream had been reduced. The Entnordung would, therefore, deprive the Germans of their most important racial “ingredient” and reverse the development of the German nation from a role destined to rule to one doomed to disintegrate (Günther 1926, 51–54, 83–85; 1927, 83; 1933, 418–420). Based on these theories, strategic links to Scandinavia were crucial in order to establish and grow “racial alliances”, and Norway in particular was seen as a natural ally. With the Nazi takeover of power in 1933 everything Norwegian became fashionable. Knut Hamsun became one of the most widely read novelists, Norway extended its attraction as a holiday destination, and many Germans envied the country’s Viking past. In early April 1934, Adolf Hitler went on a little advertised “private” trip to Norway on board the new battleship Deutschland. Following a last minute change in the schedule, the ship sailed into the Sogne Fjord in order to enjoy Norway’s “scenic beauty”—and, according to contemporary reports, Hitler was deeply impressed. Both the short notice and clear mismatch of a low key private trip on board of Germany’s newest battleship and in the presence of both Germany’s naval commander in chief Raeder and war minister Blomberg, caused diplomatic headaches though (Stratigakos 2020, 1). At the end of the 1930s and up to early 1940, German artists were regular visitors in Oslo, including leading stars such as the actor Heinrich George, the conductor Wihelm Furtwängler and the world famous boys’ choir Wiener Sängerknaben (Drewniak 1983, 123–124). German commentators stressed the strong German-Norwegian links in commerce

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and trade, in architecture and the arts. They established a narrative of powerful German roots in the country via the Hanseatic League, for example, and claimed that German-born architect Heinrich Ernst Schirmer had significantly influenced Norway’s built environment during the nineteenth century (Stratigakos 2020, 25–26). Historical links, an admiration for Norway’s natural beauty, and the fact that according to Nazi racial theory the Norwegians were seen as “Aryan brothers” meant that Norway, although occupied and bereft of its national independence, was presented almost as an equal partner, and the occupation as a “homecoming”. The Norwegians “were to be convinced rather than compelled—steered gently towards the glorious National Socialist future that they did not yet realise they wanted” (Stratigakos 2020, 25–26). In time the Norwegians would realise that collaboration with the Germans was in their own interest, too, a biological necessity in order to ensure the survival of the superior Aryan race. German soldiers were openly encouraged to be “friendly” to Norwegian women and by the end of the war between 10,000 and 12,000 children had been fathered by members of the German occupation force. The Norwegian Lebensborn branch was especially set up to care for these “racially worthy” children (Nilsen 2019, 181). In this context, opening and operating a German language theatre and opera house in Oslo were meant to send a strong signal not only to the Norwegians but also the other Scandinavian nations, too. Although Norway had, regrettably, not welcomed the invading German forces with open arms in April 1940, but instead chose to side with the Allies, the German occupiers extended a “warm welcome” and attempted to win over the population with a significant investment in the arts. The Oslo German theatre and opera house played a key role in these attempts. In the following, I will chart the main threads in this development and link them to wider issues in German cultural politics in occupied Europe. In doing so, I will attempt to work out the significant discrepancies between hopes of a powerful German theatre sowing the seeds for racial alliances, and the reality of a venture with spiralling costs, nebulous governance structures and a pedestrian repertoire that lacked the support of the very people it sought to attract.

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Occupation On 9 April 1940, German forces attacked Norway. They took the Norwegians by surprise and within hours had seized control of the strategically important coastal towns and naval bases. Norwegians coastal towns held significant importance both as bases for the German navy in an attempt to gain control over the North Atlantic and to deter Allied attempts of invading Norway themselves, and for economic reasons as German ships transported Swedish iron ore over the North Sea to Germany (Holland 2016, 238–278). King Haakon VII fled into exile to Britain, and on 10 June, the Norwegian army surrendered. Norwegian resistance had been fierce and—particularly for the German Navy—costly. Even before the Norwegians had capitulated Hitler appointed Josef Terboven as Reich Commissioner and head of the civilian occupation regime. Mirroring similar vagaries in governance structures in Germany, however, Terboven was hardly in charge. Vying for control in Norway were also Wehrmacht general Paul Nikolaus von Falkenhorst (Germany’s military commander and head of a significant German occupation force totalling around 300,000 men), Vidkun Quisling (leader of the Norwegian Fascist National Unity party and from February 1942 head of Norway’s puppet government) and the SS. Even the role of Reich Commissioner itself was never properly defined and could take different forms depending on where the postholder held office.1 What all the different protagonists had in common was an interest to assert control over the arts. Not surprisingly, this intention became a source of irritation for the German central government in Berlin where propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was keen to keep his hold over cultural matters. Therefore, the Berlin propaganda ministry sought to clarify its leadership over a future German theatre in Oslo by guaranteeing all necessary subsidies upfront. In doing so, the ministry made no attempt to hide the close link between subsidies and control. When agreeing the funds, Eugen Hadamovsky noted that the Oslo theatre was a “cultural propaganda matter which the minister [i.e. Goebbels—A.H.] has to influence directly

1 There were other Reich Commissioners instated in the Netherlands, in the Baltic region and in the Ukraine, as well as similar roles in Poland (governor general) and in the former Czechoslovakia (Reichsprotektor).

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every step of the way” (BArch R55/20543, 449). The way the theatre was set up further strengthened the connection to Germany, as it was run as a joint operation with the Berlin Theater des Volkes (which in turn was in large part subsidised by the propaganda ministry). What the Nazis had in mind quickly became clear: a representative German theatre with a German repertoire and an imported professional German ensemble, lavishly funded with subsidies from Berlin, performing uplifting German drama and opera to German and Norwegian audiences, who appreciated the gesture and the investment, and accepted the invitation to see the venture as an artistic expression of a political and racial bond. The German theatre project was part of a wider programme of investment and planning which included infrastructure, the building of new military and industrial facilities and even whole towns. In fact, by 1943, Norway had been turned “into a vast construction zone”. The Germans built highways, tunnels and bridges, railroads, airfields, docks, power stations, “modern telecommunications, fish-processing plants, aluminium smelters and refineries, [an] entire network of public works as well as commercial and industrial facilities” (Stratigakos 2020, 38, 41). There were massive reconstruction programmes for the cities of Narvik and Molde, and plans for an entirely new city and naval base west of Trondheim for 300,000 inhabitants. The occupiers also built a number of large soldiers’ homes for recreational purposes. All of these homes also comprised of theatres which hosted travelling companies from Germany. Despina Stratigakos argues that these soldiers’ homes in and of themselves can be seen as performative as they required “their users to continually perform (and thereby legitimise and reinforce) their German identity” (Stratigakos 2020, 113).

Setting up a German Theatre After the invasion, the German media stressed the role of the performing arts in “rebuilding Norway”. On occasion of his visit to Norway in September 1940, the journalist Bruno Roemisch was keen to convey the changes following the occupation. Whereas in April 1940, the Oslo National Theatre had been filled with hay sacks and used as makeshift

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accommodation for German soldiers, by September the playhouse had been restored to its former glory replacing “soldiers’ snores” with the “delicate violin notes of Lehár’s The Merry Widow” (Roemisch 1940). However, for the German occupiers, it was not sufficient to perform in the Norwegian National Theatre they wanted to have their own playhouse. Until then they organised performances by high-profile touring companies. In autumn 1940, the prestigious Hamburg state opera and philharmonic orchestra, the Berlin Theater am Nollendorfplatz and the famous Leipzig Thomaner-Chor performed in Norway. Other visiting companies included the ballet ensemble of the Berlin Deutsches Opernhaus, and the Hamburg state theatre with Goethe’s Faust. These performances were accompanied by special editions of programme notes and promotional material. When the Hamburg state opera came to Oslo in 1940 a glossy 40 page booklet was published to mark the occasion (BArch R55/20543, 52–91). These performances, though, came at a price. The visit of the Hamburg state opera cost RM 50,000 plus expenses, the Theater am Nollendorfplatz came with 170 people at a cost of RM 166,000 to perform a programme of operettas and ballets, and the tour of the Deutsches Opernhaus ballet ensemble cost RM 190,000. By way of comparison, an average monthly salary for a German actor at the time was between RM 200 and RM 600 depending on the prestige of the theatre they were employed at (BArch R55/20543, 93, 140, 166, 191, 377, 646, 704). For the German occupiers, however, this investment, the costs for which were split between the Berlin propaganda ministry and the Reich commissariat in Oslo, was money well spent (BArch R55/20543, 377). Their intention was not only to offer performances of the highest quality and show off Germany’s cultural might, but also to build bridges between Germany and Norway and reduce anti-German sentiments in the Norwegian population. German ensembles touring through Norway were well aware of anti-German sentiments among the population and their own role to alleviate “fears”. After a tour to a number of Norwegian cities in early 1941, the artistic director of the Hamburg state theatre Karl Wüstenhagen was evidently relieved to report to Herr Schlösser in Berlin that even in Bergen (a city people had told him was still “150% English”) performances had gone down well (BArch R55/20543, 743). Festivals such as the German Arts Week or the 1943 Grieg centenary, touring

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exhibitions, new museums, publications, awards and numerous smallerscale events were further meant to attract Germans from the Altreich to the recently occupied territories (Custodis and Mattes 2020, 234, 236).2 They were also intended to send a powerful message both to Norwegians and the outside world that this new Germany was a cultured nation and took its “obligations” seriously. Note, however, that these “obligations” never meant a true exchange of ideas and practices between equals but Germany taking on the role as the senior partner, as patron and benign benefactor. According to this understanding, Norwegian artists could learn from the Germans but never the other way round. To this end, a number of leading Norwegian theatre practitioners were invited to Germany in May 1941 in order to “learn from their masters”. The Germans put on a real show to prove their superiority, they invited their guests back-stage and into workshops and rehearsal spaces to show off the latest technical equipment that they were able to work with. Eleven Norwegians were invited, they were taken to Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Vienna and Prague, and Goebbels himself paid RM 10,000 for the trip (BArch R55/20543, 606ff., 621, 623). Whether the trip had any effect on the Norwegian practitioners and “improved” Norwegian theatre, and whether this had indeed been the desired effect in the first place, is not clear. In the end, the whole venture might just have been a propaganda stunt, a showing off of Germany’s superior theatre culture, with no further intended outcome.

The New German Theatre in Oslo Plans to open a German theatre in Oslo became manifest in autumn 1940. The plan was to turn the existing “Casino” cinema into a theatre, and the propaganda ministry got involved early on with an “inspection trip” by Herr Lang to Oslo. In November 1940, the head of the theatre department in the propaganda ministry Rainer Schlösser submitted a report to Goebbels in which he asked him to support the Oslo venture. In it, he anticipated an overall budget of RM 750,000 with ticket sales making up RM 200,000, so that a subsidy of RM 500,000 was required. Schlösser 2 The Grieg centenary consisted of a number of high-profile events across Norway organised by various offices and organisations and included a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic. The underlying idea was to celebrate not only Grieg and his work but also the allegedly strong German-Norwegian connections.

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intended to recruit “first-class artists” to the ensemble, he planned for touring activity, and even included an envisaged repertoire and salary costs. Significantly, Schlösser expected a 50/50 split of the costs between the propaganda ministry and the Reich commissioner in Oslo. Goebbels supported the proposal and emphatically added a handwritten “yes” on the document. The finance office in the ministry confirmed that there were no budgetary concerns as Schlösser noted in a letter to Goebbels (BArch R55/20543, 386–391). In fact, this short report and Goebbels’ signature sealed the foundation of the Oslo German theatre. It expressed the confidence—hubris even—of colonial Germany at the height of its power. Germany’s cultural leaders decided—following the briefest of internal consultations—about the foundation of an entirely new, significantly funded, permanent institution, in a coup that must have taken many by surprise—commentators unfamiliar with Nazi decision making that is. These commentators were probably even more surprised when they learned that the subsidies needed (and paid for by the propaganda ministry) tripled by early 1941 to RM 1.5m. In a similar gung ho approach, the rising building costs for turning the “Casino” cinema into a theatre were reported and approved at lightning speed. In early 1941, Eugen Hadamovsky in his role as head of Goebbels’ ministerial office (he also held the rather pompous title of Reichssendeleiter as head of German radio broadcasting) urged Rainer Schlösser as head of the theatre department to intervene “energetically” on Terboven’s behalf (BArch R55/20543, 449). Terboven had asked the Reich finance ministry to pay RM 600,000 for the Oslo theatre renovation programme. Hadamovsky added that the propaganda ministry itself had confirmed that it would pay annual subsidies of RM 1.5m to fund the Oslo German theatre. This was a serious investment, and as if to justify this internally with the head of the theatre department (who will have realised that this additional funding need squeezed his own budget and left less for theatres in Germany, the so-called Altreich), Hadamovsky added that, after all, this [enterprise] is about German practitioners, about an artistic director who heads Oslo and Berlin in personal union, and about a matter of cultural propagandistic [importance]. (BArch R55/20543, 449)

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Soon, however, it became apparent that the originally requested RM 600,000 were not sufficient. By February/March 1942, the sum had risen to RM 875,000, but a note produced by an official in the finance ministry from April 1942 recorded that the propaganda ministry had requested a further RM 330,000. Although the official admitted that the need for the increase “was not immediately obvious based on the documents submitted”, he still supported it because overall costs for such large projects were sometimes difficult to predict (an astonishing judgement from someone working in a finance ministry). In the end, the ministry approved an overall budget in excess of RM 1.2m (BArch R2/27717, BArch R55/865, 44, 57). Despite the fact that the renovation costs had doubled within a few months, a few weeks later, in June 1942, the theatre underwent a further renovation programme and received a new stack for costumes and properties. The main driver for the additional work was the desire to add opera to the theatre’s repertoire. The theatre in the former “Casino” cinema was “perfectly fine” for smaller operettas but did not offer sufficient space for full-scale operettas or opera. The orchestra pit could only accommodate 40 musicians as the Propaganda Ministry’s Herr Müller noted in a letter to the Reich Commissioner’s office after a site visit in January 1941 (BArch R55/865, 26). Representative opera, however, was of key interest to the Nazis—not least because of the Richard Wagner connection—and despite immense costs linked to building and sustaining opera houses, their large casts and orchestras, and expensive productions. Opera productions more than other works of art promised an impact on even the most stubborn of audiences. The Nazis believed that the “task of the German theatre and the required widespread impact on the Norwegian population is not achievable in the long run with such small pieces” the propaganda ministry noted. Significant building works were imperative, like the erection of a large reception hall and ample space for the box office, to “meet the demands in terms of representation” (BArch, R55/865, 26–29). The only alternative to the additional building works was to continue to use the “Casino” as a smaller venue for drama and some musical theatre but perform larger pieces in the Norwegian National Theatre—a solution the Germans were not keen on. With the opening of the 1942/1943 season opera did indeed become part of the repertoire of the German theatre, which thus boasted the only standing opera ensemble in Norway. The

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professional symphony orchestra that provided the music for the opera ensemble eventually consisted of 70 musicians, and its third anniversary was celebrated with a “magnificent” production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro (BArch, R55/155, 126). Oslo’s artistic director Rudolf Zindler headed the Oslo theatre as well as the Berlin Theater des Volkes. As mentioned earlier, this arrangement strengthened the German-Norwegian connection. It was also both useful for Zindler’s own career as well as financially lucrative for him personally and the ensemble as a whole. Goebbels was aware that a posting at one of the German theatres in occupied Europe was less attractive to many German theatre practitioners because living abroad was regarded as less comfortable. There was also the fear of losing the connection (and with this career prospects) to theatres in Germany. So to underline the importance of these ventures and, more pragmatically, to lure actors away from the more prestigious playhouses in the Altreich, theatres in the occupied territories offered lucrative annual contracts, competitive wages and additional benefits. In the formerly Polish city of Lodsch/Litzmannstadt, for example, actors were provided with furnished flats owned by the theatre, in Lille they were put up in a requisitioned hotel and select private accommodation with free rail transport and catering, and in Krakau two whole blocks with 78 furnished rooms were made available for actors. In Oslo, Goebbels paid RM 50,000 towards the erection of an “artists’ home” (Künstlerhaus ) and a café to make the posting to Norway “bearable” as Herr Lang in the Propaganda Ministry noted to artistic director Zindler in October 1942 (BArch R55/20546, 321). Salaries in Oslo were competitive and varied from RM 250 for an administrative assistant to RM 1,500 for the solo tenor, and artistic director Zindler received RM 20,000 on top of his Berlin salary, which amounted to another RM 30,000 (BArch R55/155, 3; BArch R55/155, 217).3 In Oslo, guest soloists received RM 300 per performance, a figure which could potentially see them earning RM 4,500 per month (BArch R55/155, 4–5). To sweeten the pill even further singers from the Theater des Volkes ensemble who agreed to perform in Oslo received an additional daily allowance of RM 50 on top of their Berlin salary—tax free (BArch R55/155, 28). 3 Salaries were paid in German Reichsmark (RM) with bonuses added in Norwegian Kroner.

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The Oslo German theatre opened on 22 April 1941 as a venture for which Terboven as Reich commissioner was legally responsible, but one which was funded by the Berlin propaganda ministry (BArch R55/20543, 507–511). This funding rose to RM 1.65m and remained at this high level until the end of the war (BArch R55/20546, 27 [for 1943 budget], 89 [for 1944 budget], and 218 [for 1942 budget]). With the opening of the theatre and opera house, a fully refurbished and extended venue, offering the latest technology, professional ensembles and a packed repertoire, the German occupiers hoped to attract large audiences. Crucially, and unlike other theatres in occupied Europe such as the German playhouse in Lille, the Oslo theatre was never meant to exclusively cater for German soldiers. It was not financed by the German military but run as a civic institution. This was important to the regime as it suggested a certain professional and artistic standard sometimes missing from shows which toured military establishments and were organised by Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy).4 It was also meant to show to the local population that the Germans meant to stay in these areas irrespective of the German army presence. In fact, the German occupiers presented the theatre as a permanent cultural “offer” for educated Norwegians who had never been able to enjoy professional opera performed by a standing ensemble before. In addition, the German theatre in Oslo had ambitions beyond the capital as its ensemble regularly performed in Drontheim, Bergen and Stavanger.

Challenges Hardly any of the internal documents about the costs for setting up and running a German theatre in Oslo mention anything about income. Everyone knew that this undertaking was a propaganda stunt more than anything else and that generating a sizeable revenue was unlikely. Having said that, and despite the generous funding levels agreed, audiences and audience figures were a keen concern for the Nazi regime. In Oslo, these audiences remained largely made up of members of the (sizeable) German 4 Kraft durch Freude was the Nazi leisure organisation which also organised the season ticket at many theatres. Many theatre managements saw KdF critically as the organisation used its influence to negotiate reduced tickets prices for its members.

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occupation force, members of which were able to get tickets at half the regular price (BArch R55/155, 6). Despite notes to the contrary, which were meant to cheer up colleagues internally more than anything else, audiences in Norway remained hostile to the German theatre. Although they were invited to attend performances (in contrast to most people in other occupied areas in Europe) local audiences boycotted the German theatre. Even popular operettas such as Carl Zeller’s The Bird Trader (Der Vogelhändler) were poorly attended by the Norwegian population (BArch R55/155, 5). And although the orchestra and the technical staff were entirely Norwegian, as was the majority of the chorus and the dance ensemble, it was difficult to recruit new members or find replacements for those leaving employment. Internal reports admitted that the German authorities struggled to recruit Norwegians because the “vast majority of Norwegians reject German performances” and refused to attend the German theatre (BArch R55/155, 5). This situation was concerning not least because of the fact that the Norwegians of all people should have been susceptible to German culture given the shared racial heritage. Given the lack of popular support, the subsidies appeared even more enormous. In 1942, the operating costs of the Oslo German theatre and opera house amounted to RM 2m, only RM 340,000 of which were recouped via ticket sales as the remaining almost RM 1.7m were required as subsidies. Despite the rising financial need and a glaring and continuing imbalance between box office takings and need for support, the propaganda ministry maintained that “overall” it had “no concerns” (BArch R55/155, 109, 138, 172). This view was not shared by everyone, however. Although the regime was prepared to support theatrical ventures across occupied Europe with vast sums of money the finance ministry in particular kept a close eye on the theatres’ use of public subsidies. If theatres did not manage their budgets appropriately, they faced sometimes prolonged enquiries and punitive measures. The German theatre in Oslo, for example, was repeatedly asked to lower its salaries. The theatre itself attempted to counter the criticism by claiming that its box office took RM 1,400 per performance on average between 22 April and 11 May 1941, although this is difficult to verify and sounds almost too good to be true (BArch R55/155, 6). Interestingly, the criticism mostly originated in the finance ministry with the propaganda ministry defending individual theatres against what they regarded as undue criticism. Although in the

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case of Oslo, for example, the propaganda ministry agreed that salaries were on the high side it nevertheless justified these expenses and asked the finance ministry to appreciate the difficult circumstances the Oslo theatre operated under (BArch R55/155, 18). And although the propaganda ministry was less worried about overspending and used to protect theatres from criticism, the significant salaries started to worry officials there, too. In November 1941, Herr Kohler, a senior civil servant in the propaganda ministry, visited Oslo following concerns about the salary levels. In June 1943, these concerns resurfaced as salaries remained far too generous. The theatre management, however, repeatedly chose to ignore the “advice” to lower them (BArch R55/155, 26, 54). In general, if theatres failed to address financial concerns, they were reminded about them but if things got out of hand officials from Berlin came on control visits (such as the visit by Herr Kohler referred to above). Worse still were the detailed and scrupulous investigations instigated by the National Accounting Office (Rechnungshof ). On one of its audits, the Accounting Office criticised the Oslo theatre management not only for allowing the costs for the buildings works to double (from RM 600,000 to RM 1.2m) but also for the fact that this significant job had not been put out to tender and no costs estimate had been submitted. A letter by the Accounting Office to the propaganda ministry from November 1943 noted that “to begin to undertake building works before an approved budget has been submitted fundamentally contradicts the general principle of appropriate preparation of building projects for the Reich”. Interestingly, and not untypically, the solution suggested was not to force cuts on the theatre running costs or introduce caps on salaries but to suggest “that the costs which the German Reich has paid for the renovation should be covered by Norway” (BArch R55/865, 71). It is not clear whether this was ever attempted. In any case, the concerns by the Accounting Office did not go away and in September 1944 they asked again to see the theatre’s entire financial records (BArch R55/20546, 512). Another significant challenge the regime faced in Norway was that despite claims to the contrary the repertoire performed at the German theatre hardly met the occupier’s demands on a high culture venue showcasing serious German art. Official discourse as well as internal pressure demanded a German theatre that fulfilled its role as a cultural bastion advancing Germany’s cause, particularly in terms of the quality of its repertoire. According to this discourse, theatre programmes had the power to influence audiences, change political convictions and make

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patrons susceptible to German influence and be appreciative of superior German art (Heinrich 2018, 228–230). They needed to be dominated by politically sound plays, worthy classics and musical theatre to cultivate cities and educate their population. The fare actually produced, however, was largely pedestrian. Even the guest performances by the Berlin Theater am Nollendorfplatz in December 1940 featured a programme of short operetta highlights instead of Verdi and Wagner (BArch R55/20543, 364). Hans Daiber remarked concerning the productions of Carl Zeller’s The Bird Trader that “the occupied Norwegians had not necessarily waited for the arrival of ‘Christel from the post office’” (Daiber 1995, 291) (Figs. 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3).

Fig. 9.1 Scene from production of Hänsel und Gretel (17 December 1941) at the German Theatre in Oslo (National Archives of Norway, RAFA-3309 Tyske arkiver, Reichskommissariat, Bildarchiv, series U—Fotografier, U 29a)

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Fig. 9.2 Scene from production of Eine entzückende Frau (22 November 1941) at the German Theatre in Oslo (National Archives of Norway, RAFA-3309 Tyske arkiver, Reichskommissariat, Bildarchiv, series U—Fotografier, U 28c)

There were some half-hearted attempts to justify a repertoire focussing on amusement rather than uplift as the occupiers stressed the theatre’s role for the entertainment of the armed forces. Manfred Rössner’s comedy Karl III. und Anna von Österreich (Charles III and Anne of Austria, a domestic comedy rather than a history play as the title might suggest) was performed in Oslo in 1944 before touring to other Norwegian cities and celebrated as a “charming little comedy” (Deutsche Zeitung in Norwegen, 28 March 1944). In these cases, newspaper reviews often mentioned the presence of soldiers in the audience, as if to justify the theatres’ shallow repertoire. But it was not only the classical canon which proved problematic as it dawned on local politicians that large subsidies did not necessarily equal great performances. Even allegedly less demanding pieces failed because of poor performances. In Oslo, the German press praised Christoph Reuland’s performance as Fenton in Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, for example, as testifying to an improvement in Reuland’s singing, clearly achieved through “assiduous study”—not a ringing endorsement by any

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Fig. 9.3 Scene from production of Eine entzückende Frau (22 November 1941) at the German Theatre in Oslo (National Archives of Norway, RAFA-3309 Tyske arkiver, Reichskommissariat, Bildarchiv, series U—Fotografier, U 28c)

stretch of the imagination. This challenge was exacerbated by the fact that throughout the occupation Norwegian ensembles were allowed to continue to perform, and the Germans were acutely aware of the often superior quality of their performances. This competition, in turn, led to system of quality control as only the best would do for German productions. This nervousness may explain why the Germans, during the early occupation of Norway, were evidently keen to bring over the leading companies for performances in Oslo.

Conclusion Interestingly, despite the Nazi’s interest to woe Norwegians, to convince them that they mattered to the German Reich, and that they were better off collaborating with the occupier, the Germans never once asked themselves whether the Norwegians actually wanted a German language theatre and appreciated the significant investment. Whereas a number of places in Central and Eastern Europe had featured German

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language theatres before the war, a fact which offered Nazi propaganda the possibility to justify a renewed German theatrical presence and linked investment, in Norway no such legacy existed. The foundation of a German theatre and opera house was, therefore, artificial and without precedence. German arrogance is further exemplified by the fact that the Oslo German theatre as an institution mirrored the German theatre model in terms of funding arrangements, organisation and repertoire. In fact, it could have stood in any major German city. Despite stressing “racial allegiances” and recognising the Norwegians as a Brudervolk the German occupiers made no attempt to acknowledge Norwegian sensibilities.

References Abbey, William, and Katharina Havekamp. 2000. Nazi Performances in the Occupied Territories: The German Theatre in Lille. In Theatre Under the Nazis, ed. John London, 262–290. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Custodis, Michael, and Arnulf Mattes. 2020. Celebrating the Nordic Tone— Fighting for National Legacy. The Grieg Centenary, 1943. In The Routledge Handbook to Music Under German Occupation, 1938–1945, ed. Fanning, David and Erik Levi, 231–250. London: Routledge. Daiber, Hans. 1995. Schaufenster der Diktatur. Theater im Machtbereich Hitlers. Stuttgart: Neske. Drewniak, Boguslaw. 1983. Das Theater im NS- Staat. Szenarium deutscher Zeitgeschichte 1933–1945. Düsseldorf: Droste. Günther, Hans F.K. 1926. Rassenkunde Europas, 2nd rev. ed. Munich: Lehmanns. Günther, Hans F.K. 1927. Adel und Rasse, 2nd rev. ed. Munich: Lehmanns. Günther, Hans F.K. 1933. Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, 16th ed. Munich: Lehmanns. Heinrich, Anselm. 2018. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation. London: Routledge. Holland, James. 2016. The War in the West. A New History. Volume 1: Germany Ascendant 1939–1941. London: Corgi. Nilsen, Caroline. 2019. Romance, Marriage, and the Lebensborn Program: Gendering German Expectations and Reality in Occupied Norway. In German-Occupied Europe in the Second World War, ed. Raffael Scheck, Fabien Théofilakis, and Julie Torrie, 181–194. London: Routledge. Roemisch, Bruno. 1940. Vier Monate Nachdenken in Oslo: Schrittweise Befriedung des öffentlichen Lebens: Das Nationaltheater als Beispiel. Krakauer Zeitung, 19 September.

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Stratigakos, Despina. 2020. Hitler’s Northern Utopia. Building the New Order in Occupied Norway. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Archival Sources National Archives of Norway, Oslo (Riksarkivet Norge): RAFA-2174 Tyske archiver: Reichskommisariat, series Ed, Hauptabteilung Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, boxes 57, 96 RAFA-2174 Tyske archiver: Reichskommisariat, series Eea, Abteilung Rundfunk, box 19 RAFA-2188 Tyske archiver: Organisation Todt, Einsatzgruppe Wiking, series Hfs, box 28 RAFA-2174 Tyske archiver: Reichskommisariat, series U, photographs, boxes 28c, 29a Deutsche Zeitung in Norwegen Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives) Berlin- Lichterfelde (BArch): Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda: R55/155, R55/865, R55/20514, R55/20543, R55/20546 Reichsministerium für Finanzen: R2/27717

CHAPTER 10

Propaganda, Pedagogy, and Cultural Authority: The Fascist theatre in Italy and Abroad Patricia Gaborik

…La Storia Ci Insegna Che Gli Imperi Si Conquistano Con Le Armi, Ma Si Tengono Col Prestigio 1 — Mussolini, Trieste, September 18, 1938, in a speech on fascist antiSemitism

When Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy in 1922, he aspired to no less than a reborn Roman Empire, which would expand its hegemony across Europe and its territories in the Mediterranean—or as they nicknamed it, mare nostrum, our sea. Along the way, and as a necessary condition, he would carry out an “anthropological revolution” 1 “History teaches us that empires are conquered with arms but maintained with prestige.”

P. Gaborik (B) Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica “Silvio d’Amico”, Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_10

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(the conception is Emilio Gentile’s, 2002), remaking Italians into a population of citizen-warriors undivided by class conflict and united by pride in a glorious national past: they would work hard and be rewarded for it; they would study hard and become cultured for it; they would be serious and be taken seriously. He would model the behaviour he hoped to instil in them, and the regime’s slogans provided pithy guidance: Believe, Obey, Fight. Book and Rifle Make the Perfect Fascist. For at least his first fifteen years in power, Mussolini, il Duce, enjoyed considerable esteem and indeed celebrity both at home and abroad; this his regime would exploit to such an extent in building consensus that a long line of studies has described nothing short of a “cult of the Duce.” Great pains were made to establish the dictator’s cultural credentials and authority as part of his appeal and as a symbol of an Italian superiority dating back centuries. When Mussolini entered into the Rome-Berlin Axis—it was an alliance he made with a man he considered a parvenu—he did it not just for military expediency but, as Benjamin Martin (2016) has described, out of a “shared desire to upend the liberal international order” that was established by World War I and that found Italy and Germany on lower rungs of Europe’s hierarchy than they found acceptable (3–4). The two regimes worked on parallel nationalist tracks, each vindicating its own cultural supremacy and often with differing takes on what culture was good culture (the Italians championing most modernist forms, for instance, as the Nazis tended to demonize them). It was a unique totalitarian “model of transnational cooperation based on the values of the most intense, aggressive, and racist national spirit” (7). This essay will address how the theatrical arts, particularly spoken drama, were co-opted by the Italian fascist regime in the quest to establish the nation’s and its leader’s cultural authority (the latter being crucial in bolstering the former). Prior to fascism, the Italian government had taken very little interest in the theatre: it was neither subsidized nor regulated on a national level (censorship, e.g. was managed by local officials as a question of public security). But all of this would change under Mussolini. The regime’s investments were staggering, designed to help the industry through a universally perceived crisis, sustaining innovative practices and institutions, and, at home, to serve fascism’s propagandistic purposes and pedagogical aims. Abroad, its uses were more limited to the propagandistic realm but fully integrated within a system marked by a “willingness to use unorthodox as well as conventional diplomacy” (Cassell 1970, xi). As Mussolini himself stated it in a letter to a friend, cultural production

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was “Means, not end, Arm, not adornment” (De Felice 1974, 29); on an international scale, the theatre was a key weapon of “the soft power of European cultural prestige” (Martin 2016, 10) that was crucial to the imposition of a new order, fascist or Nazi.

Internal Affairs Mussolini’s public pronouncements on the relationship of art and culture with the totalitarian State were clear. They changed little over time. Already in 1923, he declared his position and intentions: “It is far from me to encourage something that could resemble an art of the State. Art belongs to the individual sphere. The State has only one duty: to not sabotage it, to provide artists with humane conditions, to encourage them from an artistic and a national point of view” (Mussolini v.19, 188). Accordingly, his regime gave unprecedented funds to the theatre and launched numerous new performing arts initiatives, rewarding certain practices but stopping short of imposing a singular style or even of canonizing particular movements as representative of the new era’s spirit (no matter how many artists he admired vied for such recognition). Underpinning his approach was a belief in an inherent Italian genius. “In Italy, a Government that takes no interest in art and artists would be stupid,” he declared, for his duty was toward “the glorious heredity of the past and toward the certain promise of the future” (Mussolini v.19, 188). Further observations highlight his sense that military and cultural offensives were intrinsically linked, building at once a nation and a national consciousness: In Rome, and everywhere in the world Rome went with her legions and with her powerful spirit, we feel ourselves face to face with a force of beauty that is not just the manifestation of the state of a spirit and of civilization but has within itself the stupendous seed of Italian art [. . .] Italy being divided in minuscule states armed one against the other, your predecessors lent them greatness with works that touch the divine. It was in art that Italians felt themselves as such and rediscovered themselves brothers [. . .]. (Mussolini v.20, 275-76)

He called upon the artists and intellectuals ready to work with him—and there were many—to help Italians realize a new sense of fraternity and their true national character.

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In this broader context, explicitly propagandistic drama, especially works that directly addressed dogma or the experience of the ventennio, were a relative minority. As leading intellectual Massimo Bontempelli put it in debates about creating fascist art, “if the epoch is truly fascist to the core, all that is of lasting value and is accomplished during its course will bear the visible imprint of fascism” (Schnapp 2000, 220). Hence, when it came to cultural production, the cultivation of party adherence was a minor concern. And yet, it should be remembered, if Bontempelli was correct it meant that now that everything was already political anyway, even the purest of fascism’s educative ambitions served a “deeply illiberal” worldview (Bonsaver 2009, 118). Indeed, as innocuous—even praiseworthy—as some of the theatre policies may seem, it remains true that they were enacted by the same government that used poison gas in Ethiopia, sent Jews and other “undesirables” to work in death camps, poured castor oil down the throats of those suspected of non-compliance, and dragged its populace through a devastating civil and world war. Anselm Heinrich has demonstrated how integral the theatre was to broader German political and military goals, aptly using the term “cultural offensive,” a cogent reminder of the violent backdrop against which beautiful art could be produced (Heinrich 2018, 7). As different as their approaches were, this reminder is as crucial for fascist Italy as it is for Nazi Germany. Dedicated to the anthropological revolution, the regime’s goals for the theatre were three interconnected ones: Access, Pedagogy, and Innovation (Gaborik 2021, 195). As one specific means of suturing the social and economic divides that characterized Italian life, the quest to open cinemas and playhouses “to a new wider audience became, from the late twenties on, a central focus of fascist policy” (de Grazia 1981, 159). At the same time, regime officials were duly sensitive to the plight of theatre folk who lamented a state of crisis: Italian venues were poorer and thus inadequately equipped with respect to their European neighbours. Native writers struggled to get their works produced in a commercial system that defaulted to entertaining but stale French comedy (“All of Géraldy, it is known, is a love story; it’s always the same love story,” critic Silvio d’Amico scoffed [d’Amico 2005, 04/08/1934]). The nomadic actormanager system that still characterized production was costly and tiring for troupes, and—from the point of view of the playwrights and critics, if not the actors—meant that Italy was simply behind the times. If elsewhere the rise of the director had revolutionized dramatic performance,

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in Italy things went along as they always had, with star actors in charge of producing a largely commercial repertoire. From a fascist point of view, this was unacceptable: In cultural matters, the Italian were to lead the way and set the bar high. To do so, a good dose of pedagogy was needed, and thus already in 1923 Mussolini gave a clear directive: “All art institutions, from the theatre to the museum, from the gallery to the academy, must be considered schools [...] prepared to educate taste and sensibility” (Mussolini v. XX, 276). Such remarks applied both to teaching with the theatre and to teaching how to do theatre; that is to say, the fascist regime’s pedagogic ambitions for the stage are reflected both in performance repertoire, across commercial and regime-sponsored production contexts, and in the institutions created to rear the next—and first wholly fascist—generation of theatre makers. Repertoire The regime aimed to provide a legitimately formative dramatic offering in the most diverse milieu; in the bourgeois playhouses, city squares, and educational institutions alike, audiences would be introduced to a variety of plays and playwrights from many periods and nations, even if there was special attention given to the development of a native drama. The promotion of a diverse repertoire itself stemmed from the implementation of widely varied initiatives: If in the first handful of years Mussolini’s attention (and money) was directed at experimental venues like the Roman art theatres of Luigi Pirandello and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, as the regime’s plans solidified in the mid-late 1920s, they diversified. Impressed by shows he saw in 1924, il Duce nationalized the Siracusan institute of Ancient Drama (it became the INDA, Istituto nazionale del dramma antico), and from 1927 a National Institute for the Production of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Plays brought several of the famed poet’s works back onto the boards in lavish shows (many that brought them more success than they had ever had). Two years later, the Carri di Tespi, or Thespian Trucks, began tours that ran each year into the 1940s. Finally, to list only the major straight-theatre initiatives, there were the Theatrical Saturdays, sponsored by the national leisure programme, the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND), which from 1936 opened bourgeois playhouses to the working classes at prices they could afford.

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While on the surface an apparent shift from the backing of the Art houses in the mid-1920s to events for the masses in the 1930s might be seen as (and is typically recounted as) a vanquishing of the vanguard in the name of populism and an abandoning of high for low brow aesthetics, several aspects of the various programmes instead suggest a continuity of purpose. A comprehensive discussion of this issue is not possible here, but the desire for pedagogy and innovation—a not unrelated issue—can be gleaned even in a cursory discussion of the repertoire presented. Great efforts were made during the ventennio to sustain Italian playwriting: this had to do with that ideological stance of bringing forth Italian genius, but it was also a reaction to what had been a sore spot since the time of the Unification in 1870, which ushered in a political unity that was not reflected in linguistic practices. Producers turned overwhelmingly to successful French plays to keep active the playhouses that multiplied exponentially in the last decades of the nineteenth century, and by the time the 1920s rolled around, young Italian dramatists and their supporters—like seasoned maestro Luigi Pirandello or critic Silvio d’Amico—were frustrated by the lack of space left for their innovation. A clear privileging of Italian plays, then, can be seen in the numbers: about 82 per cent of the total repertoire was Italian. This was not, however, merely a question of “recurrent nationalist preoccupations” (Scarpellini 1989, 251) or a blanket opposition to the staging of non-Italian plays (Berezin 1991) but instead a rather complicated cultural (and sometimes economic) matter. Indeed, as will be seen, nationality of repertoire was never firmly set. It depended at least partly on the cultural operators in question and in the 1930s—after censorship was centralized in 1931, the Ministry of Press and Propaganda, then Popular Culture were erected in 1935 and 1937, respectively, and external affairs became increasingly complicated—would change with the winds of foreign policy. Still, innovative dramaturgy recurs. On one extreme end of the pole, we have the Art Theatres that Mussolini took most interest in and gave the most money to: in the first phase of the dictatorship, Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s Teatro Sperimentale degli Indipendenti, in operation from 1923–1930, and Luigi Pirandello’s Teatro d’Arte di Roma, open from 1925–1928; later, the Teatro delle Arti, housed in the Confederation of Fascist Professionals and Artists headquarters and completely government-funded with Bragaglia as its artistic director. As Figs. 10.1 and 10.2 show, while expressly dedicating themselves to presenting new Italian voices, they also gave heed to foreign traditions and contemporary

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innovation, producing the most interesting works to come from beyond Italy’s border and which otherwise may have never made it onto stages at home. As the numbers show, Bragaglia’s (longer-running) theatre was in general more prolific; he in fact frequently premiered up to four pieces per evening, including many short plays and dance pieces, with an eye to quantity as well. Pirandello worked for more aesthetically accomplished productions, but also strove to stage the great European authors that had been neglected by the commercial theatre. At these houses, then, one could see Alfred Lord Dunsany or Alfred Jarry, Karl Capek or August Strindberg, Maeterlinck and even Brecht (d’Amico and Tinterri 1987; Alberti 1984; Vigna 2008). On the other end of the spectrum were the mass theatre initiatives, already noteworthy to contemporaries like Mario Corsi, who printed a large illustrated volume of them in 1939 (see bibliography). Here, too, a more comprehensive discussion would be ideal; but in its absence, the Thespian Trucks tell a significant story. They reached the largest audience, sending out mobile brigades that consumed one-fifth of the OND’s total budget and dominated its summer calendar, literally delivering some 350

Fig. 10.1 Pirandello’s Teatro d’Arte and Bragaglia’s Teatro degli Indipendenti repertoires (Source texts by author nationality)

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Fig. 10.2 Bragaglia’s Teatro degli Indipendenti (1923–36) and Teatro delle Arti (1937–1943) repertoires (Source texts by composition date)

shows to around 175,000 spectators each year (locations for a sample year, 1937, are shown in Fig. 10.3). The Carri hosted an exclusively Italian repertoire, which included a handful of historical dramas of national and nationalist themes in addition to the melodramas and comedies that offset the potential of the tours becoming excessively propagandistic. More to the point, however, is the fact that intellectually and artistically robust contemporary plays were produced, especially in later years. Some of these were successful on the commercial bourgeois circuit and others pushed more insistently at the flaps of that categorical envelope: works like Pirandello’s But It Isn’t Serious (1937) and others by authors working in the experimental environment of the grottesco (theatre of the grotesque). Among them, plays by Popolo d’Italia critic Gino Rocca (The World without Shrimp, performed in 1933, written in 1932), Pier Maria Rosso di San Secondo (Among Dancing Dresses, performed in 1937, written in 1935), Dario Niccodemi (Scampolo, performed in 1938, written in 1916, a piece that was performed by the US Federal Theatre Project, a regular on German stages, and translated into at least six languages), and Ercole Luigi Morselli (Glauco, performed in 1933, written in 1919) ensured OND crowds a look at the more vivacious writing of the previous decade or

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Fig. 10.3 The Thespian Truck tours, 1937

two. No one less than Antonio Gramsci had appreciated this last example when it premiered in 1920, writing, “it is precise to say that it is an openly declared attempt to do something, if not new, at least different, in the theatre, to transfigure the dramatic action with poetic insight. But it is also precise to say that it is a failed attempt” (Gramsci 2010, 457–59). Such works were neither propaganda nor easy entertainment, in other

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words: by including them in the seasons of the biggest people’s theatre initiative it had, the regime raised the cultural bar for all types of theatregoers. It has been argued that “there was a clear demarcation between traditional ‘high’ culture and ‘popular culture’, for which different, alternative circuits were created,” and that a shift of funding and attention from the Art theatres to mass theatre projects revealed a disinterest in the former (Scarpellini 1989, 114). But close attention to repertoire instead evinces a tendency to cross boundaries, between art/popular, high/low, elite/masses. Training and Institutions In the 1930s, when the regime had consolidated its power and enjoyed relative favour at home and abroad, it turned its attention to performing arts institutions. As is well known, one unrealized ambition was the creation of a State or National Theatre (Pedullà 1994, 99–101). Although this failure tends to be written off as disinterest in “higher” endeavours, in reality plans to create a venue of the kind—a sumptuous playhouse in the capital city with a resident company that safeguarded the best of native theatrical traditions and showcased innovation from home and abroad—sat forever on Mussolini and his ministers’ desks. A combination of financial concerns and ideological debates (should the State be responsible for an entity of the sort? If so, could it allow full creative freedom? Would it seem too Soviet?, etc.) stalled definitive progress. Yet, the reasons to establish a National Theatre were addressed in a variety of ways by the other institutions that were created. The issue of writing (that is, the development of and support for a noteworthy body of play texts written in Italian) was as crucial for the training institutions as it was for the performance programming discussed above, but, in the former, staging techniques and technologies were also of great concern, as they were required to bring Italian production “up to speed,” or, as was often highlighted in step with the palingenetic ideal, in recapturing its former primacy. Accordingly, across various environments—in INDA productions, in the OND amateur troupes, and in institutions of higher education—there was a push to sustain the art of directing, which had not yet imposed itself in Italy as it had in neighbouring countries, and to increase resources and instruction in technology and design. Most notable here was the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, founded in 1935–36 and presided over by Silvio d’Amico. By handpicking

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d’Amico to design the course of study, the hierarchy sent a clear signal of its espousal of his approach to modernizing the national stage, which was well known thanks to publications like Sunset of the Great Actor, in which the author declared that if Italy did not find its own André Antoine, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Max Reinhardt, or Jacques Copeau to reform staging technique, its theatre was “doomed” (d’Amico 1929, 136). D’Amico expanded instruction to cover not just acting and things useful to actors (like fencing and make-up) but, in fact, directing, and gave the course to Tatiana Pavlova, a Russian actress who had come to Italy in the years immediately following the Revolution and who favoured the methods of the Moscow Art Theatre. The significance of her appointment, although it lasted only a few years (until she married Nino D’Aroma, a fascist hierarch) was clear, and her imprint remained on her first students. Many of the first generation of great directors in the post-war period, not surprisingly, came out of the Academy. Another institution of special interest to this discussion is the GUF, or Fascist University Groups, Theatre circuit, often referred to as the Teatri-GUF . While the Royal Academy was (and still is today, entitled “National” rather than “Royal”) the nation’s premier theatre school, the Teatri-GUF were part of a larger university-level extracurricular organization that was explicitly fascist in its character: a creative outlet for a clique—young male intellectuals—who, it was understood, would become the next generation’s ruling class (La Rovere 2003; Ben-Ghiat 2004, 95). The GUF’s first, and flagship, experimental theatre was formed in late 1934 by Giorgio Venturini, vice-secretary of the Florentine group. It was jointly funded by the National Fascist Party, the Florentine Federation, the Ministry of Popular Culture, and the Tourism Office. Given its success and the stage’s general popularity in amateur circles, in 1939 the secretariat implemented a theatre section for each and every GUF; their sizes and scopes varied widely, but by 1942 thirty-eight troupes were deemed worthy of attention in a special pamphlet, and reports on other formations in cities such as Mussolini’s hometown Forlì, Ancona, Bari, Novara, Pavia, and Parma appeared in local GUF periodicals, an enormous press machine that itself functioned as a producer of pedagogy and propaganda. The timing of this expansion is striking, as it attests to Party efforts to keep cultural production vital even—or especially—in the midst of war (Locations can be seen in Fig. 10.4.).

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Fig. 10.4 Principal Teatri-GUF locations, 1942

On paper, the Teatri-GUF privileged socio-political education, or as playwright and director of the Roman troupe Turi Vasile called it, a “contribution to the national ethic” (Vasile 1940, 22). Echoing opinions like Bontempelli’s, participants argued that no one needed to think about making propaganda because since—or if—they were properly fascist, their works would be too, by force of circumstance (Del Bo 1935). At the same time, they downplayed their individual fates: One young director, Giulio Pacuvio, noted that while it was entirely possible that new authors,

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directors, and actors would come from their ranks, “much more important and substantial” was that the theatres act as a “yeast” in the university oven, enabling the “‘renewal of national culture’ to expand” (Pacuvio 1941, 24). Such comments reveal how deeply internalized directives from above could be, rendering in more positive terms the message of the Director General of Theatre, Nicola De Pirro. He expressed the need to discipline actors, who should curb their egoistic impulses and, following their directors’ leads, dedicate themselves to the overall good, that is, the entire show (Gaborik 2017). Nevertheless, the commitment to the theatre as an art form was absolute. Each GUF theatre was to be a place that enabled young authors, directors, and designers to try their hand without prejudice and hostilities: where new experiences can be tried out and raw material can be put to the test of the stage and the public, and from these, if even in small measure, might emerge unseen elements of particular value, usable in the future. In short, a research workshop that will ensure a new repertoire and new scenic forms for the Italian theatre of the new Era. (Teatro-GUF di Teramo, 7)

To these ends, ample resources and instruction were made available to participants. In the small Abruzzo town of Teramo, for instance, the GUF possessed a 500-seat auditorium and a studio where designers and technicians could practice building sets; in Teramo, members had to take a year of classes in the theatre arts and pass an exam before admission to the company. More generally speaking, though, the GUF were after a comprehensive theatrical education. In the midst of mounting productions, they wrote, shared, and analysed new scripts, carried out their studies and debates in the periodicals, and hosted annual conferences on theatre criticism (Frigerio 1936). As one literary-minded participant summarized it, it would take time before drama reflected the fact the new generation was wholly fascist; they were still working to destroy the old bourgeois drama and thus still “waiting for the creation of Myth” (Vigevano 1937, 572). Meanwhile, it was important to think about “scenes, lights, and new locales,” another member admitted, but argued that above all their job was “to follow with daily, loving attention discussion and criticism, vital organs of the theatrical ‘climate’ of the day” (Poniatosky 1938). It

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was not the staging of fascism that interested them, but what would be staged as a result of the fascist experience.

External Affairs The intensification of the cultural offensive in the late 1930s meant, even at home, an increased willingness to use propaganda. Mussolini began to lament that his strategy had not entirely worked; perhaps Hitler, who had sought “orthodoxy” on the stage had fared better (Ciano 2006; Petacci 2010, 264). Although these realizations did not produce enormous or immediate changes on the theatre’s domestic front, there was a concerted push to “tie political and cultural ties with various countries ever tighter,” evidenced, for instance, in the Ministry of Popular Culture’s creation of the EIST, the Italian Entity for Theatrical Exchanges, in February of 1937 (EIST 1940). Increasingly preoccupied with the government’s longevity and the nation’s security, officials declared it the EIST’s task “to keep the Nation’s prestige high” (EIST 1940). The EIST would endure into the Republic of Salò, moving from Rome to Venice to keep working under the Italo-German administration (Gazzetta 1944). The German ally and then its territories had, however, been privileged in the exchange from the start. In one season considered particularly effective (1939–40), President of the Entity, Francesco Armando Liverani, recorded that when it came to imports, of a total 128 plays vetted for possible Italian productions, sixty-nine were German (and twelve Hungarian, twelve Scandinavian, and two from Yugoslavia). Still, Italy’s prestige remained paramount, and thus with satisfaction he noted that exports far outweighed imports: seventy contracts for fifty-five Italian plays were secured, while only twentyone agreements had been awarded to foreign collaborators. In this way, Liverani boasted to Minister Pavolini, “the fruit of Italian genius […] has asserted itself beyond the rosiest expectations.” Prestige was gained through a mirror, in other words, and success abroad would also result in pride at home. If Italians had nearly forgotten about some of the works taken abroad, appreciation by allies was a reassuring “testament to the originality and power of Italian dramatists” (EIST 1940). Against this backdrop, theatrical diplomacy unfolded. One of the most consequential cases was that of Campo di Maggio, a historical drama about Napoleon, conceived by Mussolini and largely written by librettist, playwright, and former La Scala staging director Giovacchino Forzano. In the summer of 1929, Mussolini invited Forzano to collaborate on the

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writing of the piece that he had begun to sketch out after reading the biography written by Emil Ludwig. The resulting work, which depicted Bonaparte’s last hundred days in power, beginning with the Champ de Mars assembly in which he essentially gave up dictatorial powers, was a huge success and led to two more co-authorings: Villafranca, about the Italian unification, and Cesare. All three works dramatize the trials of great men whose leadership is betrayed by the lesser men around them. The heroes of each—Bonaparte, Camillo Cavour, and Julius Caesar— were thinly-veiled proxies for Mussolini himself, and the pieces can thus be classified as propaganda that spoke of fascism by analogy. Beyond Italy’s borders, the plays were brought in to bolster Mussolini’s popularity in ways that were not much different from those at home. They did well, for the dictator was “a publicity magnet who always boosted sales” (Gundle 2013, 83). It was probably with this calculation in mind that il Duce recognized the pieces as his own when they were presented or published in foreign countries (whereas in Italy Forzano alone was credited). Mussolini—who for the bulk of the period in question was his own Foreign Minister—consciously used the plays as diplomatic tools, circulating them in an attempt to make himself and his policies attractive through the persuasion of the cultural plane. Particularly fertile soil was found in Austria and Germany, where historical drama was popular already during the late Weimar Republic and would reach 42 per cent of the entire repertoire in the Hitler years (Pyrah 2007, 187; Gadberry 2000). Strong leader-figures were typical protagonists but, rather than being unabashedly pro-authoritarian, the plays tended to “raise more human or philosophical questions about the nature of rule that arguably make them less amenable to a narrowly ideological interpretation” (Pyrah 2007, 189). The same was true of the first two plays of the Italian trilogy, at least (Cesare, on the contrary, devolved into a hagiography that overshadowed all else), and so they fit in well. Hundert Tage (as Campo di Maggio was entitled in German) was, indeed, stunningly successful in both Austria and Germany—but used by the Mussolini regime as a diplomatic tool in differing moments for significantly different reasons. German interest in the play endured for a decade, beginning with the premiere at the National Theatre of Weimar on January 30, 1932. Hitler attended, upon the invitation of anti-Semite German Nationalist Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche (the philosopher’s sister), largely because he had heard that the fascist dictator he so admired would be there (London

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225; Merseburger 2013). One scholar has described the show as “the real prelude to the German Fascist theatre,” for along with Hitler and a handful of Italian diplomats; there were the racist and anti-modernist architect Paul Schulze-Naumburg and a gaggle of Swastika-bearing spectators. To top it all off, Hermann Göring’s fiancée Emmy Sonnemann was in the cast (Willett 143). Response was tepid during the four-hour show, but the Nazi paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, reported that hearty applause rang out at the end, along with shouts of “Heil,” perhaps for Napoleon or Mussolini, but also for the not-yet Führer when he left the theatre. Observing that the play argued that the “male genius of State” will overcome if he unswervingly follows his own aims, he wondered aloud if “other venerated state and regional theatres, which today are all dependent on the mercy of parliaments and anti-fascists, will have the courage to perform the Italian drama. It would harm neither the theaters nor their dear audiences” (Rühle 1967, 1118–119). Nazi officials would eventually agree: Hundert Tage and Cavour (Villafranca) were performed in twenty-six theatres between 1933 and 1944, and Cesare was headed to Berlin in 1940, when the war interrupted its tour (Data can be seen in Fig. 10.5 and Table 10.1).

Fig. 10.5 Mussolini/Forzano productions in Germanic territories, 1932–42

1936 (3) 1934 (29) 1933 (3)

Basel (SW) Berlin Bochum Bremerhaven Brno (CZ) Chemnitz Cologne Danzig (POL) Dessau Duisberg Frankfurt Franzensbad (CZ) Gablenz Geneva (SW) Graz (AU) Hamburg Hannover Karlsbad (CZ) Karlsruhe (8) (5) (3) (13), 1934 (3) (2) (6) (?) (5) (9) (1) (2) (1)

(continued)

1940 (27), 1941 (18)

1940 (2), 1941 (13) 1940 (10), 1941 (6)

1940 (22), 1941 (16) 1940 (7) 1940 (4)

Villafranca

2 Cities are in Germany unless otherwise indicated. A question mark denotes that at least one performance was held there but the total number is uncertain. Cesare (not shown) made it to Budapest in 1940 before a tour that was to include Warsaw was cancelled. A performance of Campo di Maggio in Aussig (CZ) was canceled due to Socialist protests; in Warsaw, an audience riot resulted in four arrests. The local Italian consulate funded a 1936 production in Geneva and probably Basel.

1934 1938 1933 1933 1933 1934 1936 1933 1933 1934 1933 1942

1933 (5), 1934 (2)

Campo di Maggio

City

Table 10.1 Locations, years, and numbers of the Mussolini/Forzano play performances in Germanic territories, 1932– 19422

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Campo di Maggio (6) (5) (10) (3), 1934 (3) (3), 1940 (2) (8) (?) (20) (6), 1934 (2) (13) (3) (5) (6) (40), 1934 (6), 1935 (4), 1936 (2), 1937 (1) (?) (7)

1934 1933 1934 1933 1937 1940 1933 1934 1933 1934 1933 1933 1939 1933 1932 1932

City

Kassel Kiel Leipzig Linz (AU) Luckenwalde Magdeburg Marienbad (CZ) Munich Nuremberg Osnabrück Prague (CZ) Reichenberg (CZ) Salzburg (AU) Schwerin Vienna (AU) Warsaw (POL) Weimar Wiesbaden

Table 10.1 (continued)

1940 (6)

1941 (9)

1941 (10), 1942 (5)

1940 (23), 1941 (3)

Villafranca

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And yet, most interesting in light of the “prelude” notion is the ductility of the play for Mussolini’s purposes: Although it seems easy to place it in a generic category of Nazi-fascist self-adulation, in the specificity of the historical moment, in Austria, it was deployed as a decidedly pro-Mussolinian but anti-Nazi tool. Staged at the Vienna Burgtheater on April 18, 1933 by artistic director Hermann Röbbeling and starring the legendary Werner Krauss—both of whom were invited to Rome for a talk with Mussolini—it was performed fifty-four times up through 1937 and reached many thousands of spectators. The play had broader appeal than most: with such numbers, it was nothing less than a “phenomenon” in contemporary Viennese theatre (Pyrah 189). Less than a week after the opening, Mussolini sent Röbbeling a congratulatory telegram, declaring the triumph a result of the director’s “preparation, Krauss and the others’ performances, and the refined intelligence of the Viennese public” (Mussolini v.42 44). It was, indeed, a well-chosen audience. Vienna’s prestigious playhouses were key objects in a cultural co-optation by the nation’s political forces. And the Burgtheater, equipped for grandiose spectacle and catering to a generally conservative and patriotic public, had a long tradition of upholding the German classics but at the same time promoting a specific Austrian identity—an ideologically complex task in frequent periods of political turmoil and shifting borders but one that was formalized as governmental oversight increased even before the Corporate State was implemented in 1934. Röbbeling, whose tenure began in 1932, readily cooperated with authorities in toeing the authoritarian nationalist line—as is suggested by his willingness to meet with Mussolini and his agreeing to have the play’s third act broadcast on the radio in Austria and Italy (Warren 1991, 272). Just weeks before the Burgtheater opening, Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss had barred the doors to parliament and banned the Nazi party, fearing that it would gain ground now that Hitler had taken power in Germany. He deeply admired Mussolini, however, and was in fact styling his own brand of Catholic, corporatist, and nationalist authoritarianism after Italian fascism. Il Duce was an unequivocal ally, since for him Austria was a buffer against German expansion, and so at this moment it was natural that the public appreciated the story of a leader—even (or especially) an authoritarian one—determined to protect his Nation’s sovereignty at high costs. Napoleon was a stand-in for Mussolini, in other words, but also for Dollfuss.

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For his part, Mussolini was heavily invested in the relationship with Dollfuss, seeking a sort of exclusive partnership in which he was leader and model (De Felice 1974, 470–71). His desire to mark their mutual understanding was made manifest by a gala performance during his Undersecretary of State Fulvio Suvich’s visit to Vienna in January 1934; the evening, which included a post-show dinner in the Burgtheater’s salon, was hosted by Dollfuss himself. It was clear to all that the Napoleon play was celebrating the two anti-Nazi allies of the moment: indeed, the Nazis had come to make trouble, and the theatre even had to be searched after news of a possible assassination attempt had gotten around (Suvich 1984, 266). Journalists and critics readily saw parallels and made the connections explicit. One recapped a recent article from a Zurich paper that praised the Italian Duce’s patient politicking—evidenced by his decision not to take control of the government by force and trust in the “natural process” of political evolution—for the obvious purpose of commenting in turn on Dollfuss’ predicament and actions, judged to be equally careful, and measured. Casting il Duce as the Statesman who wrote a play to share wisdom gained through experience, the article made him tutor to Dictator Junior Dollfuss. Mussolini “has learned from history how […] old institutions can, under certain circumstances, threaten the life of a new political order.” How did one know that he knew? Why, he had given “eloquent expression to such historical experiences in the drama Hundert Tage” (Allgemeiner Tiroler Anzeiger). Dollfuss—who had had a rather meteoric rise in national politics and had recently stood up to Hitler—had suddenly gained worldwide attention for his new role in continental politics. For some, like American Foreign Affairs journalist John Gunther, he was seen as “Europe’s first bulwark against Hitler, a sort of Nazi giant-killer” despite his characteristically Austrian civility and even-temperedness. What’s more, the Napoleon comparison was easy to make in his case, too: “stature came to [Dollfuss], paradoxically, because he is four feet eleven inches high” (Gunther). Dollfuss had become one to watch, in short, and one proof of his political savvy was his resemblance to Mussolini. This latter, in power for over a decade, had taught through action as a politician and through words as a dramatic poet, and one who had in Austrian eyes been through an experience that spoke directly to theirs. This was classic soft power: it was his wisdom and culture—even before an eventual army—that made Mussolini the man to look to. When an Italian journalist stationed in

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Vienna wrote to urge him to privilege foreign premieres of the plays, he did so precisely because of the undeniable appeal. The Burgtheater was clamoring for Cesare, he explained, as was Krauss: another Mussolini play in their hands would be a “worldwide artistic event” (Zingarelli). Democratic Austrian patriots were horrified. Writing for the Social Democratic Arbeiter-Zeitung, David Josef Bach balked at the Burgtheater’s playing this kind of politics and revealed his discovery that the script in use there was different. “It’s not the drama by Mussolini and Forzano being played at the Burgtheater,” he complained, but an altered version of the published translation (by Geza Herczeg) done by Hans Sassmann: “All kinds of modification, intensification, and falsification have made their way into the version evidently commissioned and approved by the Burgtheater [which has] not only seen fit to produce MussoliniForzano but has also participated in this adaptation” (Bach 1933, 7). Sassmann’s modifications in fact ran the gamut, from differences of single words to addition and subtraction of entire lines, scenes, and even characters. One area of intervention was motivated at least partially by aesthetics; Fouchè, universally judged an underdeveloped character, was given more stage time and lines and was reinserted into the final scene. Yet, the main effect was the strengthening of the anti-democratic and anti-parliamentary critique (Dietrich 1976, 686–89). Ludwig Ullman wrote in the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung that Hundert Tage, with its “pseudo-Napoleonic words of Mussolini [that] have their typical, jauntily intolerant flourish,” was more than anything a political manifesto, and, “One cannot review a manifesto, convictions can only be shared or refuted. But in these fateful days for democracy attested by parliament one must declare one’s support for that system. Unpolitically. Objectively. As a cultural critic, not as a theatre critic.” He resisted: Despite pomp and mass histrionics, the theatre is in essence anti-Fascist. It attributes right and wrong evenhandedly, where it wishes to be surrounded by tragedy. And Mussolini cannot make pacts with the theatre if only because it is the parliament of the human soul. He can only be a dictator to it. (Pyrah 189)

As Robert Pyrah has poignantly observed, though, the situation was hardly so comforting. The Burgtheater parliament was casting its votes for the Italian dictator and more generally for authoritarian practices. That

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Austrians flocked to see the play was symptomatic of the spreading antidemocratic epidemic. It was a declared refutation of Naziism nonetheless—and it is little wonder that the play would disappear from the Austrian stage after 1937, as would Röbbeling from the Burgtheater management. The play would go on in other territories of the Reich, called to serve the new Nazi-Fascist order. In the decades after fascism’s fall, first those who had been involved and then the scholars who set out to write their history overwhelmingly agreed that Mussolini’s regime failed to create an authentic fascist theatre. Nevertheless, to borrow Ullman’s phrasing, the black-shirted hierarchs and their Duce did indeed do their best to make a pact with the industry and its artists, offering better working conditions, instructional programmes, and space for creative innovation with the understanding— or the hope—that the thespians’ labours would help to achieve the regime’s long term, strategic goals. A consideration of both domestic and foreign theatre policies underscores the extent to which the regime’s propagandistic and pedagogical purposes were linked in service of those goals, which aimed for far more than the maintenance of power and aimed instead to remake Italians and, from there, impose a new European hegemony based on both military power and cultural authority.

References Alberti, Alberto Cesare, et al. 1984. Il teatro sperimentale degli indipendenti, 1923–1936. Rome: Bulzoni. Allgemeiner Tiroler Anzeiger, unsigned article, January 26, 1934. Bach, David Joseph. 1933. Das Ende einer Diktatur. Hundert Tage im Burgtheater. Arbeiter Zeitung, April 23, 7. Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. 2004. Fascist Modernities. Italy 1922–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press. Berezin, Mabel. 1991. Organization of Political Ideology: Culture, State, and the Theatre in Fascist Italy. American Sociological Review 56 (5): 639–651. Bonsaver, Guido. 2009. Culture and Intellectuals. In The Oxford Handbook of Italian Fascism, ed. R.J.B. Bosworth, 109–126. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bragaglia, Anton Giulio. 1929. Del teatro teatrale, ossia del teatro. Rome: Edizione Tiber. Cassels, Alan. 1970. Mussolini’s Early Diplomacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Ciano, Galeazzo. 2006. Diary entry 5/21/1938. Diario 1937–1943, ed. Renzo De Felice. Milan: Rizzoli. Corsi, Mario. 1939. Il teatro all’aperto in Italia. Milan: Rizzoli. D’Amico, Alessandro and Alessandro Tinterri. 1987. Pirandello capocomico. Palermo: Sellerio. D’Amico, Silvio. 1929. Tramonto del grande attore. Milan: Mondadori. ———. 2005. Cronache teatrali, Vols 5. Rome: Novecento. De Felice, Renzo. 1974. Mussolini il Duce I. Gli anni del consenso 1929–1936. Turin: Einaudi. De Grazia, Victoria. 1981. The Culture of Consent. Mass organization of leisure in fascist Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Del Bo, Dino. 1935. L’arte fascista. Gerarchia. Dietrich, Margaret. 1976. Das Burtheater und sein Publikum I , 686–689. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Frigerio, Giorgio. 1936. Funzioni del tearo nella propaganda politica. Gerarchia. Gaborik, Patricia. 2017. The Voice of the Institution. The Inspector General Nicola De Pirro. Teatro e Storia 38: 241–261. ———. 2021. Mussolini’s Theatre. Fascist Experiments in Art and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gadberry, Glen. 2000. The History Plays of the Third Reich. In Theatre Under the Nazis, ed. John London, 96–135. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia. November 6, 1944. https://www.gazzet taufficiale.it/eli/gu/1937/07/02/151/sg/pdf. Accessed 20 January 2022. Gentile, Emilio. 2010. Fascismo. Storia e interpretazioni. Rome-Bari: Laterza. Gramsci, Antonio. 2010. Cronache teatrali 1915–1920, ed. Davico Bonino. Turin: Aragno. Gundle, Stephen. 2013. Mass Culture and the Cult of Personality. The Cult of the Duce. Mussolini and the Italians, ed. Gundle et.al. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Gunther, John. Dollfuss and the Future of Austria. Foreign Affairs, January 1934 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/austria/1934-01-01/dollfussand-future-austria. Accessed 15 February 2018. Heinrich, Anselm. 2018. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation. London: Routledge. La Rovere, Luca. 2003. Storia dei GUF. Organizzazione, politica, e miti della gioventù universitaria fascista. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri. London, John. Non-German Drama in the Third Reich. Theatre Under the Nazis, ed. John London, 222–261. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Martin, Benjamin. 2016. The Nazi-Fascist New Order for European Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Merseburger, Peter. 2013. Mythos Weimar: Zwischen Geist und Macht. Munich: Pantheon Verlag. Mussolini, Benito. 1972. Opera Omnia, Vol. 19. Florence: La Fenice. ———. Opera Omnia, Vol. 20. Florence: La Fenice. ———. 1979. Vol. 42. Florence: La Fenice. Pacuvio, Giulio. 1941. Funzione dei Teatri-GUF. Via Consolare 2.1 (January). Pedullà, Gianfranco. 1994. Il teatro italiano nel tempo del fascismo. Bologna: Il Mulino. Petacci, Claretta. 2010. Mussolini segreto. Milan: Rizzoli. Poniatosky, A.S. 1938. Teatro: problema per i giovani. Gerarchia. ———. 1939. Per uno sperimentale dell’OND. Gerarchia. Pyrah, Robert. 2007. The Burgtheater and Austrian Identity. Oxford: Legenda. Rühle, Gunter. 1967. Theater für die Republik 1917–1933 im Spiegel Der Kritik. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag. Scarpellini, Emanuela. 1989. Organizzazione teatrale e politica del teatro nell’Italia fascista. Florence: La nuova Italia. Schnapp, Jeffrey T., ed. 2000. A Primer of Italian Fascism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Teatro-Guf di Teramo. 1942. Rassegna dei Teatri-GUF. Vasile, Turi. 1940. Notizie da casa. Via Consolare I.7/8 (July). Vigevani, Alberto. 1937. Problemi del nostro teatro. Attesa del mito. Gerarchia 569–72. Vigna, Francesca. 2008. ‘Il corago sublime’. Anton Giulio Bragaglia e il Teatro delle Arti. Soveria Monnelli: Rubbettino. Warren, John. 1991. Austrian Theatre and the Corporate State. Austria in the Thirties: Culture and Politics, ed. Kenneth Segar and John Warren, 267–69. Riverside, CA: Ariadne. Suvich, Fulvio. 1984. Memorie 1932–1936. Milan: Rizzoli. Willett, John. 1998. Theatre of the Weimar Republic. Teaneck, NJ: Holmes and Meier.

Archival Material EIST correspondence. 1940. Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Rome), MinCulPop, Gabinetto Sovvenzioni folder 232. Zingarelli, Italo. Letter to Mussolini’s secretariat, dated November 14, 1933. Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Rome), Segreteria Particolare del Duce, Carteggio Riservato 85.

PART III

Performance Practice: Dramaturgy and the Aesthetics of War

CHAPTER 11

In the Air: Shell Shock Theatre and Ornamental Girls in Nazi Propaganda Evelyn Annuß

After their seizure of power, Nazi propaganda used mass theatre to have their interpretation of World War I enacted by the masses: a nationalsocialist heroic resurrection of the fallen. These soldierly stagings of a masculinity already in decline in the 1930s may seem alien in contemporary times. However, as I would like to argue in this article, Nazi mass theatre was a thoroughly modern mode of affect politics (Massumi 2015; Scheve 2016; Seyfert 2012) and in sync with media developments at the time as well as with the underlying change of biopolitical affordances (Gibson 2014). Its signature was to create artificial atmospheres prefiguring post-disciplinary modes of communalization. My contribution is situated in the context of contemporary research on environmental knowledge and media ecologies (Hörl 2018; Sprenger 2019; from the perspective of theatre studies Kirsch 2020) and targets the biopolitical dispositif of Nazi propaganda. Criticism of ideology may not

E. Annuß (B) Institute of Cultural Management and Gender Studies, MDW—University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_11

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suffice to understand the theatrical dramaturgies of war staged by propaganda. Reconsidering the dimension of affectics and media ecology, I would therefore like to analyze the concomitant change in form of mass theatrical productions as exemplary for shifting modes of subjectivation. Dramaturgically, their early style after the Nazi seizure of power can be read as reacting to the shock of being confronted with a possible intoxication of the atmosphere and the acoustic suggestion of its containment (Ketelsen 2009). These first war scenarios, however, were successively transformed into new, spectacular techniques of governing no longer linked to the staging of martial masculinity (Theweleit 2019). The first national-socialist experiments with chorus plays of communalization were aired before they were put on stage and translated the cheering masses into rhythmitized radio choruses. At the beginning of the Nazi era, mass theatre (Annuß 2019; Fischer-Lichte, Erika 2005; Hake 2020; Heinrich 2007; Stommer 1985; Strobl 2007) was tested on air. The leading propaganda medium chosen was radio (Hagen 2005). In Germany, broadcast—in contrast to the film industry—was stateorganized already before 1933. But the study of cultural institutions can only provide one of the reasons why radio served as the major tool to transmit the Führer’s voice—always branded in a live setting accompanied by “his” cheering people (Epping-Jäger 2003 and 2008). What we need is an understanding of the affective dimension of propaganda. We may also link propaganda’s acoustic determination to the attempt of secularizing Christian liturgy for the sake of surrogate rituals and to the aftereffects of World War I within the German political context. In order to historicize the susceptibility to a specific acoustic form more thoroughly, I would like to return to the famous description of the contemporary atmo trauma in an essay by Walter Benjamin, originally titled Poverty of Experience. It sketches out the jolt of industrialized mass destruction in World War I and reads the post-traumatic disorder of veterans as exemplary for the interwar period: No, this much is clear: experience has fallen in value, amid a generation which from 1914 to 1918 had to experience some of the most monstrous events in the history of the world. Perhaps this is less remarkable than it appears. Wasn’t it noticed at the time how many people returned from the front in silence? Not richer but poorer in communicable experience? And what poured out from the flood of war books ten years later was anything but the experience that passes from mouth to ear. No, there was

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nothing remarkable about that. For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly: strategic experience has been contravened by positional warfare; economic experience, by the inflation; physical experience, by hunger; moral experiences, by the ruling powers. A generation that had gone to school in horse-drawn streetcars now stood in the open air, amid a landscape in which nothing was the same except the clouds and, at its centre, in a force field of destructive torrents and explosions, the tiny, fragile human body.1 (Benjamin 1999, 731–32)

In his text published as Armut und Erfahrung, Poverty and Experience, Benjamin diagnoses a lack of communicable experience after World War I as a generational disposition. Without naming it, he situates the miseen-scene of this shock-like confrontation with one’s own vulnerability not so much in the context of inflation, hunger or political disillusion with nationalism after the German loss of the war in 1918. He rather stresses a genuinely gendered trauma. Benjamin shows how the contemporaneous image of hegemonic masculinity suddenly had burst in the context of defeat. He thus reads a new form of warfare allegorically in order to unroll people’s new and post-sovereign relation to their environment that seemed to have called for a collective reclamation of the soldierly, armed body as a symbol of a national community resurrected after World War I. In this sense, national-socialist mass theatre appears as an experiment to performatively suggest a new body of “the Germans”. It does so by creating new surroundings. And these surroundings are not so much determined by visual illustration, but by sound politics. Benjamin’s essay thus forestalls how Nazi propaganda answered to the inability to disclose experiences of becoming superfluous in the context of new forms of mass destruction on European territory, of chemical or trench warfare 1 German original: “Nein, soviel ist klar: die Erfahrung ist im Kurse gefallen und das in einer Generation, die 1914–1918 eine der ungeheuersten Erfahrungen der Weltgeschichte gemacht hat. Vielleicht ist das nicht so merkwürdig wie das scheint. Konnte man damals nicht die Feststellung machen: die Leute kamen verstummt aus dem Felde? Nicht reicher, ärmer an mitteilbarer Erfahrung. Was sich dann zehn Jahre danach in der Flut der Kriegsbücher ergossen hat, war alles andere als Erfahrung, die vom Mund zum Ohr strömt. Nein, merkwürdig war das nicht. Denn nie sind Erfahrungen gründlicher Lügen gestraft worden als die strategischen durch den Stellungskrieg, die wirtschaftlichen durch die Inflation, die körperlichen durch den Hunger, die sittlichen durch die Machthaber. Eine Generation, die noch mit der Pferdebahn zur Schule gefahren war, stand unter freiem Himmel in einer Landschaft, in der nichts unverändert geblieben war als die Wolken, und in der Mitte, in einem Kraftfeld zerstörender Ströme und Explosionen, der winzige gebrechliche Menschenkörper.” (Benjamin 1991, II.1: 213–19, here 214).

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and the shock of the weaponization of one’s environment by the use of gas. As Anton Kaes has shown in his book Shell Shock Cinema (2009), from which I borrowed the title of my article, the trauma of World War I, of the first use of chemical and trench warfare as means of mass destruction, had already been addressed in Weimar cinema, for example in Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Contradicting the read of the late Siegfried Kracauer, who interpreted the film in 1947 as foreshadowing what German authoritarian mentality had led to, Kaes claims that the uncanny and contradictory stories of serial killings and trauma told in an expressionist fashion within a psychiatric frame can be seen as an attempt to collectively work through the war and address the distrust in perception it had caused—a distrust so famously described by Benjamin in the quote above. The Nazis coming into power, however, provided a different technique to cope with neglected fear than Weimar cinema—airing nationalist sentiments. In the wake of the defeat of the left and internationalist perspectives on World War I—as, for example, Bertolt Brecht had provided in his Fatzer fragments (Kirsch 2016 in reference to Sloterdijk’s description of World War I as “atmoterror”, 2009)—the Nazis countered the incapability to express anxiety or loss not just by a spectacle of triumphant victory. They tried to create a national community of extraordinary surrogate experience—an Erlebnisgemeinschaft (Stommer 1985)—appropriating the latest media technology. In the following, I will focus on one of the first open air mass theatrical events after the Nazi take-over that illustrates the attempt to regain control over people’s environment by contradicting shellacking acoustically: This Berlin event, which was allegedly staged by Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg, had already been directed by Kurt Pehlemann in the Potsdam Stadium under the title Auf bricht Deutschland earlier that year. Stressing voices from above and addressing the notion of a secured and containable atmosphere (Annuß 2019, 128–173), it made use of the leading mass medium at the time in order to restage war. Its dramaturgy indicates the possible connection between gas trauma and the acoustic paradigm determining specific open air stage productions. I will focus on this early representative mass theatrical experiment from 1933, which took place in Berlin’s Grunewald Stadium on occasion of and relating to the national harvest festival held at Bückeberg. Now largely forgotten, it was a precursor of the so-called Thing plays staged in 1934 and 1935. Its technically enhanced form and

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its reception exposed the very acoustic disposition of early propaganda theatre and its relation to shell shock. We are in the Berlin Stadium. More than 10.000 people fill the vast ranks. It is the evening of 1 October 1933. The Berlin population has gathered to listen to the speech of the Führer addressed to the German peasants transmitted via loudspeaker from Bückeberg. A band plays and then suddenly stops. From somewhere, the galvanizing voice of the chancellor fills the air. The crowd sits there in silence, everybody listens. Nobody is straining to catch a glimpse of anything outside of the arena. The crowd just sits there, literally self-contained. Singing the national anthem and the Horst Wessel song, the masses, who had previously sat there as individuals and without any relation to each other, had melted into unity. The prerequisites for a gigantic pageant have been created. The huge free space in the middle of the stadium becomes illuminated. Innumerable crowds of harvest workers, of boys and girls, men and women are flocking in. [...] On the two big harvest poles in the middle of the stadium, two figures become visible: Germania and the patron of the Germans. But suddenly, the scene darkens, rumbling music announces the war. 1918—the army emerges. A black Gestalt flaunts itself in front of Germania, swinging a red flag; the soldiers leave the front. In a great run, they bolt home. The homeland becomes whipped up. The masses swing themselves heinously. At the horizon, the shadow of the army’s retreat is visible. The honouring sacrifice for the fallen troops - symbolized at a great altar - turns into insurgence. The stage turns into a deployment space for state units. The play turns into reality.2 2 My translation; German original: “Wir befinden uns im Berliner Stadion. Über zehn-

tausend Menschen füllen die unübersehbaren Ränge. Es ist der Abend des 1. Oktober 1933. Die Berliner Bevölkerung hat sich zusammengefunden, um die Rede des Führers an die deutsche Bauernschaft in der Lautsprecherübertragung vom Bückeberg zu hören. Eine Musikkapelle spielt, sie bricht plötzlich ab. Von irgendwoher hallt die aufrüttelnde Stimme des Kanzlers über den Platz. Die Menge sitzt schweigend, jeder hört. Er hat keinen Blickpunkt außerhalb, den er mühsam zu erhaschen suchte. Die Menge sitzt im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes in sich gekehrt. Im Deutschlandlied und im Horst-Wessel-Lied sind die vorher beziehungslos nebeneinandersitzenden Massen zu einer Einheit verschmolzen. Die Voraussetzungen für ein großes Festspiel sind geschaffen. Die riesengroße, freie Mittelfläche des Stadions wird erhellt. Unendliche Mengen von Erntearbeitern, von Knaben und Mädchen, Männern und Frauen strömen herein. (…) Auf den beiden großen Erntemieten in der Mitte des Stadions werden zwei Gestalten sichtbar, Germania und der Schutzherr der Deutschen. Aber plötzlich verdunkelt sich die Szene, grollende Musik deutet den Krieg an. 1918, das Heer wird sichtbar. Vor die Germania stellt sich eine schwarze Gestalt, die eine große rote Fahne schwenkt; die Soldaten verlassen die Front. In einem großen Lauf stürzen sie in die Heimat. Die Heimat wird aufgepeitscht./Massen bewegen sich zuchtlos.

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Werner Pleister—later the major sound director of thing plays—describes the first representative production in 1933: Gustav Goes’ Brot und Eisen—Bread and Iron. In his early days, Goes, a former soldier, had produced fairy tales. Between 1926 and 1940, he published one book after another on World War I. Written in 1932, Bread and Iron implied redemption from the past. Staged in 1933, the play putatively authenticated the political shift of the time by the appearance of military units of the Nazi state. Remarkably, Pleister’s description claims that the unity of the audience had already been created by the Führer’s voice. Transmitting Hitler’s speech through loudspeakers from elsewhere, communalization was in the air, as Pleister suggested. According to him, the Volksgemeinschaft, the national-socialist community of people, had been formed acoustically even before the performance began. However, its formation needed to be reenacted on stage in order to give a specific military and youthful image to the figure of the people. The reenactment of World War I and of the Nazi take-over can obviously be read as a quote of a Russian revolutionary play: The Storming of the Winter Palais. While the attempt to authenticate a political founding tale corresponds in both cases, the Bolshevik play had worked as “hand-to-hand-struggle” (Fülöp-Miller and Gregor 1968, 63) and had been reenacted by Red Army veterans. Instead, Nazism presented itself as the military formation of a new and youthful masculinity aligned to a leading figure. The mass chorus at Grunewald stadium, therefore, did not act as a collective dramatic figure with its own agency but as a “post-dramatic” (Lehmann 2006) instrument of allegorical personae whose stage appearance verticalized the visual field and demonstrated control over their surroundings. The body of the Protector, an allegorical figure played by the head of the theatre department within Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda ministry, Otto Laubinger, was placed on a pole to expose hierarchy on stage. The representative of the new mass theatre was thus staged as the complementary figure of the state and party units incorporating a soldier-like Volksgemeinschaft. However, he himself appeared as a medium—as the medium of an invisible chorus from above: a ghostly chorus of the fallen soldiers, who called for the living to unite. Like Hitler’s speech before the

Am Horizont sieht man schattenhaft den Rückzug des Heeres. Aus dem verehrenden Opfer für die Gefallenen—symbolisch an einem großen Altar dargestellt—kommt die Erhebung. Die Szene wird zum Aufmarschplatz der Verbände des Staates. Das Spiel wird Wirklichkeit.“ (Pleister 1933, 10–11).

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beginning of the play, this invisible chorus was aired via loudspeakers. It quoted one of Goes’ World War I poems in which the fallen assure the living that their death had been a happy one and was not in vain but rather prefigured communalization. This thanatopolitical answer to shell shock trauma translated a senseless mass death in positional and chemical warfare into nationalized rebirth while keeping veterans out of sight. In 1933 at Grunewald stadium, Goes’ play staged the imaginary becoming of the German people as one by having the “Sturmkolonnen des jungen Deutschland” (Goes 1933, 25)—SA, SS—marching as a visual transposition of the acoustic model of verticalized communalization. The voices of the dead became transformed into a collective horizontally moving forward, but choreographed from above. In this sense, the notion of air shared by everybody appeared to be contained within a hierarchical national framework. Early Nazi stadium theatre can therefore be interpreted as an attempt to contain open air. Technology was used to reappropriate what had been perceived as tainted atmosphere. However, in 1934, the propaganda ministry tried to shift open air theatre from its acoustic paradigm, which seemed too close to choral communion in Christian liturgy. Stressing movement as a modern tool, Goebbels tried to generate national communalization. After the consolidation of power, Nazi propaganda’s dramaturgy of war needed to be adjusted. Mass theatre gradually became a governmental technique of social choreography to propagate the Volksgemeinschaft by staging collective following. In 1934 and 1935, the propaganda ministry cooperated with local administrations to build new open air theatres labeled as Thingstätten often verticalized by stairways because the flat stadium ground was considered as inefficient to stage followership and to suggest participation to the audience. In order to provide an actual counter experience of collective empowerment, of Volkwerdung, as propaganda coined it, voices of the undead and simple bodily authentication seemed no longer enough. Propaganda called for skillful choreography beyond a marching army. Exposed physical co-presence and the staging of movement became essential to sustainably banning the haunting threat of being stuck in trench warfare. One of the main features of these new stages called Thingstätten was to have choruses march through the audience suggesting their participation. The Thing plays were an early form of immersive mass choreography as can be shown with regard to the first representative one staged in Heidelberg at the Reichsfestspiele in 1934 broadcast a year before:

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Richard Euringer’s Deutsche Passion 1933, German Passion 1933 (Euringer 1934). The play only turned to communal singing at the end. Its director Hanns Niedecken Gebhard—coming from German Dance and movement choirs—therefore had to invent a spectacular scene of communalization. Moreover, the protagonist took over the role of the collective passion figure that the chorus of the dead soldiers had stood for in Bread and Iron. As the new lead, Euringer put a fallen nameless soldier from World War I, an obvious reference to the coining of the Führer, sacrificing himself for the dispersed German people. At the end of the play, this single figure again became an invisible voice from above while the so far dispersed German masses raised their arms to give the staged communalization a verticalized direction. However, the valence of sound and visuals had changed. As I would argue, the acoustic paradigm of early Nazi mass theatre, the initial broadcasting of the thing plays, and the status of choreography as well as the verticalized scenography can be read in reaction to a new perception of one’s environment in the wake of ideological defeat. Exploiting trans-generational trauma, Thing propaganda did away with the notion of man-to-man fights, countered the shock of being reduced to one’s singular body caught amidst toxic explosions by claiming to performatively reconquer the atmosphere. Staging followership on air, in the air, on the move and rising, had thus become central to the mass theatrical propaganda of national resurrection at the time. Indeed, the Nazi version of a people’s theatre in its more developed form had to depict a single body as a leading pastoral figure, a shepherd (Broeckling 2017) unifying scattered bodies and transforming the masses into a structured Gestalt. It revalidated the single body as something other than being subjugated to opaque environmental forces—as a representative of a national community; the determining element though was not the leader, but the figure of the people as a reassuring environment for propaganda’s target audience. Research so far stressed the lack of a spectacular persona in Thing plays (e.g., Fischer-Lichte 2005). This lack is conceived as a major reason for the decline of the Thing era in the mid-1930s. However, we might more productively take a closer look at mass theatrical transformations to understand that “the people” on stage already prefigured the ornamental spectacles of the post-Olympic future, which had no need for a leading stage persona. The soldierly choruses rather became an extension of Thing architecture. Before the Nazis started World War II,

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mass theatrical propaganda had already turned away from overt dramaturgies of war and experimented with the ornamentalization of the chorus. The audience itself was now targeted as a self-enforcing environment of reassurance in an offer to externalize destructive forces. Accordingly, its gendering was inverted on stage while the propagandist reassurance of soldierly masculinity was subtly transposed from stage representation to the orchestration of perception. The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games became the catalyst for developing other, post-martial forms of Nazi mass theatrical entertainment and for experimenting with new modes of following. Propaganda got rid of its ongoing reenactments of World War I dramaturgies and reaccentuated mass theatre as a tool of communalization via branding. With the implementation of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, the juridical exclusion of the Jewish population, the cooptation of all public institutions as well as the international acknowledgment of the Nazi regime in the context of the Olympic Games in 1936, festive spectacles to entertain the crowds began replacing militarized open air theatre spectacles. We can historicize this change in form with regard to the advent of consumer capitalism and the altering media dispositif (Sieber 2011) of the time. Mass theatre thus became an up-to-date public relations tool doing away with the cultic and militarized setting of former stagings. If we look at the cinematographic development of the time, we may determine the form specificity of these post-traumatic mass spectacles more accurately. Governing the perspective of the audience increasingly overlapped the achievements of sound engineering. Thanks to the shift in leitmedia, the shift from radio to sound movies, the possibilities of rhythmically directing the gaze of the people were more and more up in the air, so to speak. In these new spectacles of mass theatrical propaganda, neither the figure of the people nor the figure of the Führer needed to be incarnated on stage since the new performative practices of communalization did no longer target mimetic affection but rather produced spectacular triggers in order to create a self-enforcing exultation of the masses. Reciprocal affection was thus not so much trimmed by ideological narratives and the staging of personae but by politics of intensity (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). This mode of affection, however, was still conceptualized ideologically. It was determined by an understanding of vertical leadership, however, not depicted but transposed into the setting itself. Film propaganda after the seizure of power had already suggested new forms of imaginary participation via directing the gaze. At the very

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beginning of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will “documentary” of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, the Nazi Party Convention, Hitler is staged as a modern messiah in his airplane overviewing the marching masses of Nuremberg. Riefenstahl used the camera as a panoptic double of the omnipresent acousmatic voice of the radio dictator after the Nazi take-over (Schnapp 2006, 15). God’s eye became translated into the leader’s view via evoking the perspective of a bomber pilot. As such, it was communalized at a time when the propaganda of assembly was still designed to address the people via radio and loudspeakers. For the later Nazi mass spectacles during the second half of the 1930s, it was rather the top shot, a vertical camera setting and its prefiguration in war (Spivak 2011) that became formative. From 1933 onwards, stadiums, in which the masses could face themselves, as Elias Canetti has put it (Canetti 1980, 25), were now used very differently to transform the audience into a cheering chorus. Martial disciplining, determining early stadium as well as Thing plays, was long since passé. An aesthetics augmented by a shift in media perception paved the way for the return to the stadium while remodeling mass theatrical stagings. Viewing the event from above and sitting in a closed oval, the audience would dictate a performance directed to all sides, as the leading regisseur of mass theatre Hanns Niedecken Gebhard put it in the program of his Berlin festival production Olympic Youth, Olympische Jugend in 1936 (Niedecken Gebhard 1936, 31). Lighting became a central instrument of directing the masses and of reinforcing the impression of containment that the stadium architecture itself produced. Anti-aircraft searchlights were used to create a complying dome atmosphere (Bartetzko 2012). Techniques of zooming in and fading out were transposed into spectacles of light coining a new mode of mass theatrical propaganda. The postOlympic festivals indicate a fundamental change in form compared to the ones prior to 1936. Substituting kinetic communalization, marching through the audiences to perform the founding of the Volksgemeinschaft with living ornaments, the Nazis turned to a new and up-to-date form of branding. In the most impressive festival of 1937, Berlin in sieben Jahrhunderten, Berlin in Seven Centuries, thousands of school girls in white sports dresses stormed the pitch of the Olympic Stadium to gymnastically form a super sign. Bowing their bodies center stage, they grouped collectively as the national emblem of Nazism: an eagle on a swastika. The mass spectacle was accompanied by canonical quotes of German Dichter und Denker as

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well as of the Führer himself. However, it was the frozen ornament that was designed as a final affect trigger for the masses. Displaying sportive girls superseded the militarized appearance of early propaganda. Instead of the incorporation of war, the audience’s gaze was reconceptualized as sovereign and soldierly at the same time. Propaganda turned to experimenting with spectacular views “for all”. Panopticism was no longer used to discipline and punish, as Foucault had described its nineteenthcentury purpose (Foucault 1995, 195–228). The ludic mediation of a simulated Führer’s perspective relied on the notion of a “panoptic synopticon” (Annuß 2019, 415), that was modeled after the viewing pattern of movie audiences. Propaganda feigned communal empowerment to affectively control the masses through entertainment. In the second half of the 1930s, it countered the perception of a toxic surrounding connected to the loss of World War I and the call for resurrection by a happy spectacle of a contained epiphany of the here and now. The many watching the many as if they would occupy the position of the “nameless soldier”, surveilling the apparatus as such could be understood as a technique of subtle governing and of offering a new, a post-disciplinary way of following. In 1927, Siegfried Kracauer had read the mass ornamental “Mädchenkomplex” (Kracauer 1977, 50), the inextricable complex of revue girls, as an international phenomenon of a modern viewer culture under the condition of Taylorism and early consumerism. According to his understanding, the geometrically moving bodies of the girls resisted any form of essentializing: As carriers of the masses ornamental figures would obviously not be rooted in a people’s community, he stated. Thus, they would have no significance beyond their presence. Instead, these moving ornaments had the potential of demystification exposing collective performativity, i.e., of deconstructing representation. The change in propaganda of the later 1930s, however, evoked a reification of the gaze no longer linked to a bodily authentication of the signified. Nazi propaganda had moved beyond the visualization of organological ideologemes in mass theatre. They obviously did not need a leading figure on stage anymore and could even do without a staged people of youthful masculinity at the eve of World War II. What was needed though, were affect triggers to externalize the abyss of political violence. The living national emblem in freeze frame had become the spectacular signature of branding avant control society, i.e., of addressing the audience as modern followers long before social media were invented. Respectively, propaganda transformed

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itself into a predecessor of and playground for modern subjectivation. Its potential efficacy was no longer determined by obscuring proxy and an-aestheticizing (Rebentisch 2016) fictionality; rather, the audience was urged to perceive themselves as parts of a splendid event community. Mass theatrical affect politics during later Nazism thus already gave the prospect of new forms of subjecthood. While early stadium plays staged the interpellation by the Führer in order to then communalize via the depicted, later festivals rather calculated on the valorization of a collective self. To charge the gaze ideologically and form a post-disciplinary event community already aimed at self-governing instead of surveillance and force. We may read later Nazi spectacles symptomatically, indicating a governmental change underneath the political organization of the Nazi state. What we may learn by historicizing propaganda accordingly is to analyze how dramaturgies of war may have taken an afterlife of their own. Looking back from the postdemocratic (Crouch 2004) conditions of today’s capture capitalism, we may find that the affectif of wanting to be governed (Foucault 2014, 229, Lecture 10, 12 March 1980) is not that new after all. As we can see with regard to today’s populist politics, the Nazis’ event-oriented use of subjectivation already targeted its affective dimension and cannot be countered adequately on the level of criticism of ideology alone.

References Annuß, Evelyn. 2019. Volksschule des Theaters. Nationalsozialistische Massenspiele. Paderborn: Fink. Bartetzko, Dieter. 2012. Illusionen in Stein. Stimmungsarchitektur im deutschen Faschismus. Berlin: Zentral, revised edition. Benjamin, Walter. 1991. Erfahrung und Armut. In Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. II (1), eds. Rolf Tiefemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, 213–219. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Benjamin, Walter. 1999. Experience and Poverty. In Selected Writings, Vol.2, 1927–1934, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, Trans. Rodney Livingstone, 731–736. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Broeckling, Ulrich. 2017. Gute Hirten führen sanft. Über Menschenregierungskünste. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Canetti, Elias. 1980. Masse und Macht. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Crouch, Colin. 2004. Post-Democracy. A Sociological Introduction. Cambridge: Polity.

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Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus. On Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis/London: The University of Minnesota Press. Epping-Jäger, Cornelia. 2003. Eine einzige jubelnde Stimme. Zur Etablierung des Dispositivs Laut/Sprecher in der politischen Kommunikation des Nationalsozialismus. In Medien/Stimmen, eds. Cornelia Epping-Jäger and Erika Linz, 100–123. Köln: DuMont. Epping-Jäger, Cornelia. 2008. LautSprecher-Passagen. Zu den Umbauten eines Dispositivs der Massenkommunikation vor und nach 1945. In Formationen der Mediennutzung III. Dispositive Ordnungen im Umbau, eds. Cornelia Epping-Jäger and Irmela Schneider, 17–41. Bielefeld: Transcript. Euringer, Richard. 1934. Deutsche Passion 1933. Berlin: Volkschaft. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. 2005. Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual. Exploring Forms of Political Theatre. London: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1995. Disclipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, Michel. 2014. On the Government of the Living. Lectures at the Collège de France. 1979–1980, ed. Michel Senellart, trans. Graham Burchell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fülöp-Miller, René, and Joseph Gregor. 1968. The Russian Theatre. New York/ London: Blom. Gibson, James J. 2014. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. New York/ London: Routledge. Goes, Gustav. 1933. Aufbricht Deutschland! (Brot und Eisen), 2nd ed. Berlin: Traditionsverlag Potsdam. Hagen, Wolfgang. 2005. Das Radio. Zur Geschichte und Theorie des Hörfunks— Deutschland/USA. München: Fink. Hake, Sabine. 2020. Workers, work, and the Thingspiel. Geschichte Und Gesellschaft 46: 155–178. Heinrich, Anselm. 2007. Entertainment, Propaganda, Education. Regional Theatre in Germany and Britain between 1918 and 1945. The Society for Theatre Research: University of Hertfordshire. Hörl, Erich. 2018. The Environmentalitarian Situation: Reflections on the Becoming-Environmental of Thinking, Power, and Capital. Cultural Politics 14 (2): 153–173. Kaes, Anton. 2009. Shell Shock Cinema. Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ketelsen, Uwe-Karsten. 2009. Theater—Hörspiel—Thingspiel. Versuch eines medialen crossing over im Theater der frühen dreißiger Jahre. In Literatur

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intermedial: Paradigmenbildung zwischen 1918 und 1968, eds. Wolf Gerhard Schmidt and Thorsten Valk, 247–264. Berlin: de Gruyter. Kirsch, Sebastian. 2016. Fatzers Aggregate. Am Nullpunkt des Jahrhunderts. In Krieg. Mülheimer Fatzerbücher 4, eds. Matthias Naumann and Florian Thamer, 34–48. Berlin: Neofelis. Kirsch, Sebastian. 2020. Chor-Denken. Sorge—Wahrheit—Technik. Paderborn: Fink. Kracauer, Siegfried. 1977. Das Ornament der Masse. Essays. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Kracauer, Siegfried. 1984. Von Caligari zu Hitler. Eine psychologische Geschichte des deutschen Films. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. 2006. Postdramatic Theatre. New York/London: Routledge. Massumi, Brian. 2015. Politics of Affect. Cambridge/Malden: Polity. Mbembe, Achille. 2021. The Universal Right to Breathe. Critical Inquiry 47: 58–62. Niedecken-Gebhard, Hanns. 1936. Die Gesamtgestaltung des Festspiels Olympische Jugend. In Olympische Jugend. Festspiel zur Aufführung im Olympia-Stadion am Eröffnungstage der XI. Olympischen Spiele in Berlin (Programmheft), 31–32. Berlin. Ostwald, Julia. 2021. Choreophonien. Konstellationen von Stimme und Körper im Tanz der Moderne und der Gegenwart. Diss: University of Salzburg. Pleister, Werner. 1933. Kontrolle der Laienspiele? Das Deutsche Volksspiel. Blätter Für Jugendspiel, Brauchtum Und Sprechchor, Volkstanz, Fest- Und Freizeitgestaltung 1: 6–11. Rebentisch, Juliane. 2016. The Art of Freedom. On the Dialectics of Democratic Existence. Cambridge: Polity. Scheve, Christian von. 2016. A Social Relational Account of Affect. SFB 1171 Affective Societies. Working Paper 3. Berlin: FU Berlin. Schnapp, Jeffrey T. 2006. Mob Porn. In Crowds, ed. Jeffrey T. Schapp and Matthew Tiews, 1–45. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Seyfert, Robert. 2012. Beyond Personal Feelings and Collective Emotions: Toward a Theory of Social Affect. Theory, Culture & Society 29 (6): 27–46. Sieber, Samuel. 2011. Zur Politik medialer Dispositive. In Blickregime und Dispositive audiovisueller Medien, eds. Samuel Sieber, Nadja Elia-Bohrer, and Georg Christoph Tholen, 295–310. Bielefeld: Transcript. Sloterdijk, Peter. 2009. Terror from the Air. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Spivak, Jeffrey. 2011. Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley. Lexington: University of Kentucky. Sprenger, Florian. 2019. Epistemologien des Umgebens. Zur Geschichte, Ökologie und Biopolitik künstlicher “environments”. Bielefeld: Transcript.

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Stommer, Rainer. 1985. Die inszenierte Volksgemeinschaft. Die “Thing-Bewegung” im Dritten Reich. Marburg: Jonas. Strobl, Gerwin. 2007. The Swastika and the Stage: German Theatre and Society, 1933–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Theweleit, Klaus. 2019. Männerphantasien. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.

CHAPTER 12

Berlin—Amsterdam—Westerbork: Revue and the Aesthetics of War Veronika Zangl

The last revue performed in transit camp Westerbork in June 1944 ends with a slap in the face for Max Ehrlich, after he has once again pronounced that “a brilliant joke comes to mind”.1 This final scene of the revue entitled Total verrückt (Totally Insane) encapsulates the apparently incomprehensible phenomenon of the revue in a place like Westerbork. Humorous entertainment is staged here as a slap in the face against the backdrop of mass deportations, but in the context of the revue it also functions as a humorous gesture. The ambivalence towards humour and amusement in concentration camps is not only found in contemporary

1 Typoscript “Ludmilla”. Archive Jetty Cantor, inv. no. 200000353.001. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, Theatercollectie (all translations of typoscript VZ).

V. Zangl (B) Department of Theatre Studies, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_12

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ego-documents,2 but also in subsequent historiography (see Presser 1985, 347–349). The fact that theatre studies and theatre historiography only began to deal with this phenomenon in the 1980s also reflects a sense of hesitancy towards theatrical events in concentration and extermination camps. This is especially true for theatre genres that are understood as ‘light entertainment’ such as revues.3 Approaching the revues in Westerbork, therefore, requires not only taking into account the uniqueness and specificity of place and time, but also the discursive positioning of the revue as a genre as well as the possibilities and preconditions of theatre historical research vis-à-vis the event. In her contribution “Assessing Theatre Under Duress in National Socialism”, Rebecca Rovit emphasises two premises of theatre historical research in relation to theatrical activities in concentration camps: first, to take into account the time gap between the moment of performance and the historiographical present, and second, to also consider theatrical continuities that marked theatre performances in concentration camps (Rovit 2018, 17–19). For historical analyses and interpretation of revues that draw on these two propositions, the consideration of a broad spectrum of sources is particularly relevant. As for revues, the availability of sources is generally rather problematic; although detailed scripts were worked out for revues, usually only programmes indicating the titles of the individual scenes or tableaus (as the scenes were usually called) are available. Often the music scores or information about melodies used with texts that can fundamentally change the effect and meaning of a text is missing.4

2 Ego-documents refer to autobiographical writings like diaries, letters, memoires, witness accounts, etc. The Dutch historian Jacques Presser introduced the term in his seminal study Ondergang. De vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse jodendom 1940-1945 (1985, 523). 3 Peter Jelavich, for instance, still notes in 1993 in the “Epilogue” to his book on Berlin Cabaret: “Westerbork holds a troubled place in the history of cabaret because six revues were staged there between July 1943 and June 1944” (Jelavich 1993, 263). 4 The reconstruction of a performance must therefore rely on the one hand on programmes and reviews, and on the other hand on autobiographies and memoirs, which were often written long after the performance and which are informed by the historical discourse of the time of writing.

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In this respect, the source situation of the revue Total verrückt is extraordinary. For we not only have the complete script from a performance in a place like Westerbork, but also the music score of the revue.5 Besides Willy Rosen and Max Ehrlich, who had already successfully established themselves as entertainers in Berlin in the 1920s, well-known German and Dutch-Jewish artists such as Jetty Cantor, Mara Rosen, Camilla Spira, Otto Aurich, Lisl Frank, Franz Engel and Erich Ziegler belonged to the ‘core ensemble’ of the so-called Bühne Lager Westerbork. Due to the artistic reputation of the artists, it is largely possible to track their artistic heritage. Therefore, based on the existing, multifaceted material, the following considerations on the revues in Westerbork primarily attempt to trace the “multiple ‘locations’ of the past and their interrelationships” (Rovit 2018, 30). As I will argue, the six revues performed in Westerbork between July 1943 and June 1944 can be understood dramaturgically as testimonies of both continuity and disruption. The different artistic phases of Ehrlich and Rosen, characterised by completely different production conditions, are inscribed in the revues at Westerbork and thus superimpose or interrupt the perception of camp ‘reality’.

Tracing a Place in Time Today, Westerbork is known and remembered as a so-called transit camp from which 107,000 people, Jews, Roma and Sinti, were deported to the ‘East,’ i.e. Sobibór and Auschwitz, but also to Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt. Only 5,000 survived. Westerbork’s history began in October 1939 when it was set up as a refugee camp under Dutch administration to concentrate large numbers of German and Austrian-Jewish refugees. 1942, two years after the occupation of the Netherlands, German authorities took over and transformed the refugee camp into a transit camp. On

5 The text of the revue was found in a folder that Jacob Cantor, the son of Jetty Cantor, a renowned Dutch-Jewish artist who was also involved in the revues in Westerbork, donated to the Netherlands Theatre Institute in 1999. It contained an almost complete director’s book of the last revue (see Zaich 2003, 57-58). In 2018, Mieke Tillema who was working on a biography on Ida Simons, a well-known concert pianist and writer in the Netherlands, who survived Westerbork and Theresienstadt, recognized that she was holding the score of the revue in her hands when she received a map with a dedication from Ziegler for Ida Simons. This discovery led to the re-enactment of the revue in 2019 in Amsterdam and Westerbork (by Punto Arte). I would like to thank the daughter-in-law of Ida Simons, Ms. Marita Simons-Deen, for generously making the score available to me.

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15 July 1942, the first of ninety-seven deportation trains left Westerbork. One year later, Philip Mechanicus, known as the chronicler of Westerbork notes in his diary: “15 July was the date when the Netherlands had to be virtually Judenrein [‘free of Jews’, VZ]. It was 15 July and the quota of ninety thousand Jews demanded by Hitler had been delivered” (Mechanicus 1964, 90).6 The last deportation train left Westerbork on 13 September 1944. When the Canadian military forces liberated the camp on 12 April 1945, 876 people were still staying in the camp. Not least because of its history Westerbork was a place full of frictions and tensions. When the first transports with Dutch-Jewish citizens arrived in 1942 the camp was mainly populated by German and Austrian-Jewish refugees who had taken on important positions in the camp administration and the organisation of daily affairs after Westerbork had been turned into a transit camp by the Nazis. As in many other concentration camps, the Nazis introduced a double organisational structure in Westerbork. Parallel to the National Socialist authorities, the daily affairs of the camp were run by a number of Jewish-led departments, headed by Kurt Schlesinger. The frictions between the German-Jewish population and the Dutch-Jewish population ran so high that according to the diary of Philip Mechanicus, plans were made to establish a commission to prevent revenge killings after the liberation (109). Time and again, Mechanicus remarked that the Dutch-Jewish population hated the German-Jewish population almost as much as the German Nazis (265). As in many other concentration camps, theatre performances took place despite the inhumane circumstances and under very different conditions: secretly, illegally, by order or tolerated, exclusively among camp inmates, in front of guards and NS authorities or under the control of NS staff (Endlich 2018, 184). In Westerbork, cultural and theatrical activities took place from the very beginning. However, after the deportation of the eminent German-Jewish artists Willy Rosen, Max Ehrlich and Erich Ziegler to Westerbork in 1942/1943, it became a semi-professional enterprise. In a witness report, given in July 1946, Erich Ziegler stated that he had already contributed to a Bunter Abend (Variety Evening) in

6 The Dutch journalist Philip Mechanicus was deported to Westerbork in 1942. He understood himself as chronicler of Westerbork. He noted his observations and experiences meticulously in his diary. In March 1944, he was put ‘on transport’ to Bergen-Belsen. He was shot in Auschwitz on 15 October 1944. The above comment can be found in his diary entry on 21 July 1943 (All transl. of the diary, VZ).

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December 1942. Subsequently, he named two decisive reasons for the efforts to set up a Gruppe Bühne. Since we felt that a distraction for the camp inmates was needed, we worked out a joint plan to offer our fellow prisoners some evenings to cheer them up on the one hand and on the other to possibly be able to work in our profession again. (Ziegler 1946)7

According to Ziegler, the Jewish camp administration supported the plan and Albert Konrad Gemmeker, the German camp commander, was persuaded to approve such events. Finally, Gemmeker not only approved of the revues, but also generously supported them. From July 1943 until June 1944, Gruppe Bühne Westerbork produced six revues: Bunter Abend (July 1943); Humor und Melodie (Humour and Melody, September 1943); Bravo! Da Capo (October 1943); Bunter Abend (March 1944); Bunter Abend (April 1944); Total verrückt (Totally Insane, June 1944). The revues were hugely successful, Gemmeker regularly visited the performances and invited Nazi dignitaries like Ferdinand aus der Fünten (head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration) to join the premieres. This resulted in a situation in which primarily German-Jewish artists, supported and controlled by the Nazi camp administration, performed before a profoundly inequitable audience composed of Nazi camp authorities, Nazi dignitaries, mainly German-Jewish camp functionaries, and German-Jewish and Dutch-Jewish camp inmates.

Revue: Aesthetics of the Emerging Market Capitalism? Revues and vaudeville emerged at the end of the nineteenth century as new theatrical phenomena that turned into mass successes at the beginning of the twentieth century. From the very beginning, these new theatrical phenomena were perceived not only as a threat to cultural values (Simonson 2013, 16), but also attracted appreciative cultural-historical 7 Bericht ueber die ‘Gruppe Buehne’ im Lager Westerbork, by Erich Ziegler, Den Haag,

29 July 1946, Collection Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork, inv. no. 3382. “Da wir fuehlten, dass eine Ablenkung fuer die Lagerinsassen noetwendig waere, bearbeiteten wir einen gemeinsamen Plan um einerseits unseren Mitgefangenen einige Abende zu bieten, die sie aufheitern sollten und andererseits um evtl. wieder in unserem Beruf taetig sein zu koennen”.

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and cultural-philosophical attention. Scholars as diverse as Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Siegfried Kracauer and Herbert Marcuse understood revues as mirror of the ambivalences of the time (Moeller van den Bruck 1902, 150), as an expression of industrialisation and capitalist mass production (Kraucauer 1995) or as a force of emancipation from modern capitalism (Marcuse 1937, 78). The different views of revue and vaudeville ultimately express the contrast between commercial entertainment that disperses attention (‘low art’) and ‘high art’ that aims at concentration and a unified national body; a contrast that Siegfried Kracauer also addresses in his essay “The Mass Ornament”: Educated people […] have taken offence at the emergence of the Tiller Girls and the stadium images. They judge anything that entertains the crowd to be a distraction of that crowd. But despite what they think, the aesthetic pleasure gained from ornamental mass movements is legitimate. Such movements are in fact among the rare creations of the age that bestow form upon a given material. The masses organized in these movements come from offices and factories; the formal principle according to which they are molded determines them in reality as well. […] No matter how low one gauges the value of the mass ornament, its degree of reality is still higher than that of artistic productions which cultivate outdated noble sentiments in obsolete forms—even if it means nothing more than that. (79)

Kracauer meticulously draws attention to central themes of modernity such as the connection between mass entertainment and distraction, the fragmented movements of modern work processes and the related shift in perception of reality. In his study Suspensions of Perception, Jonathan Crary furthermore links the experience of the modern individual with “a proliferation of images and communication, and the erosion of a principle of reality. To inhibit this pluralistic world […] means to endure a continual oscillation between belonging and disorientation […]” (Crary 1999, 370). Each of these aspects can be found in the dramaturgy of revues, contradicting what Katalin Trencsényi outlines in relation to institutional dramaturgy in the context of a national theatre project, which often represents an attempt “to move away from commercial theatre, to give theatre value and depth, and to create work of artistic excellence relevant to the nation” (Trencsényi 2015, 17).

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The typical dramaturgy of revues is based on montage, the serial production of tableaus, fragmentation and thus the dissolution of unity and totality, the (re)presentation of bodies and corporeality as well as rhythmicity and movement as guiding principles. Thus, revues consist of a complex interplay of text, music, dance, sketches, décor and costume, which, as Jean-Claude Klein and J. Barrie Jones put it, are assembled in a “syncopated rhythm” (Klein and Jones 1985, 177–178) or as Willy Rosen enthusiastically wrote in a letter from 18 January 1942 “2 verses dissolved into steps, singing, action—always movement in the image” (quot. in Forster 2008, 28; transl. VZ).8 This general dramaturgical composition applies to both the so-called revues à grand spectacle and for the cabaret revue (cf. Kottes 1977), however, the type of cabaret revue is particularly relevant for the study of the revues in Westerbork. Although cabaret revues are structured similarly to revues à grand spectacle, they differ in at least three respects: The stage space is usually arranged in a horizontal perspective; they are characterised by their topicality, albeit not in a dayto-day political sense but in a socio-critical sense; and cabaret revues are based on a sophisticated dramaturgy of mass tableaus, individual acts and the important figure of the master of the ceremony who is (superficially) connecting the fragmented parts. In her study, Mary Simonson also emphasises the topicality of revues and the resulting active attitude of the audience, since revues focused on contemporary events, popular trends, and the news of the day, revisiting and burlesquing everything from theater shows to opera to political happenings. […] revues were aimed at audience members with knowledge about current events, the day’s stars, and artistic trends. (2013, 12)

Thus, in contrast to dramaturgies that aim for “nationally relevant artistic excellence” (Trencsényi 2015, 17) by exploring the possibilities and preconditions of a future society with recourse to an idealised past, the dramaturgy of revues reflects the present under the conditions of the emerging market capitalism. Precisely from this anchoring in the present, the dramaturgy of revues and mass spectacles allows to derive a crisis of perception of reality against the background of a new regime of time that 8 German original: “2 Verse aufgelöst in Schritte, Gesang, Handlung—immer Bewegung im Bild”.

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withdraws from a meaningful historical narrative based on experience and expectation (cf. Koselleck 2004). The dramaturgy of the revue can therefore be understood as a theatrical reflection on the crisis of perception that responds to the increasing self-alienation or alienation from reality. However, this statement does not clarify whether and to what extent the dramaturgy of revues implies an affirmative or critical and emancipatory attitude towards the conditions of the modern market economy. Neither will it be possible to attest to the revues in the Westerbork transit camp an affirmative or a critical attitude towards the atrocious camp conditions. As the following elaborations will show, Volker Kühn’s summarising comment runs like a thread through the discussions in relation to laughter in times of oppression: In practice, there was something much more fundamental to consider: the ambivalence of human beings’ basic needs in no-win situations. The joke as a drug; satire and irony as harbingers of hope; the punchline as a weapon of resistance; fun as distraction; and laughter to document the will to survive—right there in places where laughter sticks in one’s throat. This all marks an unsolvable problem with which those people who faced death on the ramp of Auschwitz had to deal. (Kühn 1999, 44)

Tracing Artistic Legacies: Max Ehrlich and Willy Rosen Both Max Ehrlich and Willy Rosen were popular entertainers in 1920s Berlin. They both appeared in numerous films and performed in the Kabarett der Komiker in Berlin, among others. Max Ehrlich started his career in the 1920s at Max Reinhardt’s theatre in Berlin and played in numerous revues and cabarets. After the National Socialists seized power in January 1933, he tried to continue his career in Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland, but returned to Berlin in 1935 where he took over the direction of the Kleinkunstbühne des Jüdischen Kulturbundes (Cabaret Theatre of the Jewish Cultural League). Willy Rosen had already left for the Netherlands in 1933 and founded the successful cabaret group Die Prominenten. However, until 1936, he regularly moved between Amsterdam and Berlin and closely cooperated with Max Ehrlich (see Kühn 1999; Zaich 2001, 105–106; Rovit 2018, 25–26). From 1937 to 1940, Rosen performed with Die Prominenten during the summer season at the Lutine Palace in Scheveningen, and the rest of the year he was able

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to play at the Rika Hopper Theatre9 in Amsterdam (Forster 2008, 26). In 1939, Ehrlich fled to the Netherlands and joined Die Prominenten. In 1940, after the German occupation of the Netherlands, Die Prominenten was still allowed to perform in Scheveningen and at the Beatrix Theater (former Rika Hopper). The probably last programme accessible to the general public without restrictions entitled Operette und Parodie (Operetta and Parody) premiered on 25 April 1941. Rosen and Ehrlich produced a few more revues at the Theater van de lach, which was now ‘accessible only to Jewish citizens’ until 1942, when the performance permit for Jewish artists was finally withdrawn. In 1941, when the Germans started to implement anti-Jewish regulations in the Netherlands, the situation for Jewish artists became increasingly distressing, due to the enforced lack of performance venues. Besides Rosen and Ehrlich, who performed at the Theater van de lach with Die Prominenten until April 1942, the celebrated German revue entrepreneur Rudolf Nelson, who was also popular in the Netherlands, succeeded in establishing the Hollandsche Schouwburg as a venue for Jewish audiences. In 1941, he started to play at the Hollandsche Schouwburg together with Dutch revue stars like Henriette Davids and Sylvain Poons. At the same time, Werner Levie, one of the protagonists of the Jewish Kulturbund in Germany, who had fled to the Netherlands in 1939, tried to initiate a Kulturbund in the Netherlands. Eventually, a cultural enterprise similar to the Kulturbund was founded, financed by the Van Leer Foundation.10 The two directors of the theatre division in the Hollandsche Schouwburg were the popular Dutch cabaret artists Henriette Davids and Werner Levie, thereby reflecting one of the conditions of the foundation, i.e. that all productions had to equally represent Dutch and German-Jewish artists (Zaich 2001, 144). On 23 November 1941, the revue Hand in Hand premiered. In her autobiography, published in 1948, Henriette Davids notes:

9 The Rika Hopper Theatre changed or had to change its name several times till 1942. In 1939, it was renamed to Beatrix Theater, subsequently it was known as Theater van de lach. 10 Van Leer was a wealthy Jewish industrialist who was able to ‘buy’ his escape in 1941. He dedicated a significant part of his private assets to Jewish cultural activities in the Netherlands (Micheels 2013, 111-114; Göbel 2018, 90).

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With the title ‘Hand in hand’ we meant to illustrate that Dutch and German Jews are working hand-in-hand. Outside it was all hassle-free, but internally there had been a struggle, because the Germans could not bear that they were playing in Holland in a Dutch theatre, in a Dutch enterprise, financed with Dutch capital, and also had to work under Dutch leadership. (Davids 1948, 109; transl. VZ)

Like at the Kulturbund, only Jewish audiences were allowed to attend and the Hollandsche Schouwburg was renamed Joodsche Schouwburg. As the posters indicate, the revues were meant to be played in Dutch. However, hardly any of the German artists were able to speak the language properly. As Davids notes, it was hard to bear hearing Dutch with a strong German accent. Consequently, the group played simultaneously in Dutch and German (Davids 1948, 105). In 1942, Willy Rosen and Max Ehrlich joined the cultural enterprise in the Joodsche Schouwburg. They participated in the production of the revue Vuurwerk (Firework), but the revue Dat smaakt (That Tastes Good), planned for 17 July 1942, did not make the first night (Zaich 2001, 155–156) because the German authorities decided to transform the Joodsche Schouwburg to a major site of deportation. About 46,000 Jews from Amsterdam were called up to the Schouwburg and subsequently deported to the concentration camps Westerbork or Vught (cf. Gringold 2018, 131). Max Ehrlich was deported to Westerbork at the end of 1942, Willy Rosen in May 1943 (Ziegler 1946). The cooperation of Ehrlich and Rosen becomes evident when comparing the titles of the programmes. The titles of two productions at the Kulturbund in Berlin Vorhang auf! (Curtain Up!, Oct. 1936) and Bitte einsteigen! (All Aboard!, March 1937) correspond with programme announcements at the Lutine Palace in 1938. The tableau “Postkutschenscene” (“Stagecoach Scene”) is part of the programme Gemischter Kompott (Mixed Compote, Oct. 1938) at the Kleinkunstbühne but also part of the programme Humor und Melodie (Westerbork 1943). The Duet “Herr Fröhlich und Herr Schön” (“Mr. Cheerful and Mr. Handsome”) is both on the programme of the revue Tempo! Tempo! (Scheveningen 1939) and the programme Bunter Abend (Westerbork 1944). The titles of the revues Humor und Melodie (1941) and Bravo! Da capo! (1941) performed at the Beatrix Theater correspond with the second and third revue in Westerbork.

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Although this preliminary survey of correspondences and continuities is undoubtedly superficial, it must be emphasised that none of these correspondences is self-evident and rather mark ruptures than continuities. As Volker Kühn already points out in his contribution “We’ve Enough Tsoris ”, the programme of the Kleinkunstbühne was discussed in a highly critical manner. The Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung for instance commented on the reopening of the Kleinkunstbühne in 1935: “Jewish cabaret—today: two words which do not connect well. Cabaret gains its true legitimisation from reality. Jewish reality is sorrow, need, concern— appearances that in the cabaret’s coloured footlights would hardly make a good impression” (Kühn 1999, 51). The continuity of humour and cabaret in the context of the cabaret stage of the Kulturbund in Berlin thus highlighted a rupture with the recent past under the sign of oppression and exclusion. The productions in the Netherlands additionally indicated a break in terms of locality and cultural context. German-speaking Jewish artists in the Netherlands did not only come under pressure after the German occupation, but due to the increasing numbers of refugees, they encountered more and more difficulties in getting permission to perform.11 Moreover, it was not a matter of course to present German-language programmes in the Netherlands. Although, according to reviews, the audience was predominantly German-speaking, it was no longer primarily German summer guests who spend their holidays in Scheveningen but presumably more and more German exiles who attended the performances of Die Prominenten in Scheveningen and Amsterdam. In this respect, too, the changed locality marked a fundamental disruption despite superficial correspondences.

Re-Mediation of Cultural Legacies: Revues in Westerbork Considering the sheer number of revues Willy Rosen and Max Ehrlich produced in the 1930s under increasingly difficult conditions, the question arises as to whether the accumulation of time as a feature of modernity is to be understood solely in dramaturgical and thematic terms, or as Mary Simonson points out: 11 Willy Rosen, for instance, did not get permission to perform in the Netherland with Die Prominenten between 1933 and 1937 (Jelavich 1993, 259; see also Zaich 2001, 99-100).

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[R]evues sought to re-create and negotiate the experience of living in the modern world. In a series of short acts presented at breakneck pace, revues bombarded viewers with aural and visual stimuli, replicating the experience of urban life. The quick—and ever-accelerating—pace of these shows, too, neatly aligned with the ‘logical and rational time sequence’ of the industrialized, technologized world. (2013, 12)

If the “syncopated rhythms” (Klein and Jones 1985, 176) of revues thus referred dramaturgically to the temporal logic of industrialisation, the enormous production speed also seemed to follow the production logic of industrialisation. Therefore, in order to stabilise the dizzying effect of recounting all the titles of the revues, the performance venues and, last but not least, the artists involved, only a small part of the productions have been mentioned; the focus was given in particular to those revues which allow an analysis of the implications of the ‘travelling’ repertoire (Rovit 2018, 18). In October 1938, one tableau of the revue Gemischter Kompott, performed at the Jüdische Kulturbund in Berlin, was called “Postkutschenzeit” (“Time of the Stagecoach”). Stage design and costumes of the tableau obviously referred to the Biedermeier period, a time of bourgeois escapism. The song closes with the lines “Always slowly, always with gemütlichkeit,/it is not time yet/we still have a lot of time”12 (Van Gelder and Klöters 1985, 62; Kühn 1999, 53/ 302). Although the revue premiered before the November pogroms, for German Jews in 1938 it was evident that time was running out. Thus, in the scene “Postkutschenzeit” the escapism of Biedermeier is juxtaposed with the time pressure to flee that German Jews were subjected to in 1938. Noteworthy is also the reference, albeit not explicit, to the passion for collecting that characterised the Biedermeier period and which is reflected in the form and structure of revues. “The collection of material traces of the past”, according to Frederik Le Roy, “served a precisely defined purpose, namely to come to terms with what was posited as the distant past in the modern regime of time” (Le Roy 2012, 163; transl.

12 German original: “Immer langsam, immer mit Gemütlichkeit,/es ist noch nicht so weit,/wir haben noch lange Zeit”. (All transl. of manuscript by VZ); Kühn translates the line as follows: “Slowly, slowly, always goodnaturedly, we’re not in a hurry and we’ve plenty of time” (Kühn 1999, 53).

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VZ). However, in contrast to the Biedermeier’s past-oriented passion for collecting with its striving for national identity, the “Postkutschenscene” of the revue marks the withdrawal of national identity as well as the loss of the past. Five years later, the twelfth tableau of the revue Humor und Melodie (September 1943) indicated a “Postkutschenidylle” (“Stagecoach Idyll”) and the song “Immer langsam, immer langsam …”. The time of Biedermeier was transformed into an idyll, thereby emphasising place instead of time. Westerbork was built in a heath in the northern part of the Netherlands. On 2nd August 1943, Philip Mechanicus describes the camp as follows: “Westerbork is bare, unprotected; no relief from the heat by shadows. Burning, scorching sun on a piece of sand, with barracks” (1964, 105). Thus, in 1943 not only the barren landscape of the camp is counteracting the idyll but also the deportation trains leaving regularly on Tuesday morning, while in the evening the revues usually premiered. Moreover, the urgency of time had changed. It was not a question of escaping Germany anymore, it was a question of staying in Westerbork, i.e. not being put on the deportation list. In 1938, the line “es ist noch nicht so weit” (“it is not time yet”) expressed a threat, in 1943, it implied hope. Even Mechanicus, despite his highly critical attitude towards the revues, quoted the line “Langsam, immer langsam” in the context of frantic speculations with regard to an expected transport on a passenger train to Bergen-Belsen (Zelle) in November 1943 (211). Another example of travelling repertoire can be found in the 1939 revue Tempo! Tempo! performed in Scheveningen. One of the scenes consisted of a duet called “Herr Fröhlich und Herr Schön”. The song line goes as follows: How are you, Mr. Cheerful? How are you, Mr. Handsome? Well, thank you, it’s time. Well, I could feel better too! Recently I went to see the professor, Too fat I am, he says. Therefore, before going to bed I shouldn’t eat anything anymore. (Zaich 2001, 108; transl. VZ)13

13 German original: “Wie geht’s Ihnen, Herr Fröhlich?/Wie geht’s Ihnen, Herr Schön?/Na, ich danke, so allmählich./Na, auch mir könnt’s besser gehn!/Jüngst war

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While the names Fröhlich and Schön may have ironised the holiday resort Scheveningen and its allure, the line “Well, thank you, it’s time” expressed explicitly the change of circumstances. As already mentioned, Scheveningen was a popular holiday resort, but after Hitler seized power, the Netherlands increasingly became a place of exile for Jewish refugees. After the November pogroms, the Dutch government decided to establish the central refugee camp Westerbork in 1939 due to the large number of Austrian and German refugees. In the song text, the reference to the place of the performance, i.e. Scheveningen, was not only supercharged by different semantic meanings (holiday resort/place of refuge), but the reference to the corpulence also satirises the often impoverished circumstances of German emigrants in the Netherlands. The same song can be found as the third tableau of the revue Bunter Abend performed in Westerbork in March 1944. References to body size belong to the stereotypical inversion of the situation in concentration camps.

The Last Revue in Westerbork: ¨ Total Verruckt (Totally Insane) When the last revue in Westerbork was performed in June 1944, the camp population was relatively low (i.e. around 6,000 people). Transports to Auschwitz had stopped and trains to Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt were considered to be ‘celebrity trains,’ i.e. trains with passenger cars mainly for German-Jewish camp prisoners. Even though people expected that the liberation might be imminent, they could be ‘put on transport’ at any moment. Against this background, Ehrlich, Rosen and Ziegler produced their last revue, entitled Total verrückt. The revue consisted of two distinguished parts: The first part before the intermission follows the typical revue structure of alternating between sketches and songs. However, the second part was announced as a chivalric opera parody called “Ludmilla oder Leichen am laufenden Band” (“Ludmilla or Corpses on a Conveyor Belt”). The revue is exceptional in more than one instance: To begin with, it is a mystery why this piece of work ever passed

ich beim Professor,/Zu dick bin ich, sagt er./Drum soll vor dem Schlafengehen/Ich gar nichts essen mehr” (Zaich 2001, 108).

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through censorship14 ; secondly, both the script and the music score of the second part of the revue turned up decades later. In the first part of the revue, the motto “Totally Insane” is expressed by extended depictions of the scenes. The second tableau of the revue is announced, for example, by: “Jetty Cantor has gone insane—she has joined the Lawa saleswomen”.15 The song goes as follows: The Lawa, the Lawa. The Lawa is my crush. There one can pass the time, That’s why I’ll tell you right away. I do not want another service area. I would much rather stay in the Lawa. (Zaich 2001, 199; transl. VZ)16

The text is underscored with the then well-known melody of “Die Mädis vom Chantant” (“The Girls from Chantant”) from the operetta Die Csárdásfürstin (The Csárdás Princess ) by Emmerich Kálmán (libretto by Leo Stein and Bela Jenbach).17 In the operetta, this frivolous song about girls “who don’t take love so tragically” is sung by two of the admirers of the leading part of the operetta, who is a celebrated cabaret performer. In the second tableau of the Westerbork revue, it is Jetty Cantor who declares her love for Lawa, an abbreviation for Lagerwarenhaus/camp warehouse to the same melody. Unlike the “Mädis vom Chantant”, however, she takes her love quite seriously. The Lawa song in conjunction with the melody of the operetta implies a series of reversals: First, the frivolous flair of a café chantant is contrasted with the troubled flair of a camp warehouse in the transit 14 German original: “Die Lawa, die Lawa/Die Lawa ist mein Schwarm./Da kann man

sich schon die Zeit vertreiben,/Drum sage ich es bitte gleich/Will keinen anderen Dienstbereich/Ich will viel lieber in der Lawa bleiben”. Zaich mentions that the revue just premiered at the beginning of June 1944, but was banned subsequently, because “Gemmeker considered it inappropriate in view of the military situation after the Normandy landings” (Zaich 2003, 58; transl. VZ). 15 German original: “Jetty Cantor ist verrückt geworden—sie ist unter die Lawa-

Verkäuferinnen gegangen”. 16 Katja Zaich interprets Lawa with volcanic lava, referring to the proverbial dance on the volcano (Zaich 2001, 198). However, Lawa doesn’t refer to volcanic lava but to the abbreviation of the so-called Lagerwarenhaus (camp warehouse). 17 The operetta premiered in Vienna in 1915 and was immensely popular all over Europe, partly due to several film adaptations.

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camp18 ; next, the (supposed) frivolity of the ‘Mädis’ (Die Csárdásfürstin) is contrasted with the frivolous fidelity of the salesgirl (Revue); finally, two men admiring a woman are replaced by a woman admiring her ‘Dienstbereich’/ ‘Service Area’. Apart from this burlesque re-mediation of the operetta song, Ehrlich was one of the popular interpreters of the song in Berlin of the 1930s. Moreover, Die Csárdásfürstin was one of the most elaborate and successful productions in the Joodsche Schouwburg. The performance of the song is thus intertwined with several strands of artistic continuity, offering both German-Jewish and Dutch-Jewish audiences the opportunity to relate to this cultural legacy that reaches beyond the boundaries of the concentration camp. At the same time, the adaptation as an ironic commentary on the Lawa undermines this continuity and thereby foregrounds the ‘now’ of the camp and thus the disruption. However, the song contains a second element of re-mediation. The refrain “I am from head to toe prepared for Lawa/Yes, that is my world—and nothing more”19 is obviously referring to Marlene Dietrich’s famous interpretation of the song “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt” in the film Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel).20 The songwriter Friedrich Hollaender and the director of the film Josef von Sternberg were both German-Jewish artists. On the one hand, this is consistent with the regulations that Jewish artists were only allowed to perform works by Jewish makers. At the same time, the revues in Westerbork were not performed exclusively for Jewish audiences, but the first rows of the audience were reserved for NS staff. From this perspective, the reference to the song implies an imposed cultural identity for the Jewish audience, but a violation of cultural identitarian politics on the part of the National Socialist audience.

18 The Lagerwarenhaus has been established in February 1943 and is sarcastically

commented on in letters and diaries (see Presser 1985, 309–310). 19 German original: “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Lawa eingestellt!/Ja! Das ist meine Welt—und sonst gar nichts”. 20 Marlene Dietrich emigrated to the USA in 1930, she not only neglected Hitler’s invitation to come back to Germany but supported the US army by performing for Allied troops. Thus, it was rather daring to use the song as a blueprint for a persiflage.

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Finally, the protagonists of both the operetta Die Csárdásfürstin and Der Blaue Engel are revue-/vaudeville artists. In very different ways, operetta and film criticise the hypocrisy of the petit bourgeois by confronting him/her with the world of cabaret and revue. Through the parodistic adaptation of the songs, the Lawa song also reveals a form of meta-criticism that already comprises critical voices on ‘light entertainment’. The following tableaus of the first part of the revue Total verrückt follow a fixed pattern, alternating songs that ironically refer to everyday camp life with sketches. The satire is limited to sneaky meetings of lovers in the camp café, gymnastics classes for the slim line (again the characteristic inversion of camp reality, but also a reference to the sporting activities within the framework of the so-called ‘Leisure Department’ in Westerbork) or the omnipresent rumours and gossip. The first part ends in a so-called Orchestra Show that starts with the most popular songs Rosen composed in Westerbork, such as “Appellnummer” (“Roll Call Number”) or “Die Heide” (“The Heath”), but also includes successful hits like “Schlagzeugmann” (“Drum Kit Man”) and ends with a medley of ‘international’ dances: beginning with the well-known song “Darf ich um den nächsten Tango bitten” (“May I Ask for the Next Tango”) by Willy Rosen, followed by “Am Bosporus” (“On the Bosporus”) by Paul Abraham from the operetta film Ball im Savoy (Ball at the Savoy, 1932), and a reference to “Ungarland, Heimatland”21 from the operetta film Viktoria und ihr Husar (Victoria and Her Hussar, 1931; directed by Richard Oswald, music by Paul Abraham), and ending with the return to Westerbork and the “O.D. March”.22 Even though this musical journey can be seen as a homage to the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, the references to (film) music exclusively by Jewish artists also mark a journey to Berlin in the early 1930s before Hitler’s rise to power, only to end in the disillusioning reality of Westerbork.

21 The title is difficult to translate, Ungarland can be translated as Country of Hungary or Country of Hungarians; Heimatland can be translated as Homeland. 22 O.D. is the abbreviation for the so-called Ordnungsdienst, a Jewish ‘police force’, responsible for maintaining order in the transit camp.

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A Lucidly-Blind Finale? “Ludmilla Oder Leichen Auf Laufenden Band” (“Ludmilla or Corpses on the Conveyor Belt”) Rosen and Ehrlich composed several revues as opera or operetta parodies like the already mentioned revue Operette und Parodie. The second part of the revue Total verrückt culminates in the chivalric opera parody called “Ludmilla oder Leichen am laufenden Band” (“Ludmilla or Corpses on the Conveyor Belt”). The storyline is quite simple. Ludmilla is in love with Lopez Cardozo, but her father wants her to marry Achsterrippe. After a series of comedic missteps, everybody is dead or has committed suicide, including the Chorus and the Ballet. After the catastrophe, the Page turns to Rosen and asks him to finish the performance with a happy ending, since everybody has to go home laughing.23 Rosen willingly accepts the request, and the revue culminates in a drinking song to the mass wedding. However, Rosen comes up with another joke, which causes the revue to end with a slap in the face. As light-hearted as this parody may seem, it contains numerous allusions to everyday life in the camp. It does not express explicit political criticism, but, as is usual in cabaret revues, runs a critical commentary on everyday social life. Since the everyday situation in concentration camps was perpetually under pressure and represented a permanently exceptional situation, the texts constantly refer to the outside as well. Every reference to cultural traditions is, in a sense, an echo of past times or a reference to the outside of the concentration camp, also in and by the genre that is quoted. Ehrlich and Rosen do not spare sarcastic comments on their own situation. The chivalric opera begins, for example, with: “The second-rate theatre director Jeremias Piepenbrink from Flohwinkel announces that he is giving a guest performance in our place today”.24 With this opening

23 According to the manuscript, the Father was played by Otto Aurich, Ludmilla by Lisl Frank, Lopez Cardozo by Max Ehrlich, Achsterrippe by Franz Engel, the Chorus by Jetty Cantor, the Ballet by Esther Philipse and the Page by Mara Rosen. So the cast consisted mainly of German-speaking artists, but also two Dutch-speaking artists (Jetty Cantor and Esther Philipse). Erich Ziegler and Willy Rosen are credited as being responsible for the music. 24 German Original: “Der Schmierentheaterdirektor Jeremias Piepenbrink Flohwinkel gibt bekannt, dass er heute in unserem Ort ein Gastspiel gibt”.

aus

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line, the revue exposes itself with a self-referential gesture as a secondrate theatre; the formulation “a guest performance in our place” conceals deep black humour, in view of a non-place like the transit camp Westerbork, which systematically denied any form of belonging. The names of Ludmilla’s two lovers, Achsterrippe and Lopez Cardozo, can be understood as references to the tensions between Austrian and German ‘old inmates’ (Achsterippe) on the one hand and Dutch inmates on the other (Cardozo, many Dutch-Jewish citizens had/have Portuguese names). The Chorus and Ballet are each performed by one person (Jetty Cantor and Esther Philipse). The Chorus introduces itself with, among other things, the following words and to the melody of the string quintet from the opera Carmen by Bizet: “I always stay on stage,/so that there is always a lot going on/and I cross the stage ten times,/so that the chorus is quite big!”25 After the revue Humour und Melodie, which indeed had a large cast and a girls’ troupe, the mass transports continued relentlessly until September 1943. In June 1944, as mentioned, there were relatively few prisoners in Westerbork. Thus, the Chorus and Ballet as individual roles refer almost inevitably to the absent chorus, to the members of the Bühne Lager Westerbork who had not managed to remain on the Sperrliste (Blocking List) during the summer and autumn months of 1943. In addition to this satirisation of ensemble parts in operas, which simultaneously denote an absence, there are numerous references to everyday life in the camp. Lopez Cardozo is plagued by fleas, and the Freier (suitor) Achsterrippe sneezes incessantly, a subtle reference to possible venereal diseases. During the boxing match (which also refers to the boxing matches in the camp) Achsterrippe ironically refers to the Jewish Head of Service, Schlesinger, and Lopez Cardozo invokes the warning words of Dr Spanier, the head of the camp hospital. The end of love entanglements is marked by an intermediate finale before the fatal boxing match begins. The ironic love duet of Ludmilla and Freier Achsterrippe in the style of Italian opera blends into the title line of the well-known song “It’s so nice to have a stroll in the evening…”26 from the operetta film Ball im Savoy (Paul Abraham). The

25 German original: “Ich stehe immer auf der Scene,/damit recht viel los ist/und gehe zehnmal über die Bühne,/damit der Chor recht gross ist!”. 26 German original: “Es ist so schön, am Abend bummeln zu gehn …”.

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manuscript notes: “Original exit from the operetta finale”,27 i.e. the typical happy ending with group tableau. Then Lopez suddenly wakes up with the disillusioning words: “Where am I? I’m all in a daze./Why am I so bedraggled?”28 The collapse into reality can hardly be formulated more poignantly. Musically, genres ranging from opera to folk songs are quoted, from Bizet to a duet in the style of Italian opera to the melody of the folklore waddle dance that accompanies the boxing match. The Freier dies first with the melody and words of the well-known lullaby “Do you know how many stars there are?”29 The Chorus dies with a variation on the well-known Viennese song “Now let’s drink another glass of wine”,30 which goes “Now I’ll also drink a glass of poison/Hollodrioh”.31 The Chorus hands the cup of poison to the Ballet, which says goodbye with the words “I wash my hands once more as a farewell”,32 a variation of the well-known song “Give me your hands once more as a farewell”33 from the operetta Victoria und ihr Husar (1931). In addition to musical genres and operetta melodies known predominantly from their film adaptations, texts and melodies from previous revues are quoted too. Lopez dies with the words “Good-bye, Mr. Cheerful/Good-bye, Mr. Handsome”; a duet that was used both in the revue Tempo! Tempo! (Scheveningen 1939), as well as in the fifth revue Bunter Abend in Westerbork. Ludmilla dies with one of the most popular tangos Rosen composed in Westerbork “I told it to the stars tonight/I love you”,34 which had also been performed in the most elaborate revue at Westerbork Humor und Melodie. The two suitors, who are already dead, repeat each “I love you” as an echo (Figs. 12.1 and 12.2). 27 German original: “Originalabgang aus d. Operettenfinale”. 28 German original: “Wo bin ich? Ich bin ganz benommen./Wieso bin ich so

runtergekommen?” 29 German original: “Weisst Du, wieviel Sternlein stehn?” These words are followed by the handwritten addition “Dogs are happy creatures”, replacing a deletion in the manuscript with the Shakespearean quotation “A kingdom for a horse”. Whether the deletion is due to censorship cannot be ascertained retrospectively. 30 German original: “Jetzt trinken wir noch ein Glaserl Wein”. 31 German original: “Jetzt trink’ ich auch ein Glaserl Gift/Hollodrioh”. 32 German original: “Ich wasch’ mir zum Abschied noch einmal die Hände”. 33 German original: “Reich mir zum Abschied noch einmal die Hände”. 34 German original: “Ich hab es heut Nacht den Sternen erzählt/Ich liebe Dich”.

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Figs. 12.1 and 12.2 Manuscript page and director’s notes on the death scene; Typoscript “Ludmilla” (Source Archive Jetty Cantor, Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, Theatercollectie)

After the Page has turned to Rosen to plead for a happy ending, the ensemble addresses the audience with the following text, thus bringing to a close the metatheatrical self-critique with which the parodic chivalric opera began. You are all so crazy about kitsch, about books and films by ‘Courtsmaloer’. You like to watch gangsters and police, And a bit of Wild West romance along the way. Heine certainly stands on the book shelf, But you read your Wallace in bed. With as many corpses and suspense as possible, When the Good finally wins, oh, then you’re glad. Your taste is mostly quite barbaric, But stay like that,—for why be literary.35 35 German original: “Ihr schwaermt ja doch alle fuer Kitsch so sehr,/Fuer Buecher und Filme von ‘Courtsmaloer’./Ihr seht gerne Gangster und Polizei,/Und etwas Wildwestromantik dabei./Der Heine steht zwar auf dem Buecherbrett,/Doch Euren Wallace,

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With this preliminary closing remark of the revue, the ensemble subverts the audience’s expectations. The revue ends not with a spectacular finale, but with a critique of the hypocrisy of the educated bourgeois abhorrence of ‘low entertainment’ that disrupts the narrative layer of the chivalric opera. The finale of the second part of the revue thus does not end with a spectacular and pompous group tableau (similar to the end of the first part and in the mid-section), but with a prosaic and sarcastic commentary on the criticism of which Rosen and Ehrlich were obviously very aware. The juxtaposition of Heinrich Heine as a representative of ‘high culture’ against the popular ‘mass producers’ Hedwig Courths-Mahler and Edgar Wallace, who are associated with ‘low culture’, can be found in a similar way in Kracauer’s essay. Heine’s books, unread on the bookshelf, can thus be understood as a metaphor for the “outdated noble sentiments in obsolete forms”, to which Kracauer critically alludes (1995, 79). The title of the second part of the revue, “Ludmilla oder Leichen am laufenden Band”, presumably satirises the popularity of Courths-Mahler’s ‘light fiction’ and Edgar Wallace’s detective stories, in which corpses are produced like on a conveyor belt. Here again, the reference to mass entertainment appears under the premise of mass production with the conveyor belt as the iconic image of the industrial age. In a sense, this disillusioning intermezzo before the ultimate finale of the revue confronts entertainment and entertaining literature, which, like revues, were discredited by the educated bourgeoisie, with a ‘reality check’. This interpretation aligns to some extent with David Monod’s comment that. [a] peculiarity of variety was that it was at once naturalistic and completely artificial. It offered the impression of actuality onstage only to subvert it with an environment that was thoroughly theatricalized. In this way, vaudeville manifested the inner tension within the concept of realism itself, the fact that when something real becomes art it ‘ceases to be reality and becomes artifact’. (2020, 121)

den lest Ihr im Bett./Mit moeglichst viel Leichen und Spannung und so,/Siegt endlich das Gute, ach, dann seid Ihr froh./Euer Geschmack ist meistens ganz barbarisch,/Doch bleibt nur so,—wozu denn literarisch”.

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However, neither Rosen nor Ehrlich could have imagined how closely this ‘reality check’ corresponded to the reality of Auschwitz. The presentoriented dramaturgy of revues, reflecting the conditions of the modern market economy, seemingly allowed Ehrlich and Rosen, at least from today’s perspective, to be equally clear-sighted and blind in anticipating the perversion of mass production into “transport material”36 that took place before their eyes. This interpretation of the last revue in Westerbork is probably more likely than the hypothesis that Rosen and Ehrlich have stopped to play the “commandant’s court jesters”, as Elly Hillesum indicated in one of her letters (2009, 134; transl. VZ). Knowing that both had been transported to Theresienstadt, but were subsequently deported to Auschwitz, where both died, the last revue can also be interpreted as a desperate finale.37 However, it is only possible to point out the ambivalences in the interpretations with the benefit of hindsight. Eventually, it must be taken into account that the revues in Westerbork were performed in German in front of a highly heterogeneous audience. As is repeatedly mentioned in memoirs, Gemmeker was a frequent guest at the revues—and certainly not only to supervise the performances, as Ziegler mentions in his testimony. He also invited Nazi notables to the opening nights, such as Aus der Fünten, who as Head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration was responsible for the registration and deportation of Jewish citizens in the Netherlands. In the rows behind the Nazi dignitaries the notables of the Jewish camp administration were placed, some of whom were ordered to attend opening nights (Hillesum 2009, 102), and behind them the ‘ordinary audience’. This begs the question of who was the target audience of the revues? For Gemmeker and other Austrian and German NS-audience members, the Bühne Lager Westerbork probably conveyed something of the Berlin and Viennese allure of the 1920s. However, with few exceptions, it was music by Jewish artists or ‘entartete Musik’ (‘degenerate music’) or music banned for a plethora of reasons. After the war, Gemmeker explained that he had deliberately scheduled the revues as a distraction on transport evenings (Van Gelder and Klöters 1985, 60–65). Nevertheless, attending the revues constituted a violation of supposed 36 “Transportmaterial” was the term for Jewish people, who were considered to be able to be put ‘on transport’ (see Mechanicus 1964, 75, 81, 82, 176, 292). 37 None of the ensemble members of the last revue except Erich Ziegler and Jetty Cantor survived (see Zaich 2001, 204).

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‘German/Aryan cultural identity’ or the—albeit cynical—recognition of Jewish cultural achievements. The pleasure that the present National Socialist authorities took in the revues was then also perceived as deeply humiliating by Jewish spectators such as Philip Mechanicus or Etty Hillesum. Finally, I would like to revisit my initial assumption that revues make visible and dramaturgically translate a crisis in the perception of reality or the experience of reality. If amusement is interpreted as a distraction from reality, the examples show that the laughter inherent to revues is also a reaction to a scattered reality, an attempt to get a grip on its fragments and parts. The dramaturgy of revues reveals an ambivalence of fragmentation and stabilisation. The analysis of the different tableaus of the revues, performed in different temporal and local/cultural contexts, finally allows us to understand artistic continuity as disruption against a backdrop of a reality devoid of any meaning; a reality that incarcerated people in an enforced togetherness and at the same time isolated them fundamentally.

References Crary, Jonathan. 1999. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Davids, Henriëtte. 1948. Mijn Levenslied. Gouda: Mulder. Endlich, Stefanie. 2018. Kunst und Kulturveranstaltungen im KZ. Bedingungen und Möglichkeiten eigenständiger Aktivitäten. In Theater unter NS-Herrschaft. Theatre under Pressure, eds. Brigitte Dalinger and Veronika Zangl, 181–197. Vienna: Vienna University Press. Forster, Verona. 2008. “Obgleich man ja nie weiß, was weiter wird”. Ein wichtiger Fund. Handschriften von Willy Rosen. Zwischenwelt 24/4: 26–31. Göbel, Esther. 2018. In the Shadow of Nazism: Theatre and Culture on the Eve of Deportation. In Site of Deportation, Site of Memory. The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg and the Holocaust, eds. Frank van Vree, Hetty Berg, and David Duindam, 71–110. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Gringold, Annemiek. 2018. ‘Building of Tears’. Sixteen Months as a Site of Assembly and Deportation. In Site of Deportation, Site of Memory. The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg and the Holocaust, eds. Frank van Vree, Hetty Berg, and David Duindam, 111–154. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Hillesum, Etty. 2009. Het denkende hart van de barak. De brieven van Etty Hillesum. Amsterdam: Balans.

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Jelavich, Peter. 1993. Berlin Cabaret. Studies in Cultural History. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Klein, Jean-Claude., and J. Barrie Jones. 1985. Syncretism, Hybridisation: The Parisian revue of the 1920s. Popular Music 5: 175–187. Koselleck, Reinhart. 2004. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, Transl. K. Tribe. New York: Columbia University Press. Kothes, Franz-Peter. 1977. Die theatralische Revue in Berlin und Wien 1900– 1938: Typen, Inhalte, Funktionen. Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichshofen’s Verlag. Kraucauer, Siegfried. 1995. The Mass Ornament. In The Mass Ornament. Weimar Essays, Transl, ed. and with an Introduction by Thomas Y. Levin, 75–86. Cambridge/MA, London: Harvard University Press. Kühn, Volker. 1999. “We’ve Enough Tsoris”. Laughter at the Edge of the Abyss. In Theatrical Performance during the Holocaust: Texts, Documents, Memoirs, eds. Rebecca Rovit and Alvin Goldfarb, 40–57. Baltimore, London: Th Johns Hopkins University Press. Le Roy, Frederik. 2012. Verknoopte tijd, verfrommelde geschiedenis. Een theaterwetenschappelijk en geschiedfilosofisch onderzoek naar theater en performance als politiek van de herinnering in het modern en presentistisch historiciteitsregime. Ph.D, University of Gent. Marcuse, Herbert. 1937. Über den affirmativen Charakter der Kultur. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung IV: 54–94. Mechanicus, Philip. 1964. In depot. Dagboek uit Westerbork. Amsterdam: Polak & Van Gennep. Micheels, Pauline. 2013. Bernard van Leer. In Frank van Vree, Hetty Berg and David Duindam, 108–117 , ed. De., Hollandsche Schouburg, and Theater, deportatieplaats, plek van herinnering, 1883–1958. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. van den Bruck, Moeller, and Arthur. 1902. Das Variete. Berlin: Julius Bard Verlag. Monod, David. 2020. Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment, 1890–1925. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Presser, Jacques. 1985. Ondergang. De vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse jodendom 1940–1945, 2 Vol. Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij. Rovit, Rebecca. 2018. Assessing Theatre Under Duress in National Socialism: Tracking Theatre Repertoire in the Jewish Kulturbund and in the Camps. In Theater unter NS-Herrschaft. Theatre under Pressure, eds. Brigitte Dalinger and Veronika Zangl, 17–32. Vienna: Vienna University Press. Simonson, Mary. 2013. Body Knowledge: Performance, Intermediality, and American Entertainment at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Trencsényi, Katalin. 2015. Dramaturgy in the Making. A User’s Guide for Theatre Practitioners. London, New York: Methuen Drama/Bloomsbury.

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Van Gelder, Henk, and Jacques Klöters. 1985. Door de nacht klinkt een lied. Amusement in Nederland 1940–1945. Amsterdam, Brussels: Thomas Rap. Zaich, Katja B. 2001. “Ich bitte dringend um ein Happyend.” Deutsche Bühnenkünstler im niederländischen Exil 1933–1945. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Zaich, Katja B. 2003. “Total verrückt”—eine wiederentdeckte Revue aus dem niederländischen Durchgangslager Westerbork. Zwischenwelt. 20 (1): 56–62.

Archival Material Typoscript “Ludmilla”. Archive Jetty Cantor, inv. no. 200000353.001. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, Theatercollectie. Bericht ueber die ‘Gruppe Buehne’ im Lager Westerbork, by Erich Ziegler, Den Haag, 29 July 1946. Collection Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork, inv. no. 3382.

CHAPTER 13

Laughing, Spanish Style: Moreto and Tirso de Molina in the Third Reich John London

Introduction: Spain, Nazi Germany, and Theatre In 1941, after a German version had premiered in Vienna of Moreto’s play El desdén con el desdén, an overnight review started with a comparison: “Old Spanish comedy, almost forgotten and missing in its homeland, is currently experiencing a remarkable rebirth on German stages” (Holzmann 1941b). Whatever the precise knowledge of the reviewer, his claim cannot be dismissed as mere nationalist bluster. During the Third Reich, German-language theatres were responsible for over 280 productions of plays from the Spanish Golden Age, many of them comedies, written by Calderón (1600–1681), Lope de Vega (1562–1635), Agustín Moreto (1618–1669), and Tirso de Molina (1583–1648).1 According to one 1 For studies of Spanish theatre during the Nazi period, see Drewniak (1983, 267– 268), Eicher, Panse, and Rischbieter (2000, 320–321), London (1998), London (2000b, 228–233), Sullivan (1983, 355–358, 364–373).

J. London (B) School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_13

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calculation, they accounted for almost one per cent of the entire repertoire.2 There were 33 productions of a comedy by Moreto and 24 productions of plays by Tirso. Compare these figures with the 78 productions of all Spanish classics in Spain in the first twelve, most fervently nationalist years of the Francoist dictatorship (1939–1951) or for the totals of those same comedies by Moreto and Tirso: during the entirety of Francoism (1939–1975), they were given just one and five productions, respectively (Muñoz Carabantes 1992). Not even the relative population sizes and theatrical infrastructures of both countries are sufficient to justify these disparities or explain why the proportion of productions of Spanish plays (in relation to all plays performed in Germany) almost doubled in the Nazi period from what it had been in the last four years of the Weimar Republic. The reasons for this increase are, in part, related to a political and cultural alliance. Nazi academics voiced arguments in favour of Franco and a new role for Spain in Europe (Janué i Miret 2019). Since Hitler had supported Franco’suprising (both militarily and economically) from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, a series of inter-relationships were established, and increased even before Franco’s victory in 1939 (García Pérez 1994). The two countries signed a cultural agreement in January of that year and exchanges increased considerably once the Second World War had started (despite the fact that the agreement was never ratified): in Germany there were concerts of Spanish music, a large exhibition of Spanish art, and talks by Spanish intellectuals (Janué i Miret 2008, 2020).3 Spanish theatre featured prominently, with more stagings, two “Spanish Weeks” in Frankfurt am Main in 1939 and 1943 (Schültke 1997, 253), and informative articles in the official theatrical press (Bechstein 1939; Knöller 1939; Kummer 1939; Taube 1939). Scholarly writing by Hispanists followed suit, with a concentration on the drama of the Spanish Golden Age (Bräutigam 1997, 171–188).

2 Eicher, Panse, and Rischbieter (2000, 320). The statistical information on German productions is based on a database of traceable productions set up in the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Freie Universität Berlin. For reservations about this database, see London (2000a, 40 n. 5), Merziger (2010, 147). 3 On the details of the cultural agreement of January 1939, see Hera Martínez (2002, 404–431).

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Comedy enjoyed a prominent position in the renewed German enthusiasm for the Iberian seventeenth century. The hostility against French plays, and almost total prohibition of Molière once the war had started, left a dramaturgical gap in the repertory of comic classics to be filled by Spanish theatre and Goldoni (Eicher, Panse, and Rischbieter 2000, 318–319, 480). As if to reinforce this theatrical supplement, the Spanish Blue Division had, in 1941, travelled to help Hitler in his fight against Bolshevism on the Russian front (Kleinfeld and Tambs 1979). It is therefore logical that Spanish examples should be mentioned in an analysis of comedy, published under the auspices of Otto zur Nedden, the Chefdramaturg of the National Theatre at Weimar (Müller 1942, 69–71). Comedy also bypassed what some critics considered the two elements which made Spanish Golden-Age drama inaccessible to German audiences: Counter-Reformation Catholicism and the earnest reliance on the honour motif (Stueber 1942, 183; Wieser 1939, 63). Yet, so little attention has been devoted to Spanish comedy during the Nazi regime that there is a perception that Tirso de Molina rarely appeared on German stages between 1933 and 1944 (Grange 2006, 51). In addition to providing selected details as to how conspicuous comedies by Tirso and Moreto were in this period, the present study attempts to understand how a dramaturgy of humour derived from the Spanish seventeenth century could be conceived within the Nazi rhetoric highlighting the supposedly timeless value of theatrical classics (Kirsch 1999, 69). Above all two plays attracted the interest of some of the most important actors, directors, stage designers, and politicians of the Third Reich. But how did they portray the essentially non-German origin of this theatre? What was culturally and dramaturgically alluring in the texts? And what was the nature of the humour approved, performed, and appreciated? Possible answers are located in the translations used as well as the most prominent features of the productions themselves. Goebbels’s prohibition of all art criticism—including theatre criticism—in November 1936 and its replacement by Kunstbetrachtung (contemplation or reflection on a work of art) led to reviews later dismissed as “predictably anodyne and uninformative” (Strobl 2008, 3). Nevertheless, theatre reviews—from before and after 1936—provide a valuable source for the games being played on and offstage. In both arenas, what was allowed to be said may point to what was being silenced.

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´ con el Moreto’s El desden ´ Becomes Donna Diana desden The only play by Moreto performed during the Nazi period has a relatively simple plot-line, neatly summarized by its literal title, Disdain with Disdain. Carlos, the Count of Urgel, is in love with Diana, the Count of Barcelona’s daughter. He has two rivals (the Prince of Bearne and Don Gastón), but Diana is the real source of opposition, since she treats all men, and love itself, with disdain. To combat this, Carlos—aided by the go-between comic servant Polilla—feigns disdain as well, thus driving Diana to distraction and winning her hand. Most of the dramaturgical humour derives from Polilla’s antics, Carlos’s playacting of disdain, and Diana’s reactions, as both main characters strain to conceal their true desires. This story had enjoyed a considerable European reputation before its thirty-three German productions between 1933 and 1944. Moreto’s original (of 1654), went into Molière’s relocation in Greece (of 1664), and Gozzi’s elaborate changes (in 1772).4 German translations of Gozzi’s version had been in circulation for over thirty years before Josef Schreyvogel wrote his version in 1816. Schreyvogel, who went under the pseudonym of Carl August West, was to become director and Dramaturg of the Burgtheater in Vienna but, such was the fame of his Moreto version, that he was often known as “the adaptor of Donna Diana”, despite his important translations of Calderón (Sullivan 1983, 272). By his own admission, Schreyvogel borrowed from Gozzi, but he also attempted to omit vulgarity by returning to the Spanish in order to give Diana more nobility (West 1819, 4). On the other hand, he simplified much of Moreto’s imagery. Whatever the inaccuracies and dramaturgical adaptations of Donna Diana, it was Schreyvogel’s version which continued on stage and as a point of reference into the twentieth century (Lebede 1921–1922; Ludwig 1921–1922). We can observe the extent to which the play had become part of German theatre from a provincial context. When Donna

4 For introductions to well-known versions of El desdén con el desdén, see Bauer (1963), Ottavi (1934), Urbani (2009). In La principessa filosofa Gozzi followed Moreto, but simplified his style, tended to caricature, and repeated explanations. Since some German versions follow Gozzi’s title and call it Die philosophische Prinzessin, this is sometimes mistaken as a different play by Moreto (e.g. Eicher, Panse, and Rischbieter 2000, 321).

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Diana was staged in Baden-Baden in 1937, Dramaturg Otto Riegel edited the journal of the theatre so this production was seen as a revival of the same play first performed there in 1862 (Staerk 1937–1938, 7). Meanwhile, the pro-Nazi scholar Joseph Gregor considered Moreto’s play a masterpiece (Gregor 1943, 428). And Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek’s 1894 opera, based on Schreyvogel’s text, achieved its own place in the repertory. During the Nazi period, it received high-profile productions in Berlin and Frankfurt (Niessen 1944, 209–210). El desdén con el desdén has been seen as a play “from which the last vestiges of consciously Christian ethics have been expunged” (Wardropper 1957, 2) so it fitted a Nazi ideology free from religion. But what exactly were the attractions of this narrative of love rejected, then accepted? If we believe in the authenticity of this passion, then Moreto’s tale does not follow the features of much classic comedy in which comic types are dehumanized and arouse no identification from audiences (Malachy 2005, 21). It is therefore also worth asking if German productions of the time allowed actors to express emotion as well as slapstick.

Donna Diana: Aesthetics, Stereotypes, and Nazi Politics Jürgen Fehling’s staging of Donna Diana at the Kleines Haus of Berlin’s Staatstheater supplies several reasons for the popularity of the play. Drawing on the crude humour, feeling for space, imagination, and heightened tempo developed in his early work (Ihering 1943, 22), Fehling orchestrated what was greeted as “one of the most sparkling performances ever seen in the theatre” (Ruppel 1943, 95). It was, by all accounts, a vibrant evening, full of music and dance, in which the semblance of a fourth wall often disappeared (at one point confetti was thrown onto the audience). This made for a “successful New Year’s eve premiere” on 31 December 1935 (Braumüller 1936b). Maria Bard’s version of the eponymous Diana received praise for her “now gentle, now effervescent temperament” (Mann 1936). However, all agreed that Werner Krauss stole the show in the role of Perin (Schreyvogel’s name for Polilla, the servant). By extending the function of the stock comic gracioso, Moreto had created a manipulative, materialist character who told both Carlos and Diana what to do, and carried the action forward, sharing “the spotlight with his master” (Wardropper 1957, 8), “almost with the capacity of a prompter or master of ceremonies”

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(Sullivan 1994, 231).5 Krauss added to this a performance perceived as deriving from the commedia dell’arte (Ihering 1942, 135). Since Goldoni was also mentioned (Ruppel 1943, 96), it was easy to compare Perin to the star of The Servant of Two Masters (a comedy given thirty-nine productions during the Third Reich). Joseph Goebbels was impressed by the performances of Bard and Krauss, describing the whole as a “splendid production”, although he also thought it “unfortunately rather overacted (etwas überspielt )” (Goebbels 1987, 566). The scene which branded the production, and may well have led to Goebbels’s reservations, was a duel in which Krauss and Diana’s maid Floretta (Moreto’s Laura, played by Lotte Betke) acted out a bullfight in jest. Krauss charged with a sword at Betke who wore a mask with horns. A cartoon of the scene accompanied the review in one Nazi newspaper (Kei 1936), while another reviewer called it “a grotesque parody of a bullfight” (Braumüller 1936b). This was Fehling’s doing. As the programme indicated quite clearly (Fig. 13.1), but as no critic pointed out, the actors were using his “stage adaptation” (Bühnenbearbeitung ) of Schreyvogel/ West’s translation. Schreyvogel had more or less followed Moreto in having Don Cesar [sic] (Moreto’s Carlos) come to Barcelona at the time of the carnival (Moreto 1923, 6; Moreto 1971, 31–33, 150). Fehling turned this into the idea that Don Cesar had been attracted to Barcelona by its famous bullfighting (Moreto 1964, 6), so he had some characters wear bulls’ masks at one point and included the “Toreador Song ” from Bizet’s Carmen (1875) (Moreto 1964, 48; Ruppel 1943, 95). Two grand pianos were employed for additional musical touches, following Mark Lothar’s score for the production, “using Spanish folk music” (as the programme explained and as reviewers recognized). Fehling’s script enlivened Schreyvogel’s version further by reducing the length of speeches and modernizing aspects of the dialogue. The modernization affected the costume design as two trumpeters wore anachronistic dinner jackets and top hats (Ruppel 1943, 95). All this, despite Nazi disapproval of updating the classics (London 2000a, 30; London 2000b, 241–243). Krauss himself remembered the production with affection. On the opening night, he improvised a reaction to a woman who reached her seat in the stalls well after the performance had begun: “She’s come late, but at least she’s come” (Krauss 1958, 192). This was just after some lines 5 In the equivalent character created by Gozzi, this role had been rendered still more independent (Ottavi 1934, 473).

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Fig. 13.1 Production details from the programme for Agustín Moreto’s Donna Diana (El desdén con el desdén), Staatstheater Kleines Haus, Berlin, 13 February 1936. It is indicated that this performance is for Alfred Rosenberg’s NSKulturgemeinde which organized large audiences for shows with a supposedly strict Nazi ethos. Also clearly explained is that the text was “translated from the Spanish by K. A. West [Josef Schreyvogel]” in “Jürgen Fehling’s stage adaptation” (Source Kleines Haus, Nürnberger Str. 1 (1935–1938); Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Berlin)

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he had recited to Don Cesar in order to cheer him up: “You’re a hero, the whole world/Knows that. And believe your most faithful adviser, / You’ll one day be a heroic father” (Moreto 1964, 8).6 Fehling had again departed from Schreyvogel (Moreto 1923, 10), but here the echoes were more potent: the term “heroic father” or “father of heroes” (Heldenvater) occurs, in its plural form, in the jingoistic song “Die Wacht am Rhein” (“The Watch on the Rhine”) in which the “heroic forefathers” in heaven glance down as the German soldier protects the border.7 The reference was more audacious because, the term had become attached to the disliked Bernhard Rust, Nazi Minister of Education, who had supposedly, after he was given a military honour in the First World War, signed a telegram to his son with the phrase “Your heroic father” (Pedersen 1994, 25). As further evidence of parody, Krauss claimed that he had played Perin a bit like Charlie Chaplin, with a moustache “not just like Hitler[’s], but similar to his” (Krauss 1958, 192). The photographic proof is not as convincing (Fig. 13.2) and Krauss’s later account may have been part of his strategy to distance himself from his subsequent roles in the 1940 anti-semitic film Jud Süß and his portrayal of Shylock (in 1943). Rather than provoking any recorded political reading, Krauss’s performance stimulated an appreciation of his theatrical skill: “A whole world history of theatre lives in his imagination. He creeps, he eavesdrops, he senses opportunities. […] Krauss acts Goya” (Ihering 1936). The set underlined this prowess. Traugott Müller, the “stage designer of large, rigorous form” (Gründgens 1963, 105), devised strings of what looked like snowballs, making up a kind of curtain to be hidden behind or peeked through.8 Praised as “original” (Braumüller 1936c, 27), it was adaptable and yet gave space for elaborate action. Indeed, set design became a key element in other productions of Donna Diana. Gustaf Gründgens was enthusiastic about Nina Tokumbet’s settings for the Baden-Baden staging, more traditionally conceived in backdrops of trees and architecture (Keller 1937–1938, 18), whereas in Frankfurt am Main one-time Brecht collaborator, Caspar Neher, was responsible for the design (Schültke 1997, 453). 6 My translation is from Fehling’s text, although Krauss’s memory of the lines is almost the same (Krauss 1958, 192). 7 For the words to “Die Wacht am Rhein”, see: niederwalddenkmal.de/dasniederwalddenkmal/die-wacht-am-rhein. Accessed 19 December 2021. 8 A selection of photographs of Müller’s set is in Ahrens (1987, 162–165).

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Fig. 13.2 Mere frivolity or Hitler parody? Werner Krauss as Perin (Moreto’s Polilla) in Donna Diana (El desdén con el desdén). The shot includes a glimpse of Traugott Müller’s set design of hanging white balls, comically echoed in Krauss’s costume (Source Programme for Paul Apel’s Hans Sonnenstössers Höllenfahrt, Staatstheater, Schauspielhaus, Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin, November 19, 1936, 2; Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Berlin)

The Frankfurt production, directed by Robert George in September 1936, is also noteworthy because it occurred just before the ban on proper theatre criticism and thus allows us to see the reasons why Donna Diana did not always work so successfully. The play itself came off negatively in a comparison with The Taming of the Shrew: Shakespeare’s characters were alive, while Moreto’s were “almost theoretical figures”. Moreover, Bum Krüger’s Perin simply lacked the necessary comic skill and was not helped by his adopted nasal accent (–d. 1936).9 By the time the war was underway, Horst Beilke was depicted as acting the role with “masterly agility” in an open-air version in Leipzig (Mack 1941). Mandolins and tambourines increased the jolly atmosphere. Elsewhere, the renewed integration of Donna Diana into the Nazi repertory occasioned socio-political as well as aesthetic comment. At 9 It should be noted that the newspaper where these comments appeared, the Frankfurter Zeitung, had a reputation for honest—sometimes coded—opinions which irritated the Nazi hierarchy (Strobl 2007, 188).

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the time of the Dresden staging (in 1934), Reichsdramaturg Rainer Schlösser incorporated the comedy into his pseudo-Goethean vision of world literature (Weltliteratur). In a comparison with Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm, he emphasized how fruitful it was to be affected by foreign culture “in its particular popular (völkischen) nature” and praised, in superficially dramaturgical terms, the “lightness and liveliness” of Donna Diana as features often lacking in German theatre (Schlösser 1934, 473). In Hamburg, it was given two productions during the regime. Robert Meyn’s initial staging provoked appreciation of the play as “popular/ folk art (Volkskunst ) of the highest degree” and the mirror of a culture in which “the entire Spanish people (Volk)” had collaborated (Schramm 1933).10 Later in the same year, Walter Stang, Bavarian Dramaturg and head of the newly coordinated theatre-goers’ association called Deutsche Bühne, came to give a speech during the Week of German Culture in Hamburg. A close associate of Alfred Rosenberg, Stang was keen to underline the unity of the German people through theatre. Afterwards, scenes from several plays were performed, including Donna Diana, and the applause apparently recognized the closeness between “stalls and stage” (Werbeveranstaltung 1933). It was, then, logical for Meyn to revive the play during the war. Now, it was welcomed as “theatre in its finest and purest form” (Langer 1942), although it was given specifically Spanish local colour, with Moorish touches in the setting and a Spanish cut to the black dress worn by Maria Wimmer, highly praised as Diana (Koch 1942). It is not possible to confirm all cases, but Schreyvogel’s translation seems to have been the basis for productions outside Berlin. The names of the characters are those Schreyvogel gave them, even when Hans Schlegel’s contemporary version was used for the Frankfurt production (Schültke 1997, 453). So when Moreto’s play was put on in Austria in 1941 there was a real sense of homecoming: here was a part of nineteenth-century Viennese theatre returning to its birthplace, thereby also implicitly reinforcing Austro-German unity. The renowned Austrian actress Paula Wessely in the title role increased the popularity, but also underlined a natural connection since she was working at Berlin’s Deutsches Theater and the Josefstadttheater at the same time. 10 Despite these comments, which agreed with a Nazi approach to aesthetics, it should be noted that the critic who voiced them—Wolf Schramm—did not escape later censure from the Nazi authorities (Lüth 1962, 32).

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Otto Niedermoser’s set possessed the forms and colours of “a merry Spain” and, in contrast to the previous negative comparisons with Shakespeare, the language attained a Shakespearean level (Stigler-Fuchs 1941), or the play was declared to have nothing to do with The Taming of the Shrew (Holzmann 1941b). A year later, the similarity drew a mention (Langer 1942), although by this time a Hamburg critic—in an echo of Schlösser’s earlier comments—was asserting that Donna Diana rightly belonged to “world literature” (Koch 1942). A seventeenth-century Spanish comedy had remained Spanish, consolidated its importance in Nazi regime, and garnered praise which asserted its canonical status well beyond Spain and Germany.

Tirso de Molina’s Don Gil de las calzas ¨ verdes/Don Gil von den grunen Hosen Tirso de Molina’s most successful comedy in the Third Reich has a dramaturgy of humour based on situation rather than the character portrayals necessary for Donna Diana. Doña Juana has come to Madrid dressed as a man (called Don Gil, with the green breeches of the title) in order to reclaim Don Martín, the man who has seduced her. Meanwhile, Martín is following his father’s advice in courting the rich Inés, although her existing suitor is Don Juan. Lies and falsified letters propel the action, but the most striking feature of the story is disguise: it culminates in a scene in which four characters are calling themselves Don Gil, the irony being that this is nobody’s real name in the play. The intricate twists in the plot (Hesse 1962, 389–392) have made it perhaps the most complex in the whole of Spanish Golden-Age drama (Halkhoree 1989, 43). There is much metatheatrical comic mileage in Juana, “the writer, director, and protagonist of the drama” (Darst 1974, 80), although the role demands a skilled and energetic actress (even more so than in the case of Moreto’s Polilla/Perin). The size and age of the lead apparently scuppered the premiere in 1615 (Carrión 2014, 124). Nevertheless, Don Gil de las calzas verdes had an influence on the English stage in the eighteenth century (Saglia 2001, 337–342) and Carl August Dohrn’s nineteenthcentury German translation gained the play a certain reputation (Dohrn 1841, 157–330). By the twentieth century, two German versions were competing: Friedrich Adler’s (1902) and the result of the collaboration between

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August L. Mayer and Johannes von Günther (Tirso de Molina 1918). The fact that Adler was Jewish effectively proscribed his translation by 1933, maybe more easily forgotten because he worked in Prague. However, the Mayer-Günther version had also benefited from a popular Munich production by Otto Falckenberg in 1920 and led to two musical adaptations (Braunfels 1924; Futterer 1922). Mayer had translated the Spanish into German prose, so Günther—who had put it into blank verse— claimed ownership of the text after a few years. Günther admitted to borrowing some of Dohrn’s lines and attempting to make Martín more agreeable (Tirso de Molina 1924, 89). Don Gil von den grünen Hosen was not performed in the Third Reich until Günther’s reworked version premiered in Königsberg (Kaliningrad) in 1937 (Tirso de Molina 1938a), after which it seems that most of the nineteen German productions of the play until 1944 were based on Günther’s text.11 Although one should say “texts”, since Günther again readjusted his version for Falckenberg’s 1939 revival in Munich and then included further changes for the 1943 publication of the script. Since Günther had contrived a subplot and constructed a “Goldoni-style comedy of character” in 1937, he thought it had “hardly anything to do with Tirso de Molina’s original text”. Yet, swayed by Falckenberg’s objections, he diminished the comedy of character in 1942 and eliminated most of his previous musical insertions (Guenther 1943, 139–141). In spite of the different translations on offer, they all maintained the basic trick of a woman—and, by the end, women—imitating a man. Moreover, Juana is successful in deceiving Martín for her benefit. In that sense, the play has the potential to undermine traditional masculine roles (Carrión 2014, 124; Connor 1994, 144). More so than the other comedy by Tirso de Molina staged in the Nazi regime, La celosa de sí misma

11 Two other translations of Don Gil de las calzas verdes were in circulation towards

the end of the Nazi period (Tirso de Molina 1938b; Tirso de Molina 1941). Moreover, Dohrn’s translation, slightly adapted, also seems to have retained some currency (e.g. in Vienna in 1941). The German title occasionally becomes Don Gil mit den grünen Hosen in reviews, instead of Don Gil von den grünen Hosen, although this does not appear to indicate a specific choice of translation.

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(Jealous of Herself ), this farce shows a woman in control.12 The question in this context is, therefore, whether any subversive notion emerged from productions or if the laughter smothered such considerations.

Gilerei: From Munich to Breslau In the three years following the 1939 Falckenberg production, it is possible to observe how Don Gil von den grünen Hosen confirmed a certain perception of Spanishness and also provided excuses for laughter the nature of which stimulated justification and debate. Eduard Sturm’s set of “baroque Madrid” (Wehner 1944, 216) provided Falckenberg with the local colour for what was, following Günther, a highly musical show. The acting, though, seems to have taken inspiration from the commedia dell’arte. So as Juana, Paula Denk was skilled at her changes into Don Gil, but Don Pedro (Inés’s father) had the spirit of Pantalone in Fritz Reiff’s interpretation. No wonder it was necessary to emphasize that this was not “unbridled theatre from the period of l’art pour l’art ”, but rather “theatre with human beings at its centre” (Wehner 1944, 215), whatever the sophistry of that differentiation. Indeed, the sort of human beings created within stagings became as typically Spanish as those of Donna Diana. Juana was thus the blackhaired beauty from Valladolid, “with the abundant charm of her race” in Hamburg-Altona (Kark 1939), a role played to great applause by Elsbeth Jäger and doubtless rendered more Spanish by Nina Tokumbet’s set (Fig. 13.3). Sylvia Devez’s Juana in Vienna (in 1941) wore a “Spanish dress” (Holzmann 1941a) in a production scored by Franz Salmhofer’s songs and dances with “southern melodies” (Liebl 1941). The lightness of tone provoked an understandable sense of unease at the idea of vulgar laughter. So, in an echo of the comments from Munich, one Viennese critic thought it necessary to highlight that this was not a farce, but the “specific merriment of an old Spanish play” (Liebl 1941). By 1942, when Kurt Hoffmann directed Don Gil von den grünen Hosen in Breslau (present-day Wrocław), the proliferation of Don Gils in the plot led to the neologistic labelling of the play as a “Gilerei” or 12 There were five productions of Eifersucht auf sich selbst, all between 1940 and 1944, including one in Prague (1941). These were mainly the result of the efforts of the translator Hans Schlegel, although another version was in circulation (Tirso de Molina 1939; Tirso de Molina 1943).

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Fig. 13.3 An unsigned sketch of Nina Tokumbet’s set for the final act of Tirso de Molina’s Don Gil mit [sic] den grünen Hosen (Don Gil de las calzas verdes ) performed in Hamburg-Altona, 1939 (Source Hamburger Tageblatt, September 30, 1939: 9)

“collection of Don Gils” (Bergmann 1942). Tokumbet again stepped in to create a “Spanish baroque” set, but amidst the dance and music, one reviewer pointed out how the men in the play were “naïve, good-natured, and stupid”. In accordance with Günther’s acknowledgement (Tirso de Molina 1938a, 3), the reviewer also explained that the source for the songs was a combination of Herder, Cervantes, and other Spaniards from the period (Bergmann 1942). Here, then, was a fusion of German and Spanish culture at a time when it was most needed on the European military stage. There is a darker side to the play, apart from the sordid money motive for Martín’s switch in affections. As part of her ruse, Juana invents a story in which she is pregnant, has retired to a convent, and then dies giving birth to Martín’s deformed daughter (Tirso de Molina 1988, 282). Dohrn’s translation conveys most of these details (Dohrn 1841, 266–268) and Günther, in the diluted equivalent scene, at least includes the ruse of Juana’s death so that she continues to haunt him as what

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Ramon [sic] (Günther’s Martín) thinks is a ghost (Tirso de Molina 1938a, 84–86; Guenther 1943, 105–107). Reviewers did not mention this invented guilt. The possibility that the play might allegorize and question the search for sexual identity (Halkhoree 1989, 48–63; Stroud 1991, 77) or minimize the differences between the sexes (Donahue 1987, 179) seemed a distant prospect (beyond the occasional signal about the stupidity of men, erroneously viewed as “good-natured”). More striking still is the fact that these more serious elements and interpretations were not voiced in Gregor’s discussion of the text in his historical account of Spanish drama, not even in an embryonic form (Gregor 1943, 406–407). The choice to ignore the more profound potential of Don Gil de las calzas verdes obviously relegated the play to superficial comedy, despite unsubstantiated protestations to the contrary in some reviews. Of course, audiences may have perceived points unmentioned by reviewers and scholars, but the Third Reich had officially rendered Tirso an author of skilled dramaturgical frivolity. There is a sense in which the action of Don Gil de las calzas verdes —of a woman’s managing to deflate male pretensions—conveys the idea of an anti-Don Juan (Gijón Zapata 1959, 208–224). However, on the stages of Nazi Germany, Tirso de Molina was not the author of the Don Juan myth with its strong religious morality (in El burlador de Sevilla/The Trickster of Seville) or, therefore, of Don Juan’s possible opposite, but rather two examples of farcical comedy.13

Conclusion: Laughing at or with Spaniards? The success of Spanish comedy during 1933–1944 clearly contradicts those Nazis who were against the presence of non-German dramatists in theatre repertories, a view voiced strongly at the start of the regime by Hanns Johst, author and Dramaturg of Berlin’s Staatliches Schauspielhaus (Johst 1933). From one perspective, the battle had been won well before owing to the nineteenth-century German presence of Moreto and Tirso de Molina. The published introduction to the fifth edition of Schreyvogel’s Donna Diana stated that the play was one of the most “elaborate and accomplished works which are rarely found in the literature of any nation” (Appell 1862, 8). It could therefore be cited 13 It is worth noting, in contrast, how the anti-Nazi scholar Karl Vossler was interested in the more tragic and religious aspects of Tirso’s work (Vossler 1965).

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as an example—alongside plays by Aristophanes, Plautus, Lessing, and Shakespeare—within a typology, published in the midst of the Second World War, of different kinds of comedy (Rommel 1943, 284). And the enduring popularity of Donna Diana and Don Gil von den grünen Hosen provides more evidence for those who argue for a certain continuum in German theatre between the pre-Nazi and Nazi periods (Strobl 2010, 380–381). There was, though, a Nazi gloss to justify the continuation of this Spanish tradition. The particular angle on “world literature” by Schlösser and others fitted a wider rhetoric. In the Nazi newspaper Der Angriff , Perin (in Donna Diana) was called “one of the most precious mediator roles in world literature” (Kei 1936). Two days earlier the same daily had published a photograph of Werner Krauss (as Perin) and Lotte Betke in Donna Diana as well as fragments from a speech by Goebbels entitled “We must be a world nation [Weltvolk] once again!” (Goebbels 1936, 1). Since these seventeenth-century Spanish comedies had almost been admitted to the realm of German classics, one could argue that the “sense of form of the German people” lay within them as was asserted for their German counterparts (Braumüller 1936a, 5). Likewise, the best German contemporary comedy derived, according to a Nazi view, from dramatists’ “deep-rootedness” in their region and unfalsified national character (Wanderscheck 1938, 260). If these comparisons seem far-fetched, then a racist account of humour provides further evidence; its author did not cite Spanish plays, but his praise of Don Quixote managed to associate the novel with German humour.14 So far so official, although such assertions support the contention that there was a coincidence of interests between the regime and audiences in the enjoyment of theatrical entertainment (Strobl 2010, 383–384), here granted more cachet by being rooted in a noble Spanish-German literary tradition. The fact that the majority of the productions of plays by Tirso de Molina and Moreto were premiered during the Second World War corresponds to the general increase in the performance of theatrical classics at this time (Heinrich 2007, 205). But given that—according to some calculations—over half the repertory of 1933–1944 consisted of comedies (Grange 2006, xv; Merziger 2010, 147), it is well worth considering 14 See Kadner (1936, 99–101). It has to be admitted, however, that no Nazi accounts of Spanish comedy coincided with the racism seen as characterizing theatre during the Nazi period (Heinrich 2021).

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the nature of the humour in these plays, beyond anachronistic, implicitly racist interpretations. There certainly seemed to be no fear whatsoever that these Spanish comedies were immoral and licentious, a criticism levelled against Tirso de Molina by Spanish, German, and American critics in the nineteenth century (Banús and Galván 1999). On the other hand, it is difficult to see how the plays followed accounts in which classic comedy holds a mirror of daily life up to audiences and shows them their errors and ludicrousness (Müller 1942, 63) or in which the contemporary genre should be truthful and far from superficial (Wanderscheck 1938, 259, 261).15 Diana receives her comeuppance and Martín is punished for his betrayal, but they are both relieved at their final coupling in matrimony. Besides, they are far from being the unique source of laughter, so this is hardly comedy as correction, as Bergson (1985, 150) would have it. The three marriages at the end of both plays and the frenetic revelation of identities conform to the tried methods of comedy whereby the formal aspects naturally predominate as the action closes and resolutions rely on social institutions. We are invited to accept the artificiality, look at the bare bones of the play and admire the artistry (Jagendorf 1984, 12). A journalistic article of the time claimed that Berliners did not laugh on the street, but rather at home, in the office, and in the theatre (h. b. 1936.). Could this idea be applied to all of Nazi Germany, in that the theatre functioned as a safety valve (Strobl 2007, 190) and part of the humour of tension management within a social hierarchy (Gundle 2015, 223)? This was essentially comedy within a Nazi frame, but—with the exception of the odd covert reference—little trace of political topicality (Grange 2006, xiv), thereby conforming to the idea of an everyday life within the regime where entertainment could be a spare-time pleasure, separate from active engagement (Peukert 1989, 78–80). Laughing was not oppositional in the way it is often viewed in historical terms (Grunberger 1974, 419–430). The recognizably Spanish sets and costumes, accompanied by some pseudo-Spanish music, may have implied that characters from the distant

15 When discussing theatrical comedy, certain critics in the Third Reich attempted to differentiate between Komödie and the more superficial Lustspiel. The categories are far from precisely defined; the comedies by Moreto and Tirso de Molina were sometimes seen as Komödien (Koch 1942; Schramm 1933) and sometimes as Lustspiele (Braumüller 1936b; Brück 1940; Rommel 1943). See also the subtitles for translations.

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past in a foreign land would tend to behave in this comical manner so we can find them amusing and concentrate on the action. However, in line with contemporary German comedy, this was not satirical theatre because no individuals became the target of destructive barbs. What was being celebrated at the end of these comedies was the same as in popular German plays (Merziger 2015, 188–189, 193–194): reconciliation and a sense of community. For the comedies of Moreto and Tirso de Molina, this community is obviously not exclusively German. Rather the marriages in the plays were parallel to German-Spanish alliances on the international political stage as well as a reminder—for a public with erudite pretensions—of a long history of German involvement with Spanish literature of the Golden Age. When the comedy was successful, they also represented, quite harmoniously, the marriage of audiences and actors by means of a dramaturgy of humour.16

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16 I am grateful to Robert Gillett, Rüdiger Görner, Astrid Köhler, and Angus Nicholls for help with certain sections of this study.

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CHAPTER 14

The Rationality of War: Brecht’s Theatre Experiments at the Limit of the Epic Ramona Mosse

Among the rich materials in the Brecht Archive in Berlin, there exists a curious sound clip. It consists of a series of drum beats followed by endlessly repeated base intervals on the piano, partially played on the piano strings themselves; they refuse any notion of harmony or melody and are instead strung together by a violent and oppressive rhythm, building up an ominous sense of suspense. Strange, foreign, and somewhat threatening, the clip is a far way off from Kurt Weill’s jazzy tunes

This article reframes part of a dissertation project and draws on another article, published in German and entitled “Fragment und Modell: Brechts Theaterästhetik der Zukunft” (Fragment and Model: Brecht’s sketch for a theatre aesthetic of the future); in it, the author explored the relationship of the model books to the fragment in Brecht’s works (Rothe and Oesmann 2020, 59–80). R. Mosse (B) Departement Darstellende Künste & Film, Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Heinrich and A.-C. Simke (eds.), Dramaturgies of War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39318-1_14

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with which the Threepenny Opera’s “Mack, the Knife” teases its listeners. This clip is a part of the soundscape of the 1948 Antigone, which Bertolt Brecht, his set designer Caspar Neher and Hans Curjel, the Artistic Director of the municipal theatre in Chur, jointly created during the rehearsals in Switzerland and then played on a record player as part of the performance. The clip creates an atmosphere of destruction, distilling the focal points of Brecht’s Antigone sonically rather than with words. The 1948 Antigone was Brecht’s theatrical reintroduction to post-war Europe after his return from exile in the United States. It was also a reintroduction to stage practice, since Brecht’s and Weigel’s ability to make theatre during the years of exile was limited.1 The Antigone came in two parts: (1) the 1948 Antigone, an overall short production run of the Sophoclean play in an adapted version of the Hölderlin translation, staged at the municipal theatre in Chur in early 1948; (2) the Antigone model, a production book with images and commentary published a year later. In this double manifestation, Brecht’s 1948 Antigone production and its model (that would institute an entire genre of model books at the Berliner Ensemble) long remained on the sidelines of scholarly interest. Only recently have they gained more scholarly attention, notably through David Barnett’s work on the making of the Berliner Ensemble and Werner Wüthrich’s casebook on Antigone. Brecht’s Antigone Model has become more interesting to theatre scholars again because the format of the model book investigates performance as an experiment and participates in creating a complex dialogue between archive and performance that has been an increasingly important theoretical discourse at least since Diana Taylor’s The Archive and the Repertoire (2003). Furthermore, this experimentation with dramaturgical forms and the performance situation examines how violence and war become constituted in the production. Brecht stages the perceptual and cognitive shift that war creates. In order to address Brecht’s theatre as a ‘theatre of war’ and with it the complexities at the heart of Brecht’s dramaturgy, this article moves the concern with war beyond the dramatic and to his media experiments, located between cultural and theatrical performance. In my analysis, I will read Brecht’s model books of the Antigone and Galileo productions alongside his journals and the War Primer, which explore the notion of war theatres through the formal combination of image, text, and performance. That 1 For a detailed account of Brecht’s American exile years, see James K. Lyon (1980). Bertolt Brecht in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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is to say, Brecht moved from using war as an allegory for capitalism to conceptualizing war as embedded into his aesthetic structure. No longer was war just informing the content of the play but it instead provided the dramaturgical frame for the production. Brecht thus created an intermedial laboratory for understanding the mechanisms of war and violence, which in turn posed a challenge to the established notions of epic theatre. A structural analysis of violence and destruction runs through Brecht’s writings of the time, reflecting the state of a ravished European continent that Brecht encountered after the war. In the preface to his Antigone Model 1948, Brecht speaks of a “total moral and material collapse” of “our unfortunate land, source of so much misfortune” (Brecht 2014, 160). Yet, Brecht’s reflection on the logic of destruction also informs his work surrounding the 1948 Antigone. Immediately preceding the Antigone material, Brecht’s more renowned Life of Galileo similarly grapples with the double bind between progress and destruction and helps to gain a broader perspective on Brecht’s experimentation with these concepts. Brecht’s many revisions of Galileo both mark his responses to the historical developments but are also part of a more fundamental crisis about the status of scientific methods as such (Jameson 1998). Over the course of rewriting, this struggle becomes intensified and is of a less soluble nature. Everything hinges on what Galileo professes: “Yes, I believe in reason’s gentle tyranny over people. […] Thinking is one of the great pleasures of the human race” (Brecht 2008, 27). Yet, this sense of rationality and science as tools with which to advance knowledge comes under fire through the historical developments that Brecht was subject to. Science no longer presented a way of distancing oneself from the world to evaluate it objectively; instead, it became equally subject to and manipulated by political power struggles. Crucial parts of the revision process of Galileo are recorded in an important precursor to the model books that would become such an essential part of the work processes at the Berliner Ensemble (Barnett 2016, 106–121). “Constructing A Part: Laughton’s Galileo” was a miniature version of these later model books, as it offered a detailed account of the collaboration between Charles Laughton and Brecht in California during the mid-40s, in translating and then staging Life of Galileo in the United States in 1947 with Laughton in the leading role. Laughton’s strategies of embodiment are at the centre of the piece, thus highlighting the crucial role of gesture in the process of translation into English. Galileo’s struggle between scientific knowledge and physical pleasure is

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illustrated through Laughton’s physicality, but his performance ultimately also reshapes the dramatic play. Brecht describes their collaboration as a “system of performance-and-repetition” and adds: The awkward circumstance that one translator knew no German and the other scarcely any English compelled us, as can be seen, to use acting as our means of translation from the outset. We were forced to do what better equipped translators should do: translate instances of gestus. For language is theatrical above all when it expresses the behavior of the speakers to each other. (Brecht 2014, 154)

In other words, the relationship between text and performance became inverted here, so that acting rendered language. Brecht’s focus on performance becomes reiterated in the “Foreword” to the Antigone Model: “The damage done to the theatre buildings is far more conspicuous than that done to performance” (Brecht 2014, 165). Yet, the most shattering change in Laughton’s and Brecht’s attitude to the material in front of them came in the shape of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Brecht explicitly references the ways in which the atomic bomb shifts his idea of science: “It is important to realize that our production took place at the time and in the place where the atom bomb had just been produced and put to military use, and where nuclear physics were shrouded in the deepest secrecy. […] Making discoveries had become shameful” (Brecht 2014, 160). The figure of Galileo captures this shift. In his production notes, Brecht states that Galileo should be played like a “phenomenon of the order of Richard III, whereby the vitality of this strange figure brings out emotions of approval in the audience” (Brecht 2014, 158). With the advent of nuclear warfare, the very idea of scientific progress was put into question. No longer could social and scientific advancement go hand in hand. Fundamentally, Galileo’s vision of science’s function as objective and distanced echoes the parameters of detachment in epic theatre. Yet, the scientific method also turns into a dwarfish category, instrumentalized by the military and paid for by the market. The conception behind the American version of Galileo displays, more than anything, that Brecht had run up against a substantial problem in his use of the idea of science and rationality to reconceptualize the theatre. Reasons for scepticism came from more than one side. In 1947, Brecht was called before the House Committee of Un-American Activities (HUAC), heralding in the new parameters and ideologies of the Cold

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War. Brecht’s statement to HUAC is interesting in this context because it speaks to a change in ideological warfare that occurred in this transition period from World War II to the Cold War: Looking back on my experiences as a playwright and poet in the Europe of the last two decades, I would like to say that the great American people stands to lose and risk a lot, if it allowed either restrictions on the free competition of ideas on the cultural level or any infringements of the arts, which have to be free in order to count as art. We live our life in a dangerous world. Our civilization is at a level that already would enable humankind to be exceedingly rich, yet in its totality it remains stricken with poverty. We have suffered great wars, and as we are hearing, greater ones seem to be ahead of us. (Transcript of Brecht’s Hearing at the House of Un-American Activities (HUAC) on October 30, 1947)

The “dangerous world” Brecht evokes replaces a Brechtian universe, in which the struggle for an alternative society and theatre’s part in it seemed more imminent. Brecht’s development of the Lehrstück during the 1930s is telling in this context: it had functioned as an aesthetic response to the forging of political revolutions. By abolishing the audience, it had enacted revolution on the body of the participants; the action taught the lay actors their own social role and potential in the theatre, so that they could carry it over into reality.2 In a similar vein, Brecht’s early plays cast first the New World of America, later communist Russia as foils for political alternatives that projected the possibility of utopian other places and the reality of social change. Yet, the immense destruction of World War II and the emergence of the Cold War pushed back all notions of any such imminent revolution. The rise of McCarthyism in the United States and the HUAC hearings revealed a new, hardened status quo. Brecht’s statement in front of the Committee is interesting because it reflects his altered and less optimistic understanding of the possibilities of art as a motor of political and historical change. Brecht captures the tense atmosphere and impending risks that the post-WWII world was facing. As new political power structures emerged out of a war-torn landscape, political paradigms seemingly blurred. When Brecht stated that “the great American people stands to lose and risk a lot,” he pointed to the shifting and

2 See also Steinweg’s seminal study on the “Lehrstück”: Steinweg, Reiner. 1976. Das Lehrstück. Brechts Theorie einer politisch-ästhetischen Erziehung. Stuttgart: Metzler.

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destabilized understanding of allegiances and enemies that threatened to undo the US’s moral high ground as liberator from dictatorship. While World War II seemed to offer a clear division of friend and foe, the inversion of this divide that went along with the beginning Cold War period marked also the relativism inherent in its ideological battle. It was a battle that would also structure the reception of Brecht’s work itself, since it was peculiarly tied up with the ideological prerogatives and intellectual stumbling blocks of Cold War culture.3 In effect, Brecht had to review his writings, dramatic and theoretical, in their structural make-up to respond to the political reality and answer the question of how change could be enacted. In its comparative rawness and immediacy to recent historical events, the 1948 Antigone participates in exemplifying how Brecht departed from his conception of epic theatre. Brecht’s statement in front of the HUAC reveals a deep-seated dismay with a reality saturated with violence, destruction, and suppression. The operations of the Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities revealed that the world at large, not just Germany, had become threatening and did not hold a safe haven: “We live our life in a dangerous world.” With the end of the war, the world had failed to become less threatening.

Modelling Antigone This sense of a “dangerous world” characterizes the mood of Brecht’s first theatrical project on European ground, the Antigone adaptation at the Churer Stadttheater in Switzerland. The scholarship has generally focused on this rationalization for a scientific age as the centre piece for analyzing the adaptation. “The ideological fog has to be removed, so that the real social fundament can become visible again,” states Frank D. Wagner of this “demythologized worldview” that becomes apparent in Brecht’s version of Antigone and which he admits to be ultimately antithetical to the genre of tragedy that Brecht reconceives here (Wagner 3 In his monograph on Brecht, Martin Esslin also remarks upon the depth to which Brecht’s life was embedded in the political and ideological debate of the time, adding that “Brecht’s case defies such simplifications. It is far more complex and constitutes as a curious paradox: Brecht was a Communist and also a great poet. But while the Wet liked his poetry and distrusted his Communism, the Communists exploited his political convictions while they regarded his artistic aims and achievements with suspicion” (Esslin 1971, xvi–xvii).

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2006, 11, 132; my translation). Dieter Baldo judges Brecht as “weaning the audience from the classical belief in fate” (Baldo 1987, 178; my translation) and Robert Vellusig equally notes “Brecht’s criticism of a semantics of fate” (Vellusig 1989, 50; my translation). The agreement is unanimous: rationalization here means the abolition of fate, gods, myth, and necessity in order to make tragedy operate according to a “principle of visibility” (Baldo 1987, 17; my translation). The only disagreement lies in judging the ultimate success or failure of Brecht’s method of adaptation.4 Viewed in this light, there is not much to the 1948 Antigone; the adaptation becomes just a minor occasion to exemplify epic strategies applied to classical theatre. Yet, such criticism fails to acknowledge that Brecht’s 1948 Antigone is far from the smooth, if lack-lustre, play it is made out to be; it overlooks another dimension of the material that remains antithetical to the process of rationalization. In the 1948 Antigone, the urgency lies not merely in making things rational but in how to represent the tension between the rational, scientific sphere and the mere force of violence that had imposed itself through the war. Brecht set out to reinvent performance aesthetics for the post-war period, and the Antigone was a crucial starting point. The breach into which Brecht’s theatre inserted itself existed between the wholeness of the past and the fragmentary experience of the ruined present. In his historical survey of post-war theatre in Berlin, Lothar Schirmer similarly talks of tracing “the cultural comeback in the ‘rubbish-heap’ near Potsdam” (Schirmer 2001, 8; my translation), for not much more than what was left of Berlin and of its theatres. When Brecht opted for theatre models, it was with the express purpose of destroying what was left of the pre-war and wartime theatrical understanding: “the effect of a production such as mine today seems to be to tear down and ruin as much of the theatre as possible” (Brecht, Arbeitsjournal 1973, 797 – my translation). Brecht aimed to employ his models as a conceptual attack to create a new foundation for the German theatrical landscape. The Antigone Model makes most directly apparent Brecht’s efforts to make sense of and integrate the incapacitating and unprecedented levels of destruction and violence of World War II into the rational and ‘scientific’ theatre that he had been propagating. Part 4 Jan Knopf summarizes the critical tenor when he states that “the intended transposition of the myth, already re-focussed by Hölderlin onto a bourgeois-republican dimension, does not sustain the turn toward the anti-fascist resistance fight” (Knopf 1980, 278; my translation).

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of this reality was the insurmountable power of what lay beyond rationality that Brecht faced and experimented with. In short, the stakes are different in this theatrical experiment: Brecht employs rationalization to examine rather than to counter the irrational. The production in Chur, but more so the project of the model book itself, provided a new approach to engage in this task. According to the OED Online, a model could be all three: (1) “a set of designs…for a projected building or other structure;” (2) “something which accurately represents something else;” or (3) “an archetypal image or pattern.” In short, the model fascinates because it unites two temporalities: it could be a copy of something-that-is or a projection of something-to-be. Future and past co-exist in the concept of the model. In other words, the past war experience remains a core experience from which to imagine the future of performance in the post-war period. Much like Galileo, the model’s emphasis on a physical score for renewing performance styles and dramaturgy made unusable by twelve years of National Socialism lies at the centre of the enterprise. Paul Rilla, one of the earliest critics to discuss the model book, calls it a “directing book like none before it” (Rilla 1955, 231), highlighting the model as an entirely new genre. With the model, Brecht insists on perpetual repetition instead of originality at the heart of his concept of performance: “Probably one must have made a copy before one can make one’s own model” (Brecht and Winds 2014, 245). By focusing on this culture of copying, Olga Taxidou links Brecht’s model to Benjamin’s conception of the reproducibility of the artwork, which is picked up in Brecht’s use of photography in the model (Taxidou 2008, 242). For in the photograph, the art of copying and the art of modelling become intrinsically related. The photo captures the dual nature of the model because it is both a trace of the existing performance and a blueprint for creating future performances. If one analyzes the structure of the model up close, it is a picture book dominated by the production photographs that Ruth Berlau took throughout the rehearsal process. On the left run, a dramaturgical commentary as well as Q&As concerned with the wider frame of the production and written as quasi Socratic dialogues between the director Brecht and an ideal audience member. On the right, we find full-page images or a combination of two images with captions, often in the shape of bridging verses (“Brückenverse”). They functioned as a bridge into the performance: the actors used these during the rehearsals to describe the

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actions of their character in order to gain the distance from their role required for the epic style of acting. The combination of these three spaces on a given model book page is of interest here: the images with the bridging verses as captions represent the performative plane, the dramaturgical comments stand for the production process, and the Q&A makes the leap into the audience perspective. The reader, therefore, may continually shift perspectives between these different aspects throughout the book. Ultimately, the white spaces in between these text blocs are as crucial as the texts and images themselves. They invite the reader to project their own kind of performance that seeks to capture all: the audience, the actors, and the theatre maker in a single stroke. Arguably, then, the model book radicalizes and extends Brecht’s theatre into the realm of performance if—somewhat oddly—by way of the book. The model turns into an ideal performance space that offers more control than the ruined remnants of post-war German (and Swiss) theatre institutions. The turn towards the page in Brecht’s model could be seen as continuing in an anti-theatrical tradition that traces back to Plato. However, if one were to flip the relationship of page and stage as W.B. Worthen does, the performance of the book offers its very own singularity: “[it] materialize[s] the work as a unique event in time and space” (Worthen 2005, 10). Brecht’s description of the model as “a mixture of the inimitable and the exemplary” (Brecht 1964, 211) underlines his desire for a tool that moves between print and performance. The eventness of model arises out of the intermedial interplay between word and image. The important function of images becomes evident most particularly in Brecht’s collaboration with Caspar Neher, the most important set designer for Brecht’s vision of theatre both before and after WWII. Neher was also named as co-director of the 1948 Antigone in Chur and influenced Brecht crucially in his choice of the Hölderlin-translation. Brecht’s comment on the rehearsal process in a footnote in the model sheds light on the complexity of the collaborating style: “We used Neher’s sketches for groups and masks, so that the model builders already worked from a template, so to speak.”(Brecht and Neher, 1949, n.p.). Again, the relationship of image and action is inverted. Neher’s images do not document the configurations in rehearsal but rather pre-empt them. The sketches themselves become dramaturgical interventions for performance, specifically for the movement of and spatial relationship between the actors. Neher blocks the theatrical performance on the page before the actors

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are even on the stage. His sketches parallel the Brecht’s bridging verses for the actors. In both cases, the idea of copying stands at the beginning of the performance process.

Dramaturgies of War in the Model Yet the expressivity and visceral brutality of Neher’s sketches also reflect the war as the core thematic of Brecht’s dramaturgy. Neher’s sketch of Teiresias and Creon, for example, channels the power relations of the play as the predatory smile of Creon is enlarged and heightened in the centre while the other figures’ faces turn into a blur as they recede into the corners of the frame. (Fig. 14.1) The monstrous face of Creon in Neher’s sketch echoes Brecht’s exploration of violence in his journals that provide an insight into the making of Antigone. Brecht returns repeatedly to the idea of an excess of violence that is neither sacred nor divine: “violence is explained by inadequacy […] Violence splits the forces instead of holding them together; basic humanity, under too much pressure, explodes, scattering everything with it into destruction” (Brecht 1996, 383). The challenge that the Antigone Model grapples with in performing on the page is how to succeed in performing this mix of excess and banality. As Curjel put it: “The optical conception of antiquity emerged; an unelegant, primitive antiquity of the cyclops […]” (Curjel 1961, 11; my translation). The horse skulls and the dark red screens underline the unfamiliarity of an environment that no longer matches up with the established conceptions of antiquity. Instead, the Churer stage with its plain materials and temporary spaces appears to be just as rapidly set up. For the audience, this unfamiliar space, or as one contemporary Swiss theatre critic called it, “a disrespectful but accomplished mash of powerful images” (S.C. 1948; my translation), destabilizes any sense of orientation. Curjel’s cruel, disfigured, man-eating cyclops resonates in Neher’s stylized sketches of the scene. Brecht explores the question of violence as one that is not based on a violent breach with the religious customs of the country or infringement against family relations but as a structural question of governance. Antigone marks less of a unique point of opposition to Creon; she is an example for how such violence exerted by the state operates: In the new version the action starts from the crucial moment where ‘only a little’ is needed for victory, and yet the most desperate force has to be

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Fig. 14.1 Caspar Neher’s sketch of the encounter between Creon and Tiresias, courtesy of Guntram Stoll, Neher-Nachlass

employed, i.e. the extravagant proves to be essential. […] The collapse thereby becomes all the more total. (Brecht 1996, 385–386)

Violence is no longer the last resort to be used by the government, but a spiralling “extravagant” and “desperate” process that has run out of control. Most significantly, these waves of violence are channelled into the figure of Creon. He represents the intertwining relationship between power, violence, and ineptitude. Neher’s drawings depict Creon in a striking transformation from a towering and expansively drawn leader figure to a monstrous grimace. Valeria Steinmann, a cast member of the Churer production, described the Creon-actor Hans Gaugler in an interview: “As Creon, he captured the madness of the mighty. The power of a lunatic. The daemonic and bizarre quality that he brought to the part was a platform for estranging the character” (Neubert-Herwig 2000, 224; my translation). In the shape of a bloody clown, Creon shouts, pounces, and simulates in front of the Elders and the audience in order to subjugate them to his will. Creon’s encounter with Tiresias equally stood out as the culmination of his ravings, as the Creon-actor

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Hans Gaugler threw himself into a manic dance around the blind seer figure whom he mockingly attacked with one of the chorus’ Bacchus masks. In the notes provided in the model, Brecht describes Creon as “drunk with triumph” (Brecht 1988, 143). Likewise, the model book included images of him dancing which show the quality of exaggeration, excessive movement, and manic frenzy that characterized Gaugler’s acting style. There is also no doubt that Gaugler’s movement choices were neither accidental nor due to a lack of technique, since Curjel provides detailed comments on the rehearsal process and directing methodology, based on “exploration and variable experimentation, that could extend to the smallest gestures—to eyes, to fingers” (Curjel 1961, 12 – my translation). The square costumes and whitened face paint with sharp shadows turn the chorus into a somewhat rigid, choreographed, and removed entity (Brecht explicitly remarks on the highly choreographed nature of movement for the chorus, see Brecht 1988, 77); in Creon’s case, however, they enhance his clownish identity, enlarging the overwhelming energy of his movements.5 The choice of the clown as an acting model comes as no surprise both in Brechtian theatre or in modern drama in general. Donald McManus identifies the combination of the clown and particularly tragedy as a frequent trope of twentieth-century drama, particularly because it allows for a combination of formal transgression and revolutionary politics in the figure of the clown, commenting on the “alternate logic” of the clown, either as “an expression of a class-conscious revolt or an extreme application of the ruling class” (McManus 2003, 16– 17). To sum it up: in their experimentation on the appropriate gestus for Creon, Brecht and Gaugler were looking for the gestus of violence itself. Brecht’s physical work for Creon strikes an entirely different note from that of the remaining cast: he could almost be in a different play, working from a different acting repertoire. Creon’s clown does not illuminate the surrounding social fabric but instead overlays and obscures the environment with further and further levels of spectacular theatricality. This quest for a representation of violence in the figure of Creon that Brecht is engaged in with the 1948 Antigone was also a core thematic of

5 For an extensive discussion of the reception of the Antigonemodell 1948 at the time, see Wüthrich, Werner. 2015. Die ‘Antigone’ des Bertolt Brecht. Eine experimentelle Theaterarbeit, Chur 1948. Zürich: Chronos Verlag.

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another contemporaneous project: in the images of violence that constitute the War Primer, the combination of text and images focus on staging violence as a self-perpetuating cycle of irrationality.

The War Primer as an Archive of the Gestus of War With the Antigonemodell 1948 Brecht created an experimental new genre of performance book that captures a new performance style and dramaturgy while tackling the fundamental challenge of how to adequately represent the experience of war. Brecht’s concern with this experience of war is also reflected in a collection of newspaper articles of the time. The War Primer is another kind of picture book that offers important insights into Brecht’s dramaturgy of images (Fig. 14.2). It was co-published with Ruth Berlau in 1955 after extended controversy with the GDR authorities regarding the allegedly pacifist message of the book. The War Primer consists of a series of eighty-five newspaper photograph clippings from WWII but new captions in the form of quatrains that Brecht added as a framing device. Taken together, the War Primer and the Antigone Model offer a strikingly similar engagement with the question of violence and war because of the shared technique of collage and the prominent status that a dramaturgy of images plays here. Brecht’s epigrams are urgent interventions into his own historical moment rather than re-evaluations of the past. Again, violence and madness go hand in hand here. The War Primer reiterates Brecht’s evaluation of the irrationality of violence that Antigone brings to the fore. Brecht gathers intensely choreographed images that resonate in their depiction of loss and destruction across the entire spectrum of the War Primer. One such example is Image No. 67, originally entitled “The End…,”. It depicts a young German corporal who has gone mad and is left behind on a deserted battlefield, surrounded only by corpses. Underneath the image, it reads: “I’m left to sit here holding my poor head: / Now the Misleader’s fleeing from his troubles. /The cock that chokes on all the corn he’s fed: /They’ll go up in bubbles” (Brecht 1998, 67). The epigram is shrewd because it emulates the soldier’s madness in structure and imagery by weakening the causal link between the individual lines of the epigram. It is hard to tell what the final “they’ll go up in bubbles” refers to: the corn, the troubles, the soldier himself, or Hitler, “the Misleader.” Rather than following a narrative arc or proverbial wisdom,

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Fig. 14.2 Title page of the first edition of Brecht’s Kriegsfibel (War Primer) from 1955

the epigraph piles up ruined phrases of potent imagery—the reader grasp assembly of images while any causal frame is lost. In other words, the poem itself is as mad as its apparent speaker. Madness marks the incommensurability of war’s destruction, which pervades all the collages in the War Primer. This limit of the rational, this excess of violence, exists in Brecht’s collage technique that allows the reader to insert themselves between text and image. In their simplicity, the epigrams raise questions about the immensity of their task to explain death and destruction. Throughout, the people in these images—whether civilians or soldiers, whether Germans or Allies—are depicted as victims of a fundamental delusion about their action. They become exchangeable, so that the notion of victor and vanquished retains no meaning. In turn, the corporal on the battlefield marks the recognition of such madness. The War Primer is a condemnation of the spiralling excess of violence that is war, and yet, it operates much like the epigram to Image 67. The result is clear, but the

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mechanism and logic that engenders the collective horror remain hidden behind the event itself. It is precisely this experience of irrationality as existential that dominates the War Primer. It is in this sense that the War Primer also connects very practically to Brecht’s theatrical work. The images of the War Primer become another extension of Brecht’s modelling aesthetic for theatre, only this time, the images are drawn from history itself. Another War Primer image exemplifies this most eloquently: it is of a wailing mother with her dead child after an air raid on Saigon. Werner Hecht identifies this image as the model for Helene Weigel’s famous “silent scream” in the 1949 Mother Courage (Hecht 2012). Weigel’s open mouth picks up on this photographic tableau and thus is yet another copy upon which the dramaturgical gestures in the model books are based. The newspaper scraps and cut outs that Brecht collected are both: a resource for political analysis and a theatrical storage house of gestures. The War Primer’s collage performs its own struggle between text and image but more importantly, it offers an image-infused dramaturgy that Brecht used as yet another model for performance. Notably, Grischa Meyer has stressed how Brecht’s work process on the War Primer was part of a substitution for his theatrical work while in exile. One could even say that he moved performance on the page and was concerned with a multi-media approach to create and document his theatre work. Meyer also traces Brecht’s turn towards images to earlier parts in his career, specifically the period after the Threepenny Opera production: The continuation of his work on the Lehrstücke, on Measures Taken and Fatzer brought him to a point where the operative and practical work in the theatre, in radio, and in film became more important than the “literary” production of plays to be sold to the big theatres. Throughout, Brecht, the writer, was surrounded by “image producers” […]. (Meyer 2005, 76; my translation)

The “image producers,” among which Neher and Ruth Berlau as much as the news photography count, developed Brecht’s sense for the dramaturgical capacity of images to embody the political and societal breakdown around him and to become active tools on his stage. It is worthwhile thinking about Brecht’s own method of theatre making as one in which his work as playwright, as theatre maker, and as thinker is fractured and breached time and again by the war, as he had to find new

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spaces and frameworks within which to make theatre during his years of exile. The Antigone Model and the War Primer are records of these shifts in dramaturgy. They conceptually and literally propose a new form of dramaturgy that oscillates between and experiments with the relationship of stage and page.

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