Acknowledgements

My thanks go to the Royal Society of Edinburgh for awarding me three research grants under their bilateral agreements scheme for research in Prague (in cooperation with the Czech Academy of Sciences), in Łódź (in co-operation with the Polish Academy of Sciences) and in Ljubljana (in co-operation with the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences). The Herder Institute for Research into East and Central European History in Marburg awarded me a research fellowship in 2014, for which I am enormously grateful. I am also indebted to Harvard University for awarding me the John M. Ward Fellowship in Dance and Music for the Theatre, which allowed me to research and write at Harvard’s Houghton Library throughout June 2016.

I would like to thank staff at various archives and collections across Europe, and in particular Espen Anderson at the National Archives of Norway in Oslo, Claire-Marie Grosclaude in Lille, Vlasta Měšťánková and Pavel Baudisch in Prague, Igor Zemljič and Mojca Šorn in Ljubljana, Ina Alber in Marburg, and Monique Duhaime and Dale Stinchcomb at the Houghton and Widener libraries at Harvard.

Thanks go to my students as well as my friends and colleagues in theatre studies at the University of Glasgow, namely Michael Bachmann, Cara Berger, Minty Donald, Graham Eatough, Stephen Greer, Dee Heddon, Carl Lavery, Simon Murray, Vicky Price and Tony Sweeten, as well as former colleagues Katie Gough and Adrienne Scullion. Michael Bachmann and Carl Lavery provided succinct feedback on earlier drafts of this book. I thank the university’s College of Arts and School for Culture and Creative Arts for generously awarding me two semesters of research leave, and Dimitris Eleftheriotis in particular. I would also like to thank Debbie Lewer, Elwira Grossman, Alan Jones and Barbara Kaulbach (all in Glasgow); Peter Brod, Michael Wögerbauer, Jitka Ludova and Lenka Jungmannová (Prague); Małgorzata Leyko and Karolina Prykowska-Michalak (Łódź); Matjaz Birk and Sandra Jenko (Ljubljana); Moritz Bünemann and Benedikt Stuchtey (Marburg); Evelyn Anuss (Berlin); Veronika Zangl (Amsterdam); Tracy Davis (Chicago); Peter W. Marx (Cologne); Jeffrey Richards (Lancaster); Kate Newey (Exeter); John London and Philippe Sands QC (London); Thomas Höpel (Leipzig); Volker Mohn (Düsseldorf); Paul S. Ulrich and Alexander Weigel (Berlin); Rebecca Rovit (Lawrence/Kansas); Gerwin Strobl (Cardiff); Thomas Kässens (Schwerte); Christoph H. Müller (Kiel); Wolfram van Well (Krefeld); and Karin und Otto Bünemann (Dortmund) for suggestions, feedback and comments. I am grateful to Małgorzata Leyko, Monika Wąsik and Horst Fassel for allowing me to use previously unpublished material for this study. And, last but not least, I am indebted to Ben Piggott at Routledge, who commissioned this study – I thank him and the publisher for their trust in me.

I thank my parents, Gerlinde and Carl-Joachim Heinrich, for their unwavering interest in all my research endeavours, and my family – my wife, Anne, and our daughters, Lili, Nellie and Thea – for their understanding, interest and love. I dedicate this book to my sister Caroline, the Walter Benjamin expert who knows his Über den Begriff der Geschichte better than anyone and who nudged me towards using this text more. At every stage of this project she was keenly interested in my research, made a number of crucial suggestions and asked the right questions.

Chapter 1

Introduction

In 1943, four years into the Second World War, eminent theatre scholar and devout National Socialist Heinz Kindermann outlined the role German theatre was supposed to play during the conflict:

At all those places where German culture now gains a foothold or where the old German cultural soil is newly farmed, it is not only German factories and schools, which are being built, but also German theatres. German actors, directors and set designers travel to The Hague, to Cracow and into the Ukraine; they go from Oslo to Athens. Everywhere German theatre represents German culture, German manners and German language to the outposts of German labour and military force, but it also speaks to Germany’s friends from other nations.¹

On the one hand, this reading of theatre’s cultural importance and transformative powers corresponded to a particular Central European appreciation of the performing arts. On the other, Kindermann went far beyond this reading and attributed additional qualities to the theatre as advancing Germany’s war effort, even increasing and solidifying Germany’s hold on Europe. The spread of German language theatre across Europe was seen as crucial for the regime to establish a foothold in these areas and make them susceptible to and appreciative of German domination. The Nazis expected that their substantial and continuous investment would be valued as a serious commitment to the newly acquired territories and their inhabitants and would be read as both a sign of confidence and a signal of permanence.² This reading of theatre’s role in wartime corresponded to a new understanding of war itself which went far beyond that of previous military conflicts.³ This war was not solely about specific geographical gains or economic goals; the Nazi “war of ideologies” was a fundamental struggle about Lebensraum (living space), about vast new territories for a superior and growing “Germanic master race”, about securing new areas of German settlement in “the East”, about a whole continent turning into “a mere object of German desires”.⁴ According to this rhetoric the “people without space”, to use a phrase Hans Grimm had popularized in his best-selling novel in 1926, justly embarked on a ruthless and lasting reshaping of Europe.⁵ The cultural campaign the Nazis conducted at the same time was part of this total war of annihilation and Germanification.

The Nazi interest in theatre may not be surprising. Theatre played an eminently important role for the Nazis, and after their 1933 take-over of power in Germany they were keen to be seen as supporting an established institution at the heart of the culturally minded German middle classes. Millions of people went to the theatre every year; successful visitors’ organisations distributed reduced price theatre tickets among hundreds of thousands of members, often reaching audiences not necessarily close to middle class leisure pursuits; and the prospect of new völkisch playwriting exerting an influence was certainly appealing to the Nazis, too.⁶ The 1930s were boom years for German theatres. Regular subsidies rose to unprecedented heights, new performance venues opened, and new jobs were created. In addition to the regular subsidies being paid out by city councils as well as regional and national bodies, Hitler throughout the 1930s personally funded specific theatre productions, projects or building programmes out of his own “special fund” – as did Goebbels. For example, Fürth received RM 30,000, Bayreuth RM 50,000 and the opera house in Berlin Charlottenburg RM 50,000. Dessau got RM 200,000 towards the building of a new theatre in 1938, Kehl RM 120,000 for the same purpose in 1937 and Salzburg RM 350,000 towards the refurbishment of its festival theatre in 1939. Munich received the Führer’s special attention, with the state opera being paid RM 300,000 over three consecutive years (1937–9) towards the set and costume designs of Wagner opera productions.⁷ Hans Daiber has claimed that “never before, and never after […,] did Germany have a government which was so supportive of theatrical matters as during the Third Reich”.⁸ The figures seem to bear this claim out. In 1933 there were 147 publicly funded theatres with 22,000 employees in Germany; in 1940 these figures had risen to 248 theatres employing some 44,000 staff.⁹ Meanwhile, working conditions had improved, too. After a period of serious unemployment among actors in the early 1930s when seasons (and thus contracts, too) had been reduced to 6 or 7 months, most theatres now introduced 12 month contracts. Already in 1934/5 theatres generally employed significantly more staff and played longer seasons than two years previously.¹⁰ In 1938 Goebbels proudly announced that pensions for theatre practitioners had now been introduced across Germany.¹¹ This was no small feat, and was recognised as an enlightened move outside Germany, too. In the British journal Theatre World Eric Johns praised the working conditions at German theatres and claimed that “the English actor would be only too pleased to change places with his German fellow-artist, who has a much easier and happier existence”.¹² Many theatres reduced ticket prices and introduced attractive season tickets. Audience figures rose exponentially and increased by a third within only two years at the end of the 1930s alone – from 30 million tickets sold in 1938 to 40 million in 1940.¹³ During the war – and in contrast to other countries such as Britain, where theatres were shut immediately after the outbreak of war (albeit only for a relatively short time) – the Nazi regime was at pains not to let the war affect the home front and in particular Germany’s cultural life.¹⁴ The main reason for this was the belief that morale could be sustained only if life continued as normal.¹⁵ Theatre performances had to continue at all costs, and when Hamburg’s Gauleiter enquired on 1 September 1939 (the day German troops entered Poland) how he should communicate to the public “the probable closure [of all theatres] for the duration”, he received a furious reply within 20 minutes. Rainer Schlösser, a leading official and Germany’s national dramaturge (Reichsdramaturg), made it clear that “the closure of thea-tres was completely out of the question”.¹⁶ Goebbels reacted angrily to suggestions at the end of 1942 that small theatres should be closed in view of the increasingly demanding war effort.¹⁷ Until the end of the war “Hitler was anxious for Germany to retain its character as the leading cultural nation”, and this included the theatre more than anything else.¹⁸

The amount of funding made available in the form of subsidies and capital expenditures, the speed at which theatres were renovated and opened across Europe, the way in which the infrastructure of performance was improved (with added performance spaces, workshops, costumes and properties) and the general effort to transport whole ensembles across the continent to perform in the far West in Lisbon the far East in Kiev, the far North in Narvik or the far South in Athens are simply staggering. There had been attempts to incorporate the theatre into the war effort during the First World War, and the patronising tone around the “cultivating” purpose of performances in the Ober-Ost (the occupied areas in Lithuania, Eastern Poland and Kurland) in particular anticipated the discourse of the late 1930s and early 1940s, but in terms of sheer scale alone the German Theaterpolitik of the Second World War is unprecedented.¹⁹ However, for Nazi commentators this was not only a question of scale but also, crucially, a question of quality. They were keen to refer to the German theatrical efforts during the Great War to point out the mistakes they claimed had been made at the time. Carl Niessen, for example, criticised the low artistic quality of the variety ensembles operating behind the front lines between 1914 and 1918.²⁰ These “mistakes” were not to be made again, and “quality” became one of the keywords for Germany’s theatrical campaign during the war, both from a craft and an aesthetic perspective. Posen’s mayor Gerhard Scheffler in a typical statement summed up the task of the local theatre as “a space for the fostering of the most noble German art, an agent for Germany’s cultural intentions and for the National Socialist ideology in the German East”.²¹ The demands about repertoires expressed in statements such as these left theatre makers in no doubt as to what they ought to produce: the classics of the German repertoire (Goethe, Lessing, Schiller, Kleist and Shakespeare), grand opera and nationalistic and völkisch plays by politically reliable playwrights.

Figure 1.1 Map of occupied Europe, 1941, showing cities The Hague, Lille, Strasbourg, Prague, Posen, Danzig, Łódź, Cracow, Lviv, Maribor, Kiev, Minsk and Riga. This map represents the political borders and not all the areas occupied by German forces.

Scope

This study is concerned with officially supported (i.e. subsidised) German language theatres across Nazi occupied Europe between 1938 and 1945. If there were several playhouses in any one locality, the focus will be on the main representative theatre, and others (whether those for particular constituencies such as the police, those for particular genres like puppet theatres or cabaret or commercial companies) will be discussed only in passing.²² Geographically and politically, this includes theatres outside of Germany’s borders as of 29 September 1938, the date of the Munich Agreement. This date is important, as following the treaty Germany for the first time annexed territories which were not exclusively populated by ethnic Germans.²³ Although the occupation of the Sudetenland was largely peaceful, one third of the region’s population was Czech. Also, after the treaty was signed the German government secured an even larger territory in direct “talks” with the Czech government. The annexation of the Sudetenland therefore signifies the beginning of a new phase of aggressive expansionism and marks the starting point of my investigation.²⁴ The study will, in passing, refer to theatrical activity in countries which were military allies of Germany (some of them for a limited time only), such as Italy, Spain, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Croatia.²⁵ So-called cultural treaties (Kulturabkommen) provided the frameworks for tours to Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary by some of the leading German ensembles, conductors and soloists.²⁶ This book will also refer to tours and performances, for example to Norway and Serbia, which preceded military action and established a seemingly inseparable link between the arts and war (in this way aptly illustrating what Peter Reichel has described as the “fascination and violence” of National Socialism).²⁷ In 1939 and 1940, for example, the regime developed significant activities to establish a theatrical exchange with Scandinavia. High profile performances by the Vienna boy’s choir (Wiener Sängerknaben), Wilhelm Furtwängler (conducting the Oslo Philharmonic) and Heinrich George took place in Oslo ahead of the German occupation and illustrated the particular interest of the Nazi regime in this region. The Balkans received a similar treatment ahead of the German invasion. The Frankfurt opera came to perform in Belgrade in March 1940, and one year later Karl Böhm conducted the Dresden state opera with an ensemble of over 200 people on a tour to Zagreb and Belgrade.²⁸

The main focus, however, will be on a number of high profile German language theatres in Poland (Lodz/Litzmannstadt, Poznan/Posen, Cracow/Krakau), the Czech Republic (Prague/Prag), France (Lille), the Netherlands (The Hague/Den Haag), Norway (Oslo), Latvia (Riga) and Ukraine (Kiev/Kiew). Apart from these metropolitan theatres this study will also discuss activity at regional playhouses. In the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, for example, there were funded German theatres in Iglau, Brünn, Mährisch-Ostrau, Olmütz, Budweis and Pilsen, and the Sudetenland featured playhouses in Reichenberg, Troppau, Aussig, Karlsbad and Eger, in addition to four summer theatres. In the formerly Polish territories (now divided up into the Gaue Danzig-Westpreußen [West Prussia] and Wartheland, and the General Government [Generalgouvernement], plus territorial additions to the already existing Gaue East Prussia [Ostpreußen, the administrative district of Zichenau] and Silesia [Schlesien, the administrative district of Kattowitz]) there were smaller theatres in Thorn, Bromberg, Bielitz, Teschen, Kattowitz and Königshütte (a joint theatre operation), Zoppot (both open-air and municipal theatre) and Lublin, as well as a number of touring theatres, such as the one in Graudenz (which moved to Marienburg in 1943). Although the Germans opened a theatre in Warsaw, too, this was less prestigious than the one in Krakau, the capital of the Generalgouvernement.²⁹ Similarly, in France the most important German stage was not in Paris but in Lille, although there were two soldiers’ theatres in the French capital, as well as significant touring activity elsewhere.³⁰ In the Netherlands the German theatre in The Hague was the main venue, but from 1943 the touring theatre Rheinisches Landestheater operated from its new base at Arnhem. In Slovenia a German theatre opened in Marburg (Maribor), and the playhouse in Cilli (Celje) was refurbished at great cost (without these works being finished in time), but plans to turn the amateur German stage in the Croatian capital, Zagreb, into a professional company failed. Similarly, in Serbia an official German language theatre never opened. The Serbian theatre life, however, was under the strict control of the German occupiers, and the Serbian thea-tre in Belgrade was urged to put on German plays.³¹ There were two receiving theatres in Athens, which catered for the armed forces, the Kentrikon and the summer theatre Rialto. Plans to open an official German language theatre were well advanced in 1944 but ultimately did not come to fruition.³² After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, theatres in Lemberg and Czernowitz were taken over, although the main theatre of the region, in Lemberg, only opened in summer 1943, and in Ukraine smaller ensembles existed in Charkov, Poltawa and Stalino.³³ In Minsk, the capital of Belarus (Weißruthenien), the occupiers opened a German theatre with a standing company in 1943.³⁴ The theatre in Memel (formerly Lithuanian) was taken over when the so-called Memelland was declared German in March 1939 following an ultimatum by the Nazi regime. Alsace and Lorraine (Elsaß-Lothringen) were annexed, too, in June 1940, and the theatres in the region, including three in Straßburg and one in Metz, became German again (the region had been part of the German Reich between 1871 and 1918).³⁵ In the Baltic states, apart from Riga, there were a number of regional theatres in Wilna, Kaunas, Mitau, Libau, Dorpat and Tallinn, most of which featured local ensembles, with the occasional German guest productions by army entertainment units (Kraft durch Freude [KdF; Strength through Joy]) or by travelling companies.³⁶ Not owning a theatre, therefore, was no reason for these communities to be deprived of regular theatrical entertainment, either provided by touring companies travelling from Germany or, more commonly, by travelling local or regional ensembles. The so-called Landesbühnen sprang up in a number of areas in occupied Europe, and their role was to provide performances for places without a standing theatre (theaterlos is a fixed term in the German language to describe these localities). In occupied Poland, for example, there were established stages in Kalisch and Hohensalza which did not have their own companies but were receiving theatres for professional touring companies.³⁷ The above-mentioned theatre in Graudenz toured the entire region under the name Landesbühne Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreußen.³⁸ These companies often performed in primitive conditions in community halls, schools and inns, but they still fulfilled an important cultural mission according to the German occupiers.

By definition, this study will not be concerned with theatres which did not perform in German. In Paris, for example, by the end of 1940, 34 French theatres, 14 variétés and 6 cabaret clubs were up and running again – under close German control.³⁹ Equally excluded are performances by ensembles primarily aimed at entertaining the armed forces as so-called army theatres (Wehrmachttheater, which performed in the occupied territories) or front theatres (Fronttheater, which operated just behind the front line), which were mostly organised by the armed forces in conjunction with KdF.⁴⁰ The study of performances in concentration camps is an established field by now, and it is hoped that my research into the theatre of the perpetrators will help to complement this.⁴¹ With its focus on theatres which were designed as permanent features, visits from companies based in the Altreich will be noted but not discussed in greater detail. These activities were significant across Europe and will complement the overall picture. In Paris, for example, in the absence of a permanent German language theatre, visits by companies from elsewhere became an important feature, and some of the leading ensembles and practitioners came to the French capital.⁴² Most of the theatres under investigation here opened immediately after German forces had moved on and civil administrations had been set up. If amateur German theatre had existed before, this process could go relatively quickly. All theatres closed on 31 August 1944 – if indeed the areas were still under German command (the last theatre employee left Lille on 1 September 1944, just before Allied forces liberated the city) – following Goebbels’ declaration of total war and the closure of all playhouses.

Overall, this study will pay particular attention to subsidies and institutional structures, theatre repertoires and the theatres’ representative function. It will trace the various levels of attempted control and influence: the Propaganda Ministry, the national dramaturge (Reichsdramaturg), military authorities, city councils and local KdF branches who offered season tickets to their members and often had a significant influence on theatre programming. And it will discuss the overall function of a massive cultural offensive the likes of which the continent has not seen before or after.

Methodology

The study is based on substantial research in different European archives but chiefly in the German Federal Archives in Berlin.⁴³ It is worth noting, also for future research on the topic, that the holdings in some archives are better than others. The impact of the Second World War played an important part, of course, with some archives suffering from hits during air raids (e.g. many of the files of the Reich Theatre Chamber were lost when their offices were bombed in the autumn of 1943),⁴⁴ and others lost material in transit or due to deliberate destruction. The archival collections in Łódź and Prague are extensive, for example, but archives in Oslo, Lille and The Hague hold relatively little relevant information. Neither the Slovenian national archives nor Ljubljana’s municipal archives hold any files relating to the performing arts under German occupation, but in the cellar of Ljubljana’s Institute of Contemporary History is a vast uncatalogued library of German books dating from the late 1930s and early 1940s which the German occupiers left behind when they were forced to leave the city in a rush in May 1945. In linking this archival research with the existing literature I am able to discuss the theatres’ histories, the context of their operation, wider political and cultural implications in view of their function in wartime and their legacies. A particular focus throughout will be on theatre repertoires and issues of funding and control. Apart from the published research literature there are a number of micro-historical studies to be found among unpublished master’s and PhD theses. Insights can also be gained from contemporary newspapers, journals, pamphlets and unpublished speeches, memoirs and private correspondence, museum catalogues, legal papers, parliamentary debates and photographs. Particularly important for the present research have been programme and repertoire notes, season reviews and minutes of municipal theatre council meetings, as well as season and performance previews and reviews.

The particular (and novel) methodological approach used here combines research into institutional structures, cultural policy and theoretical debates with theatre repertoires. In other words, this study is not limited to discussing the frameworks of theatrical production but discusses these in relation to the actual performance output. This focus on repertoires assumes that their outlook and composition mattered, and that they played an important role within a wider framework of cultural history. Like anthologies of poetry or art galleries, thea-tre repertoires, particularly in towns and smaller cities, claim to present a comprehensive, relevant and up-to-date overview of the essential dramatic works of the time to their audience – from ancient Greek drama to the latest plays. Their repertoire can, therefore, be seen as a closed entity, a cosmos of what seemed important to show in the world of theatre.⁴⁵ Interestingly, contemporary commentators were well aware of this role and organised their programmes accordingly. In 1929 the manager of the Westphalian theatre of Dortmund, Richard Gsell, for example, distinguished between Berlin theatres, with their particular agendas and audiences, and municipal playhouses like his own, which, as the sole provider of music and drama, had “to meet the expectations of all potential visitors”.⁴⁶ The importance of this exclusiveness, however, lies in the fact that it was based on deliberate decisions not only with regard to which works made it into the repertoire and formed a particular canon but also with regard to those which did not.⁴⁷ The arrangement of these repertoires, therefore, creates a certain meaning; they become “configured corpora”. They stabilise, at least for a while, the sense among their respective audiences of what constitutes the relevant drama of the world.⁴⁸

This in turn opens up the question of the purpose of a particular selection, and this book will seek to establish the nature of this purpose, why a particular repertoire was chosen and how changes can be accounted for. Relating to its cultural mission, theatre in Germany was charged to present what was commonly accepted as the established dramatic canon. This canon, although subject to change, aimed to preserve a certain cultural heritage, a fact which, especially during times of war, became a focal point for those in power who wished to influence the theatre and a particular reading of the world. The concentration on programmes as one of the main sources for this study can, therefore, not only offer interesting insights into the tastes of audiences and managers but also reflect the manner in which repertoires mirrored wider social, cultural and political developments.

Literature

Research into a number of aspects of German history during the first half of the twentieth century is now vast, and new studies are appearing all the time.⁴⁹ The research for this study has benefitted from a masterful new multi-volume history of Germany during the Second World War (Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg), as well as the impressive ten volume Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas (German History in Eastern Europe).⁵⁰ A number of publications in English on theatre in Nazi Germany have markedly improved the research situation, primarily John London’s collection of essays (2000) and Gerwin Strobl’s monograph (2009). Since the mid-1970s there has been a series of German language publications on theatre under the Nazis, with book length studies by Fischli (1976), Drewniak (1983), Wardetzky (1983), Dussel (1988), Ketelsen (1970, 1994), Daiber (1995), Rischbieter (2000) and Sarkowicz (2004). There is also an increasing number of studies of regional theatres. Relating to the topic of this book, these include Wolting on Danzig (Gdansk),⁵¹ Wessely on Brünn (Brno), in John London’s collection of essays (see above), Podlasiak on Thorn (Torún),⁵² Leyko on Łódź,⁵³ Abbey and Havekamp on Lille, and Alena Jakubcova’s collection of essays on German language theatre in Prague, among others.⁵⁴ Over the last 20 years historiographic interest in regional issues has grown in general, with research by Horst Möller, Andreas Wirsching and Walter Ziegler (Nationalsozialismus in der Region, 1996) and Sabine Mecking and Andreas Wirsching (Stadtverwaltung im Nationalsozialismus, 2005). The present study has also benefitted from more focussed research on specific aspects of wartime performance, such as puppet theatre (FrontPuppenTheater, 1998) or entertainment provided for the armed forces (Frank Vossler [2005], Alexander Hirt [2006]). Theatre during the First World War has recently attracted rising attention, and a number of book-length studies have proved helpful, including Baumeister (2005), Krivanec (2012) and Maunder (2016).

Apart from the established research literature, a number of popular studies glorifying German history in Eastern Europe and lamenting the loss of territories there have provided interesting insights into post-war discourses. Most of these books were aimed at a mass market, often reaching multiple editions. The revisionist literature of this kind is still significant and is still being read. Academic publications, too, have for a long time been tainted by happily fitting into a revisionist discourse.⁵⁵ In a special issue of the journal Nordost-Archiv from 2001, which featured a number of articles detailing research desiderata and current work being undertaken on Eastern European history, Wolfgang Kessler presented a useful summary of German Ostforschung. He showed that this term had been tainted from the beginning (i.e. the early 1920s) and denoted research which had never been neutral and instead was biased towards a scholarly justification of revisionist policies concerning the “German” East.⁵⁶ Ultimately, the goal of most of these historians and commentators, along with the powerful Vertriebenenverbände (federations run for and by Germans expelled after the war) in West Germany, was to regain the formerly German territories in Europe and re-establish Germany in its pre-war borders.

Despite this wealth of publications, the existing literature on official German language theatre during the Second World War is scarce. For example, neither of the two multi-volume standard reference works mentioned above (Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas and Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg) provides any detailed discussion of officially sanctioned theatre in the occupied territories, and almost all of the histories of theatre during the Third Reich are concerned with theatrical activity in the Altreich alone (i.e. Germany in its pre-war borders). The only exceptions are Bogusław Drewniak and Hans Daiber although neither deals with the topic in any great detail,⁵⁷ and both studies are only available in German.⁵⁸ Henning Rischbieter’s magisterial Theater im Dritten Reich (published in 2000 and written almost as the last word on the subject) acknowledges the importance of the topic but dedicates only eight pages to the theatre in the annexed territories, and these are largely lifted from Drewniak, to whom he refers his readers instead.⁵⁹ Gerwin Strobl provides an all too brief overview of the topic in a recently published edited collection, and in this he concentrates on propaganda aspects.⁶⁰ A recently published detailed study on Paris during the Second World War does not refer to theatrical endeavours at all.⁶¹ Although the increasing number of essays on individual theatres during the war alluded to above is useful, a contextualisation of findings is long overdue. On a macro level Nadine Holdsworth’s Theatre and Nation and Benjamin Poore’s Theatre and Empire, both published in the “Theatre and …” series by Palgrave, provide an overview but no in-depth analysis, and, rather frustratingly, Poore only refers to theatre in the UK.⁶² An additional problem with some of these studies are frequent inaccuracies. For example, Pavel Eckstein argues that the former New German Theatre in Prague was used “only occasionally by the wartime occupation authorities”, which seems to be a general reading in the literature.⁶³ The available archival material shows, however, that the Nazis did make use of the space and in full knowledge of its propagandistic value. In light of the small number of studies in the field it is not surprising that Albert Kotokowski stated in 2001 that research into the arts of the German speaking minority in Poland between 1919 and 1945, for example, was still a significant research desideratum.⁶⁴

This study, however, not only synthesizes the findings of existing micro-histories and fills in the gaps, but will also for the first time discuss the Nazi attempts to establish a European theatre under German leadership as a whole. What has also been missing in the literature so far is a critical evaluation of the attempts to theorise the aggressive expansion of the German theatre during the war and provide it with a scholarly justification. Heinz Kindermann’s crucial role in these discourses will be introduced to an English speaking readership for the first time. Kindermann, the leading German language theatre scholar for much of the twentieth century, whose influential studies form an integral part of performance studies libraries the world over, will be introduced here as a key reference point for Nazi claims of German leadership in the arts across Europe.

Debates in the literature

The authors of what little there is on the subject (mostly shorter articles on individual theatres) largely make three assumptions:

1. that there was a fundamental split between Nazi theatres and Nazi theatre policy in occupied Western and Eastern Europe

2. that these theatres were a “unique failure” and left no trace, “no legacy of any sort”⁶⁵

3. that Nazi cultural policy in general failed because theatres largely refrained from producing the officially supported overtly political repertoire.

The first assumption originates in wider historical research on the Second World War. For example, renowned historian Rolf-Dieter Müller, in one of the standard reference works on Germany history (“the Gebhardt”), establishes a clear distinction between the German occupation in Western Europe and the one in the East. He asserts that the realities of Nazi occupation – at least for the first four years of the war – varied “between considerate action enlisting support in Northern and Western Europe and reckless, colonial methods in the future ‘living space’ on Polish and Soviet territory”.⁶⁶ Abbey/Havekamp apply this claim to the thea-tre and posit that “winning over local (Germanic) populations” mattered in the West and at the theatres in The Hague, Oslo and Lille, but that in Poland and the Soviet Union “there was no such secondary motive: German theatres were there for the Germans”.⁶⁷ In a similar vein Drewniak claims that the German “cultural offensive” in the West was different to that in the East. Whereas in the West the occupiers were interested to further Germany’s role as the leading cultural power, in the East they were only interested in territorial gains and the destruction of national cultures, like in Poland.⁶⁸ Instead of accepting this rather orthodox view, this study will investigate whether there were overarching themes concerning theatres across occupied Europe, including an underlying agenda of showcasing and advancing Germany’s alleged cultural supremacy. In questioning the established West-East divide in Nazi occupation policy the present study also refers to more recent research by military historians. Hans Umbreit, for example, questions the usefulness of a distinction between East and West and argues, with a view to the situation in the Netherlands towards the end of the war, that this no longer had anything to do with a regular war and instead displayed characteristics previously associated with the German war in the East.⁶⁹ Umbreit also usefully concludes that one of the issues which characterised the German occupation policies everywhere was a failure to engage with people in the occupied territories; manifold possibilities for using their initial good will were discarded and disappointed by a heavy handed approach.⁷⁰

The second claim not only refers to the relatively short time these theatres existed, and the fact that they and their companies were often parachuted into places where German theatres had not previously existed, but also relates to the fact that due to the short time span of their operation these theatres could not take root in a particular locale and, for example, develop an ensemble or a repertoire. This would have taken more than a few years, and it would have resulted in an established and familiar ensemble, a full range of productions (new and old) and a loyal audience. This living performance archive, a body of work the theatre could return to and be identified with, was missing at almost all of these theatres, and in retrospect it made them appear empty, artificial and even superfluous. At the same time, the above claim will need to be put into context – from both a diachronic and a synchronic perspective. It will need to be related to the substantial efforts made by the Nazi regime to establish German language theatres across Europe and the importance attached to such an undertaking by contemporary commentators from different fields including, crucially, theatre studies. Kindermann, for example, in a number of key studies published over several years (1938, 1939, 1941, 1943, 1944) stressed the importance of theatre for Germany’s war effort (see quote at the beginning). The narrative of failure will also need to be analysed from a diachronic perspective as other aspects apart from the built heritage will need to be taken into account. The establishment of a particular memory, for example one of oppression or disfranchisement for a Polish community, say in Bromberg (Bydgoszcz), or one of happy memories and fulfilment for a troupe of German actors in Prague, may not be inextricably linked to a surviving building but could possibly be associated with more ephemeral experiences – conversations, applause, indiscriminate physical brutality.⁷¹ In what ways did the substantial efforts to establish a network of official German language theatres all over Europe leave a lasting mark on contemporary audiences and practitioners despite the fact that they operated only briefly? Also, after the war, how were the theatrical endeavours of the early 1940s assessed? What happened to the powerful discourse of the “German East” as advanced by the German theatre? And how did the significant efforts at establishing German language theatres during the war affect post-war attitudes towards German theatre in the formerly occupied territories?

The third assumption relates to a discourse which claims that the focus on a primarily entertaining theatre programme during the Third Reich showed that (a) the Nazis failed in their endeavour to establish a politicised theatre supporting their cause, and (b) such a shallow repertoire does not merit in-depth analysis. Konrad Dussel concluded that the Nazis never succeeded in permanently establishing “heroic” theatre programmes, Richard Evans added that “public demand for comedies and light entertainment […] depressed the standard of what the German stage offered”, and Hans Daiber posited that “nothing remained of the Nazi drama. Much ado about nothing [viel Aufwand, wenig Effekt]”.⁷² Bettina Schültke admitted that she only reluctantly discussed the “mediocre plays of the Nazi dramatists” in her book on the history of the Frankfurt theatre during the Third Reich.⁷³ The immensely popular programme of largely entertaining plays only served to illustrate the failure of Nazi cultural politics. In one of the most recent studies on theatre during the Third Reich (published in the highly respected series Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg – see above), Birthe Kundrus referred to the “intellectually impoverished repertoires” on Nazi stages. Interestingly, for Kundrus this also meant that there was no need to discuss their popular success. Instead, she turned her attention almost exclusively to the canonical repertoire, clearly buying into an understanding which regards elite art as the sole legitimate expression of culture.⁷⁴ Record theatre attendances during the war are explained only negatively by stating that audiences had no alternatives.⁷⁵ Questions as to why these genres were so successful and what role they played for the regime, even if they failed to relate to the demands for a heroic theatre, are not being evaluated by Kundrus or others.

In their attempts to analyse the character of the Nazi regime a debate among historians has established the terms “intentionalist” and “functionalist” as useful points of reference. Commentators subscribing to an intentionalist reading claim that the development of the Nazi regime after 1933 largely followed a plan already established in the 1920s and with Hitler as the central figure who was involved in all major decisions, whereas historians favouring a functionalist (or structuralist) interpretation point towards ad hoc and pragmatic decisions made by a number of protagonists within the Nazi regime along the way.⁷⁶ These established terms will provide a useful theoretical framework for this study as they will help to answer one of the crucial questions concerning the role these theatres fulfilled, i.e. to what extent they corresponded with Nazi claims of cultural superiority and whether they related to broader policy goals.⁷⁷ For example, did the foundation of a network of German language theatres across Europe follow a long-established plan, or did improvisation, the personal dispositions of the leading protagonists, and local conditions play a larger part?⁷⁸

Although the historiographic debate between the “intentionalists” and “functionalists” only took off in the 1990s, it is related to earlier research on the totalitarian character of the Nazi regime, a key aspect masterly discussed by Hannah Arendt as early as 1951.⁷⁹ The crucial question was: how far did the regime control every facet of life? For example, one of the challenges of the Jerusalem Eichmann trial in 1961 was precisely the assumption that as head of the infamous section IV B 4 in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt Eichmann must have received direct orders from Hitler and must have been responsible for every detail of the deportations of Jews across Europe.⁸⁰ The prosecution failed to appreciate that even Eichmann had no knowledge of certain aspects of the Holocaust and was part of an overall system in which competition and rivalry between departments, ministries and individuals played an important part.⁸¹ A difficulty in understanding the true character of the regime (in addition to a widespread reluctance to discuss the recent past) led many post-war commentators to claim that the arts had been largely unaffected by Nazi propaganda and had remained apolitical – a convenient approach, since the majority of people working in museums, orchestras and theatres before 1945 continued in their jobs after the war, including the cultural politicians who decided on their funding. Commentators posited that theatres had resembled “islands in the storm” or “sanctuaries for the arts”, and that they had survived the “darkest chapter in German history” mostly unscathed or even in direct opposition to it.⁸² Ilse Pitsch asserted in 1952 that “true ‘radical’ theatre […] was kept alive in the productions of the classics during the Third Reich”. Nazi theatre politics capitulated vis-à-vis the resistance of the theatres, which by and large turned against the “alienation of their artistic role”.⁸³ Pitsch and others pointed towards a number of noteworthy productions at leading Berlin theatres and by some of the most influential directors at the time. In some of their signature productions Gustaf Gründgens and Heinz Hilpert, for example, used Shakespearean drama to make cautious yet poignant critical remarks, particularly on the totalitarian character of the regime. In Jürgen Fehling’s 1937 production of Richard III, Gloucester was presented as a reckless usurper of power who limped in a way strikingly similar to Goebbels, and the uniforms used resembled those worn by the SS.⁸⁴ Fehling’s irreverence, Hilpert’s humanism and Gründgens’ aestheticism did not fit well into the highly politicised atmosphere of Nazi cultural politics. These directors and their productions seemed to provide the proof that German theatre practitioners in general courageously opposed the Nazi dictatorship.⁸⁵ Instead, they and others concentrated solely on producing “great art”.⁸⁶ Particularly the alleged dominance of classical drama in repertoires during the Nazi years proved that “the establishment of a repertoire which activated audiences according to its Fascist principles only partially succeeded”.⁸⁷ Instead, and against the intentions of theatre makers, the Nazis used the theatre for their own ends, or so many commentators asserted. Interestingly, the claim of having been used by the Nazis for political purposes as opposed to willingly and actively supporting the regime has never entirely gone away. In his new history of German theatre from 1945 to 1966, Günther Rühle, for example, suggests that the theatre was subject to “political abuse” during the Nazi years.⁸⁸

There were some who even praised the “achievements” of Nazi cultural policy. In his book Shakespeare and the German Theatre, the renowned critic and right-wing academic Ernst Ludwig Stahl asserted in 1947 that the Nazi take-over had provided a “cleansing” which the theatre world had long been waiting for.⁸⁹ In fact, the quality of theatre performances even in the war years had been of an “incredibly high standard”. Up until the 1990s some theatre companies claimed they had produced excellent work during the Nazi years.⁹⁰ After all, despite the increasingly devastating Allied bombing campaign, which had destroyed countless playhouses, German theatres still managed 900 performances of Shakespearean drama during the last war season before all theatres were shut in 1944 – some of which were “highly respectable”, as Stahl noted.⁹¹ In light of these accomplishments, discussing the Nazi past not only was futile but would have been unfair. What was needed after 1945, many critics posited, was not a critical reassessment of the past but a continuation on the path of “truth” and “pure art”, a return to “culture” and “harmony”.⁹²

From the late 1960s onwards comments such as these have been increasingly criticised. Instead of seeing the arts as a haven in a sea of barbarism, commentators now asserted that the arts entirely submitted to the Nazi cause. Peter Adam, for example, posited that the “cultural infiltration of every sphere of life never […] stopped until it brainwashed almost the whole nation”.⁹³ Glen Gadberry added that “Hitler, the swastika, and the gas chamber […] dominated the thea-tre space as completely as they did every other aspect of German life”.⁹⁴ Using less colourful language, Monika Carbe asserted that after the Nazi take-over, within a very short space of time, Germany had come under the total control of the Nazis, who turned the country into one “colossal machine”.⁹⁵ Even some of the most recent research on the subject claims that the Nazi control of the theatre was entirely “efficient”.⁹⁶ Theatres had been under enormous pressure to “Nazify the repertoire [and] to perform […] works reflecting Nazi ideology” because of the “rigid control and censorship of the theatre repertoire” by the Propaganda Ministry and Goebbels, who had enjoyed “unchallenged supremacy” already in 1934.⁹⁷ Numerous regional and local history studies have continued to reiterate these claims. With reference to the Essen theatre, but also with a more general appeal, Jürgen-Dieter Waidelich asserted that “the stage only presented nationalistic [deutschtümelnd] plays from now on and suppressed anything which did not fit into the Nazi corset”.⁹⁸

From the start of the 1990s onwards, a number of commentators have been using a more nuanced approach, one which reflected the misalliance between demands for total control and an output across all the arts which did not necessarily reflect hard-core Nazi ideals. A number of studies have shown that the Nazis never managed to control the arts entirely.⁹⁹ This does not mean, however, that theatre managers actively resisted the regime or deliberately boycotted Nazi theatre politics but that there could have been more mundane reasons, like the poor quality or low popularity of the new political playwriting. Recent research has also shown that the Nazis may not have wanted to control the arts entirely and shied away from any suggestion of Nazi Germany being a police state. The critical Shakespeare productions by Hilpert et al. referred to above, for example, may actually have suited the regime in order to prove that it was tolerant and cultured enough to provide for critical voices, too.¹⁰⁰ Linked to this aspect is another interesting issue which has come to the fore in various publications. Commentators from various fields – such as Baird (2008), Strobl (2009) and Klapper (2015) – have criticised the conscious neglect of the officially sanctioned cultural production during the Third Reich in the established literature and its labelling as aesthetically inferior and not worthy as a subject of serious study (see above). Instead, they have faced up to the challenge of discussing the popular cultural production of a barbaric regime and have successfully contextualised their findings. Another unwelcome and hitherto neglected issue has been the fact that some of the tolerated or even officially supported cultural production during the Third Reich was immensely popular. This neglect touches on a more fundamental issue in academic research, i.e. the question of what constitutes a proper object of historiographic research. Despite their financial and popular success, art forms primarily aimed at entertaining mass audiences have been neglected by traditional research precisely because they could not be read as high culture.¹⁰¹ This prioritisation of elite forms of culture over popular performance practices has been criticised more recently, particularly in Anglo-American theatre historiography.¹⁰²

Another discussion in recent historiography has developed in relation to the questioning of established periodisations.¹⁰³ Although by now historians largely agree that neither 1933 nor 1945 represents a radical break with the past and that continuities were substantial, all major histories of the Third Reich still use these dates as marking the start and end points of a clearly definable “era”. In their opus magnum on theatre during the Third Reich, Henning Rischbieter and Thomas Eicher not only follow a rather traditional approach in stressing the importance particularly of 1933 as a watershed moment but also attack others who present alternative readings, such as Konrad Dussel. In the book’s preface Rischbieter accused Dussel of a “tendency” to “belittle” the impact of the Nazi regime on the theatre, as Dussel argued – based on comprehensive archival research and drawing convincing conclusions – that the traditional system of German municipal theatre provision remained largely untouched by the Nazis.¹⁰⁴ Other research has more convincingly shown that the traditional reading of particular historical moments as watershed moments needs to be revisited. Musicologists Walter (2000) and Kater (1999), for example, have illustrated that it was not the Avant-Garde which dominated musical life during the Weimar Republic but nationalistic and conservative traditions and audiences, which were open to Nazi cultural propaganda or even actively advanced it. In musical terms the Nazi take-over therefore did not represent a marked change. Claims that 1945 represented a “Zero Hour” (Stunde Null) have equally been questioned, as significant continuities have been worked out. Ketelsen, for example, convincingly argued that in terms of personnel 1945 did not represent a new start – on the contrary.¹⁰⁵ With regard to the thea-tre in the Westphalian city of Essen, Waidelich discussed the lives of three artistic directors who successfully continued with their careers after 1945 and turned a blind eye to their own role during the Third Reich.¹⁰⁶ Emigrants who returned to Germany after the war, such as Erwin Piscator, Julius Bab and Kurt Jooss, often found themselves in positions in which they were answerable to the same cultural politicians or artistic managers who had forced them out of Germany in the first place.¹⁰⁷ In terms of content, too, as has already been discussed above, after the end of the war German repertoires were by no means dominated by the oeuvre of previously ousted dramatists and radical political work but instead by the “apolitical” classics and bourgeois comedies.

Different conclusions in the literature have also been affected by different research methodologies, certain subject traditions and theoretical approaches. Literary historians such as Ketelsen and Fischli have been concerned with the characteristics of Nazi drama and its aesthetic qualities rather than issues around the financial, popular and critical success of these plays. Historians like Dussel have largely neglected literary aspects and concentrated instead on socio-political and institutional questions, for example concerning the issue of compliance and the extent to which theatres went along with the demands of the new political system after 1933. Overall, however, this approach is much better suited to answer one of the central questions when discussing the arts during the Third Reich, i.e. the discrepancy between political demands and actual artistic output. How successful was the regime in controlling the cultural sector? How far was it able to put into practice specific National Socialist art forms? For example, to what extent were theories around a “völkisch drama” and a new National Socialist popular theatre (Volkstheater) translated into practice?

In approaching these questions, this study will for the first time focus on the degree to which official German language theatres in the occupied territories reflected theoretical debates and fulfilled political demands, particularly with regard to repertoires, in occupied Europe. Overall, the existing research largely fails to acknowledge the importance of the theatre for the regime’s military and political goals, including the intended Germanification of large parts of Europe. It is hoped that this monograph will go some way to address this gap.

Theoretical underpinnings

Apart from relating to the historiographic debates discussed above, a number of other theoretical approaches have proved useful, in particular the New Theatre Historiography movement, which since the late 1970s successfully questioned the validity of positivism, the belief that sources offer objective truths, and which has urged us to consider that history is made and not given. New Theatre Historiography scholars, in objecting to the “neutrality of facts”, usefully refer to discourses of the so-called linguistic turn, which emphasised that language constructs reality. Hayden White in his influential metahistory, for example, has made clear that the historiographic representation of past realities is decisively influenced by stylistic decisions and basic rhetorical structures.¹⁰⁸ New theatre historians have objected in particular to an “antiquarian interest in the stage”,¹⁰⁹ such as the mere gathering of material and the production of, for example, play lists without critically interrogating the sources used or the context in which these plays were produced – a crucial factor when it comes to the production of classical plays under the Nazis, for example, and attempts to link these to völkisch discourses. Joseph Donohue criticises the confidence with which these databases have been put together and reminds us of their ephemeral quality, as “today’s deeper insight may prove tomorrow’s meretricious trendiness”.¹¹⁰ Various studies by theatre historians such as Tracy Davis, Jim Davis und Victor Emeljanow, Peter Bailey, Jacky Bratton, Thomas Postlewait and Bruce McConachie ask us to leave the mere literary interest in the drama behind and be aware of wider contexts of theatrical production. Like this present study, their interdisciplinary interests approach theatre from various angles – political, socio-economic and cultural – and relate to the interplay and creation of meaning between stage and audience. As part of this contextual approach, scholars such as Jacky Bratton further invite us to question the established binaries between high and low art, between elite and popular entertainment¹¹¹ – a “grand narrative” in Lyotard’s terms, which dates back to the 1830s and according to Bratton has done much harm. There have also been calls for a widening of scope and our sources in particular. In relation to these critical approaches, some recent research projects have concentrated on circus shows, travelling performers, street singing and tavern culture, and sources consulted have included anecdotes, cartoons, oral testimonies, census information, local police records, economic data, personal diaries and hand bills.¹¹² In this present study, too, theatre will not be solely understood as the “the place for drama” but will be discussed within its wider socio-economic and political contexts. Although many theatre practitioners after the war put forward claims to the contrary, art is of course never apolitical, as it does not exist in a social vacuum. All too often, however, studies even today deal with repertoires, opera libretti, stage designs or costumes in isolation without asking about the context in which they were produced. The present study understands itself as part of a movement which questions the validity of such approaches.¹¹³

Terms, spelling, language

For clarity, and in view of changing names for places and regions, official spellings of the time have been used as much as possible (so, for example, Polish, Czech or Slovenian spellings ahead of the occupation, and German spellings thereafter). Changes were relatively rare in occupied Western Europe but a regular occurrence in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Although this is sometimes challenging, with names of places changing several times in a relatively short period (Łódź – Lodsch – Litzmannstadt between 1 September 1939 and 1 April 1940), this approach was felt to be more accurate. A glossary of terms, names and places (see page 247) offers translations and will assist navigation. The only exception to this rule was applied when established English names exist, as, for example, for Prague, Warsaw or The Hague. Germany’s currency until 1945 was the Reichsmark (RM), and Reich subsidies to thea-tres across occupied Europe were always paid in the German currency. To give an idea of the currency’s worth in today’s money, Götz Aly suggests that in 1939 1 Reichsmark equalled roughly 10 Euros today. A monthly gross salary of RM 200 was above average, a pension of RM 40 per month not bad, and 50 kg (110 lbs) of potatoes cost RM 0.75.¹¹⁴

Notes

1 Kindermann, Heinz. Theater und Nation. Leipzig: Reclam, 1943. p. 61. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the German are my own.

2 Abbey, William and Katharina Havekamp. “Nazi Performances in the Occupied Territories: The German Theatre in Lille.” London, John, ed. Theatre under the Nazis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. p. 263.

3 See, for example, Baranowski, Shelley. Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. pp. 242–243. It also went beyond any previous war with regard to the total commitment of the German people, both physically and mentally, “expending and exhaust ing all the moral and physical reserves of German society” (Stargardt, Nicholas. The German War: A Nation under Arms, 1939–45. London: Bodley Head, 2015. p. 1).

4 Hirschfeld, Gerhard. “Nazi Germany and Eastern Europe.” Mühle, Eduard, ed. Germany and the European East in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Berg, 2003. p. 87. See also Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel. War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 (particularly the chapter “The Triumph of Raum”, pp. 247– 277).

5 Grimm, Hans. Volk ohne Raum. Munich: Albert Langen, 1926. See also Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. 434th–443rd ed. Munich: Eher, 1939. pp. 732, 740.

6 The term völkisch derives from the German word Volk (people). It has strong romantic, folkloric and “organic” undertones, which, in its emphasis on the “Blood and Soil” idea, combine with an anti-urban populism. The völkisch movement was also characterised by anti-communist, anti-immigration, anti-capitalist, anti-parliamentarian and strong anti-Semitic undercurrents.

7 See various bits of communication in the files of the Reich Chancellery (BArch R43 II/1252, pp. 45, 50, 117, 121–122, 130). In 1937 Hitler decided to pay a monthly pension to the wife of actor Alfred Abel in the amount of RM 200 (the salary of a leading administrative assistant or a rank and file orchestra musician in a mid-sized theatre), and he took such an interest in new theatre buildings that he personally wanted to see the plans and models for the Kehl project despite the fact that Kehl was only a small regional town (see ibid., pp. 42, 55–56, 58).

8 Daiber, Hans. Schaufenster der Diktatur. Theater im Machtbereich Hitlers. Stuttgart: Neske, 1995. p. 11. It has to be noted, however, that subsidies to the performing arts were already substantial pre-1933 and remained significant after 1945. Today no other country supports its theatre as generously as Germany.

9 See Daiber, Schaufenster der Diktatur, p. 11.

10 See Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 31 January 1935.

11 Goebbels in a speech at the Reich Theatre Festival in Vienna in June 1938 (see press release by the Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro, dated 13 June 1938 [BArch, R43/II 1252, p. 77]).

12 Johns, Eric. “The Actor in Germany.” Theatre World November 1936: p. 227. Johns praised a system in which “the actor, instead of being beaten down to the lowest possible salary by an independent manager, becomes almost a Civil Servant […] at a fixed salary”. German actors were “not faced with possible unemployment five or six times a year” like their English colleagues. Johns was equally impressed by the German pension system, “which pays out regular pensions on retirement”.

13 Rischbieter, Henning. “NS-Theaterpolitik.” Rischbieter, Henning, ed. Theater im “Dritten Reich”. Theaterpolitik, Spielplanstruktur, NS-Dramatik. Seelze: Kallmeyer, 2000. pp. 32–33.

14 The closure of theatres in Britain (at least for a time) was keenly noticed and commented on in Germany. As theatres in Paris and London were shut, the German press celebrated the opulently produced shows currently onstage in Berlin (see “Die Szene des größten Erfolgs.” Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung 9 November 1939).

15 See Göring’s circular from November 1939 in which he made it clear that all theatres had to remain open because they contributed to keeping morale at the home front up. He warned against underestimating the importance of entertainment during wartime (see BArch, R55/20111, pp. 128–131).

16 See BArch, R55/20258, pp. 214–215.

17 Goebbels argued that regional theatre, “though not producing art of the highest standard, forms the root of our entire theatre work. The regions provide us with the most important artists” (Goebbels, Joseph. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Teil 2. Diktate 1941–1945. Ed. Elke Fröhlich. Munich: Saur, 1993–1996. Volume 6, entry 9 December 1942, p. 416).

18 Goebbels, Tagebücher, Diktate 1941–1945, volume 7, entry 21 March 1943, p. 608.

19 For the German efforts during the First World War in Eastern Europe see Baumeister, Martin. Kriegstheater. Großstadt, Front und Massenkultur 1914–1918. Essen: Klartext, 2005. pp. 280–289. See also Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front, particularly pp. 113–150; Mazower, Mark. Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe. London: Penguin, 2009. pp. 27–30.

20 Herder Institut Marburg, G/34 VIII P120 Z23, Reichsgautheater Posen 1942/3, p. 24.

21 Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen 1 (1941/2): 7 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

22 Krakau, for example, also featured a theatre reserved for SS and police personnel. This venue offered variety shows as well as films.

23 Austria is therefore not included here. The country was occupied in March 1938 and subsequently incorporated into the German Reich. However, Austria’s annexation met with the overwhelming support of the Austrian public, many of whom considered themselves German. Also, Austria’s subsidised theatre displayed fundamental similarities with the German theatre system – even the repertoire in the second half of the 1930s was very similar. Another reason is that Austria’s administrative structure was largely left intact and was not destroyed as occurred in all other areas, starting with the Sudetenland (see, for example, Rebentisch, Dieter. Führerstaat und Verwaltung im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Verfassungsentwicklung und Verwaltungspolitik 1939–1945. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1989. pp. 21, 203–205).

24 After 1918 the Sudetenland had belonged to Czechoslovakia (for a detailed discussion see Umbreit, Hans. “Auf dem Weg zur Kontinentalherrschaft.” Kroener, Bernhard R., Rolf-Dieter Müller, and Hans Umbreit, eds. Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Organisation und Mobilmachung des deutschen Machtbereichs. Kriegsverwaltung, Wirtschaft und personelle Ressourcen 1939–1941. Vol. 5/1. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1988. pp. 14–28).

25 The exchange with Italy was certainly the most important, with Italy the only country seen as an equal partner. Nazi Germany’s other European allies were rather seen as junior partners with no strong independent voice. In the Slovakian capital of Preßburg (Bratislava) German language performances were largely provided by touring companies organised by the German Theatre Association, mostly from Vienna but also from further afield. The city’s main theatre was the Slovakian National Theatre, to which the German Landestheater had access on one or two days a week.

26 These included theatres from all major German cities, including a visit to Budapest by the Berlin state opera and their full Bayreuth cast, conducted by general manager Hans Tietjen with Winifried Wagner and Herbert von Karajan (see Drewniak, Boguslaw. Das Theater im NS-Staat. Szenarium deutscher Zeitgeschichte 1933– 1945. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1983. p. 128).

27 Reichel, Peter. Der schöne Schein des Dritten Reiches. Faszination und Gewalt des Faschismus. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1994.

28 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 130.

29 Krakau was also the region’s cultural centre and its focus point in terms of investment in the arts. The German theatre in Warsaw was quite unique because it also organised performances for the Polish population under a different name (Teatr Miasta Warszawy) and with a different, entirely Polish ensemble. The repertoire, however, was largely made up of German playwrights and composers, and it was boycotted by many Poles (see Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 105).

30 Paris featured the Empire and the Trocadero, and touring productions came from several German theatres, including the Berlin state opera and the Cologne, Mannheim and Frankfurt opera houses. Despite acute German interest at least in the Flemish part of the Belgian population there was no German language theatre installed in Belgium, although the theatre directors in Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels were loyal to Nazi Germany. For an excellent overview of the situation at the Paris Odéon Theatre under German occupation, see Treml, Cordula. “Von Deutschen beeinflusstes Theater in Paris während der Besatzungszeit am Beispiel des Théâtre de l’Odéon (1940–44).” Fassel, Horst and Paul S. Ulrich, eds. Alltag und Festtag im deutschen Theater im Ausland vom 17.–20. Jahrhundert. Repertoirepolitik zwischen Wunschvorstellungen der Kritik und des Publikums. Münster: LIT, 2007. pp. 256– 280.

31 The Belgrade theatre also produced plays in German which were organised by the German Theatre Association and were primarily aimed at members of the armed forces, but in essence it remained a Serbian theatre.

32 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 131.

33 Another playhouse operated in Rowno (Wolhynien). The Germans used the name Wolhynien to describe a historic region situated in what is now northern Ukraine but straddling parts of Poland and Belarus, too.

34 Interestingly, the local population was allowed to run their own theatres and even produce their own work, at least to a degree (see Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 139).

35 Other playhouses operated in Mühlhausen (Mulhouse), Colmar and Metz.

36 The municipal theatre in Wilna remained in Lithuanian ownership although a German repertoire was strongly recommended (in Lithuanian translations). For more prestigious concerts soloists from Germany were regularly flown in (see Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 134). The Estonian capital of Tallinn as well as Riga had already featured German language theatres, both of which were closed down in 1939. After 1941 in Riga the German efforts focussed on the famous opera house.

37 Further receiving theatres were situated in Przemysl and Rzeszów (Reichshof).

38 Other regional touring theatres, for example, operated from Allenstein (Landesbühne Südostpreußen), Posen (Landesbühne Gau Wartheland) and Bunzlau (Schlesisches Landestheater).

39 See Daiber, Schaufenster der Diktatur, p. 299.

40 The key study in this area is Hirt, Alexander. “Die Heimat reicht der Front die Hand”. Kulturelle Truppenbetreuung im Zweiten Weltkrieg 1939–1945; ein deutsch-englischer Vergleich. Diss. Uni Göttingen, 2006. The number of KdF performances rose from 100,000 in 1940 to 570,000 in 1942, and they were attended by 189 million people during that year (see Daiber, Schaufenster der Diktatur, p. 310 – although it is not quite certain where Daiber’s figures come from).

41 See, for example, Rebecca Rovit, who has written on performance in ghettos and concentration camps (“Cultural Ghettoization and Theater during the Holocaust”, Holocaust and Genocide Studies [2005]), and Lisa Peschel, who has particularly focussed on performances in Theresienstadt (2014, 2016). There is also a body of work on playwriting and the Holocaust (e.g. Gene Plunka, Holocaust Drama [2009], Robert Skloot, Theatre of the Holocaust [2 vols. 1982, 1999], Vivian Patraka, Spectacular Suffering [1999], and Claude Schumacher’s influential collection of essays, Staging the Holocaust [1998]). See also Kay Weniger’s useful Zwischen Bühne und Baracke. Lexikon der verfolgten Theater-, Film- und Musikkünstler 1933–1945. Berlin: Metropol, 2008. A new edited collection of essays on the topic is currently in preparation following an international conference in Vienna in 2014 (ed. Veronika Zangl and Brigitte Dalinger).

42 In January 1941, for example, Franz Lehár came to Paris to represent the German music world, and in 1942 Hans Pfitzner and Werner Egk conducted French premieres of their works. The Berlin Philharmonic performed in Paris, as did the Regensburger Domspatzen, the world famous boys’ choir (see Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, pp. 113–115, 117).

43 Because of the current political climate research in the Ukrainian National Archives in Kiev could not be carried out.

44 This is discussed, for example, in the private correspondence of Dr Rönneke, an employee at the chamber (see BArch, R56 III/317).

45 The idea of a closed entity, however, only works for theatres which were the sole provider of dramatic entertainment in a given community. The theory is difficult to apply to bigger cities with several theatres because then the idea of exclusiveness is lost.

46 See Gsell, Richard. “Der Kassenreport.” Ritter, Wilhelm, ed. Das Theater. Festschrift zum 25 jährigen Bestehen der Städtischen Bühnen Dortmund. Berlin: Verlag Das Theater, n.d. [1929].

47 See Assmann, Aleida and Jan Assmann, “Kanon und Zensur.” Assmann, Aleida and Jan Assmann, eds. Kanon und Zensur. Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation II. Munich: Fink, 1987. pp. 7–15, 19–23.

48 See Frank, Armin Paul. “Anthologies of Translation.” Baker, Mona and Gabriela Saldanha, eds. Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2011. p. 13.

49 See, for example, Stargardt (2015), Grüttner (2014), Baranowski (2011), Evans (three volumes 2004–2009), Hildebrand (2003), Burleigh (2001), Kolb (1998), Peukert (1997), Thamer (1994), Schulze (1994) and Bracher/Funke/Jacobsen (1993).

50 Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. 10 vols. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1979–2008. Conze, Werner, et al., eds. Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas. 10 vols. Berlin: Siedler, 1991–1999.

51 Wolting, Stephan. 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. Wrocław: University of Wrocław Press, 2003.

52 Podlasiak, Marek. Deutsches Theater in Thorn. Vom Wander- zum ständigen Berufstheater (17. – 20. Jahrhundert). Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2008.

53 Leyko, Małgorzata. “Das deutsche Theater in Lodz in den Jahren 1939–1944.” Fassel, Horst, Małgorzata Leyko, and Paul S. Ulrich, eds. Polen und Europa. Deutschsprachiges Theater in Polen und deutsches Minderheitentheater in Europa. Łódź/Tübingen: University of Łódź Press, 2005. pp. 123–147.

54 Jakubcova, Alena, Jitka Ludvova, and Vaclav Maidl. Deutschsprachiges Theater in Prag. Begegnungen der Sprachen und Kulturen. Prague: Ekon, 2001). Their volume, however, does not discuss performances during the Second World War. In general, the publications by the Thalia Germanica research society have proved invaluable for the present study.

55 See, for example, Eduard Mühle’s insightful essay on one of the protagonists of German Ostforschung, Hermann Aubin (Mühle, Eduard. “The European East on the Mental Map of German ‘Ostforschung’.” Mühle, Eduard, ed. Germany and the European East in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Berg, 2003. pp. 107–130).

56 See Kessler, Wolfgang. “Die ‘Ostforschung’ und die Deutschen in Polen.” Nordost- Archiv. Zeitschrift für Regionalgeschichte NF 9.2 (2000): 391–392. The title of this special issue is “Die Erforschung der Geschichte der Deutschen in Polen. Stand und Zukunftsperspektiven”.

57 Daiber, Schaufenster der Diktatur, pp. 282–291, 295–311; Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, pp. 86–144.

58 An additional issue with Daiber’s study is that it does not fully satisfy academic standards. He provides an exciting overview of theatrical activity under the Nazis but uses a more journalistic (and sometimes simplifying) writing style without offering any footnotes or bibliography.

59 Rischbieter, NS-Theaterpolitik, pp. 269–277.

60 Strobl, Gerwin. “Das Theater, eine Waffe deutschen Geistes. NS-Propagandastrategien und das deutschsprachige Theater im besetzten Europa, 1939–1944.” Fassel, Horst, Paul S. Ulrich, and Gunilla Dahlberg, eds. Im Spiegel der Theatergeschichte. Deutschsprachiges Theater im Wechsel von Raum und Zeit. Berlin: LIT, 2015. pp. 304–313.

61 Drake, David. Paris at War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.

62 See Holdsworth, Nadine. Theatre and Nation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; Poore, Benjamin. Theatre and Empire. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. p. 7.

63 Eckstein, Pavel. The Road to State Opera Prague. Prague: Státní Opera, 1993. p. 18.

64 Kotokowski, Albert S. “Die deutsche Minderheit in Polen 1919–1939/45. Forschungsstand und – desiderata.” Nordost-Archiv. Zeitschrift für Regionalgeschichte NF 9.2 (2000): 483–506.

65 Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, pp. 285–286.

66 Müller, Rolf-Dieter. Der Zweite Weltkrieg 1939–1945 (Gebhardt Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte, vol. 21). 10th completely revised ed. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2004. p. 190.

67 Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 263.

68 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 107. Similarly, and establishing a stark contrast between theatre in occupied Paris and Warsaw, see Friedrich, Michael and Hans Daiber. Geschichte des deutschen Theaters. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990. pp. 133–134.

69 Umbreit, Hans. “Die deutsche Herrschaft in den besetzten Gebieten 1942–1945.” Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Organisation und Mobilmachung des deutschen Machtbereichs. Kriegsverwaltung, Wirtschaft und personelle Ressourcen 1942–1944/45. Vol. 5/2. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999. p. 21.

70 Ibid., pp. 55–56.

71 Jan and Aleida Assmann have argued that the establishment of so-called Traditionshorizonte is not entirely reliant on written texts or “eternal scriptures” but that other factors play a part, too. I would posit that this form of cultural memory can also at least in part be attributed to oral history and the ephemeral (see Assmann and Assmann, Kanon und Zensur, pp. 7–27). See also Assmann, Jan and John Czaplicka. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” New German Critique 65 (1995): 125– 133, and, more generally, Assmann, Aleida. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

72 Dussel, Konrad. Ein neues, ein heroisches Theater? Nationalsozialistische Theaterpolitik und ihre Auswirkungen in der Provinz. Bonn: Bouvier, 1988. p. 335; Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster. London: Penguin, 2009. p. 568; Daiber, Schaufenster der Diktatur, p. 143.

73 Schültke, Bettina. Theater oder Propaganda? Die Städtischen Bühnen Frankfurt am Main 1933–1945. Frankfurt: Kramer, 1997. p. 12.

74 Kundrus, “Totale Unterhaltung”, p. 117. Kundrus almost entirely neglects both comedies and the völkisch drama and, therefore, the most significant part of the programmes.

75 Kundrus, “Totale Unterhaltung”, p. 119. The situation was very similar in film and literature, where works of mass entertainment (often written/produced by foreign writers/directors) topped the league tables of bestsellers (see Trommler, Frank. “A Command Performance? The Many Faces of Literature under Nazism.” Huener, Jonathan and Francis R. Nicosia, eds. The Arts in Nazi Germany: Continuity, Conformity, Change. New York: Berghahn, 2007. pp. 111–133).

76 The latest Hitler biography, by Peter Longerich (Hitler. Biographie. Munich: Siedler, 2015), has again strengthened a reading of Hitler as a powerful and pro-active leader around whom everything else evolved. Longerich stressed the notion of Hitler as clever, eager and unscrupulous, not as an instrument of others or solely a charismatic popular leader, but as the central political figure of his time (see also the review by Ulrich Herbert in Die Zeit, 10 December 2015, p. 57). By contrast, Götz Aly noted the importance of ad hoc decisions and argued that any attempt to align Nazi ideological concepts or theories from the 1920s with a later reality were futile largely because of the speed, youthfulness and general “can do” atmosphere during the regime’s short but feverishly intense life span (see Aly, Götz. Hitlers Volksstaat. Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler Sozialismus. 4th ed. Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 2005. p. 16). Related to these notions of radicalisation, speed and expansion, Mark Mazower characterised the development of Nazi hegemony across occupied Europe as “an almost limitless escalation” (Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 11).

77 See, for example, Kißener, Michael. Das Dritte Reich. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005. pp. 20–25.

78 Ulrich von Hehl, for example, noted the importance of improvisation in everyday life during the Third Reich and questioned Peter Reichel’s assumption that all cultural events during the Third Reich equally supported the regime’s propagandistic self-portrayal and contributed to the overarching goal of creating a Volk community by aesthetically elevating the political reality (see Hehl, Ulrich von. Nationalsozialistische Herrschaft. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996. p. 86).

79 See Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1951.

80 SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann’s main role in the Holocaust was a bureaucratic one. He was responsible for organising the transport of the European Jews to the extermination camps in Eastern Europe. Although Eichmann was relatively low in rank, his role was crucially important for the organisation of the Holocaust. An interesting document in this respect is the set of interviews conducted with Eichmann while he was in prison awaiting trial in Jerusalem (see Lang, Jochen von. Das Eichmann-Protokoll. Tonbandaufzeichnungen der israelischen Verhöre. Vienna: Propyläen, 1991).

81 See, for example, Hans Mommsen’s useful essay “Hannah Arendt und der Prozeß gegen Adolf Eichmann”, published as an introduction to Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen. 3rd ed. Munich: Piper, 2008. pp. 12–13.

82 Apparently Gustaf Gründgens claimed such a position of resistance after 1945 for his Berlin theatres during the Third Reich. According to Willy Maertens the Hamburg Thalia theatre remained an “oasis” during the Nazi years.

83 Pitsch, Ilse. Das Theater als politisch-publizistisches Führungsmittel im Dritten Reich. Diss. Uni Münster, 1952 [masch.]. pp. 237, 289.

84 See Rühle, Günther. “Ich bin Fehling. Shakespeares Richard III., eine Inszenierung in der Diktatur – Jürgen Fehlings nicht geheures Theater.” Theater heute October 2002: pp. 34–41. See also Wilhelm Hortmann, Shakespeare und das deutsche Theater im 20. Jahrhundert. Mit einem Kapitel über Shakespeare auf den Bühnen der DDR von Maik Hamburger. Berlin: Henschel, 2001, p. 151ff.; London, Non-German Drama in the Third Reich, pp. 247–250. For a contemporary review (which does not acknowledge the political connotations), see Niessen, Carl. “Die interessante Inszenierung I. ‘Richard der Dritte’ von Jürgen Fehling im Staatstheater Berlin inszeniert.” Theater der Welt 2 (1938): 119–121.

85 What these commentators did not say was that these productions were isolated instances of famous metropolitan directors who could not easily be silenced. In fact, despite the documented arguments between some directors and the Nazi leadership, Goebbels and Göring were keen to show that the Third Reich was tolerant and cultured enough to provide for critical voices, too.

86 See, for example, Stahl, Ernst Leopold. “Theaterschau. Shakespeare im Aufführungsjahr 1943/44.” Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 80/81 (1946): 109.

87 Wardetzky, Jutta. Theaterpolitik im faschistischen Deutschland. Studien und Dokumente. Berlin (East): Henschel, 1983. p. 85.

88 See Rühle, Günther. Theater in Deutschland 1945–1966. Seine Ereignisse – seine Menschen. Frankfurt: Fischer, 2015. p. 26.

89 See Stahl, Ernst Ludwig. Shakespeare und das deutsche Theater. Wanderung und Wandelung seines Werkes in dreieinhalb Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1947. pp. 669, 701–705. It is quite likely that this book was meant to be published before 1945, and then the end of the war got in the way.

90 See, for example, Hans Taubken in his address commemorating “75 Jahre Niederdeutsche Bühne an den Städtischen Bühnen Münster e.V.” (Münster 1995, p. 16). See also Bergenthal, Josef. “Die niederdeutsche Bühne am Theater der Stadt Münster.” Das schöne Münster 18 (1959): 11–12.

91 Stahl, Shakespeare und das deutsche Theater, p. 721.

92 In discussing Bielefeld’s recent past, critic Kurt Uthoff concluded in 1954 that the city’s theatre had been quite unaffected by politics: “Politics back and forth, what Bielefeld’s artistic managers really wanted was the realisation of the word which landgrave Hermann called out adjuratorily to his minstrels: Graceful art, turned into deed!” (Uthoff, Kurt. “Ein halbes Jahrhundert.” Städtische Bühnen Bielefeld, ed.50 Jahre Stadttheater Bielefeld. Bielefeld: Sievert & Sieveking, 1954. p. 9). See also Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre: Translated and with an Introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby. London: Routledge, 2007. p. 52.

93 Adam, Peter. The Arts of the Third Reich. London: Thames & Hudson, 1992. p. 21. Similarly, Ketelsen (1970), Drewniak (1983), Steinweis (1993) and Gadberry (1995), as well as, more recently, Rühle, Günther. “Eine deutsche Karriere. ‘Schlageter’ von Hanns Johst – eine Uraufführung zu Hitlers Geburtstag.” Theater heute August–September 2002: pp. 56–63.

94 Gadberry, Glen W. “Introduction: The Year of Power – 1933.” Gadberry, Glen W., ed. Theatre in the Third Reich, the Prewar Years: Essays on Theatre in Nazi Germany. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995. p. 1.

95 Carbe, Monika. Schiller. Vom Wandel eines Dichterbildes. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005. p. 110.

96 Kundrus, Birthe. “Totale Unterhaltung? Die kulturelle Kriegführung in Film, Rundfunk und Theater 1939–1945.” Echternkamp, Jörn, ed. Die deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945 (Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 9/2). Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2005. p. 114. Kundrus refers to the “highly controlling” 1934 Reich Theatre Law and numerous other regulations and restrictions and seems to assert that the Nazis managed to achieve total control of the theatre industries.

97 Bonnell, Andrew G. Shylock in Germany: Antisemitism and the German Theatre from the Enlightenment to the Nazis. London: IB Tauris, 2008. pp. 127, 136; Panse, Barbara. “Censorship in Nazi Germany: The Influence of the Reich’s Ministry of Propaganda on German Theatre and Drama, 1933–1945.” Berghaus, Günter, ed. Fascism and Theatre: Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics of Performance in Europe, 1925–1945. Oxford: Berghahn, 1996. pp. 141–142.

98 Waidelich, Jürgen-Dieter. Essen spielt Theater. 1000 und Einhundert Jahre. Zum 100. Geburtstag des Grillo-Theaters. Vol. 2. Düsseldorf: Econ, 1994. p. 81.

99 See, for example, Dussel (1988), Kater (1999), London (2000) and Strobl (2007). Relating to music under the Nazis, Pamela Potter has recently claimed that there was no evidence that the Nazis actually wanted to achieve total control (see Potter, Pamela M. “Music in the Third Reich: The Complex Task of ‘Germanization’.” Huener/Nicosia, Arts in Nazi Germany, pp. 91, 99). For a useful discussion of recent historiography on the arts under National Socialism, see Potter, Pamela M. “The Arts in Nazi Germany: A Silent Debate.” Contemporary European History 15 (2006): 585–599.

100 See Heinrich, Anselm. “‘It is Germany Where He Truly Lives’: Nazi Claims on Shakespearean Drama.” New Theatre Quarterly 28.3 (2012): 238.

101 This narrow view is all the more surprising given the fact that the critical study of popular entertainment should have been established a long time ago, and at least since Siegfried Kracauer’s influential publications in the 1920s. In The Mass Ornament, for example, Kracauer discussed in detail the “pleasant splendour of the superficial” as the characteristic of the new palaces of mass entertainment. Although Kracauer was referring to the cinema here, his theory is also applicable to the immensely popular comedies of Arnold/Bach and Bernauer/Oesterreicher as well as the operettas by Emmerich Kálmán and Paul Abraham (Kracauer, Siegfried. Das Ornament der Masse. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977. p. 311).

102 See, for example, Bratton, Jacky. New Readings in Theatre History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

103 See, for example, Thomas Postlewait’s work on the subject (“The Criteria for Periodization in Theatre History.” Theatre Journal 40 (1988): 299–318; “Historiography and the Theatrical Event: A Primer with Twelve Cruxes.” Theatre Journal 43 (1991): 157–178).

104 See Rischbieter, Theater im “Dritten Reich”, p. 8. Later in the volume Eicher posited that Dussel neglected the importance of the year 1933 as a radical turning point (Eicher, Thomas. “Spielplanstrukturen 1929–1944.” Rischbieter, Theater im “Dritten Reich”, p. 484).

105 Ketelsen refers not only to Saladin Schmitt here but all key players in Bochum’s civic administration. Continuities were not the exception but the rule (see Ketelsen, Uwe-Karsten. Ein Theater und seine Stadt. Die Geschichte des Bochumer Schauspielhauses. Cologne: SH-Verlag, 1999. pp. 149–150).

106 See Waidelich, Essen spielt Theater, vol. 2, pp. 102–144. The continuities also relate to the cultural politicians during these years, such as Wilhelm Vernekohl in Münster and Arthur Mämpel in Dortmund (see Heinrich, Anselm. “Erbauung und Unterhaltung. Das Dortmunder Stadttheater zwischen 1933 und 1945.” Beiträge zur Geschichte Dortmunds und der Grafschaft Mark 96/97 [2007]: 293–322).

107 See Waidelich, Essen spielt Theater, Bd. 2, pp. 137, 143. The appointment of P. W. Jacob as artistic director of the Dortmund theatre after his return from Argentinian exile in 1950 was a rare exception.

108 See White, Hayden. Metahistory. Die historische Einbildungskraft im 19. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1991.

109 Bratton, New Readings in Theatre History, p. 4.

110 Donohue, Joseph. “Evidence and Documentation.” Postlewait, Thomas and Bruce McConachie, eds. Interpreting the Theatrical Past: Essays in the Historiography of Performance. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989. p. 194.

111 Bratton, New Readings in Theatre History, p. 8.

112 See, for example, Bratton, Jacky. The Making of the West End Stage: Marriage, Management and the Mapping of Gender in London, 1830–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011; Gale, Maggie and Vivien Gardner, eds. Women, Theatre and Performance: New Histories, New Historiographies. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000; Davis, Tracy C. The Economics of the British Stage 1800–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000; Zarrilli, Philipp B., Bruce McConachie, Gary Jay Williams, and Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, eds. Theatre Histories: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2013; Bratton, New Readings in Theatre History (as above). There have also been a number of important articles by Postlewait, Thomas. “Writing History Today.” Theatre Survey 41.2 (2000): 83–106; “The Criteria for Periodization in Theatre History.” Theatre Journal 40 (1988): 299–318; “Historiography and the Theatrical Event: A Primer with Twelve Cruxes.” Theatre Journal 43 (1991): 157–178.

113 See, for example, Müller, Sven Oliver and Jutta Toelle. Bühnen der Politik: Die Oper in europäischen Gesellschaften im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Munich: Oldenbourg 2008.

114 See Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat, p. 48.