Chapter 4

Occupation

In those areas which we intend to keep the cultural life slowly gains momentum again.

Theatre and cinema flourish in particular.

We are looking at great opportunities here.¹

All over occupied Europe the establishment of representative, fully funded German language theatres and opera houses was a matter of the highest priority for the Nazi regime. Immediately following military action, experts moved into the occupied areas to check on the available theatre spaces – and sometimes even prior to it. In a detailed report for the Propaganda Ministry (probably from the summer of 1940 and, therefore, prior to the Balkan campaign of the Wehrmacht), theatre scholar Heinz Kindermann called for a lasting German theatrical presence in the Balkans. He suggested increased touring activity in Yugoslavia, for example by the Frankfurt and Vienna opera houses, or the Vienna Burgtheater. Performances should not take place only in Belgrade, however, but also in Zagreb, Ossiegg and Neusatz. Kindermann detailed that the Berlin Philharmonic would go down well in Bulgaria, and that audiences in Sofia would love to see the Burgtheater and Heinrich George. Crucially, Kindermann argued that ticket prices should be low so that the promotion of German culture could also “win over the coming generation”.² Immediately after the Netherlands had been occupied, the Propaganda Ministry sent Rolf Gebhardt into the country to inspect all available theatres and make suggestions for a representative German playhouse.³

And upon the occupation of the Baltic states a high profile meeting took place in late autumn of 1941 to discuss the use of the different theatre spaces in Riga.⁴ The Germans were keen to get their ventures off the ground quickly as a string of new or newly renovated theatres opened with grand celebrations amid substantial media coverage throughout the war. In Prague Generalintendant Oskar Walleck presided over a consortium of three venues: the Deutsches Opernhaus (formerly the Neues Deutsches Theater), the Deutsches Schauspielhaus (housed in the baroque Ständetheater) and the Kammerspiele (studio theatre), which together made up the Deutsche Theater Prag.⁵ The Ständetheater opened in October 1939, and in September 1942 the Deutsche Operette received an equally grand inception in the Deutsches Opernhaus with a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. The Doppeltheater Kattowitz/Königshütte (the former providing opera, the latter drama) opened in September 1941 in the presence of leading politicians, as had the theatre in Warsaw a year earlier with Beethoven’s Coriolan overture and Hebbel’s Agnes Bernauer (performed by the Krakau ensemble). The new Gautheater in Posen launched in March 1941, with a main house and a studio, after an extensive and costly renovation; the Staatstheater Krakau (housed in the famous former Słowacki Theatre) played host to visiting performances before opening with its own ensemble in 1940; and Oslo’s German theatre opened after massive investment in 1941. The new German theatre in The Hague opened as a full Dreispartentheater with opera, operetta and dance ensembles in 1942, as did those in Lille in 1941 and Kiev in 1942, and even the comparatively small city of Bromberg received its own opera, drama and dance ensembles, performing in two venues.⁶ Bielitz in Upper Silesia had a population of only 50,000 but received its own fully funded theatre. And the town of Zoppot outside Danzig was smaller still (population 30,000) but featured a well-known open-air theatre (with a capacity of almost 9,000) as well as a fully functional municipal theatre.⁷ Already in the summer of 1939 the new German authorities in the formerly Czech city of Brünn took over a well-equipped theatre, which the regime extended to a Dreispartentheater with opera, drama and dance ensembles plus a full opera chorus.⁸ It is worth noting as well that even the venues in smaller towns and cities were full-blown theatres accommodating significant audiences of between roughly 800 (Zoppot) and 1,400 (Lille) people. In addition, most places also offered studio theatres (Kammerspiele) with capacities between 300 and 500. After the attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, as large areas came under German rule, the occupying forces extended their keen interest in matters theatrical further east. In Kiev the Germans opened a German opera house and re-opened the theatre as Tara Schewtschenko Theatre, named after the Ukrainian poet who in the early nineteenth century fervently fought for Ukrainian independence from Moscow – more than a nod to Ukrainian separatists.⁹ A report for the Propaganda Ministry written in June 1942 detailed the “theatre situation in the Eastern territories” and celebrated the growing number of ensembles and theatres.¹⁰ In Riga the Germans planned to take over the Latvian National Opera and slowly turned this into a German venture with leading German soloists and conductors visiting Latvia.

The foundation of and official support for professional German language thea-tre in occupied Europe was situated in a wider context to place the arts at the heart of the German war effort. Touring exhibitions, new museums, publications, awards and numerous smaller scale events were meant to attract Germans from the Altreich to the recently occupied territories and to entertain the existing ones, and to send a powerful message both to original inhabitants and to the outside world that this new Germany was a cultured nation and as such took its “obligations” seriously. Reich commissioner Josef Terboven invited the Hamburg State Opera to Oslo for a German Arts Week. In 1940 Straßburg hosted the Upper Rhine Arts Festival with many leading artists from the Altreich. In Litzmannstadt an exhibition on German Art in the East opened in 1940 in the city’s art museum,¹¹ and a similar exhibition on Old German Art from Cracow and the Carpathian Lands was organised in Krakau in 1942. Artists, functionaries and politicians from the region and beyond attended the East German Days of Culture in Posen in 1941. In the Czech Protectorate the German administration was keen to foster German language writers via public readings, exhibitions, sponsored publications and awards, such as the new and prestigious Adalbert-Stifter-Preis.¹² Gauleiter Arthur Greiser established a new musical award (the Musikpreis des Reichsgaus Wartheland) in 1941,¹³ Warsaw celebrated a new annual open-air theatre festival in the Łazienki park and an annual arts festival (the Warschauer Kulturtage) in the autumn, and the theatres in Kattowitz/Königshütte organised an annual Eichendorff festival (the Deutsche Eichendorff-Wochen).¹⁴ Officials in Krakau were keen to establish the city as a leading Musikstadt and to this end instigated a Richard Strauss festival in 1944 with leading soloists from across Germany and Austria.¹⁵ A new Reich Foundation for Research into the German East and an entirely new university were founded in Posen (in stark contrast to Warsaw University, which was closed, and Krakau, which was scaled down, with many of its academic staff arrested and many of them killed). In Krakau, Generalgouverneur Hans Frank, opened the Institute for German Work in the East (Institut für deutsche Ostarbeit), which had its own publication series, lectures and exhibitions.¹⁶ Straßburg’s university was rebranded as a “Reich University”.

Newly founded institutions such as the Volksbildungswerke or Volksbildungsstätten (centres for public education) or the so-called Kulturringe (cultural associations), as well as the municipal offices for cultural affairs (Kulturämter), organised events which acted as additional means to create and foster distinctly German cultural communities. Events were held entirely in German and often featured guests from the Altreich or even international stars. Concerts organised in occupied Poland between 1942 and 1944, for example, featured conductors, soloists and ensembles from Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna and Rome. Soloists included such internationally renowned stars as the pianist Wilhelm Kempff or the violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan, and conductors such as Eugen Jochum and Count Hidemaro Konoye from Japan.¹⁷ The Warsaw Kulturring collected subscriptions from its members, supported theatre and orchestra performances and put on its own events.¹⁸ In the summer of 1943 the Volksbildungsstätte Litzmannstadt organised around ten events per month and offered language classes, lectures, screenings and concerts. Their work was deemed particularly important as it promised to bring together Germans who had already been living in Łódź before 1939 and the new arrivals, as Gauleiter Arthur Greiser claimed. Mayor Werner Ventzki summed up what German popular education meant during this war. The main goal of the Volksbildungsarbeit was

to communicate to all German nationals the knowledge of the national treasures and cultural assets this war is being fought over. The better you know your nation’s language, history and culture, the more you will be steeped in its importance and its historical mission. At the same time you will be able to appreciate that this war is being fought for nothing less than the eternal safeguarding of everything German.¹⁹

Overall, the amount of money spent on cultural affairs in general was staggering: apart from the support for theatres, towns and cities received their own professional symphony orchestras, as well as municipal music schools and arts colleges (sometimes complemented by regional activities, too). In Litzmannstadt alone, plans included a Museum of Natural Science, a Museum of Anthropology, a Museum for Science and the Arts and a number of art galleries.²⁰

Beginnings

The first country to be subjected to Germany’s cultural war was Czechoslovakia. Already before the annexation of the Sudetenland, as already alluded to above (see Chapter 3), the theatres in the region increasingly came under the influence of the Nazis in the late 1930s – both from within, by Konrad Henlein’s Sudetendeutsche Partei, and from Berlin. When the Sudetenland with its largely German population was eventually annexed by Nazi Germany following the Munich Agreement in September 1938, its theatres came under German jurisdiction, too. Immediately following the annexation, significant sums of money were pumped into the region for its cultural “rebuilding”. Hitler made RM 1 million available for “cultural purposes” out of his own personal coffers.²¹ In many ways the take-over of the theatres in the region anticipated the way in which the Germans intended to deal with the performing arts in other countries, too. Critical voices and “racially inferior” staff were forced to leave, positive references to Germany were enforced in theatre repertoires, and investment in infrastructure and people was heavily increased. Companies which had mostly operated on a business footing, with a director at their helm who took out a lease for a particular theatre, were now taken over by city councils and turned into municipal institutions.²² Amateur companies were disbanded, and professional ensembles installed instead. Theatres received rising subsidies, introduced 12 month contracts and started new festivals. The theatre in Reichenberg, as the first theatre in the region, offered opera, drama and ballet and organised symphony concerts. In 1943 a studio theatre was added. The theatre in Aussig similarly operated as a Dreispartentheater after 1938 and placed particular emphasis on music. In 1940 a music festival was inaugurated, and the opera blossomed, too. Aussig received a theatre school, and Reichenberg featured a regional music college. The theatre in Troppau played host to yet another festival and had its own municipal orchestra, and the cities of Karlsbad and Eger had their own fully funded theatres, too.²³ Before these municipal theatres were established, professional touring companies from the Altreich had provided theatrical entertainment in a pattern repeated all over occupied Europe immediately following military occupation.

German forces occupied the remaining Czech territories in March 1939 in an act of blatant aggression. They formed the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia with a semi-autonomous Czech government under minister president Alois Eliáš and president Emil Hácha, but the real power was with the German Reich protector, Konstantin von Neurath, and his Staatssekretär, Karl Hermann Frank. After an initial period in which some aspects of Czech culture (including the publication of Czech literature) were tolerated, control got much tighter after von Neurath was replaced by the much more radical SS general (Obergruppenführer) Reinhard Heydrich as deputy Reich protector in September 1941. After occupying it, the Germans made it clear that they regarded Bohemia as a German land (“Kernland deutscher Kultur”) and the occupation as nothing more than the rightful return of this region to the German Reich.²⁴ As if to manifest this claim, the Germans immediately organised a German Week of Culture (Deutsche Kulturwoche) in June 1939 with prestigious visiting productions by the Dresdner Staatsschauspiel (with a richly appointed Faust I) and the Vienna State Opera (performing a repertoire of Mozart). In Prague, German theatre politics were determined by three aspects: the Nazis’ claim that historically Prague was a German city, the existence of a substantial and growing German minority of 40,000–60,000 Germans who needed to be mobilised to support German language theatre, and the importance placed on the theatre as a site of representation.²⁵ Not surprisingly, activity set in immediately with the take-over of the baroque Ständetheater, the New German Theatre and the studio, which not only came into German hands but were now owned by the German Reich – demonstrating to the Czechs and the outside world alike that theatre in Prague was a matter of the utmost priority for the German government. In a development mirrored across occupied Europe, the playhouses underwent renovation and sometimes more substantial construction, and significant investment went Prague’s way, too (see below). The disrespect, and at times outright contempt, with which the Czech population and their rich culture were treated also anticipated what happened subsequently to other people across large areas of occupied Europe. In his diaries Goebbels noted that “in the long run the Czechs do not have any right to assume their own cultural life”.²⁶

Where theatre buildings already existed, the Nazis were keen to take these over into municipal or Reich ownership. This normally did not pose a problem where municipalities in the occupied territories already owned buildings because ownership just passed on to the new rulers. Private theatres owned by non-Germans were often allowed to remain open either for the duration (as in Paris, Oslo and The Hague) or for a short period of time until they were closed down for good (as in Litzmannstadt and throughout the Generalgouvernement). Additionally, even if they were allowed to remain open, life was made difficult for some of these businesses: they were forced to move to alternative, less prestigious premises (as in Prague or Riga), the Germans requisitioned some or all of their equipment, or curfews were imposed. But even playhouses owned by German bourgeois theatre societies ran into difficulties after occupation as these societies were declared unfit to run their own theatres. “In the public interest” they were taken over by the Nazi authorities. In Brünn, for example, both developments happened hand in hand as the German Theatre Association, which had been responsible for running the amateur German language theatre, was liquidated in August 1939 and the local (Czech) theatre was taken over by the new German municipal authorities.²⁷ In other places this process could be lengthier. In Prague, for example, the German Theatre Association was dissolved only in 1943. Taking over some playhouses proved tricky, too, when the legal situation was not entirely clear, particularly in cases of mixed ownership. The Prague Ständetheater, for example, had been taken over by Czech authorities in 1920, but turning it into a Reich theatre proved difficult and could only be effected with a decree (the Verordnung des Reichsprotektors, dated 28 February 1942). A particular challenge had been dealing with the so-called Erblogen (theatre boxes owned by wealthy Prague patrons and passed on to their descendants). The legislation offered these patrons compensation, but an internal letter dated 14 January 1942 made it quite clear that the remaining patrons (some had already waived the rights to their boxes before the legislation took effect) should be “persuaded” to give up their compensation, and also reminded them that “public interest comes before self-interest” (adding insult to injury, as most of these patrons were Jewish citizens).²⁸

Subsidies

The Nazi regime was prepared to fund its theatrical endeavours across occupied Europe with astonishing and rising sums of money. Relating to the established German model of the municipal theatre (Stadttheater), theatres were normally overseen (and managements were answerable to) city councils (e.g. in Posen, Litzmannstadt, Marburg and Cilli). They received the bulk of their subsidies from municipal sources, too. Although the German theatres in Prague were Reichstheater (state theatres), they still received some financial support from the head of the city council, the so-called Primator.²⁹ In addition, some theatres also obtained funding from regional bodies, as was the case with the German language theatres in Bohemia and Moravia, which received extra money from the Protectorate’s Ministry for Schools and Public Culture for the upkeep and renovation of theatre buildings,³⁰ and directly from the Protectorate’s central administration to support performances for school children and offer reduced price tickets for those who could not afford full priced ones.³¹ In Oslo, Kiev, The Hague and Riga, theatres were under the direct control of the respective Reich commissioners, Josef Terboven, Erich Koch, Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Hinrich Lohse, with varying input and influence from the Propaganda Ministry.³² At Lille the army played a significant part as legal owner of the theatre, although funding was often in kind, with free transport of sets and costumes when the company went on tour and free accommodation for German staff in a commandeered hotel.³³ The French city council was made to pay the wages of the French theatre staff and to be responsible for the upkeep of the theatre building.³⁴ The Krakau theatre – a municipal enterprise in the first instance – was taken over by the Generalgouvernement authorities in April 1940, although the city kept a stake in the enterprise and was allowed to keep its revenues.³⁵ Additional funding for all theatres came – on application – from the Propaganda Ministry. The amount paid out to theatres via the Ministry rose exponentially, from RM 9.7 million in 1934 to RM 45 million in 1942.³⁶ Goebbels repeatedly noted the issue of rising subsidies in his diaries and seemed rather pleased with himself to be able to dish out vast sums of money.³⁷ These payments proved a useful instrument for Goebbels to control theatres, their staff and their artistic output. For example, theatres were required to submit their programmes to the Ministry to prove that the funding had been used “appropriately”. This opportunity for control by-passed the municipal authorities, which had traditionally been responsible for local thea-tres, and secured Goebbels a direct say in theatre matters. In fact, the Propaganda Ministry’s theatre budget outstripped everything else, even their expenditures for film projects.³⁸ After 1939 Goebbels used the available funding mainly to support theatres in the occupied territories as applications from theatres in the Altreich increasingly received negative replies.³⁹

Theatres across occupied Europe quickly made use of this additional source of funding from the Propaganda Ministry. In March 1939, thus immediately following the occupation, the German theatre in the Moravian city of Brünn (Brno) had already secured RM 125,000 and now applied for an additional Reich subsidy of RM 45,000 (equalling Kc 450,000) for April and May.⁴⁰ On 28 March 1939 the theatre wrote to the Propaganda Ministry again with an “addition” for the upcoming season 1939/40. The theatre now asked the Ministry to shore it up with a whopping RM 882,300.⁴¹ Although this amount was about ten times higher than the highest sum ever paid out by Goebbels to a theatre in the Altreich, the application was not refused outright; on the contrary, the Ministry still granted Brünn a Reich subsidy of RM 750,000. During the following season (1940/1) the Propaganda Ministry still paid RM 540,000.⁴² Many of the new theatres in the occupied territories relied heavily on funding from Berlin; in fact, they could not survive without it. The small theatre of Iglau, about 100 km south-east of Prague, is a good example. Its funding needs during the 1940/1 season were met by the town of Iglau (RM 10,000), the Gau Lower Danube (RM 20,000), the town of Znaim (RM 5,000) and the Moravian regional authority (Mährische Landesbehörde) (RM 10,000), but the bulk of the funding came from the Propaganda Ministry (RM 100,000).⁴³ In Lille and Oslo, too, subsidies mainly came from Berlin. In 1940 Posen received a staggering RM 400,000 from Berlin.⁴⁴ On top of the annual subsidies the Propaganda Ministry was also happy to make more ad hoc decisions. In January 1941, for example, Goebbels agreed to pay out RM 280,000 in extra payments in addition to already agreed subsidies from the Propaganda Ministry. This money was distributed among a number of theatres in the East, in both formerly German as well as newly “acquired” territories across Poland (although not to theatres in the Generalgouvernement).⁴⁵ In terms of cultural politics and governance, these funding structures therefore mark a significant shift away from the model of the locally funded municipal theatre towards playhouses increasingly subsidised by central bodies, a shift which corresponded to general attempts by the Nazi regime to move away from decentralised administrations towards a strong national government. The one politician set to gain the most from this development was Goebbels.

The sheer amount of funding made available to German language theatres in occupied Europe overall is staggering. Funding in the Altreich had already risen substantially after 1933. The subsidies paid to theatres during the Weimar Republic, which had been heavily criticised by the Nazis as having been exorbitant, paled into insignificance when compared to the sums dished out in the late 1930s (see the introduction). And it was these inflated sums which seemed to have been used as a benchmark for the new territories – and they kept on rising, too. In 1939 the Prague German theatres received RM 1.6 million in Reich subsidies.⁴⁶ In 1941 this rose to RM 1.8 million, in 1942 the theatres received almost RM 2 million,⁴⁷ and later that year, when operettas were added to Prague’s theatrical portfolio, the subsidies increased further, to almost RM 2.5 million.⁴⁸ In March 1943 the theatres in the Protectorate were in receipt of the following subsidies: Brünn RM 500,000, Mährisch-Ostrau RM 250,000, Iglau RM 120,000, Olmütz RM 110,000 and Budweis RM 138,000.⁴⁹ In the Warthegau the Gautheater Posen in 1941 received RM 400,000, and even the small travelling ensemble of the Landesbühne Gau Wartheland was in receipt of RM 50,000.⁵⁰ Ahead of its opening, the financial director at the theatre in Marburg (Maribor) declared that his relatively small theatre was in need of subsidies to the tune of RM 700,000.⁵¹ The German theatre in Oslo was awarded an annual subsidy of RM 1.5 million,⁵² Lille received almost RM 1 million,⁵³ and a similar amount was paid out to the opera and theatre in Kiev.⁵⁴ In a pre-season note from early 1941, Lille’s artistic director Ernst Andreas Ziegler calculated the theatre’s annual budget to be in the region of RM 950,000, RM 900,000 of which needed to be from subsidies as he did not expect proceeds to exceed RM 50,000.⁵⁵ The file does not contain any note of misgivings about this significant discrepancy. Similarly, the Deutsches Theater in den besetzten Niederlanden in The Hague in its 1942 budget noted proposed expenses of RM 2.1 million against a projected income of only RM 215,000. So the directors asked the Propaganda Ministry for RM 1.9 million in subsidies, a sum they duly received.⁵⁶

To illustrate both the rise in subsidies and the different pots of money tapped into, let us take a more detailed look at a typical example, the theatre in Litzmannstadt. The theatre opened as a municipal theatre in January 1940 and was generously supported out of municipal, regional and national funds. The municipal subsidy rose substantially, from RM 562,000 in 1941 to RM 831,000 in 1942.⁵⁷ In addition, and as early as January 1940, Litzmannstadt’s mayor, Franz Schiffer, asked the Propaganda Ministry for an extra RM 60,000 as a contribution towards the running costs of the theatre. And he did not ask for the money politely – he literally demanded it (“transfer the money as soon as possible”).⁵⁸ This was not an isolated case. A similar approach was used by cultural politicians and artistic managers throughout occupied Europe. They knew full well that they were in a strong position when it came to financial support from Berlin due to the prominent role theatre played in the political discourse as a beacon of German culture extending into the occupied territories. As at many other places, Litzmannstadt’s theatre was being refurbished, and by March 1940 the renovations had already cost RM 105,000 (paid for by the city), and another RM 230,000 was needed from elsewhere. Schiffer declared that for 1940/1, the theatre’s first full season, the overall budget was going to be RM 600,000, and that he hoped the Propaganda Ministry and the Gau authorities would contribute RM 200,000 each.⁵⁹ A few months later he adjusted this upwards and now asked for a Reich subsidy of RM 250,000. In October 1940 he was told by the Ministry that it was prepared to pay the full amount.⁶⁰ Despite these significant subsidies the hole in the theatre’s finances grew. Between September 1940 and late March 1941 the theatre was in the red by a staggering RM 553,000.⁶¹ Undeterred, Litzmannstadt’s officials kept asking for more. For 1942 they wanted increased Reich subsidies in the sum of RM 400,000 and asked for an additional RM 300,000 towards a new theatre building. This time, though, Rainer Schlösser cautioned Goebbels against these enormous sums, and the annual subsidy remained at RM 200,000. Goebbels still agreed to contribute RM 150,000 from a “special fund” to the building costs. This means that the theatre in Litzmannstadt received RM 350,000 in national subsidies in 1942 – more than the overall budget of many municipal theatres elsewhere.⁶² It may not be surprising that Litzmannstadt’s administration got carried away. In December 1942 Mayor Ventzki asked for a Reich subsidy of RM 450,000 for 1943.⁶³ These sums proved too much for the Propaganda Ministry, which paid RM 170,000 in 1943 – still a substantial sum.⁶⁴

Rising subsidies did not go unnoticed in the general public, particularly in Eastern European towns and cities, where living conditions were significantly below the German average and money was desperately needed to improve the infrastructure, quality of housing and local amenities. Although public unrest about arts funding seems to have been extremely rare, some theatres apparently felt the need to counter potential critics. Programme notes at a number of thea-tres in occupied Europe featured an article by A. E. Frauenfeld, who justified municipal expenditures on theatres.⁶⁵ Frauenfeld claimed that having a publicly funded civic theatre was a major asset for any city and had a substantial economic impact. To illustrate the value for money aspect, he proposed to look at a hypothetical case – a municipal theatre in a city of 100,000, with a capacity of 1,000, 150 staff and a budget of RM 500,000, of which “between a third and half would be paid by the city as subsidies”. Assuming a realisation of 70% (which seemed realistic) he arrived at annual audiences of 300,000 – a substantial figure apparently intended to convince even the staunchest Philistine of the importance of a publicly funded theatre. Even aside from the fact that this model did not discuss the repertoire, there are two problems with it: first, the sum of RM 500,000 was quickly outstripped at many theatres as funding needs rocketed out of control, and, second, no theatre was ever able to make up 50% (or even 30%) of its financial needs itself; the income generated by the box office was significantly lower. Therefore, both civic and national funding was substantially higher.

Despite a largely academic fear of public criticism and even despite the very real change of fortunes for Nazi Germany as the war moved decisively in the Allies’ favour, theatres in occupied Europe continued to be in receipt of substantial subsidies and performed their propagandistic role. Looking ahead to the 1943/4 season, Litzmannstadt’s Intendant Hans Hesse declared that his Faust production would compare favourably to the best the big Reich theatres had to offer,⁶⁶ and introduced his plans for three world premieres during the upcoming season, for which a poster was designed to attract season ticket holders.⁶⁷ Overall, the statistics are staggering. In the spring and early summer of 1944 the studio in Litzmannstadt still presented an average of 20 shows and attracted monthly attendances of 10,000, double what they had been two years previously.⁶⁸ As late as June 1944 the municipal theatre still staged 25 performances attracting some 15,000 people.⁶⁹ Surely these figures proved that the subsidies were money well spent.

Titles, benefits, salaries

The importance of these German language theatres for the regime can be seen not only from the substantial and quickly rising subsidies paid to them but also in the rising wages, special benefits and awarding of prizes and titles. Even before a professional German theatre ensemble had actually arrived in Prague, the actors were already receiving the prestigious (and more than slightly pompous) title Staatsschauspieler in May 1939.⁷⁰ The theatre in Posen – despite the fact that it was a moderately sized playhouse in a moderately sized city⁷¹ – was awarded the grand title Reichsgautheater on its festive opening in March 1941 with Goebbels as the main speaker. The German theatre in Krakau was from August 1940 on referred to as the Staatstheater des Generalgouvernements and opened in the presence of Goebbels and Generalgouverneur Hans Frank. The name of Danzig’s Stadttheater had already been elevated to the similarly grand Staatstheater in 1935, and the theatre of the German minority in Hermannstadt (Sibiu) in Romania could from 1933 refer to its small playhouse as the German State Theatre in Romania (Deutsches Landestheater in Rumänien).⁷² In Danzig, although the city’s German language theatre could never have competed with the larger and more influential playhouses in bigger cities elsewhere in the Reich, its status meant that the theatre’s artistic director, Kurt Barré, was promoted to Generalintendant (general artistic manager) in 1941, at a time during the war when promotions had officially been halted.⁷³ Internal communications between the Propaganda Ministry and Gauleiter Albert Forster illustrate that the impetus for the promotion was not to reward a worthy artistic director. Instead, “this particular emphasis of the Danzig theatres shall serve the reputation of your Gau and thus also stress the importance of the entire German East”.⁷⁴ In Krakau artistic director Friedrichfranz Stampe received his promotion to Generalintendant as late as 1944. This was all the more surprising since Stampe had never held a leading managerial position before, after having served as one of the directors for the dramatic repertoire (Oberspielleiter) at the comparatively small regional theatre in Hagen.⁷⁵ His tenure had hardly been plain sailing either, and after a production on New Year’s Eve in 1943 Stampe was even booed off the stage by the audience.⁷⁶ In early 1944 the Propaganda Ministry itself noted that Stampe’s work in Krakau hardly warranted a promotion to general artistic manager.⁷⁷ Later in the same year he still received the new title because, as with Barré, it was matters outside his artistic expertise which helped his career along as Stampe had been a deserved and early party member and had friends and supporters in influential positions.

To stress the importance of the German theatres in the occupied territories and, more pragmatically, to lure actors away from the more prestigious playhouses in the Altreich theatres offered annual contracts, competitive wages and additional benefits.⁷⁸ In Lodsch/Litzmannstadt the actors were provided with furnished flats owned by the theatre,⁷⁹ in Lille they were put up in a requisitioned hotel and select private accommodation and provided with free rail transport and catering,⁸⁰ and in Krakau two whole blocks with 78 furnished rooms were requisitioned and made available for actors.⁸¹ Goebbels paid RM 50,000 towards the erection of an “artists’ home” (Künstlerhaus) and a café in Oslo to make the posting to Norway more attractive.⁸² Other perks were on offer, too. The general artistic manager of Prague’s German theatres, Generalintendant Oskar Walleck, had his own driver and company car and insisted on travelling only first class on the railways, including the first class sleeping carriage.⁸³ In Lille artistic director Ziegler received a company car, too, and it carried a representative flag as well.⁸⁴ Salaries in general compared favourably to those at theatres in the Altreich – and they rose exponentially within a very short period of time. When the Lodsch theatre opened in January 1940, for example, the average monthly salary for an actor was RM 350.⁸⁵ Half a year later, monthly salaries had risen to almost RM 500,⁸⁶ while during the 1941/2 season an average of RM 600 was paid out. Some of the soloists in the musical theatre received up to RM 1,400, and within only three years the salary of the artistic director Hans Hesse increased by over 50%, from RM 1,000 to RM 1,575.⁸⁷ On top of this, every employee received allowances and extra payments (including a so-called development bonus), which could amount to up to RM 100 extra per month.⁸⁸ At the Westphalian theatre of Bielefeld (a theatre of roughly the same size as Litzmannstadt), for example, a typical monthly salary for an actor at the same time was just RM 365, half of what his or her colleagues in Litzmannstadt earned.⁸⁹ Overall salary costs for actors, singers and musicians at Litzmannstadt rocketed from RM 200,000 in 1940 to RM 666,000 in 1942 – more than what some established Reich theatres received as their total annual subsidy.⁹⁰ Even smaller theatres such as the one at Brünn paid good salaries in comparison, with leading artistic and managerial staff earning up to RM 1,000 per month.⁹¹ The same applied to the theatre in Marburg, which was equally small and off the beaten track. It still paid decent salaries, with RM 930 for the artistic director and RM 1,000 for the tenor soloist in the operetta ensemble.⁹² More was paid out in Lille, where the senior management, soloists and conductors received up to RM 1,250, actors no less than RM 650 and rank and file orchestra musicians and chorus members around RM 300 per month.⁹³ Salaries in Oslo ranged from RM 250 for an administrative assistant to RM 1,500 for the solo tenor.⁹⁴ Reflecting its high prestige as a Gautheater, and irrespective of the city’s comparatively small size, Posen paid excellent salaries. Artistic director Karl Peter Heyser, for example, received a monthly salary of RM 2,000.⁹⁵ At the Deutsches Theater in den besetzten Niederlanden, artistic director Wolfgang Nufer earned RM 24,000 annually plus an “allowance” of RM 2,500;⁹⁶ Oslo’s artistic director, Rudolf Zindler, received RM 20,000 on top of his Berlin salary.⁹⁷ In Krakau Stampe’s posting in “the Polish dirt” (as he referred to it) was sweetened by an annual salary of RM 30,000 – a third more than what a permanent secretary in a Reich ministry typically earned.⁹⁸ After his promotion to Generalintendant in 1944, Stampe immediately asked for this to be raised further.⁹⁹ Walleck in Prague offered exorbitant salaries to his leading existing artistic staff as well as to the soloists of the planned opera house – so high, in fact, that the Propaganda Ministry intervened and insisted on them being reduced.¹⁰⁰ In 1943/4, for example, he offered Operettentenor Hannes Raul a contract worth RM 27,000 a year.¹⁰¹ And Walleck rewarded himself royally, too, with an annual salary of RM 36,000.¹⁰²

Guest performances in the occupied territories, particularly by the stars of the business, were popular, not least because they paid well. Count Hidemaro Konoye was paid RM 1,300 for conducting one concert in Litzmannstadt in 1942.¹⁰³ Another guest conductor who stayed three weeks in Litzmannstadt to conduct Tosca and who was asked to write a report assessing whether local audiences were “ready” for grand opera received a princely honorarium of RM 4,000. In Oslo guest soloists received RM 300 per performance, a figure which could potentially see them earning RM 4,500 per month.¹⁰⁴ As the musical theatre at Oslo operated in co-operation with the Berlin Theater des Volkes, singers performed at both venues. To sweeten the pill, Berlin singers performing in Oslo received a daily allowance of RM 50 on top of their Berlin salary – tax free.¹⁰⁵ It is no wonder that performances by visiting companies often ended in a loss. For example, a six day visit of the Volksbühne Berlin to Prague resulted in RM 1,747.50 worth of ticket sales, but the honoraria for the two leading actors (Eugen Klöpfer and Flockina von Platen) alone amounted to RM 1,300. Even the sale of the programme notes made a loss. Only a fifth of their production costs could be recouped.¹⁰⁶ It is worth noting, though, that handsome salaries were only available for German nationals, while local employees received a lot less. The Latvian director of the world famous Riga Opera House, for example, received only RM 500 per month, less than a third of what Hans Hesse, the artistic director at the arguably much less prestigious Litzmannstadt theatre, received.¹⁰⁷ Leading Latvian soloists, conductors and actors could hardly earn more than RM 400 and only if they performed in a clearly specified number of productions.

Investment in material conditions

Support for the theatre did not manifest itself only in rising subsidies and salaries but also in substantial capital expenditure. The Nazis were keen to demonstrate their commitment not only by taking over existing buildings but also by significantly extending them or building new ones.¹⁰⁸ Expensively refurbished theatres and opera houses across Europe also provided the perfect stages for the Nazi representation of power.

Wherever the German authorities took over existing playhouses, they stressed the poor quality of what they had inherited from the previous owners. In Lille the German occupiers claimed that the theatre they had helped establish in 1915 had faced “vandalism” and “neglect” after 1918 and under the subsequent French administration and that it needed German investment and care to rise up again.¹⁰⁹ In Posen the Germans asserted that due to Polish negligence they had to entirely renew the theatre’s technical apparatus.¹¹⁰ The theatres in the newly established Generalgouvernement in occupied Poland had, without exception, “gone to wrack and ruin”.¹¹¹ The expert sent to the Netherlands to evaluate theatres in the country identified only one which was suitable for the Germans, although even the former Theatre for Art and Science in The Hague could hardly be called “representative”, he added.¹¹² At almost every theatre in occupied Europe which the Germans took over, work started immediately – ranging from cosmetic changes to the rebuilding of entire theatres.

Figures 4.1–4.3 Performances at the Prague State Opera House and National Theatre, Prague National Archives.

Figure 4.4 Dress circle, German theatre in Oslo, Oslo National Archives.

In relation to the 1940/1 season Ludwig Körner, president of the Reich Theatre Chamber, proudly remarked that 36 new theatres had opened during the last 12 months.¹¹³ In Oslo RM 1.2 million were spent on turning an existing cinema into the German standing theatre, and a year later, in June 1942, the theatre underwent a further building programme and received a new repository for costumes and properties.¹¹⁴ The three venues which made up the Deutsche Theater Prag from 1939 on were one after one lavishly refurbished and renovated. The studio theatre (Kleines Theater), for example, re-opened in the autumn of 1940 after six months of extensive building works.¹¹⁵ In the same years plans emerged for the small theatre in Iglau-Znaim to move into a purpose built playhouse.

The regime intended to turn the prestigious Riga Opera House into “the large representative German theatre for the Eastern territories”.¹¹⁶ The Reich commissioner intended to open it at the start of the 1942/3 season, but despite the rhetoric of a “German theatre” he was quite happy to take over the existing ensembles – particularly the ballet – because of their high quality. Further plans included significant investment with respect to the interior spaces of the opera house and the setting up of a German acting ensemble which would perform not only in Riga but also in the wider region.¹¹⁷ The all-important statement of intent, however, was the taking over of the opera house, not only because of its reputation but also because it had originally been opened by the Germans in 1863.

If we want to establish Germany’s leading cultural role in the Ostland the Riga Opera House, which the Germans had erected for the city […], has to be taken over by the Germans again and turned into the representative theatre of the East.¹¹⁸

Figures 4.5–4.6 Two architectural sketches, Iglau Stadttheater, Office of the Reich Protector, Prague National Archives.

Litzmannstadt’s city council intended to build an entirely new theatre and had plans for operetta and even opera.¹¹⁹ The city’s mayor stated that overall costs would run up to RM 1.8 million.¹²⁰ In January 1942 the city opened a studio theatre (Kammerspiele, capacity of 456), which operated alongside the municipal theatre (capacity of 730), and later in the same year a new dancing school was added to Litzmannstadt’s cultural portfolio (attached to the playhouse).¹²¹ Generalgouverneur Hans Frank invested significant sums to turn Krakau’s playhouse into a representative state theatre.¹²² Work started immediately at a whole range of other theatres in the Generalgouvernement to turn them into proper playhouses fit to receive the leading ensembles of the region.¹²³ The German theatre in Warsaw, for example, was refurbished at great cost and fitted with the latest stage technology.¹²⁴ Straßburg opened its theatre after renovations in 1941, and a second studio stage was added in 1943. Ahead of its opening in March 1941 the theatre in Posen underwent major building works to the tune of RM 1 million,¹²⁵ and Lille received RM 850,000 for “essential” building and renovation works.¹²⁶ Even smaller stages such as the ones in Marburg and Cilli in former Slovenia asked for RM 555,000 and RM 380,000 respectively for “necessary” works to be carried out.¹²⁷ The theatre in Bromberg opened in October 1940 after extensive building work, including the renovation of the auditorium, additions to the lighting system and a new revolving stage. In 1942 it even opened a second stage for smaller productions. Right up to the very end of the war significant building projects were still being undertaken. In July 1943 the Nazis opened a new stage in Gotenhafen on which the theatres from Danzig and Zoppot both performed.¹²⁸ In autumn that year Thorn’s theatre life was augmented by a second stage and a puppet theatre company.¹²⁹ In 1943/4 the regime planned two entirely new thea-tres in the Warthegau – in Kalisch and Hohensalza – although a professional and subsidised regional touring company (the Landesbühne Gau Wartheland) already performed in both towns.¹³⁰ When paper rationing began in early 1944 (banning all printing of posters, programme notes and even tickets) after a decision taken in November 1943, a number of theatres “in the East” received special permission to print programmes notes regardless, for “ethnic reasons”.¹³¹

As discussed above, a number of places in Central and Eastern Europe had featured German language theatres before, which offered Nazi propaganda the possibility to justify a renewed German theatrical presence and linked investment. At other places, particularly in Western Europe, no such legacy existed. The foundation of substantial German theatres in France, Norway, the Netherlands and Ukraine was artificial and without precedent. Lille, for example, had never been German, yet in early 1941 the Deutsches Theater opened.¹³² The initial impetus for the foundation was the significant presence of German troops in the region, just south of the Pas de Calais, at least for as long as an invasion of Britain was still in the cards. However, from the outset the theatres in Oslo and Lille were not meant to be “soldiers’ theatres” alone; both undertook extensive touring and were keen to perform for civilian audiences, too. The Lille company performed all over Northern France and Belgium, with the added role of playing its part in bringing about some sort of Flemish state (loyal to the German Reich, of course) made up of both Belgian and French territories at some point in the future.¹³³ Crucially, too, none of these playhouses were taken over by the army, and they represented civic institutions more than anything. 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 KdF. It was also meant to show the locals that the Germans meant to stay in these areas and were providing them with “superior German culture”.¹³⁴

Investment, however, did not exclusively relate to capital expenditure vis-àvis buildings but extended to issues of technical equipment, interior appointment and design. Properties, scenery and costumes had to be bought from elsewhere or made from scratch, and new workshops had to be built and equipped to produce these. The Germans were keen to use the latest technologies, particularly concerning lighting and stage design, as many theatres received revolving stages. Advertising played an increasingly important role, too. Theatres received their own photo studios, print works, design workshops and public relations offices.¹³⁵ They instigated new and elaborate systems of advertising by, for example, banning other advertisements for cultural events ahead of new seasons (when prospective patrons were supposed to buy their season tickets).¹³⁶ Posters were printed on site, widely distributed and centrally placed in specially erected display cabinets. New letter-heads, advertisements, business cards, etc. were professionally created and uniformly branded following the latest approaches to corporate design. An additional area of investment was staff. As pointed out above, the focus on professional standards meant that whole ensembles were moved across Europe, and in particular from theatres in the Baltic states to towns and cities in former Poland. Further investment in staff was possible, too, and year on year rises in staff numbers and staff costs were almost the norm. Posen, for example, appointed a number of new staff ahead of its opening in 1941. There were now almost 30 artistic staff (managers, directors, dramaturges, etc.), 30 actors, 17 opera singers, 13 operetta singers, 8 administrators, 36 chorus members, 23 ballet dancers and 19 leading technical staff (with an additional significant number of workers, technicians and apprentices), plus a symphony orchestra with 60 musicians.¹³⁷ In the following season (1942/3) the theatre already employed 53 leading administrative and artistic staff (Bühnenvorstände), a rise of 57%. There were also 38 actors, 22 opera singers, 16 operetta singers, 38 chorus members, 28 ballet dancers, a 60 strong symphony orchestra, plus many additional workers and stage hands, who did not appear in the list printed in the programme notes (because many, no doubt, would have been Polish).¹³⁸ The number of employees at Prague’s theatres rose exorbitantly from 110 in 1939 to almost 500 in 1943, with the technical department alone employing 140 technicians, tradesmen and workers.¹³⁹ Ahead of its second season, Krakau’s ensemble was extended to 14 singers for opera and operetta, 12 ballet dancers, a chorus of 12, 26 actors and an orchestra of 50.¹⁴⁰ Litzmannstadt, too, was quickly brought up to a level comparable to that of any large German city. At the beginning of the 1940/1 season the company consisted of 29 actors, 1 artistic director, 1 scene designer, 2 dramaturges, 3 directors, 1 conductor, 1 costume designer and 2 administrative staff. At the end of the following season, in July 1942, the theatre’s size had increased substantially – at a time when many German theatres had to cut down in size and make savings in view of the war effort. Management and senior artistic staff now made up 16 people, and there were another 13 staff in administration, 48 actors, 20 singers in the theatre’s own professional chorus, 14 dancers plus an associated dance school, and 9 technical staff.¹⁴¹ In August 1940 Litzmannstadt received its own fully funded municipal orchestra for the first time in the city’s history – another propaganda coup for the regime, it seemed. Whereas the city’s musical life before 1939 had been char-acterised by “popular music of Jewish-Polish-American persuasion”,¹⁴² musical director Adolf Bautze now headed a professional orchestra of 52 (which soon afterwards reached its full capacity of 85 musicians) who played a series of symphony concerts alongside providing the music for the theatre. The orchestra, too, was in receipt of municipal as well as national funds. The Propaganda Ministry paid special subsidies which rose to RM 100,000 in 1943.¹⁴³ In 1944 – when many staff had already been called up to the armed forces – the theatre still employed 23 actors, 15 opera soloists, 30 chorus members and 11 dancers, plus a municipal orchestra of 50 musicians, 3 conductors, 1 pianist and 2 choral coaches.¹⁴⁴ In fact, the theatre’s size compared favourably to some of the more established municipal theatres in the Altreich, and towards the end of the war it outstripped many of them.¹⁴⁵ Lille, too, was very well equipped, with a “company extensive and varied enough to undertake a full programme of opera, operetta, drama, orchestral concerts and dance performances”. The theatre employed 430 staff, including 200 non-German stage hands, technicians and musicians.¹⁴⁶ Many theatres in smaller towns which had previously played host to touring companies now received their own professional ensembles. The small town of Teschen in Upper Silesia, for example, was given a professional standing company in 1941. Not only did Thorn get a professional ensemble, but the theatre was also substantially renovated and received its own municipal orchestra and ballet school (with 60 students). When it re-opened in 1942 the theatre employed 200 staff.¹⁴⁷

Representative opera was of key interest to the Nazis – not least because of the Wagner connection – and despite immense costs linked to building and sustaining opera houses, their large casts and orchestras, and expensive productions. When discussing the spaces available for a future German theatre in Oslo, one large enough to produce opera as well, the Germans discarded one particular venue because it was only suitable for staging small operettas and Singspiele. 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, to “meet the demands in terms of representation”.¹⁴⁸ In 1942 the German Opera House in Oslo eventually opened with a capacity of 750.¹⁴⁹ It was the only standing opera house in Norway, and its third anniversary was celebrated with a “magnificent” production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.¹⁵⁰ The regime planned to erect a new opera house in Danzig,¹⁵¹ and in Thorn artistic director Theodor Anton Modes had set his mind on turning this small theatre into the “Mozart centre of the East”.¹⁵² At Riga’s opera house, which already had an excellent reputation, the occupiers reinstated the German inscription on the building’s front elevation and were keen to be associated with such an important cause. Although there were two other performance spaces in Riga, it was the opera house which attracted the occupiers’ particular attention.¹⁵³ The focus on opera was also evident in Kiev, where the opera house was the main focus of German theatrical activity in Ukraine.

The 1941 Mozart anniversary offered the Germans a particular opportunity not only to claim Mozart as a German composer but also to increase their efforts vis-àvis the opera in general. Mozart’s universal appeal was of immense propagandistic potential for the regime, and not surprisingly the 150th anniversary of his death was commemorated with festivals and special performances all over occupied Europe and even in areas Mozart had never set foot in, like Poland. Undeterred, Generalgouverneur Hans Frank instigated the Krakau Mozart Days in December 1941.¹⁵⁴ There was a lavish Mozart Week in Paris, and celebrations in Amsterdam and Flanders, too.¹⁵⁵ Clever theatre directors also identified the anniversary as a possible way to add opera to their performance portfolios and argued for additional investment. Prague, for example, was finally to get its own German opera house and the connection to the “German Mozart” played a significant part here.¹⁵⁶ The ongoing debates about this venture deserve closer attention because they illustrate some key interests and issues in the way Nazi Germany conducted Theaterpolitik in the occupied territories. Generalintendant Oskar Walleck was keen to increase the profile of German theatre in Prague (and his own) by establishing the “best German opera company outside Germany”. This company would not only perform in Prague but also, as the leading European opera company, tour the whole continent.¹⁵⁷ A few days after submitting his proposal, however, Walleck received a negative reply from Berlin as Goebbels did “not think it was a good idea”. Instead, the Propaganda Ministry suggested that touring productions by leading German opera houses would have to do for the foreseeable future.¹⁵⁸ However, the issue of a German opera house in Prague did not go away and remained on the agenda, also because German audiences flocked to the Czech opera house to appreciate the “incredible efforts and excellent achievements of the Czechs”.¹⁵⁹ Throughout 1941 letters and notes went back and forth between Walleck, the Protectorate administration and Berlin, and on 18 July 1941 Schlösser eventually came to Prague to discuss the matter in an all day meeting with all major protagonists present. They all agreed that a German opera in Prague was important, and Walleck reckoned that in its first year of operation it would need a subsidy of RM 3.1 million, plus building costs of RM 1.4 million. Plans for this had already been submitted to the Reichskanzlei (the Reich Chancellery, Hitler’s presidential palace) with costs being met by Hitler and Goebbels on a 50/50 split basis. Despite these immense costs Goebbels offered his support for the project provided Walleck revised his business plan down, as a number of items in the budget appeared too high. In fact, some of the proposed salaries were twice as high as what was being paid at the leading opera houses in Vienna, Munich and Berlin. Walleck then duly revised some of the items, but not by much. Crucially, however, he did not reduce the star salaries, which had been particularly criticised by Schlösser, and vehemently denied that further reductions in the proposed opera budget were possible – if he was to remain in Prague(!). In a candid letter Unterstaatssekretär von Burgsdorff (in the Office for Cultural Affairs at the Protectorate administration) pointed out to Walleck that further reductions were vital if the undertaking was to have any hope of success, particularly in the context of an expanding war in the East. Burgsdorff appealed to Walleck’s good will – in vain, as it turned out. Walleck agreed only to a relatively small further reduction, which still left the budget just short of RM 3.1 million. In a letter to Schlösser, Karl Freiherr von Gregory explained that Walleck was proving obstructive, unwilling to enter into any further discussions, and in fact threatening to withdraw from the whole project entirely. Gregory made it quite clear that he thought this was unacceptable. He then attempted to reduce the budget himself and arrived at further savings of RM 478,000. The discussions then dragged on; the Propaganda Ministry asked about possible contributions from the Protectorate administration, the regional Bohemian authorities and Prague city council, and in December 1941 the Office for Cultural Affairs indeed confirmed that these three bodies would together make RM 500,000 available in additional support. However, this seemed to have been too little too late for the Propaganda Ministry, which in early 1942 pulled out – at least out of the building project – and in March the Berlin Finance Ministry declared that it was not agreeing to the use of Reich funds to subsidise a German opera house in Prague. This seemed to be the end of the story. Undeterred, Walleck in the same month (March 1942) suggested the foundation of an operetta ensemble instead of the much more expensive opera, an idea which met with support from all quarters, and one which developed quickly. Already in May the Berlin Finance Ministry agreed to a subsidy of RM 420,000, and Walleck immediately started with the casting. The operetta performances were going to take place in the famous Ständetheater with an orchestra made up of German as well as Czech musicians. Interestingly, while the operetta started performing, the opera remained on the agenda, and further notes and letters were being exchanged in the autumn of 1942 discussing various scenarios with suggested start dates in the autumn of 1944 or the autumn of 1945. In February 1943 Walleck asked for RM 600,000 to be made available for regular opera performances by visiting companies from the Vienna, Dresden, Berlin and Munich opera houses in 1943/4. However, the Propaganda Ministry, by now clearly annoyed with what they regarded as Walleck’s exorbitant requests, radically revised this down to RM 260,000 and required Walleck to come up with a revised plan (which he refused to do). Ultimately, things turned out very different. Instead of visiting companies Prague received its own opera company in the autumn of 1943, although it was “only” the Duisburg opera company, which had been bombed out of its home and transferred to Prague. Also, they did not operate under Walleck’s leadership but under the company’s own opera director, Georg Hartmann, so Walleck had no control over the undertaking. In the end the Duisburg company, which arrived in November 1943 but only started performing in early 1944, only stayed a few months, until all theatres were closed in August 1944.¹⁶⁰

The investment the Nazis poured into theatrical undertakings across Europe was astonishing and in itself noteworthy. Crucially, as well, the German investment brutally destroyed existing cultural landscapes and balanced ecologies of arts provision in affected towns and cities. Litzmannstadt, for example, a city which had hosted a number of successful theatres in the 1930s, most of which had been run on a business footing, suddenly had an expensive municipal playhouse imposed on it. The theatre soon opened a second venue, started to offer operetta and ballet produced by its own ensembles, and during the 1943/4 season even introduced grand opera. There was a newly founded professional municipal orchestra and a new dance school associated with the playhouse. Not surprisingly, in view of the lack of a sufficiently large German population to sustain all these venues, they constantly ran a deficit. More importantly for the regime, however, it had in a few years’ time succeeded in changing the cultural landscape of the city substantially and irreversibly – or so it seemed.

Repertoires

Rising subsidies and investment had an immediate impact on repertoires. Seasons were extended, theatres presented much more elaborate productions, and the number of productions and performances per season rose. Prague’s Ständetheater presented 31 drama premieres in its first season alone.¹⁶¹ Between its opening and the end of July 1942 the Deutsches Theater in Lille produced eight different operas, five operettas and ten dance choreographies and gave almost 700 performances. The symphony orchestra accompanied the musical theatre and gave 17 symphony and 20 chamber music concerts of its own.¹⁶² The Alsatian theatre of Mühlhausen in 1942/3 produced 48 premieres and reached 445 performances that year.¹⁶³ In its first season of operation the Doppeltheater Kattowitz/Königshütte produced 12 operas, 9 operettas and 23 plays, achieving 526 performances in total.¹⁶⁴ The thea-tre in The Hague managed 350 performances in its first year of operation.¹⁶⁵ The Gautheater in Posen in 1942/3 featured 283 dramatic, 147 operatic and 166 operetta performances. A year later, during 1943/4, these figures had risen even further to 784 performances overall – an increase of 31%.¹⁶⁶ The prestigious Riga Opera House performed the entire Wagnerian operatic repertoire in signature productions and with leading guests from Germany. During 1941/2 the opera put on 356 performances.¹⁶⁷ The opera house in Kiev planned to produce 13 operas, 5 operettas and 5 ballets during the 1943/4 season alone.¹⁶⁸ The same season was the busiest ever at Danzig, with 388 performances.¹⁶⁹ Even the small theatre at Marburg managed to produce seven operas and seven operettas in the first four and a half months of its existence.¹⁷⁰ The theatre in Litzmannstadt offered between 28 and 32 new works per season, and the number of performances rose from 330 in 1940/1 to 546 in 1942/3.¹⁷¹ Overall, and almost everywhere in occupied Europe, the statistics were impressive. Until their closure in September 1944 the number of productions, the output of new plays per season, and audience figures rose steadily, and sometimes significantly. The theatre in Lille put on almost 3,900 performances between May 1941 and July 1944 with total audiences of over two million. While not constantly performing to “capacity audiences” as claimed by contemporary German press reviews, a utilisation of 84% was certainly more than respectable.¹⁷² However, although quantity was important for the regime, quality was just as much.

Nazi theatre critic Hermann Christian Mettin’s dictum that “the character of the repertoire determines the nature of theatre” rang particularly true in occupied Europe, where the Germans throughout the war remained concerned with the quality of theatre programmes and were keen to retain high standards.¹⁷³ Wartime thea-tre had to fulfil moral, political and artistic demands, and these demands were expressed in each theatre’s repertoire, as The Hague’s dramaturge Karl Peter Biltz stated. “Theatre repertoires are never random, they have an obligation”, he added, and the particular obligations of the theatre in The Hague were determined by the cultural tasks resulting from the theatre’s geographical position “in the upper north-west of the Germanic space”.¹⁷⁴ Further east in the 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”.¹⁷⁵ In Thorn the new Nazi administration claimed in late 1939 that the Poles had turned the old German theatre into a “place for cheap entertainment”, and that it needed the German advance to “return the theatre to its great original mission” – a clear statement of programmatic intent.¹⁷⁶ The dramaturgical concerns voiced by commentators, practitioners and cultural politicians related to the choice of the works performed, production aesthetics and craft aspects. Claims of German superiority and leadership, coupled with the assertion that the German nation had produced a disproportionally high number of creative minds and some of the world’s leading artists (as put forward by Günther and Chamberlain – see above), needed to find expression in theatre programmes of the highest quality. Not surprisingly, therefore, the political and propagandistic demands on programmes were significant and set in immediately after occupation. “The composition of repertoires in these regions [i.e. the annexed and occupied areas] requires particular attention”, Karl Künkler claimed in 1942.¹⁷⁷ Celebrating the efforts to set up theatres all over Europe and immediately following Germany’s advancing armies, Heinz Kindermann added that “there was a lot more at stake here than mere ‘diversion’”.¹⁷⁸ 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 as well if these theatres are to fulfil the task set before them as outposts of German culture”.¹⁷⁹ Instead, it was absolutely vital for wartime theatre in occupied Europe that its repertoire was based on “Shakespeare, Schiller and Goethe, Verdi and Wagner […] in perfectly accomplished productions”.¹⁸⁰ “Wishes for entertainment, box office successes even”, were out of place.¹⁸¹ Instead, theatre in wartime had the “obligation to represent the perfected art of national and cultural education” and “to lead the German people to the eternal sources of its strength”.¹⁸² To achieve its völkisch mission and to remain in line with the regime’s racial ideology, anything “degenerate” was banned from stages, too. This could be read politically (and so relate to left-wing authors) as well as racially, as any work of art with a Jewish collaborator was out of bounds. On both counts, it has to be said, official policy could sometimes be contradictory, however.¹⁸³ In some of the occupied territories home-grown playwriting was prohibited, too. In the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, for example, no Czech plays were allowed on German stages.¹⁸⁴ In Ukraine, however, theatres produced plays in German and Ukrainian, not least to woo the Ukrainian separatists, and a Ukrainian National Choir was founded which even performed in Berlin.¹⁸⁵

Across occupied Europe, German language theatres opened with grand productions of the classics using 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” in the occupied territories.¹⁸⁶ Lille featured Kleist’s Prince of Homburg and Goethe’s Egmont in early 1941, and opened its second season in November with Wagner’s Tannhäuser. Ziegler’s further plans for the season included the great German classics (Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Kleist, Hebbel and Grabbe), contemporary German plays and classical drama by foreign authors. Among the operatic works performed were Mozart’s The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro, Puccini’s La Bohème and Madame Butterfly and Albert Lortzing’s Der Waffenschmied (The Armourer).¹⁸⁷ The German theatre in Prague opened in 1939 with a series of high profile productions of classical drama and presented five premieres in six days. The first season overall featured an impressive 34 new productions over eight months. In the 1940/1 season the Ständetheater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) featured in its repertoire productions of plays by Grillparzer (Medea), Franz Hauptmann (Der Goldene Helm), Goethe (Iphigenie auf Tauris), Schiller (Kabale und Liebe and Don Karlos), Lessing (Minna von Barnhelm), Shakespeare (Richard III) and even Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.¹⁸⁸ A year later Richard III, Medea and both Schiller dramas were still in the repertoire and had been joined by Lessing’s Emilia Galotti, Goethe’s Torquato Tasso, Schiller’s Die Braut von Messina, Hebbel’s Gyges und sein Ring, Grillparzer’s Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen and Goethe’s Faust – a more than respectable effort, it seemed.¹⁸⁹ The theatre’s press office announced that the 1942/3 season would focus on classics and contemporary drama, well made plays in the studio (“gepflegten Konversationsstücken”) and operetta in the Opernhaus (the former New German Theatre) performed for the first time by its own ensemble – a highly respectable programme for one of Europe’s leading stages it seemed.¹⁹⁰

Posen’s theatre opened in March 1941 with Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio and Kleist’s Prince of Homburg, Krakau presented Hebbel’s Agnes Bernauer after Beethoven’s Coriolan overture, Zagreb offered Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris as their first productions, and The Hague opened in 1942 with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The Danzig theatre opened the 1939/40 season with five new productions in the first eight days (one drama, one comedy, two operas and one operetta), with Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen und Wagner’s Lohengrin as celebrated highlights. The beginning of the season also marked the return of the formerly independent city-state to the German Reich. The Doppeltheater Kattowitz/Königshütte began in September 1941 with Wagner’s Lohengrin and Schiller’s Maria Stuart, and in 1943 produced Wagner’s entire Ring cycle.¹⁹¹ The small theatre in Bromberg produced Hebbel’s mighty Nibelungen in 1942/3. During the 1941/2 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 (13 productions altogether). There were an additional ten operetta productions, seven dance shows and four world premieres.¹⁹² Ahead of its first season in 1942/3, The Hague intended to produce 19 operas (including those of Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi and Wagner), 16 plays (including classical drama by Goethe, Grabbe, Kleist, Schiller, Lessing and Shakespeare, as well as the highly praised völkisch drama) and 9 operettas.¹⁹³ The preview for the 1943/4 season still listed an impressive 11 operas and 13 plays, including one each by Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer and Richard Billinger.¹⁹⁴ The theatre in Thorn started with the nationalistic anti-Polish historical drama Anke von Skoepen by Friedrich Bethge, one of the officially supported playwrights during the Third Reich. As late as summer 1944 the theatre in Thorn planned a programme of premieres, which took place in June. Although the programme did not feature any exciting new plays, it still showed the theatre’s attempt to take its cultural role seriously and “actively contribute to shaping the current times”.¹⁹⁵ Kleist’s Prince of Homburg proved a 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. 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.¹⁹⁶ Like the young prince Homburg, a new generation followed their Führer’s leadership, accepted his judgement and obeyed his orders unfailingly.

The Theater der Stadt Lodsch, as it was called until the city received its new name Litzmannstadt, also opened with a German classic: Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm. This choice seemed to bode well for a heroic, Germanic and uplifting repertoire. On the occasion of the theatre’s opening in January 1940, the city’s mayor, Franz Schiffer, demanded that “the German theatre in Lodsch must develop into a fortress of German spirit and German culture here in the east of the Reich”.¹⁹⁷ The press was equally ecstatic – and equally demanding: “It is a matter of course for a German theatre, which has to fulfil such an important cultural mission, that only those dramatic works can be considered which are products of a truly German mind.”¹⁹⁸ The theatre produced 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 Magdalena). It performed Goethe’s epic Faust I in a production which was staged seven times in ten days in the spring of 1943.¹⁹⁹ Apart from the classics the theatre also incorporated nationalistic and völkisch plays into its repertoire. In May 1942 the theatre produced Eberhard Wolfgang Möller’s Das Opfer (The Victim), a production which was accompanied by intense media coverage,²⁰⁰ as well as Hermann Burte’s Katte and Felix Dhünen’s Uta von Naumburg. During a typical week, between 12 and 19 April 1942, the Litzmannstadt offered 14 productions at its two venues. Apart from a dance production by its own ballet ensemble (which was performed three times during this week), the theatre offered Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (four performances); three contemporary comedies by Waldemar Frank, Heinz Steguweit and Felix Lützkendorf (with four performances between them); and two operettas (three performances)²⁰¹ – a respectable showing, one might think. The theatre seemed to take its cultural mission seriously, in other respects as well. In October 1943 the theatre premiered Emmerich Nuß’ comedy Dissonances. Artistic director Hesse faxed the Leipzig publishers of this play afterwards to relay the happy news that it had been a huge success and “received 28 curtain calls at the end”.²⁰² As late as November 1943 the theatre offered a “week of premieres” with four different plays.²⁰³

Ultimately, however, a closer look at the repertoires over and above the grand announcements and glossy season reviews reveals that attempts at highly politicised theatre programmes failed and theatres quickly adopted much more pedestrian fare.²⁰⁴ The theatre in Warsaw, for example, hardly produced any serious plays at all and concentrated almost entirely on “the lighter fare”. Even the prestigious Berlin State Opera on its visit to Warsaw in late 1940 did not produce a grand opera but medleys of popular opera and operetta songs.²⁰⁵ In Lille, despite the grand plans ahead of the first season (see above), the repertoire eventually realised looked very different to Ziegler’s previous announcements. Of the mighty German classics, neither Grabbe nor Hebbel nor Grillparzer was ever performed in Lille during the course of the war. 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. Shakespeare fared only slightly better, with Hamlet being performed 13 times (eight in Lille, five on tour), and The Taming of the Shrew 11 times, with six of the performances taking place in Paris.²⁰⁶ Lille, like most other theatres in this investigation, stayed well clear of the celebrated völkisch dramas by playwrights such as Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer, Hanns Johst, Richard Euringer, Richard Billinger, Eberhard Wolfgang Möller, Curt Langenbeck, Hans Rehberg or Heinrich Bethge. The only exceptions were two historical plays by Felix Dhünen (Uta von Naumburg) and Otto Erler (Struensee). The vast majority of the plays produced were contemporary comedies and farces, such as 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 across Germany.²⁰⁷ The theatre also relied on older established comedy formats such as the classic nineteenth century comedy Der Raub der Sabinerinnen (The Abduction of the Sabine Women) by the Schönthan brothers and August Hinrichs’ Krach um Iolanthe (Much Ado about Iolanthe). In addition to a busy programme of comedies, farces and operettas, German language 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).²⁰⁸ A cursory look at the 1941 repertoire suggests that Lille featured one classical play for every four comedies it produced. In Prague, despite claims to the contrary and attempts at a high culture repertoire at the beginning, the German theatres throughout 1940/1 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 amongst Girls), Coubier’s Aimee, Schäfer’s Reise nach Paris (Trip to Paris) and many more, including the classic comedy Der Raub der Sabinerinnen (see above). In 1941/2 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 first and foremost.²⁰⁹ Paul Ernst, the “visionary” of the völkisch drama and ideological mentor of a new generation of nationalistic playwrights in the 1920s, was represented in the repertoire but not with one of his “worthy” plays, such as Preußengeist or Yorck, but with his comedy Pantalon und seine Söhne. Other hits of the season were farces such as Toni Impekoven’s Das kleine Hofkonzert (The Little Court Concert), Ferdinand Raimund’s Der Bauer als Millionär (Peasant as Millionnaire) and Friedrich Michael’s Der blaue Strohhut (The Blue Straw Hat).²¹⁰ Although Posen during its first season (1941/2) produced a number of classical plays and operas, the majority of the fare was of a primarily entertaining nature. Möller’s anti-Semitic Rothschild siegt bei Waterloo (Rothschild Wins at Waterloo) was the only political play in a season dominated by comedies and operettas. And the performance figures show that audiences clearly favoured this entertaining fare. Whereas Goethe’s worthy Clavigo reached nine performances throughout the season, Alois Johannes Lippl’s peasant comedy Der Holledauer Schimmel (The Holledau White Horse) was played 20 times and Franz Lehár’s Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) 40 times.²¹¹ Posen’s next season did not look much different, with Hermann Bahr’s comedy The Concert (Das Konzert) and operettas by Benatzky (My Sister and I) and Johann Strauss (Die Fledermaus) topping the bill.²¹² Thorn, too, relied on comedies and operettas and produced only a single classical play in its first season.²¹³ The moderately successful run of Heinz Ortner’s historical drama Isabella of Spain during the 1939/40 season at Danzig 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.²¹⁴ The most successful play of the 1941/2 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 Ruggero Leoncavallo’s popular classic double opera Pagliacci/ Cavalleria Rusticana.²¹⁵ Neither Schiller nor Shakespeare, and neither Kolbenheyer nor Möller, provided Danzig’s theatre with the greatest successes but the operettas of Franz Lehár. His Der Zarewitsch (The Tsarevich) and Schön ist die Welt (How Fair the World) were the most popular productions of the 1939/40 season. The last two seasons were dominated by operettas of the Viennese school, such as those of August Peppöck and Carl Zeller. Stephan Wolting reckoned that during the war the Danzig theatre showed at least one operetta performance every two days.²¹⁶ Similarly, the share of the operetta repertoire at Bromberg grew steadily and significantly over the years. Not surprisingly, the most successful theatre productions of the entire period were Carl Millöcker’s Der Bettelstudent (The Beggar Student) with 28 performances and Fred Raymond’s Die Perle von Tokay (The Pearl of Tokay) with 26 performances.²¹⁷ The situation at the other theatres under consideration here was no different, for example at Metz, Brünn, Budweis, Iglau-Znaim, Olmütz and Mährisch-Ostrau.²¹⁸

Attempts were made to justify the largely entertaining and amusing repertoire as relating to the Nazi völkisch agenda and particularly the “Blood and Soil” discourse. In Prague, as if to pre-empt possible criticism, a number of articles in the programme notes “explained” the entertaining character of the repertoire, particularly in the studio.²¹⁹ Ernst Leopold Stahl in 1941 defended, and even praised, the “new German comedy” in Posen’s programme notes, and particularly those plays which were rooted in popular German traditions (“stark im Volkstum verwurzelt”) – a trademark, however, which could probably be applied to almost every comedy.²²⁰ In fact, the comedy was superior to the tragedy in its “life affirming” character, Werner von der Schulenburg claimed, and, therefore, the current surge in comedies was not surprising and indeed indicative of Germany’s power and energy.²²¹ In a long essay published in Posen’s programme notes a year later, Max Baumann posited that today’s theatre needed “grand drama” as well as comedies; it was not an “either-or” situation.²²² 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 allow 50% of their programmes be taken up by comedies and other largely entertaining fare. Another line of defence was the claim that German minority audiences across Europe lacked the experience of being exposed to high culture and art. In effect – as argued, for example, by Litzmannstadt’s chief dramaturge Hanns Merck – the expectations should not be too high and theatre programming needed to be flexible. In order to justify Litzmannstadt’s pedestrian repertoire he posited:

In Litzmannstadt it is important to reach out to audiences who are partly still negotiating their way in a new environment, which so far has been largely alien to German theatre. [The theatre, therefore,] has to offer a mixed fare, one which is palatable to people of every age, every class, personnel who are only temporarily stationed here and people who have moved here from all areas of the Greater German Empire.²²³

Merck’s comments were a desperate attempt to defend a choice of programme which increasingly relied on light entertainment and avoided the classical canon as too “heavy”.²²⁴

Figure 4.7 Litzmannstadt theatre repertoire, ca. 1943, Łódź City Archives.

But even here some quarters admitted defeat. Peter Lorenz, writing for the Sudetendeutsche kulturpolitische Monatsblätter “Volk an der Arbeit”, had to concede that despite attempts to argue the contrary there simply had not been any significant dramatic talents among the Sudeten German population – not even with regard to comedies and farces.²²⁵

Another way 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 theatre company at Lille intimated that “the overriding consideration was that the repertoire should be neither too intellectually demanding nor too boring”.²²⁶ These kinds of plays often toured widely. Zerkaulen’s Der Sprung aus dem Alltag (A Break from Routine), for example, toured throughout occupied France and was put on in Paris, Bordeaux, Dax, Biarritz and Bayonne.²²⁷ 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 was celebrated as a “charming little comedy”.²²⁸ In these cases newspaper reviews often mentioned the presence of soldiers in the audience, as if to justify the theatres’ shallow repertoire. But even with respect to entertaining the troops the original expectations and plans had been very different. Ernst Andreas Ziegler, the artistic director at Lille, in a newspaper article on the occasion of the opening of the theatre in May 1941, declared that “opera, operetta and the classic drama” would feature in the repertoire. He would perform comedies as well but not to supply “simple entertainment but to provide profound and deep values”.²²⁹ Additional problems arose in connection with the changing political and cultural climate. A new political course could affect theatre repertoires and necessitate immediate changes. The infamous German-Soviet pact of 1939, for example, made the presence of Russian plays in repertoires desirable, albeit for a relatively short period of time until the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941.²³⁰ Plays like Alexander Ostrowski’s Late Love were briefly produced after 1939, only to be replaced by others paying tribute to renewed anti-Soviet sentiments, such as Herbert Reinecker’s The Village near Odessa.²³¹ Anti-Polish plays, which had been successful before and after the take-over, were forbidden after the German-Polish treaty of 1934, only to be reinstated after 1939.²³² Even the approach to drama and music from countries that Germany was officially at war with was confusing at times. No theatre or ensemble operating in the occupied Soviet Union was allowed to stage any Russian plays or music; even classical works by Gogol or Tchaikovsky were forbidden. In Riga, however, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake was performed during the 1943/4 season and even recorded on film for propaganda purposes.²³³ Shakespeare, Shaw, Bizet and Chopin were also fine in the Baltic states and also elsewhere in occupied Russia.²³⁴ Generally speaking, the comedies by British playwrights such as Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, Somerset Maugham and Laurence Housman were simply too popular, and some works remained in the repertoires even after war had been declared on Britain.²³⁵ The Nazis conveniently interpreted Shaw as Irish, and therefore as a quasi-ally of the Nazis’ anti-English cause, and Shakespeare as an established part of the German theatrical canon and almost an adopted German.²³⁶ Bizet’s Carmen is a similar case. Although French works were prohibited after 1939, the popular favourite Carmen continued to be produced.²³⁷ Even within the Nazi administration, leading protagonists such as Hans Hinkel and Rainer Schlösser regularly clashed over what should be allowed and what should not. Schlösser wanted to ban operas by Meyerbeer and Offenbach, for example, but Hinkel took a less hard line view. In the Protectorate there were similarly long and sometimes contradictory instructions concerning English and French works, which seem to have been produced on Czech stages for a lot longer than elsewhere in the Reich.²³⁸

Audiences

What becomes clear in the often fraught and contradictory debates about the “correct” choice of repertoire is that audience figures were of vital importance, too. The popular success of its theatre was crucial for the Nazi regime in view of the high subsidies paid, but also with regard to claims of the superior quality of the German theatre, which surely would draw in the crowds. Records in attendance figures, therefore, were keenly expected and constantly used in propaganda. Failing to attract large audiences not only would have contradicted claims of the dawn of a true “national theatre” (Volkstheater) but also would have compared unfavourably to the years of the Weimar Republic, during which – according to Nazi propaganda claims – a degenerate Avant-Garde theatre had played to pitiful audiences of like-minded people. In occupied Europe the desired popular success was difficult to achieve, however, as the German language theatres were primarily aimed at German minority audiences, both existing and new ones comprising members of the Wehrmacht and occupation administration, as well as people moving permanently into areas now declared German, such as the Wartheland. In Riga the Germany minority had decreased significantly after the First World War, yet 70% of audiences going to the opera house were Germans, and at other places this figure was even higher. A report from December 1941 noted with satisfaction that although the Riga opera was still formally run by the Latvians it largely catered for a German audience, with Wagner’s Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser sung in German.²³⁹ This situation posed significant challenges in regions with small German populations and/or local populations who were not prepared to support the German ventures or were not allowed to. But even if numbers were substantial, like the estimated 40,000–60,000 Germans living in Prague at the outbreak of the war, they could not necessarily sustain a theatre – or three, as was the case in Prague. Numbers were bumped up by allowing the non-German population to go to the German theatre at some places, such as in The Hague, Oslo, Lille, Thorn, Bromberg, Kattowitz, Kiev, Marburg and Prague. At other places attendance was strictly reserved for German nationals, like at Litzmannstadt, Posen and Krakau and throughout the Generalgouvernement.²⁴⁰ Even opening theatres up to the locals, however, did not guarantee full houses as the more or less open boycotts in Oslo, Lille, Thorn and The Hague show.²⁴¹ Internal reports frankly admitted that the German authorities struggled to recruit Norwegian actors and musicians for the theatre because the “vast majority of Norwegians reject German performances” and refused to attend the German theatre.²⁴² A statistic by the Lille Deutsches Theater from July 1942 illustrated the scale of the resistance. During this month the theatre counted 41,000 patrons and revenue of some RM 133,000. Ticket sales to the French public, however, generated a mere RM 7.50.²⁴³ In Prague Walleck admitted that the Czechs made up only “3%–5% of audiences”.²⁴⁴ In Marburg, in an environment where only a minority actually spoke and understood German, the dramatic repertoire fared particularly badly. Between September 1941 and January 1942 its utilisation was only 42%, which translated into average audiences of a meagre 80–100 people – despite a system of concessions and complimentary tickets.²⁴⁵ Wooing local audiences also rarely had the desired effect because the Germans were not very good at it. An attempt to appease French audiences in Lille by putting on Bizet’s Carmen in German rather than French was certainly not the best idea. Not surprisingly, French audiences continued to stay away.²⁴⁶ The fact, however, that local audiences were targeted at all in some places shows how much importance the Nazis placed on the role of theatre as an educational tool. In Thorn, for example, officials in the Gau administration hoped that attending performances might entice more people with “worthy racial predispositions” to join the “list of German nationals” (Deutsche Volksliste).²⁴⁷

Meeting the expectations for a politically reliable and popular theatre in occupied Europe was therefore difficult for artistic managers. To make matters worse, local, regional and national authorities closely monitored theatres, which had to provide regular balance sheets listing income, expenditure, performance and audience figures (which were not published). These authorities were not only interested to check that their investment in terms of subsidies was spent wisely but also keen to receive notes of success, particularly concerning significant audience figures. To attract the desired record attendances, theatres in occupied Europe offered a mix of individually sold tickets, season tickets, block bookings and reductions for particular groups. Members of the armed forces received a 40% reduction in Litzmannstadt and a 50% reduction in Oslo and Metz, and in Lille they did not have to pay at all. Reduced price block bookings were offered to organisations such as KdF (which in Litzmannstadt, for example, offered no less than eight different schemes of block bookings to its members), the police force, the city administration, the postal service, the job centre, the state railway, the Hitler Youth and other party organisations, and national offices such as the customs authority, the board of trade and the revenue office.²⁴⁸ In Warsaw the already reasonably priced tickets were further reduced for groups, or the cost would be waved entirely for groups of civil servants or army units. Sometimes the Wehrmacht even ordered soldiers to visit the theatre, further propping up attendance figures. Given this context it may not be surprising that the Warsaw thea-tre performed to capacity houses in 1,000 shows over three years.²⁴⁹ The system of reductions and concessions was so widespread in fact that full ticket prices (which at Litzmannstadt, for example, ranged from RM 0.70 to RM 4.50) were hardly ever paid by anyone anywhere. Even Nazi officials themselves expected and sometimes demanded perks, such as reduced ticket prices or free entry. In Prague, for example, high-ranking Nazis expected to get free Logenplätze (seats in one of the boxes) at the representative Ständetheater. But income, profit even, seemed a secondary concern in this system, and it would have been utopian for this kind of undertaking anyway. More important, it seems, was the fact that the theatres managed to draw in the crowds.²⁵⁰

Block bookings in particular proved highly convenient for theatres not only because, as closed performances, they promised a reasonably high and reliable number of people in the audience but also because, officially, they counted as sold out performances. Bogusław Drewniak assumed that in 1941 23% of all performances at all German language theatres both within Germany and in occupied Europe were closed performances,²⁵¹ although at playhouses in occupied Europe this figure was even higher. For example, the Litzmannstadt theatre during February 1941 (a typical month) offered one classical drama, one contemporary drama and five comedies. Out of a total of 31 performances that month, 20 were reserved as closed performances (eight of them for KdF, but also for the armed forces, SA, Hitler Youth, police, women’s association [Frauenschutzbund] and city administration). Out of total audiences of 17,500 visitors 13,500 people attended the closed performances.²⁵² At Lille, starting in January 1942, the local KdF branch paid a monthly fee of RM 45,000 to “buy” a certain number of performances for its members.²⁵³ In Posen during 1941/2 there were 178 closed performances, almost 25% of the total number of performances that season,²⁵⁴ and in Danzig KdF played an increasingly important role, too.²⁵⁵ The over-reliance on closed performances came with its own challenges, though. At many places the biggest client in terms of ticket sales was KdF, which booked whole performances which would then not go into open sale. In a typical week in May 1940 at Litzmannstadt’s theatre, for example, almost half of the weekly takings of almost RM 1,400 were guaranteed by KdF (RM 600). This put KdF in a strong bargaining position, one which they regularly exploited. For example, KdF hardly ever paid their dues on time; in fact, they regularly paid only a fraction of what they owed the theatres. The other problem concerning the apparent success with large organisations and block bookings was that it disguised the fact that regular box office takings were often abysmal. During the above-mentioned week at Litzmannstadt’s theatre, ticket sales were sometimes as little as RM 150 for an evening performance.²⁵⁶ At Lille open sale tickets to the French population hardly exceeded RM 30 per month, and in July 1942 reached only RM 7.50 (see above).²⁵⁷ And sometimes even large organisations could not guarantee capacity crowds. In June 1940 the Prague Deutsches Schauspielhaus, for example, arranged a special matinee of the comedy The Sixth Wife for the local Waffen-SS. In the end, however, only 30–40 people attended, and the SS did not come at all. Artistic director Walleck was fuming. Instead of apologizing, the Waffen-SS explained that they had decided against attending the performance of a play which, on closer inspection, appeared “inappropriate”. Apart from the obvious snub, what is also

Figure 4.8 Litzmannstadt theatre repertoire and season ticket, 1942/3, Łódź City Archives.

Figures 4.9–4.10 Performances in the Neues Deutsches Theater (New German Theatre), Prague National Archives.

interesting here is that Walleck escalated the matter and in a letter to the Office for Cultural Affairs in the Protectorate administration declared that news about these abysmal audiences would get out and adversely affect the theatre’s reputation among the public. Walleck even declared that he would regard all upcoming arrangements with the SS as “suspended”.²⁵⁸

By and large, however, audiences at the German speaking theatres were very good. In fact, at many places they rose significantly throughout the war, for a range of reasons.²⁵⁹ In the formerly Czech town of Mährisch-Ostrau, for example, figures rose from just over 68,000 in 1938/9 to over 204,000 in 1941/2.²⁶⁰ Posen’s audiences rose by almost 25% in the space of only one season and reached 500,000 in 1943/4. With these figures the theatre reached a utilisation of over 90%.²⁶¹ Krakau attracted 62,000 people in 1940/1, but this figure rose to 192,000 in 1942/3 – an impressive threefold increase.²⁶² Riga’s opera house welcomed 420,000 visitors through its doors in its first season.²⁶³ In his “overview of achievements” with regard to the theatre’s activities between 1941 and the end of July 1942, Lille’s artistic director Ziegler proudly noted that the theatre had presented almost 1,200 performances to over 640,000 people.²⁶⁴ The theatre in the relatively small town of Graudenz attracted 120,000 people during its one and only season of operation in 1943/4,²⁶⁵ the only slightly larger Bromberg welcomed 180,000 visitors through its theatre doors in 1942/3,²⁶⁶ and Thorn had audiences in excess of 217,000 in 1942/3.²⁶⁷ The Doppeltheater Kattowitz/Königshütte had audiences of 350,000 during its first season (1941/2),²⁶⁸ and the theatre in Mühlhausen attracted 280,000 in the subsequent season.²⁶⁹ And even the little travelling company Landesbühne Gau Wartheland (operating out of Posen) welcomed some 150,000 visitors to its performances during the 1943/4 season.²⁷⁰ At Litzmannstadt, audiences rose by 30% between 1941 and 1942, and utilisation reached 80%.²⁷¹ In the first half of 1942 monthly audiences averaged 25,000,²⁷² with operetta performances achieving ticket sales of 93%.²⁷³ The newly opened studio, which unashamedly and almost exclusively concentrated on light-hearted fare, completed an increasingly successful picture for the Nazi propaganda – at least in terms of quantity.²⁷⁴ In late 1942 the theatre was operating at near capacity. In October it staged 56 performances, in December even 64, and it reached monthly audiences of up to 35,000.²⁷⁵ Overall, audiences at Litzmannstadt’s theatre rose from 190,000 in 1940/1 to almost 300,000 in the last two seasons, and the number of performances went up from 330 to 572 in the same time frame.²⁷⁶ There were manifold reasons for this increase. Massive advertisement bordering on pressure on the German population to support the theatre played a part, as did a lack of alternatives. Ticket prices were affordable, and the technical quality of performances was better than what had been on offer before at many places. Audience numbers were also helped by the general increase in the German population, particularly in Eastern Europe – either temporary or permanent. Within one year the German population in Posen, for example, rose from 69,000 to 83,000.²⁷⁷ Additionally, we should not underestimate that the discourse about theatre playing an important role in German culture was not entirely made up and that rising German populations were willing to support “their” local theatre as a matter of course.²⁷⁸

The figures are indeed impressive, and unprecedented funding levels, a popular programme and a general disposition to support theatre and opera as one’s “civic duty” certainly played a part. Other reasons for these substantial audience figures, however, should be taken into account as well. Performances by local ensembles (such as in the Generalgouvernement) were largely prohibited by the occupiers or heavily sanctioned, which meant that the local German theatre was often the only venue offering live entertainment. Additionally, the Germans often benefitted from using local talent to support their own artistic endeavours. In Warsaw, for example, the quality of the Polish acting ensemble was far superior to that of the German one, and its performances subsidised the German theatre enterprise in no small measure. Also, it was only thanks to the excellent orchestra (which was entirely made up of Polish musicians) that the Germans could start to offer a musical theatre programme of their own.²⁷⁹ In other regions where performances by the occupied were permitted, the Germans were acutely aware of their often superior quality. This competition, in turn, led to a system of quality control, as only the best would do for German productions. In Oslo the German authorities were worried not only about duplications in the repertoire, as Norwegian theatres sometimes staged the same operettas, but also about the fact that they did a better job as well.²⁸⁰ In Paris German officials made it clear that touring productions had to be of the highest quality to even be considered to be invited – “only touring productions of the first German theatres are possible in Paris”.²⁸¹ In Holland, related to the considerable touring activity even by smaller theatres in the Altreich, officials urged certain quality standards to be applied.²⁸² In a report for the Propaganda Ministry a senior official stressed the importance of getting a top class artistic director for the Riga Opera House because any lowering of quality standards would have a “disastrous effect” in a country used to excellent performances in both drama and ballet. In fact, increasing the quality even more was a must for this prestigious institution if its German administration was going to be a success.²⁸³ In the Protectorate, too, the Nazis valued the quality of Czech performances very highly and were keenly aware of the pressures on their own productions. Given the discourse of the superiority of German culture, it was imperative for the regime to present work of outstanding quality. In a continuation of a development which had started with the opening of the Czech National Theatre in 1883, from which Czech theatrical life had received a new impetus, and the subsequent opening of the New German Theatre by the German Theatre Association in 1888, the Nazi authorities constantly felt they needed to prove a point.²⁸⁴

Debates about the quality of repertoires and performances were a constant feature both in internal communications and (less candidly) in the press. Artistic director Oskar Walleck was repeatedly criticised for presenting an allegedly pedestrian programme. The Czech National Opera, meanwhile, continued to produce a repertoire of a high standard in Czech and for Czech audiences (although programme notes were given in both languages), with international drama, operas by Verdi and Smetana, and ballet.²⁸⁵ Goebbels rated the quality of the Czech opera so highly, in fact, that he held back with the foundation of a German opera company because “we should not attempt to compete with the Czechs in an area where we

Figures 4.11–4.12 Prague National Theatre, Herder Institute, Marburg, image archive.

are bound to come out second best”.²⁸⁶ Not surprisingly, in this context the Office for Cultural Affairs (Kulturabteilung, Amt IV) in the Protectorate administration reacted nervously if standards seemed to be slipping. An internal report by the Office for Cultural Affairs at the Protectorate administration on performances at the Brünn theatre in April 1943, for example, was devastating. The comedy A Night in Transylvania at the studio theatre had been “quite enjoyable” (“ganz nett”), but the performance of Lehár’s operetta Friederike at the Brünn Landestheater had been “very parochial”. The male parts in particular had been very badly casted, and one lead role had been woefully sung. It seemed small consolation that at least the “Brünn audience seemed to enjoy itself”, as the commentators remarked sarcastically at the end. Significantly, however, the author of the report also concluded that “with such sorry efforts we can not compete with the cultural achievements of the Czechs”.²⁸⁷ This anxiety became apparent in other areas, too. When the German embassy in Prague compiled a list of teaching staff at the Academy of Music for the Foreign Ministry in Berlin in February 1939 (thus, ahead of the occupation), it noted that a certain Professor Josef Langer was a mediocre teacher and an unreliable pianist and, therefore, “unacceptable for Prague. In Germany, however, one could certainly find a suitable position for him.”²⁸⁸

Only sometimes, albeit very rarely, did the Germans manage to turn to their advantage the fact that local companies were in fact better than anything they could have got off the ground. The Latvian ballet company attached to the Riga Opera House, for example, already had an excellent reputation when the Germans occupied the Baltic states in 1941. Although on paper they still planned to turn both opera and ballet into entirely German ensembles, in the meantime the occupiers cleverly used the Latvian ballet’s status and success to reflect positively on themselves. A profusely illustrated and expensively produced volume on the Latvian ballet from 1943, for example, celebrated the company, its repertoire and its major protagonists, even its Latvian character.²⁸⁹ A vast number of high quality photos, colour images and prints added to the book’s high production value.²⁹⁰ Interestingly, there was no political undertone throughout this volume; it seemed entirely neutral. Even the historical account on pp. 8–11 did not contain any reference to Germany or the German occupation at all; instead, the Latvian character of the ensemble and its directors was foregrounded. Štāls posited that although the Latvian ballet company was a recent foundation, it was “today one of the most outstanding dance ensembles of our present time”.²⁹¹ Overall, this claim seemed to be justified when looking at the expansive and elaborate settings for the productions assembled in this volume. However, despite the fact that there was no mention of anything German, the expected reading of this book was clearly that only the German occupation and its benevolent influence had made the recent successful development of the ballet company possible. For example, two photographs showing two different ballet rehearsals, one from 1922 and one from 1942, illustrated a positive development. In terms of size, equipment and professionalisation, the latter clearly outshone the former – although this conclusion was cleverly left to the reader to draw.

Figure 4.13 Title page from Štālas, Das Lettische Ballett (The Latvian ballet).

Figure 4.14 Two illustrations from Štāls, Das Lettische Ballett (The Latvian ballet), pp. 48–9.

In a clever way not usually found in German propaganda (although the fact that the volume was published in German was a bit of a give-away), the reader subconsciously associated the recent further rise and success of the Latvian ballet company with the German occupation. Given that reading, it may not have been perceived as a problem that this success was not actually achieved by a German company.

Colonisation masked as cultural transfer

The Nazis were keen to make their leading role felt, and there were increased attempts to achieve a significant theatrical presence across the continent, but particularly in Eastern Europe, from the mid-1930s onwards. The fact that Germany began to gear up for war in earnest at around the same time (Four Years’ Plan [Vierjahresplan], 1936) was no coincidence. The Propaganda Ministry began funding German language theatres all over Europe as officials were convinced that this activity, as well as tours by leading German ensembles, immensely “increased Germany’s cultural image abroad”.²⁹² In the Baltic states, for example, the Ministry was in constant contact with the amateur German theatre association in Latvia and the German theatre in Riga (Deutsches Schauspiel). In early 1936 its director asked Schlösser to approve the repertoire, which he duly did, although theatres in Latvia were not under the Propaganda Ministry’s jurisdiction.²⁹³ Still, this practice repeated itself over the following years, and both sides acted as if this process of application and approval was normal procedure when in fact it was anything but.²⁹⁴ In return for his consultation and for the fact that he produced some of the leading Nazi playwrights, including Hanns Johst, Heinz Steguweit, Paul Ernst, Guido Kolbenheyer and Eberhard Wolfgang Möller, theatre director Hermann Grussendorf received direct funding from Berlin. For the season 1935/6, for example, the Riga German theatre received RM 35,000.²⁹⁵ At around this time the Propaganda Ministry significantly increased its efforts to support German language theatres outside of Germany’s current borders more generally and raised the amount available from RM 150,000 to RM 500,000. After all, as the respective expert (Referent) Herr Klaus argued, theatres in Zoppot, Memel, Beuthen, Reval, Hermannstadt, the Sudetenland and Northern Schleswig needed increased financial assistance, too.²⁹⁶ In line with this rise the Riga German theatre received RM 55,000 for 1938/9 and RM 75,000 for 1939/40.²⁹⁷ The Propaganda Ministry even checked the books of theatres in Memel and Riga, under cover naturally, and sent experts to the Baltic states to assess the theatre situation there.²⁹⁸ When the director of the Riga German theatre stepped down in the summer of 1939, the search for a successor was not left to the Latvian authorities or the German minority in Latvia either. The Propaganda Ministry wanted to have its say, as did the foreign section of the Nazi Party (the NSDAP Auslandsorganisation). The fact that Germany was interfering in the national affairs of an independent foreign state did not seem to bother anyone.²⁹⁹ On the contrary, the substantial correspondence in the surviving files is characterised by a fundamental belief that this kind of action was Germany’s given right. Even the production of German classical drama in foreign countries concerned the Propaganda Ministry, particularly if there was cause for alarm. In May 1940 (ahead of the German occupation) the Foreign Ministry sent a report to the Propaganda Ministry detailing a production of Goethe’s Faust in a Latvian theatre in which the play had been edited, cut and modernised: “The scenes on the Brocken take place in a modern bar, the classic Walpurgisnacht has been turned into a carnival, and the scenes in the Auerbach cellar were missing altogether.”³⁰⁰ The Propaganda Ministry was shocked and suggested that the German ambassador in Riga contact the Latvian authorities to make it clear that such an interpretation of a German classic was unwelcome in Berlin.³⁰¹

However, the Nazi regime not only was concerned with German language theatres but also showed great interest in other venues, for example the Riga Opera House, which – as a “German foundation” – they felt they had a real stake in. When it transpired in March 1939 that the director of the Belgrade national thea-tre wanted to erect a new opera house, officials in the Propaganda Ministry sprang into action and made it clear that they wanted the commission to go to a German architect. They pulled all the strings, involved the German embassy, targeted specific high profile architects with the help of Albert Speer and even propped up the meagre Serbian prize money out of Reich coffers to make the architectural competition more attractive. When it became clear that the German architects would not be ready to submit their proposals in time, the German embassy in Belgrade put pressure on the Serbian authorities to extend the deadline, which they duly agreed to. Despite this and – no doubt – continued pressure behind the scenes, no German architect won, but the lengths to which the German regime went to significantly increase the German chances are noteworthy, as is the self-assured arrogance of a colonial power which expected Serbian officials to bow to German demands.³⁰² Attempts at extending Germany’s cultural reach and colonising Europe using the theatre as a tool were clear for everyone to see, yet the Nazis tried hard to mask these attempts by suggesting a reciprocal relationship between Germany and her neighbours. In most cases the Nazis simply exported the German theatre model with German actors and a German repertoire, so the rare instances of traffic in the other direction are worth noting. In close relation to the military situation, and clearly aimed at making a political impact, the Nazis attempted to get theatres in the Altreich to produce plays by dramatists from countries allied with Germany. This support for foreign drama, though rarely successful, was intended to be read as cultural transfer. Spanish plays, for example, reached German stages in the course of the Spanish Civil War and Lope de Vega alongside Calderón experienced celebrated revivals, as did Italian works after the signing of the 1939 “Steel Pact”. The regime also endorsed plays from Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Finland and Japan. The Berlin Staatstheater produced Luca Caragiale’s nineteenth century Romanian comedy A Lost Letter in 1943, and in the same year works by Paul Constantinescu and Aurel Milos were performed at the Vienna State Opera.³⁰³ In 1944 Schlösser wrote a circular to 35 theatres in which he requested the production of Paracelsus by the Finnish dramatist Mika Waltari. The reasons for the push were clearly of a political nature, with Finland being an important wartime ally.³⁰⁴ Although the regime was, therefore, interested in fostering contemporary foreign playwriting originating in countries allied with Germany, this interest only went so far. Visits by foreign companies, for example, were largely out of the question. When the Foreign Theatre Office (Auslandstelle für Theater) suggested to the Propaganda Ministry to invite the Belgrade opera and ballet to perform in Germany (in March 1941), this was flatly denied.³⁰⁵ A similar attempt to bring over Croatia’s National Theatre Company failed, too.³⁰⁶ Traffic in the other direction, however, was strongly encouraged, with leading German ensembles travelling the continent (see below). The regime was also keen to invite foreign theatre practitioners to Germany to show off the leading German stages. Later in 1941, and after the Wehrmacht’s Balkan campaign, for example, the director of Zagreb’s opera house was invited to Berlin to establish closer ties with German theatres.³⁰⁷ Heinz Kindermann suggested that the Propaganda Ministry should fund a trip to Germany for Bulgarian theatre director, politician and academic Alexander Zankoff to introduce him to the work done at leading German playhouses.³⁰⁸ And in May 1941 the Propaganda Ministry invited 11 Norwegian theatre practitioners to Germany to show off Germany’s theatre industry. Goebbels agreed to fund this trip with RM 10,000 as the guests were whizzed through Central Europe, staying two days each at theatres in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Munich and Hamburg.³⁰⁹

Tours

Another means of extending the influence of German Theaterkultur was via tours, both by companies performing in recently occupied areas (particularly in the early years and until resident ensembles had been set up) and by the new companies set up in occupied Europe themselves. Already before the outbreak of war, however, and corresponding to a discourse around the “benevolent” character of German theatre arts across Europe (see above), German companies and practitioners were encouraged to tour and were generously supported on their travels abroad.³¹⁰ The German dancer Alexander von Swaine, for example, in January 1939 performed in Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania on a tight schedule with eight performances over ten days. In recognition of this propagandistically important undertaking he was paid RM 1,200 by the Propaganda Ministry in addition to local ticket sales. The investment proved to be money well spent as the German embassy in Sofia confirmed that “the artist Swaine is and always will be a valuable asset for the prestige of German art”.³¹¹ German embassies tapped into what must have appeared a tempting opportunity to raise their own profile. The German embassy in Bucharest, for example, asked the Propaganda Ministry in early 1940 whether a performance by Heinrich George, leading opera soloists and/or “the full Bayreuth ensemble of Tristan with Karajan” could be arranged. The embassy argued that such a tour would be conducive to the growing interest in German culture in the country.³¹² In March 1940 a tour by the Berlin Schiller-Theater featuring George was planned to Belgrade, Prague, Brünn, Preßburg, Budapest and Zagreb.³¹³ The particular urgency of this tour rested on the fact that France and Britain both had a cultural presence in the region, including tours by the Comédie Française and the Old Vic, an argument which rebuffed any hesitation caused by its hefty price tag – RM 65,000.³¹⁴ Germany followed this up with subsequent activity. Shortly before the attack on Yugoslavia in April 1941 the Dresden opera house performed in Belgrade in February and March with a 200 strong ensemble at a cost of RM 160,000.³¹⁵ The Germans celebrated the performances as “a success of previously unheard of proportions in Yugoslavia”. Germany had won “strong sympathies across all sections of society” who had appreciated the visit of the Dresden opera as an “honour for Yugoslavia”. The performances had given local audiences “for the first time a true reflection of the quality of German opera” and had instilled in them the wish for regular visits and further dates.³¹⁶ Ahead of the German occupation the Nazi regime could not have wished for a better outcome of the tour.

Immediately after the German occupation and before many of the standing theatres had started operation, high profile tours by leading companies were organised throughout Europe. The famous Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, the ensemble of Florence’s royal opera house from Italy, the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic all performed in Krakau in 1940.³¹⁷ Even after the Krakau theatre had formally opened, leading ensembles, conductors and soloists from the Altreich queued up to travel eastwards to support the German cause. The Berlin State Opera, the Vienna Burgtheater and the Berlin Philharmonic performed in Krakau, and guest conductors included Herbert Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss and Count Konoye. The poet Max Halbe and the composer Hans Pfitzner came, too, as did many leading soloists and stars of the stage, including Wilhelm Kempff, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Lil Dagover, Lucie Höflich and Heinrich George.³¹⁸ Posen was the destination for a similar number of visits by leading performers, such as the dancer and choreographer Harald Kreutzberg or leading opera singer and general manager of Berlin’s Deutsches Opernhaus Wilhelm Rode.³¹⁹ Gustaf Gründgens, Marianne Hoppe and Bernhard Minetti stayed for a few days to perform Lessing’s Emilia Galotti, and Paul Hartmann starred in Minna von Barnhelm.³²⁰ The famous Berlin Admiralspalast ensemble premiered the operetta Poor Jonathan (Der arme Jonathan) ahead of its run in Berlin.³²¹ Litzmannstadt played host to ensembles such as the Dresdner Volksoper, who produced Verdi’s Tosca. Prague was the destination of choice of many theatre and opera ensembles after March 1939. The leading ensembles from Berlin and Vienna performed there, as did theatres from Hamburg, Munich, Kassel and Dresden; soloists such as Wilhelm Backhaus, Wilhelm Kempff, Georg Kulenkampf and Elly Ney; and conductors such as Clemens Krauss and Wilhelm Furtwängler.³²² Straßburg, too, welcomed some of the leading theatre directors of the day: Karl-Heinz Martin, Jürgen Fehling and Walter Felsenstein.³²³ Ahead of the official opening of the German theatre in The Hague, Reich commissioner Seyss-Inquart organised some high profile visits by leading ensembles including the Vienna State Opera with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch in 1940, the ballet ensemble of the Berlin Deutsches Opernhaus, an ensemble from Berlin’s Staatstheater (with Gustaf Gründgens) in 1941, and the Burgtheater in 1942.³²⁴ Scandinavia, too, was the object of significant touring activity. In 1940 alone the Hamburg State Opera and philharmonic orchestra, the Berlin Theater am Nollendorfplatz, and the world famous Leipzig Thomaner-Chor performed in Norway. The visit of the Hamburg State Opera cost RM 50,000 plus expenses, and the Theater am Nollendorfplatz came with 170 people, at a whopping RM 166,000, to perform a programme of operettas and ballets.³²⁵ Ahead of the opening of the German theatre in Oslo the ballet ensemble of the Berlin Deutsches Opernhaus performed in Norway, and the Hamburg theatre came with Goethe’s Faust.³²⁶ The ballet ensemble of the Berlin Deutsches Opernhaus also performed in Holland. The theatre of the West German city of Bochum performed at the opening of the Lille theatre in 1941 and also toured regularly through Holland. Bochum’s artistic director, Saladin Schmitt, had made a name for himself as director of the German theatre in occupied Brussels during the First World War.³²⁷

After occupation, some of the new German theatres, once established, went on tours as well. As late as July 1944 Oskar Walleck received official permission to go to Athens to prepare a production of Beethoven’s Fidelio there.³²⁸ Other German theatres in the occupied territories went on sometimes prolonged tours as well. Lille’s theatre was meant to cater for a significant geographical area in Northern France and Belgium. The propagandistically significant production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser, for example, was also performed in Brussels. Smaller productions, like Benatzky’s operetta My Sister and I, were toured widely throughout Belgium and France, even extending in late 1942 to the former Vichy France.³²⁹ The theatre in The Hague also toured widely and regularly performed in Arnhem, Haarlem, Utrecht, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, and the ensemble of the Oslo German theatre performed in Drontheim, Bergen and Stavanger. Even smaller theatres went on tours, such as the theatre in Iglau. As discussed previously, tours to and by the Danzig theatre during the 1930s were deemed to be of particular political importance to stress the strong connections between the “Free City” and its German “homeland”.³³⁰

Tours by leading theatres from the Altreich continued throughout the war; they were seen as vital “to spread the German gospel a long way further than the current borders of ethnicities and into European spaces which are currently re-ordering themselves”.³³¹ Touring continued right up into the summer of 1944, such as the tour by the Schiller-Theater with its entire cast including its star Heinrich George in July. Two visits by leading German ensembles in 1941 were billed as the artistic highlights of the year in occupied France. In May the Berlin State Opera performed Mozart and Wagner in the Paris Opéra National, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, and in September the Charlottenburg opera performed Johann Strauss in the Paris Théâtre de L’Opéra in elaborate settings designed by Reichsbühnenbildner Benno von Arent. Over 400 people came to Paris to work on this production, which cost the Propaganda Ministry close to RM 200,000.³³² The largest single expense for touring activity, however, was the visit of the Berlin state opera to Rome in February and March 1941. A 456 strong company stayed in Rome for two weeks, which cost taxpayers in excess of RM 680,000 – equivalent to the annual budget of a mid-sized theatre.³³³

Censorship and control

Theatres in Nazi Germany, however, not only were in receipt of rising subsidies, salaries and investment but were also tightly monitored. Repertoires, for example, were controlled by a combination of national, regional and local legal frameworks as well as more indirect forms of self-censorship. For example, thea-tres were required to produce regular and detailed reports (due every week at some places, but more commonly once per month) on income, expenditure, audience and production figures, and if they were late, reminders were sent out.³³⁴ For example, a report by the theatre in Mährisch-Ostrau for the Office for Cultural Affairs at the Protectorate administration covering April to June 1943 was ten pages long – in small font and single-spaced. This level of detail was no exception. The German theatres in Prague submitted a seven page report covering theatrical activities in August and September 1942.³³⁵

If theatres did not manage their budgets appropriately or subsidies were not spent properly, managements faced sometimes prolonged enquiries and punitive measures. Oslo was repeatedly asked to lower its salaries,³³⁶ as was Prague. When the 1942 budget of the Thorn theatre was scrutinised, it became obvious that the theatre had been overpaid by RM 117,282. The regional Gau propaganda office therefore concluded that this money would now be allocated to the existing theatre’s building fund, which meant that the current application for funding towards construction costs was regarded as “baseless”.³³⁷ The money was gone.

Traditionally, about 90% of German theatres were regional theatres, and these in turn were funded by and answerable to city councils. They were therefore largely out of the reach of the central government. As mentioned above, as part of a general development under the Nazis, Goebbels intended to get Germany’s entire cultural life under his control, however. In September 1933, therefore, he founded the Reich Culture Chamber (Reichskulturkammer) to bring together all cultural professions under one organisational roof. Everyone working in the arts had to be a paid up member of one of the seven different chambers of the Reich Culture Chamber, and prospective members were vetted for political and racial “reliability” on entry. One of the chambers, the Reich Theatre Chamber (Reichstheaterkammer), was responsible for the theatre. Part of the Propaganda Ministry, and therefore also under Goebbels’ direct control, was the Reichsdramaturgie.³³⁸ The Reichsdramaturg (national dramaturge) oversaw the programmes of all German theatres and ensured the “right” choice of plays.³³⁹

Figures 4.15–4.17 Records from the Brünn theatre, Prague National Archives.

Figures 4.18–4.21 Records from the Iglau-Znaim theatre, Prague National Archives.

Although total control of repertoires proved impossible and the office was poorly equipped in terms of staffing levels, the system by and large proved efficient as most managers were anxious to avoid problems with the authorities and presented a programme they considered safe.³⁴⁰ A further step in Goebbels’ attempts to centralise Theaterpolitik was the National Theatre Law in May 1934, which, in theory, put every single theatre under the influence of the Propaganda Ministry. This does not mean, however, that Goebbels entirely succeeded. Cultural politics continued to be carried out by a number of agencies, and frequently responsibilities overlapped or were unclear.³⁴¹ There were four main players in the cultural arena, with varying degrees of influence over the years: Alfred Rosenberg, Joseph Goebbels, Robert Ley and Hermann Göring. Rosenberg was the party hard-liner fighting for “pure” German art and ideologically “sound” repertoires (and also the author of The Myth of the 20th Century, as discussed above), Goebbels appeared less radical at first but eager to increase his power and remain close to Hitler, Ley headed the mass organisation KdF and wanted to exert his influence on the growing leisure sector, and Göring played an important role as Prussian Home Secretary.³⁴² Also, despite Goebbels’ attempts, the vast majority of thea-tres remained municipal playhouses under local control, and the number of state theatres under the direct supervision of national authorities continued to be low. At the local level, however, control was carried out by various agencies, too, and theatre managements often found themselves in arbitrary situations. City councils (via the respective Office for Cultural Affairs – Kulturamt) largely held the purse strings, but party and Wehrmacht officials, as well as the regional Gau administration, were keen to have an influence, too. Although open bans were rare and unpopular with both audiences and the regime, direct intervention in theatre programming was possible via the police when performances were deemed to “disrupt public order”.

These various means of control and censorship extended to the occupied territories as the new theatres were bound by the existing legal frameworks. All employees had to be members of the Reich Culture Chamber and were therefore vetted for political and racial “integrity”. Repertoires had to be submitted to and agreed to by the national dramaturge. When Litzmannstadt’s artistic director Hesse, for example, submitted the draft repertoire for the 1941/2 season, he received a reply from the Propaganda Ministry asking him for three changes, which Hesse promised to implement “as a matter of course”.³⁴³ Officials of the Propaganda Ministry were regularly sent out to theatres all over Europe on fact-finding missions. They talked to artistic directors and other employees, checked the finances and, chiefly, reported back on the quality of performances. Although not labelled as “control visits” they were clearly that, and theatre administrations were anxious to please Berlin’s representatives. The reports the officials submitted to Schlösser were not meant for publication and therefore give an honest and blunt assessment of what Berlin thought about the quality of certain theatres and their programmes, about problems and inconsistencies, or simply about personalities they found “annoying”.³⁴⁴

It is interesting to note that the modus operandi of official German language theatres in the occupied territories mirrored that in the Altreich in other ways, too. There were numerous occasions of aspiring playwrights who were politically reliable and willing and who tried hard to get their plays performed, but were silenced mostly due to the fact that their writing skills and basic understanding of theatre and drama were found lacking. One typical example was a certain Wilfried von Proskowetz, who was German and born in Moravia and who had written a play he wanted to see performed. After a lot of nagging of important people in Prague and Berlin (for example, he sent his play in triplicate plus three other publications to National Dramaturge Schlösser), he eventually succeeded in getting his play Pescara’s Temptation (Die Versuchung des Pescara) performed at the Prague Deutsches Schauspielhaus in January 1943 – three years after he had first tried. Interestingly, and again quite typically, Schlösser did not rate the play highly and was not prepared to support it further. The Prague production can clearly be seen as a concession to a loyal supporter of the German cause during the Protectorate and before.³⁴⁵ At the same time, and this is an interesting phenomenon across Europe, the German authorities were not prepared to support just anything irrespective of its artistic quality. In a quite unusual but still illuminating case from 1941, German police officer Andreas Marx (stationed in the infamous Kleine Festung, the Gestapo prison attached to the Theresienstadt ghetto) submitted a musical comedy he had written called The Bohemian Fortress to the Kulturabteilung (Office for Cultural Affairs) with a view of getting this published by a Czech publishing house and subsequently performed. A literarily gifted police officer could have met with interest and support, one might think, also given the fact that Marx was a keen supporter of the regime, but the key issue in the appraisal of his piece was its actual literary quality. And in this respect it fell way short of expectations. A “ridiculous and tasteless botch”, judged Fritz Oehmke, adding that a Czech publisher would probably jump on the opportunity to publish such a sorry effort as officially endorsed German art.³⁴⁶

Interestingly, the fate of being sidelined sometimes also hit leading party officials. In a fascinating exchange of letters between Walter Stang (head of the Arts Office in the Amt Rosenberg), Karl Freiherr von Gregory (head of the Office for Cultural Affairs at the Protectorate administration) and Oskar Walleck between December 1940 and March 1941, Stang unsuccessfully tried to place one of his own plays on the prestigious Prague stage. People close to Stang wrote to Gregory and suggested that Stang’s play Albion und Rosamunde be produced in Prague, but Walleck declined for various half-hearted reasons (loss of key actors due to active service, the fact that he did not have a second acting ensemble and would find it difficult to recruit the significant number of extras required for this play). Instead, Walleck suggested that the play be produced in the regional theatre of Teplitz, and this happened in early March 1941, much to the displeasure of Stang, who then personally wrote to Gregory a few days later, urging for the Teplitz production not to travel to Prague. In his view this “provincial production” would diminish his chances of getting the play ever produced by the significantly more important Prague theatre. Stang appeared almost panic-stricken at the prospect of having his great play produced in one of the key theatre capitals in Europe – but by a second rate company.³⁴⁷ We do not know what happened next, but it is likely that the play was never shown in Prague, and this may be exactly what Walleck wanted.

The situation became more and more obscure, and many theatres got increasingly wary of what was allowed and what was not. Even authors whose allegiance to the party was in no doubt and whose works had been celebrated by the regime could see the tide turn within a few years. When, for example, the municipal theatre of Iglau and Znaim wanted to produce a Curt Langenbeck play in early 1942, its artistic director, Hadolf Herold, was told by the Protectorate Office for Cultural Affairs that Langenbeck was “currently not welcome”. This would have been surprising news for Herold, who had just been told by Langenbeck’s publisher (the prestigious Langen/Müller publishing house) that a ban “was out of the question” and Langenbeck’s work was now more important than ever before – not least because he was actually fighting at the front now, which was seen as the ultimate seal of approval.³⁴⁸

Aesthetics

Relating to the theatre’s political role and its representational function, the onus on lavishly appointed productions was particularly significant.³⁴⁹ Right up to the end of the war, and despite rationing of raw materials, the emphasis on costume and setting was considerable. In Litzmannstadt artistic director Hans Hesse in a preview of the 1943/4 season announced that the technical facilities and workshops would be extended, and existing costumes, properties and scenery significantly added to and modernised.³⁵⁰ Rudolf Zloch, head of administration at Lille’s theatre, suggested in 1944 the purchase of an expansive collection from Charleroi to build up the theatre’s stock of costumes.³⁵¹ Even if a theatre’s basic equipment were lost due to enemy action, this did not mean it had to stop performing. After an air raid had destroyed all the costumes at Essen’s theatre in March 1943, for example, the décor and costumes for particular productions were immediately supplied by other theatres: Straßburg equipped Beethoven’s Fidelio, Darmstadt Calderón’s Life Is a Dream and Chemnitz Oskar Nedbal’s Erntebraut.³⁵²

Productions at German theatres in occupied Europe attempted to reflect the discourse around aesthetics and dramaturgy as discussed in Chapter 2. Discussions and reviews of productions, however, also reflected a diversity of approaches and – with some – the rejection of any kind of critical aesthetic frame as 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, Herbert Petersen stressed that audiences were not moved by “some elevated aesthetic experience” but by a basic feeling of belonging together.³⁵³ Overall, however, and often unwittingly, productions at German theatres in the early 1940s were characterised by an aesthetic rooted in nineteenth century realism coupled with a cold monumentalism reminiscent of ancient Greek performance practice. Production photographs at almost any of the theatres under consideration here show large spaces, substantial pillars and heavy furniture. There is nothing intricate or indirect about this aesthetic. Even set designs for productions of drawing-room comedies or operettas never looked light and playful but had something heavy, almost leaden about them. Walleck’s productions in 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.³⁵⁴ In doing so he related to a general discourse on aesthetics on the stage. In discussing Hölderlin’s Empedokles in 1943, for example, Heinz Kindermann praised the “monumental style” of recent productions as “unsentimental” (a point of praise in Kindermann’s book) as well 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”.³⁵⁵ Kindermann linked the many revivals of Hölderlin’s Empedokles during the early 1940s, for example, to the present war: “Never before has the German theatre paid homage to Hölderlin in a similar way as it does today during the struggle for what it most sacred to us.”³⁵⁶ However, as repertoires during the war only rarely performed the “holy truths” of the eternal classics in monumental stagings but relied instead on quite un-heroic comedies and farces, commentators tried to read these through a völkisch lens, too. In 1943 Heinz Kindermann published a profusely illustrated book of sixteenth century German comical tales (Schwänke), some of which had anti-Semitic undertones.³⁵⁷

Discussing the aesthetics of performance is of course hampered methodologically by an absence of filmed material, and even photographs are rare, particularly for the smaller stages. Where they exist they show off signature productions and are hardly representative of the majority of the fare produced. The reality of producing a great number of plays each season also meant that due care could rarely be exercised. Prague’s set designer, Frank Schultes, for example, had to design 14 to 16 shows each season.³⁵⁸ Apart from this, the discrepancies between leading stages such as Prague and smaller ones were significant. Discourses around the requirement for heroic and magnificent settings and costumes probably raised an eyebrow or two at small regional and touring theatres where the material conditions for productions were limited. But even apart from these limitations most productions at theatres across occupied Europe seem to have been rather pedestrian and unexciting in their aesthetic.

Interviews with contemporary witnesses suggest that productions were “lack-lustre”; they offered nothing new and were based on “routine” performances.³⁵⁹

Figure 4.22 Marriage of Figaro, German theatre in the Netherlands, Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies.

At the same time, “lacklustre” performances, unexciting as they may have been, by and large could not be described as “poor” if judged solely from a craft perspective. At the top end of the profession the quality of the leading German orchestras and opera houses remained outstanding, despite significant emigration

Figures 4.23–4.25 Performances at the German theatre in Oslo, Oslo National Archives.

of some of the most prominent figures.³⁶⁰ Josef Keilberth in Prague turned the German Philharmonic Orchestra Prague into an influential orchestra, which was widely recognised not only for its quality but also for its unconventional repertoire. A number of sources not necessarily close to Nazi propaganda claimed that Keilberth successfully continued the famous tradition of the orchestra and sustained the level of quality it had acquired during the directorships of Alexander von Zemlinsky, George Széll and Karl Rankl.³⁶¹ But even smaller theatres benefitted from the fact that the vast majority of actors, musicians and singers appearing on German stages had undergone significant professional training. In Poland, despite the fact that the official German language theatres were largely boycotted by the Polish population, many Polish commentators after the war testified to the quality of the productions, the detailed costume and set designs, and the meticulous acting and singing.³⁶² The same was true for the administrative, technical and managerial staff. This also means that by and large they would have been able to translate at least some aesthetic ideas and demands onto the stage had they been asked to do so. Overall, however, and even at the leading stages and even with 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 that to a lay audience it was probably not obvious what had changed “in the art of theatre” since the Nazis had come to

Figures 4.26–4.27 Interior and set designs, German theatre in Warsaw, from Gollert, Warschau unter deutscher Herrschaft (Warsaw under German rule).

power.³⁶³ It was even more important, then, to provide the “necessary” explanations and contextualisations in the programme notes.

Programme notes

Since the turn of the nineteenth century, programme notes had become an important feature at German theatres chiefly as a means of communication between the theatre and existing and future audiences. Many of these notes took the form of journals, which were published at least once a month and contained 15 to 20 pages. They informed the reader about particular productions and playwrights, and provided conceptual and contextual input about the season as a whole or the vision of the theatre. In many ways these notes went far beyond the task of information about which actor played which role and were used to 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.³⁶⁴ These appeared at regular intervals throughout the season – sometimes with inlays containing information about current productions – but there were also special issues or specially bound yearbooks at the end of the season.

On occasion of the opening production (Festvorstellung) of the German theatre in Prague in the baroque Ständetheater on 31 October 1939, for example, a special issue of the programme notes appeared which featured a number of drama-turgical contributions and quotes by leading officials. It immediately placed the theatre in the context of Nazi cultural politics and attempted to establish Prague as a German city. Goebbels saw the Prague theatre as an “outpost of our cultural aims”; Ludwig Körner, president of the Reich Theatre Chamber, interpreted the re-opening of the German theatre as “proof of our cultural fighting spirit”; Staatssekretär Karl Hermann Frank expected the playhouse to return to its “rightful” place as a specifically German theatre; and NSDAP district leader Konstantin Höss confirmed that “Prague shall sustain National Socialist places of edification, cultural education and German cheerfulness”.³⁶⁵ There was no question as to the importance the Nazi administration afforded to Prague as a centre of German culture and, indeed, theatre. Posen, although considerably smaller and evidently less influential than Prague, claimed a similar leadership in theatrical matters in the “German East”, and again the programme notes were used to stake this claim. In a preview to the upcoming season, published on the occasion of the grand opening of the Gautheater in March 1941, Posen’s Mayor Scheffler celebrated the significant investment in Posen’s two playhouses as this allowed the theatre to offer the kind of programme “which our cultural mission in the German East demands of us”. The head of the regional Reichspropagandaamt added that

our Gau’s inhabitant [Volksgenosse], after going about his duties and a hard day’s work, shall in the evening be able to experience hours of national edification, in order to fulfil the most important duty which allowed the two theatres to be built in the first place, i.e. to be a signal [Fanal] for the holy German culture in the old East.³⁶⁶

Significant touring activity or performances by visiting companies were equally accompanied by special editions of programme notes. When the company of the Hamburg State Opera came to Oslo in 1940, a glossy 40 page booklet was published to mark the occasion.³⁶⁷ In June 1942 the “Prague German theatres” went on a much-publicised tour to Florence as the ensemble of the Ständetheater produced Lessing’s Emilia Galotti at the Palazzo Vecchio. To accompany this visit the theatre management published an expensively produced 48 page booklet with 21 high resolution illustrations (some of them in colour) as a special issue of the Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag.³⁶⁸ The illustrations featured productions in the repertoire (not only the one being performed in Florence), and there were also pictures of Prague itself. The performance and the accompanying booklet were clearly not merely produced for information purposes but were meant to function as marketing tools for “Prague the German city with its successful German theatre”. Many theatres used special editions of their programme notes for more substantial season reviews. In one of these publications in Posen, and looking back at the 1941/2 season, the editors presented a volume of almost program-matic character formulating the ideals of a truly National Socialist theatre. For example, separate essays were dedicated to different theatrical genres and the ways in which these had changed under the new regime and what still remained to be done. In one of these contributions Wilhelm von Scholz discussed the “art of directing” and stressed the fact that the director really needed to be invisible. Not surprisingly, Scholz turned against Regietheater here as directors were solely required to serve the text.³⁶⁹ This does not mean, however, that similarly program-matic essays did not appear in regular weekly programme notes – on the contrary. In one of these regular notes during the 1941/2 season at Posen, 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.³⁷⁰ Also, even ordinary programme notes could take the form of glossy booklets, which not only informed the audience about specific productions but put these in a wider cultural and political context. During the 1940/1 and 1941/2 seasons the Prague Ständetheater produced elaborate programme notes of between 32 and 70 pages on high quality paper with many illustrations, which, together with their large size, gave them an expensive look.³⁷¹ Some issues were dedicated to individual playwrights or composers, such as Grillparzer or Wagner; others featured contributions by leading dramatists and commentators, such as Gerhart Hauptmann and Richard Billinger. There were essays on theatre history as well as detailed dramaturgical articles with drawings, illustrations and photographs. References to Prague’s glorious theatrical past in particular afforded the Nazi regime additional legitimisation. Programme no. 2 during the 1941/2 season, for example, was entirely dedicated to the memory of the first production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Ständetheater in October 1787.³⁷² Although the notes appeared conservative, overall discussing a canonical repertoire without being overtly political, the production photographs show that the theatre clearly accepted its role as an official playhouse supporting the Nazi cause.³⁷³ As discussed above, performances aspired to a heroic aesthetic, with large, empty performance spaces framed by massive stone walls and substantial pillars and stairs. The set designs for all featured productions were elaborate and costly, and it appears that these set designs were of particular interest to the theatre management (one issue in 1941/2 was dedicated to the architect Schinkel, whose work was celebrated by the Nazis). In fact, everything in these programme notes suggested that this thea-tre was a worthy state theatre.

Prague was clearly one of the most important theatres in occupied Europe, but even less prestigious stages published substantial programme notes. The notes at the Gautheater Posen, for example, had an expensive and grand feel to them. During the 1942/3 season, at a time when wartime shortages in resources had already led to significant cuts elsewhere in the Reich,³⁷⁴ Posen still featured 14 page programme notes with inserted weekly repertoires on high quality paper with many photographs and programmatic articles, sometimes by leading commentators such as the theatre historian Carl Niessen.³⁷⁵ During the same season Litzmannstadt, too, continued to publish 16 page elegant programme notes with photographs, sketches and detailed articles.³⁷⁶ At various theatres across Europe the notes reported on the activities of other similar stages in annexed and occupied territories, and featured articles on the activities of theatre companies operating behind the front lines.³⁷⁷ At the same time, it is noteworthy that the programme notes in general at theatres in occupied Europe looked strikingly similar to those at theatres in the Altreich.³⁷⁸ They featured adverts by local (German) businesses, photos of members of the ensembles, theatre anecdotes and biographies, drama-turgical pieces concerning particular productions, historical essays, inserts with the week’s repertoire and, last but not least, a substantial political section. This featured statements, sometimes whole speeches, by leading politicians, as well as photographs of national as well as regional and local party representatives. On the other hand, and again linking to developments in Germany at large, the political emphasis of the programme notes diminished over the course of the war.³⁷⁹ What remained was an emphasis on the canonical classical literature, with many articles on Goethe, Schiller and Grabbe, among others.

The programme notes were also used to introduce the inner workings of a thea-tre to audiences who might not be familiar with large, professionally run theatres, and this can be seen as a difference to notes published in the Altreich. During the 1942/3 season, for example, Posen’s programme notes ran a series of articles on 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 those of the dramaturge, the technician or the carpenter.³⁸⁰ The educational impetus behind the articles was obvious, but they also illustrated the vast investment in spaces and manpower that had gone into re-opening the two Posen stages. The sizes of the painting and carpentry workshops, for example, are simply staggering and worthy of a state theatre. To judge from the photos, the theatre was well supplied with the latest lighting system, switch boards and control rooms, too.

However, programme notes also had another much more mundane role to play. Particularly at the end of each season and over the summer months, they engaged in serious advertising activity to persuade the public to buy season tickets. At Litzmannstadt artistic director Hans Hesse reminded the German speaking population that going to the theatre was an obligation for every good German – most clearly expressed by buying a season ticket. These “reminders” tended to be far from subtle. After all, it was supposed to be their duty to play their part in the expansion of German culture in the East.³⁸¹ At the of the 1941/2 season, for example, the theatre management published a special edition of the programme notes which featured a season review as well as a preview of the upcoming 1942/3 season in connection with an “invitation” to take out a season ticket.³⁸² In an aggressive promotional campaign the entire city administration seems to have been flooded with these flyers – sometimes several times in the space of days. Staff members had to sign a register on receipt of a flyer to make sure they took note.

Overall, programme notes situated theatres in a historical context and on a theatrical continuum which provided them with much-needed legitimacy, particularly in areas which had never featured a professional German theatre. In Litzmannstadt, for example, which, even by the Nazis own (albeit secret) admission had never been a German city, the programme notes stressed the fact that the city had been a German foundation and had been dominated by German merchants for a long time in its early history. By doing so, programme notes placed theatres in the context of 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. In doing so, the current situation appeared as the fulfilment of the promises of Germany’s great theatrical past.

Germanisierung

As laid out in the so-called Generalplan Ost (General Plan East), the Nazi regime, and Heinrich Himmler in particular as Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums (Reich commissioner for the strengthening of Germandom), envisaged a radical reshaping of large parts of Europe, not only concerning political borders but also relating to a forced mass migration of indigenous populations.³⁸³ The plan was to drive Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians etc. from their homelands and to replace them with Germans, many of whom would themselves be moved from their homes in the Baltic states or Northern Ukraine. A Germanic super-state was to be created including the Netherlands, parts of Belgium and France, the Scandinavian countries and large parts of Eastern Europe. For example, even though it was formally an ally of Nazi Germany, the SS planned to “Germanify” Slovakia by resettling 100,000 Germans in the country and by “educating” the “worthy” part of the Slovakian population,³⁸⁴ while the others were to be moved out. Similar plans existed for Bohemia and Moravia. Reinhard Heydrich claimed in 1942 that 40%–60% of Czechs were “eindeutschbar” (could be turned into Germans) and that the rest should be “removed in a discreet way”.³⁸⁵ Martin Wolf, head of the cultural office in the Protectorate administration, explained in a 1943 lecture what this meant. After the war there would be a necessary “extinction of racially unwanted elements”.³⁸⁶ Houses and farms vacated by removing their rightful owners were filled with incoming German nationals. They were tempted to relocate to Bohemia and Moravia as substantial areas had been requisitioned for them, and by late 1944 almost 9,000 Germans had moved into the region.³⁸⁷ In a speech in 1942 Arthur Greiser explained that in the long run the Polish population of the Warthegau had no right to be there as this was now German land.³⁸⁸ In the meantime, “the German is master of the land and the Pole, who is loyal and hard working, is under Germany’s protection”.³⁸⁹ Greiser envisaged a total transformation of the region’s “infrastructure, architecture, landscape and public memory” to make it German.³⁹⁰ The official statistics were meant to impress: the newly formed Reichsgau Wartheland received some 400,000 Germans from within Germany (Reichsdeutsche) and a further 600,000 Germans from across Europe (Volksdeutsche) by the end of the war.³⁹¹ In 1943 80,000 of Posen’s overall population of 320,000 were already German. And while Litzmannstadt’s overall population decreased (not least because large parts of the Polish and Jewish population [90,000 by the end of 1939] had been expelled or murdered), that of the German minority rose steadily, from 80,000 in 1939 to 135,000 in 1943.³⁹² The number of Germans living in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia rose, too, from 189,000 in March 1940 to 245,000 six months later.³⁹³ And by mid-1944 the number of Germans living in Krakau had risen to 40,000.³⁹⁴ In little more than six months in 1940 2,000 inhabitants of Straßburg had “volunteered” to have their names changed to sound more German, and 60,000 French speakers were expelled from Lorraine.³⁹⁵ The resettlement of ethnic Germans, however, was often marred with problems. The majority of the Baltic Germans, for example, did not want to leave their homeland. To add insult to injury, on arrival in Poland they were put in holding camps until they were assigned new farms and houses. The newcomers were not exactly greeted with open arms either.³⁹⁶

One region in particular was seen as a model for future resettlements. Both the central administration in Berlin (and particularly Hitler and Himmler) and Gauleiter Greiser himself (who was keen to please his superiors and advance his career) promoted the Warthegau in central Poland as a region which could successfully be turned into a German land.³⁹⁷ There were plans to resettle 40,000 ethnic Germans from the Baltic states and another 130,000 from Northern

Figure 4.28 Cover of the journal Das Elsass (The Alsace).

Ukraine (Wolhyniendeutsche) in the Warthegau. In addition, large numbers were expected from elsewhere, including the Altreich (see below). To make room for them, an equal number of Poles were required to leave their homeland. Recent research assumes that up to 50% of the region’s original population were affected by the brutal Germanification policy of the occupiers by migration, forced

Figure 4.29 Cover of the journal Deutscher Osten (German East).

labour, deportations and sometimes outright murder.³⁹⁸ German forces occupied the region only days after the attack on Poland in September 1939, and within a few months it was branded Reichsgau Wartheland and incorporated into the “Greater German Empire”. Despite the Gau now formally being German, neither

Figure 4.30 Image of Litzmannstadt (Łódź), from Gissibl, Osten des Warthelandes (The eastern Wartheland). The caption reads: “Lodsch became Litzmannstadt”.

Figure 4.31 Image of Litzmannstadt (Łódź), from Gissibl, Osten des Warthelandes (The eastern Wartheland). Two photographs of the German army entering Łódź.

the region nor its largest city, Łódź, had ever been German – either politically or culturally – and even the occupiers admitted as much.³⁹⁹ In November 1939 85% of the overall population of the Warthegau was Polish, and in Łódź only 7% considered themselves German.⁴⁰⁰ The Polish majority became second-class citizens to be dominated (and eventually eradicated – at least that was the plan) by their German oppressors.⁴⁰¹ In the eyes of the German administration these figures made it even more pressing to “Germanify” the city and region quickly, and the German language theatres were meant to play a major part in this process.⁴⁰² They provided cultural education for growing German communities, some of which had not previously been exposed to professional German companies, and displayed to domestic populations the dominant German culture to which they had no access (either physically or ideologically). District president and Gau superintendent Friedrich Uebelhoer claimed in September 1940:

To foster German culture is one of our chief purposes in the German East. German theatre art in particular as one of its chief expressions (and represented here by the municipal theatre) is called upon to allow German national traditions [Deutschtum], which have been suppressed before, to blossom again and to award this region with the cultural character it deserves.⁴⁰³

The drive to make the region German was immediately obvious and was carried out with a conviction, brutality and speed which stunned the Polish population. Although the files of the civic authorities were written in a matter of fact style and used the typical administrative jargon, they nevertheless displayed some broadly held beliefs of the German occupiers. What shone through was a deep feeling of superiority, an almost pioneering spirit of a chosen elite who justly colonised and “civilised” the “wild East”.⁴⁰⁴ These attitudes were played out in the public arena immediately and without any hint of sensitivity – not even towards the German minority, who had largely lived peacefully alongside the Polish population. In Łódź, for example, the German name of the city (Lodsch) was disregarded and officially used only for the first few months of the occupation. The new name, Litzmannstadt, related to a German general who had fought there during the First World War, but it had no historical roots and was forced on the city in April 1940 on Hitler’s direct order.⁴⁰⁵ The aggressiveness of the occupiers was also illustrated by the name changes for streets. Across occupied Europe, towns and cities now featured new Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Dietrich Eckart and Schlageter Streets. Warsaw’s famous Piłsudski Square was renamed Sachsenplatz and Adolf-Hitler-Platz shortly thereafter, Minsk received a Gauleiter-Kube-Platz, and Łódź’ famous thoroughfare Piotrkowska (for which the Germans had used the name Petrikauer Street) was renamed Adolf Hitler Street.

By early 1940 the Germans had relatively detailed plans for massive building programmes in a number of cities in the Warthegau and beyond. Warsaw was to be radically reduced in size, from a major European capital with 1.3 million inhabitants to a regional German city of 40,000.⁴⁰⁶ Similar, albeit slightly less

Figure 4.32 Image of Warsaw theatre, from Gissibl, Osten des Warthelandes (the eastern Wartheland).

Figure 4.33 Performances on Warsaw’s new open-air stage in 1940, from Gissibl, Osten des Warthelandes (The eastern Wartheland).

radical plans existed for Litzmannstadt, where the new name seemed to offer a carte blanche for radical changes to the city’s fabric. The city’s senior planning officer, Wilhelm Hallbauer, produced a detailed report⁴⁰⁷ which used as a starting point the claim that the quality of housing in Litzmannstadt “was unacceptable for Germans”.⁴⁰⁸ The solutions he suggested, however, went far beyond the immediate fixing of a housing shortage. The city’s main railway station was to be moved from the east to the west of the city, all manufacturing was to be relocated to the outskirts (a substantial part of the city’s manufacturing base was located in the city centre or in close vicinity) as the centre was to be reserved for small businesses, shops and administration. The Polish population was to be moved out of the city centre and “crammed into other bits of the former city” – the Germans did not specify, however, where exactly they wanted the Polish majority to move to. The planners did say that they intended to build a whole new suburb especially for the incoming German population to the west of the new railway station; that suburb was to house “approximately 25,000 people”. A new main road “2 km long” would connect the railway station with the old city centre. At one end of this new axis were the city chambers and a new building for the national workers’ association (Arbeitsfront), at the other a massive new “people’s hall” (Volkshalle) for 12,000 people. The Germans were fully aware that whole areas needed to be torn down, which “wouldn’t be a problem” as the Polish population was to be moved out of the central areas anyway. The already radical plans soon became even more radical, and in early 1941 the capacity of the new suburb was increased to 100,000 people.⁴⁰⁹ The speed of the development as well as the constant changes in plans was breathtaking. Figures and plans seem to have been dealt with and changed almost at will and without any consideration for the tens of thousands of people involved. Even the staff in Speer’s office, not normally known for their modest and sensitive approach to town planning themselves, seemed baffled and suggested to Greiser that he might want to consult the German railways (Reichsbahn) first before moving railway stations around.⁴¹⁰ Greiser and his team, however, had already started with substantial building works, and widespread demolition in inner city districts had begun at the end of 1939.⁴¹¹

Monthly statistical reports documented Litzmannstadt’s radical development in order to illustrate its “success” story for local, regional and national authorities. Their tenor throughout was one of growth – rising electricity and gas consumption, a rising number of people owning a radio⁴¹² and a car,⁴¹³ a rising number of books in the city library and a substantial rise in its usage, too.⁴¹⁴ In April 1942 Litzmannstadt had 12 cinemas with 7,000 seats and monthly audiences of around 335,000.⁴¹⁵ New city guides were printed for this expanding “German” city and the official Publikationsstelle Berlin-Dahlem commissioned other publications, too.⁴¹⁶ The efforts made in the Warthegau show that the German occupiers wanted to not only give existing cities a make-over but effectively turn them into new ones. These new cities were intended to be bulwarks against the “uncivilised hordes in the East” and outposts of German culture.⁴¹⁷ The regime turned to film to document this transformation. In 1942 the German UFA film production company produced a feature length propaganda film entitled Łódź Turns into Litzmannstadt (Aus Łódź wird Litzmannstadt, written by Hans F. Wilhelm),⁴¹⁸ and a year later Posen featured in a film entitled Posen, Stadt im Aufbau (Posen, Reconstructing a City). New inhabitants from the Reich were tempted into the region not only by appeals to their “conscience” but also by very real tax breaks. For example, companies were lured to the East with promises that they would be able to reinvest profits made in the Reich tax free in the Warthegau region.⁴¹⁹ Part and parcel of the Warthegau’s “Germanification” was the expulsion, concentration and later extermination of the region’s Jewish population. In Litzmannstadt the Nazis created one of the biggest ghettos in Eastern Europe.⁴²⁰ In the significant planning exercises, however, the large ghetto towards the north of the city centre did not play any significant part although by 1942 it housed almost 250,000 people. Corresponding to the Nazi’s liking for euphemisms, the ghetto was almost exclusively referred as Litzmannstadt Nord, as if it was a suburb like any other.⁴²¹

The theatre played a key part in the aggressive Germanification drive of large parts of Europe. The immediate need for substantial funds to be paid to set up a German language theatre in Marburg, for example, was underlined by the “special role” it was meant to play “for the Lower Styrian region and to win it back for Germany”.⁴²² More than other art forms the theatre was called upon to let “Germanhood flourish” by providing it with a “fitting cultural aura”, as Warthegau’s district president Friedrich Uebelhoer asserted. He charged artistic director Hesse and his staff with the further “consolidation and stabilisation” of the German people.⁴²³ To add further weight to plans to renovate the former Slovenian theatres in Marburg and Cilli (at a cost of almost RM 1 million) and run them on an annual subsidy exceeding RM 700,000, the Regional Propaganda Office in Styria argued that it was only the theatre which could “exterminate [the] primitive Slovenian and Serbian culture” and substitute it with the “worthier and better” German culture. Currently (in August 1941, that is), the state the theatre buildings were in did not correspond “to the cultural standard required by the Greater German Empire”.

The particular task in newly acquired Lower Styria is a Germanification of the Slovenian population. This Germanification cannot be achieved solely by learning German or by political propaganda but has to rely strongly on the imparting of German cultural values. The elimination of the […] primitive Slovenian and Serbian culture can only be accomplished by engaging with a more highly developed and better culture. More than literature and film it is the thea-tre (with opera and operetta) which is primarily called upon to achieve this.⁴²⁴

In a further letter to the Finance Ministry the Regional Propaganda Office in Styria – using the same line of argument – almost demanded that the money be granted and noted the geopolitical location close to Italy and Croatia as further proof of the urgent need for action.⁴²⁵ Without even requiring further evidence, plans or quotes as to how exactly the money would be spent, the Finance Ministry happily granted RM 800,000 – within just three weeks of receiving the initial application letter.⁴²⁶

Related to this discourse, the focus was not on theatre buildings alone but, more importantly (as already discussed above), on what was put onstage inside them. The opening production of Litzmannstadt’s theatre in January 1940 (Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm), for example, was linked to the particular role the theatre was supposed to be playing in this setting. Mayor Franz Schiffer claimed that the city, which had been founded by the “industriousness and ability” of German merchants over a hundred years ago, was now (rightfully) returning into German hands, after having suffered from an “inorganic and racially inferior” character due to the “influx of a quarter of a million Jews” and “conscious neglect by the Polish state”. Now the Germans would “erect a bulwark of German culture in the East in the unshakeable belief in the victorious and continuing existence of the Third Reich”.⁴²⁷ The theatre’s Intendant Hesse was happy to oblige and claimed that the theatre had a central role to play in the city’s Germanification:

The actors and their artistic director had to defeat the Polish-Jewish heritage first before being able to approach the world of poetry. They carried out pioneering work, like everyone else who arrived in Łódź in 1939, in order to turn a city with a substantial German population in former central Poland into a truly German city.⁴²⁸

Figure 4.34 Litzmannstadt theatre, Herder Institute, Marburg, image archive.

Figure 4.35 Litzmannstadt’s studio theatre, from Gissibl, Osten des Warthelandes (The eastern Wartheland).

Figure 4.36 Image of Litzmannstadt (Łódź), from Gissibl, Osten des Warthelandes (The eastern Wartheland). The caption reads: “Adolf Bautze conducts”.

It is interesting to note however, and quite typical for a regime characterised by contradictions, that despite the powerful discourse of a pan-European Germanic super-state held together by Germany’s superior culture, economic and political considerations regularly got in the way as territorial expansion carried substantial economic significance. The continent’s Germanisierung did not seem to represent a coherent plan at all, as some areas with significant German minorities were excluded. Südtirol, for example, with its largely German speaking population, was handed over to the Italian ally, and the 70,000 ethnic Germans in the Baltic states were moved westwards following the Hitler-Stalin Pact.⁴²⁹ The vast areas of formerly Polish territory now annexed by the Nazis (so even excluding the Generalgouvernement), however, had a German population of less than 10% but with their heavy industry and resources were of high economic importance. Himmler was charged to make them German within ten years, driving out 7.8 million Poles and 700,000 Jews and resettling the region with ethnic Germans from the Baltic, Bessarabia, Bukowina and other places. In a blatant contradiction to the established discourse of the crucial role these ethnic Germans played for the new regime, 350,000 Volksdeutsche were forced to move from their established homelands to settle in the new German territories in Western and Central Poland.⁴³⁰

Battling stakeholders, competing influences

Despite attempts at top down structures, theatres in the occupied territories were subject to competing demands from various agencies in a situation which displayed many of the characteristics of theatre politics in the Altreich.⁴³¹ Individuals as well as military, party and civil authorities all wanted to have their say. This regularly resulted in disruptions and frustrations and affected artistic, administrative and financial questions. The regional Gauleiter were keen to play their part and display leadership in artistic matters; the armed forces kept a keen watch over entertainments and sometimes interfered directly; civil administrations, newspaper critics and party organisations such as KdF were eager to affect the repertoire; and even minor local party members wanted to have their say. The Brünn Kulturreferent (head of the municipal cultural office) Herr Notz, for example, wrote regular reports for Fritz Oehmke in the Office for Cultural Affairs at the Protectorate administration in Prague detailing the theatrical activities at Brünn. Although he was probably not required to do so and almost certainly lacked any suitable qualifications or experience, Notz happily gave his verdict on the quality of actors and performances.⁴³² Lengthy administrative processes and delays resulted from the fact that the appointment of a new Intendant, for example, had to be approved by the Propaganda Ministry, the military authorities, the Gauleiter, the city administration and the Gau’s head of cultural affairs. Even the annual repertoire planning documents had to be submitted to various agencies. The thea-tre administration in Lille, for example, submitted plans to the Reichsdramaturg in Berlin, the Regional Propaganda Office in Brussels, an army liaison officer and the local KdF branch (the KdF secured a right to have a say in this matter because of the large quantities of tickets they bought in bulk). An internal note by Herr Kleinschmidt in the Propaganda Ministry in May 1941, who claimed with respect to the Lille theatre that the military authorities who had been keen to play a role before had now been “deactivated”, clearly proved premature as conflicts – particularly over financial matters – continued.⁴³³

Frictions also arose from the various demands put on theatres, which were expected to play an active part in the war effort. Theatres organised special performances for the Wehrmacht, for departments in municipal administrations, and for companies, and co-operations existed with party organisations such as KdF and Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Workers’ Front). Block bookings (see above) seemed a good idea but also gave those organisations which guaranteed large quantities of tickets a chance to interfere with the programming. In April 1943 the artistic director of the Gdansk-West Prussia touring company (Landesbühne Danzig-Westpreußen) complained to Reichsdramaturg Schlösser about the undue pressure he was under from local KdF representatives to present a particular repertoire.⁴³⁴ Closed performances proved equally ambivalent. On paper they looked like sold out events and were therefore attractive, but they were not popular with actors as the audiences were less engaged and sometimes did not turn up at all (see example above with respect to the performance for the Waffen-SS in Prague). In Lille tensions also arose around financial matters resulting from the fact that, since soldiers were not required to pay for their tickets at all, box office revenue was even lower than at other theatres. Subsidies therefore needed to be higher to make up for the shortfall, and negotiations proved difficult between the Propaganda Ministry, the Finance Ministry and the army.⁴³⁵ The finance minister duly suggested cutting costs by sacrificing the opera, a suggestion which met with stiff opposition from the Propaganda Ministry and was ultimately unsuccessful.⁴³⁶

A particular set of circumstances in wartime Europe and a particular source of irritation arose around the role of the Reich commissioner (a position created in the Netherlands, in Norway and on former Soviet territory), as well as that of the Generalgouverneur in Poland and the Reich protector in Prague. Equipped with almost total control over “their” territories, the Reich commissioners and Hans Frank in occupied Poland did not readily accept the Propaganda Ministry’s role as supervising theatrical activity. In an internal note to a colleague within the Propaganda Ministry, Rainer Schlösser complained about Frank’s irritating behaviour and his refusal to accept that the Propaganda Ministry was “responsible for all matters theatrical”.⁴³⁷ A set of files concerning the German theatre in The Hague sheds more light on these conflicts. In the spring of 1942 the Propaganda Ministry noted with surprise that Reich commissioner Seyss-Inquart “apparently” wanted to run the theatre himself, a suspicion which became fact a few days later.⁴³⁸ When the Reich commissioner’s office asked the Propaganda Ministry for a sample on which they could model Wolfgang Nufer’s job contract as artistic director, the Ministry gleefully declined as these contracts were issued on a case-by-case basis: “Intendant Nufer will need to receive a tailor made contract suited to the particular situation at the Hague theatre. This is something we would have issued from our side had the theatre become an immediate Reich theatre.”⁴³⁹

The Reich commissioner risked a conflict not only with the Propaganda Ministry but also – and perhaps more worryingly – with the Finance Ministry. As Seyss-Inquart claimed that he could finance “his” theatre by using Dutch funds, he refused to let the German Finance Ministry check the books.⁴⁴⁰ Frictions continued throughout the war. Whenever the office of the Reich commissioner in The Hague asked the Propaganda Ministry for advice, responses were slow in coming and correspondence seems to have been deliberately delayed.⁴⁴¹ Financial matters also caused headaches in Prague where deputy Reich protector Heydrich in a meeting with Walleck in 1941 had made wide-ranging decisions concerning the status and the resulting salaries of members of the ensemble which directly impacted on the theatre’s budgetary needs. Not only had the Propaganda Ministry not been consulted at the time, but there was also no note of the meeting and its outcomes. Still, in a report from 1943 the decisions presumably taken at the meeting (which Walleck reported on verbally) were taken at face value.⁴⁴² In Oslo the Propaganda Ministry intended to reduce the risk of a similar mess by stating from the outset that it was responsible for the theatre by agreeing to provide the funds needed. In doing so the Ministry made no attempt in hiding the close link between subsidies and control. When agreeing to the funds Eugen Hadamovsky noted that the Oslo theatre was a “cultural propaganda matter which the Minister [i.e. Goebbels] has to influence directly every step of the way”.⁴⁴³ In Krakau open conflict arose between the theatre’s artistic director Friedrichfranz Stampe and Generalgouverneur Frank over the setting up of a new regional orchestra, the Philharmonie des Generalgouvernements, which Stampe saw as being in direct competition with “his” theatre orchestra. Stampe deliberately fuelled discussions in a letter to the Propaganda Ministry by playing the race card. He established a clear distinction between “my German orchestra” and the new regional orchestra which had been entirely made up of Polish musicians. He also – probably rightly – feared that two orchestras would be too much in a city where Germans were only a minority.⁴⁴⁴ In the end the orchestra was indeed founded, conducted by excellent conductors, and existed right up to the end of the German occupation in Krakau. After the incident over the orchestra, however, the relationship between Stampe and Frank seems to have developed rather well – so well, in fact, that Frank intervened on Stampe’s behalf to make sure he received the much coveted title of general artistic manager (Generalintendant). After the Propaganda Ministry had turned down the request for promotion in late 1943, Frank went behind Goebbels’ back and wrote to Hitler directly. In a personal conversation Hitler agreed but asked Frank to adhere to the usual administrative processes. Frank, however, at a reception in Krakau a few days later (February 1944) jumped the gun, handed over the certificate to Stampe and congratulated him on the successful promotion. After this had been reported in the national media, Goebbels had no choice but to accept the fact and sign the relevant documents.⁴⁴⁵

Interestingly, conflicts also arose that were of the theatres’ own making and not caused by external factors. A keen interest to further one’s influence, power and career resulted in sometimes open conflict and competition between artistic directors. Competition particularly arose between theatres in occupied Eastern Europe, a region of significant political interest and investment, which seemed to provide the opportunity for particularly gifted directors and managers to shine and suggest themselves for higher laurels (i.e. more important postings in the Altreich). The theatre in Krakau, for example, furnished with the grand title of Staatstheater (as opposed to the more common and significantly less grand Stadttheater [municipal theatre]) and headed by the similarly titled Generalintendant Stampe (as opposed to “just” Intendant) vied for the role of the leading theatre in “the East”. Officials in Krakau posited that the city was the “largest place of cultural interest in Germany’s East” and that its actors “stood as propagandists in the first line of Germany’s creative artists”.⁴⁴⁶ Posen’s artistic director Karl Peter Heyser, however, claimed a similar role and importance for his own theatre, one of the “first stages in Germany” and without a doubt “the cultural centre of the entire German East”.⁴⁴⁷ Litzmannstadt claimed a special cultural and political leadership as the largest and “most easterly [German] city”,⁴⁴⁸ and Riga asserted a similar role based on its influential opera house.

Conflicts also regularly arose around issues of Europe’s Germanification and between different ministries and departments, the armed forces, party and civil administration, and schools of thought. In July 1942, for example, Himmler, against the wishes of the district authorities in Krakau, moved 27,000 ethnic Germans into the Zamosc region and simultaneously drove out thousands of Poles in order to establish the first “major German area of settlement” in the Generalgouvernement.⁴⁴⁹ Similar conflicts occurred all over occupied Europe. In April 1940 Litzmannstadt’s Stadtoberbaudirektor (the head of the city’s planning office), Wilhelm Hallbauer, put together a detailed report on “spatial issues in Litzmannstadt” (entitled Grundsätzliche Gedanken zum Raumproblem Litzmannstadt) in which he made a number of radical suggestions to change the city’s outlook (see above). To meet the exorbitant costs for the building project Hallbauer suggested using the funds confiscated from Jewish and Polish businesses in Łódź. It was not this suggestion which caused frictions in the Nazi administration but the fact that other protagonists wanted to have their say, too. In this instance, the Reich Interior Ministry felt that it was side-lined as Hallbauer had sent his report only to Albert Speer.⁴⁵⁰ There were countless other examples which not only are testament to the rivalries and conflicts within the Nazi regime more generally but also show the major importance afforded to the “reshaping of the German East”.

Problems and inconsistencies

The plan to open a network of German language theatres across occupied Europe while the war was going on proved an enormous undertaking and stretched resources to the limit. Problems related to subsidies not arriving in time (like in the Protectorate – see above), actors being called up and not replaced, building works delayed or cancelled altogether, etc. The regime was at pains, however, not to let any of this become public knowledge and instead let the theatrical conquering of Europe appear like a well-oiled machine. Behind the scenes, however, problems and inconsistencies were rife.

To illustrate these inconsistencies, let us look at Litzmannstadt’s theatre and compare and contrast the official story with the reality on the ground. According to the official account the Theater der Stadt Lodsch opened its doors in January 1940 to great critical acclaim and after a number of guest performances by the ensemble of the Breslau theatre in the autumn of 1939.⁴⁵¹ The opening production was performed by the ensemble from Reval (Tallinn), and it was this company under its director, Hans Hesse, which subsequently became Litzmannstadt’s standing theatre company. In a planned development a professional ensemble from the Baltic which had worked there under difficult conditions, bringing “worthy” German art to the German minority in Reval, and which was now being rewarded for their missionary work with a much more stable situation in Litzmannstadt, had arrived in Germany’s largest city in the East to continue their good work for the nation. If one looks behind the scenes, however, the situation proved more complex. The files reveal that in the weeks and months preceding the opening performance, chaos reigned. Immediately after the German occupation of Łódź it had seemed as if the existing German amateur dramatic society (the Thalia Theater-Verein) would continue to offer theatrical entertainment. Then, in mid-October, a newspaper article promised an “immediate re-opening” of a German theatre but gave no indication as to when this might be expected to happen and whether this would be a receiving or a standing theatre.⁴⁵² The Breslau company was then drafted to give a number of guest performances at short notice, and by the end of October a municipal theatre seemed to be in the cards – but not growing out of the local Thalia ensemble. This group, instead, was given no role in the future developments apart from the thankless task of “supplying the new theatre with a substantial audience”.⁴⁵³ On 7 December the press announced that a contract with the Reval company under Hesse had been signed, and that (despite the fact that the beginning of the season was as yet unconfirmed) “the artists will be arriving in Łódź tomorrow morning”.⁴⁵⁴ This took not only the city’s population by surprise but also the regional authorities. Hesse faxed the Regional Propaganda Office in Posen on 8 December asking them to book hotel accommodation for the whole troupe and announced that rehearsals would start immediately.⁴⁵⁵ The head of the Regional Propaganda Office, Vossler, sent a furious fax to his superiors in Berlin the next day. According to Vossler the situation in Łódź was still unclear, he was uncertain in which theatre they were going to perform, and he did not even know where to put the company up.⁴⁵⁶ Even after its opening the playhouse hardly became an immediate success story as audience figures were dismal. After a bleak January monthly audiences peaked at 17,000 in February but after that fell consistently to below 9,000 in June.⁴⁵⁷ This was a disaster, both in relation to the cultural propaganda and claims of a new cultural dawn but also, more importantly, in comparison to the audiences attracted by the former Polish municipal theatre. The Teatr Miejski had achieved figures almost three times higher in the preceding year.⁴⁵⁸ Looking back at its beginnings, even the theatre’s dramaturge, Hanns Merck, admitted that since its foundation the theatre had achieved only “a fraction of what it had hoped and planned for”.⁴⁵⁹ As if to buoy himself up, Merck announced that at least they had made a start – only a small consolation given the function this playhouse was meant to fulfil both to educate the German population and to stand as a bastion of German culture in the East.

Litzmannstadt’s early problems were mirrored at other playhouses across occupied Europe. Building works delayed the opening of theatres (for example in Lille and Marburg); more complex projects meant that the renovation work was never finished (in Cilli). Despite notes to the contrary, which were meant to cheer up colleagues internally more than anything else, audiences in Norway and The Hague remained hostile to the German theatres. Even more problematic in view of the claims that these German theatres were fulfilling their role as cultural bastions in Europe and as advancing Germany’s cultural cause was the reality in terms of their repertoires (see above). Despite a powerful discourse literally demanding that theatre programmes needed to be dominated by politically sound plays and worthy classics to cultivate cities and educate their population, the fare actually produced was quite pedestrian and largely catered for a hunger for amusement. At Litzmannstadt, for example, the völkisch drama Uta von Naumburg by Felix Dhünen sold only 362 tickets, and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure attracted only 101 patrons on its first night.⁴⁶⁰ Lille produced only a small number of classics, often with reduced casts. None of the productions achieved any notable popular success.⁴⁶¹ The failure of the völkisch repertoire in particular hurt cultural politicians. Almost none of the officially celebrated new political plays were produced – no works by Hanns Johst, Siegmund Graff, Ernst Bacmeister, Curt Langenbeck, Paul Ernst or Hans Bethge.⁴⁶² Even worse was the dichotomy between high demands and actual output concerning the smaller stages attached to most theatres under investigation here. In a discourse mirrored across Europe, artistic managers had stressed that their studio theatres would primarily stage classical plays and modern classics with smaller casts.⁴⁶³ Instead, what these stages almost exclusively relied on were musical comedies and farces – exactly the kind of fare the Nazis had turned against when criticising the “cheap entertainment” on Weimar’s stages.

Local commentators were shocked. The theatre critic of the Litzmannstädter Zeitung, Gustav Röttger, for example, did not buy Merck’s desperate attempts to sell the focus on entertainment as part of the “education process” in a largely uncivilised Eastern city.

Endowed with substantial sums out of municipal pockets the theatre has become everyone’s friend due to some good achievements. In future, the goal will be, above all, to look after the dramatic ensemble and repertoire. It has to become a bulwark of the German character, a site of great art, which, far exposed in the East, can never only entertain, but must become presentable and prestigious in a way which it is not quite at the moment.⁴⁶⁴

Not surprisingly, Litzmannstadt’s city officials were not amused, either, and in their voluminous 1943 administrative report reminded everyone of the theatre’s function:

Since Schiller and Richard Wagner we appreciate the importance of the thea-tre as a national place of education and culture. In the Litzmannstadt region good theatre more than anything is called upon to fulfil this function and to become the enunciator of German art and spirit.⁴⁶⁵

The report made it clear that the theatre must not become a “place of sheer amusement or superficial interests”.⁴⁶⁶ On the whole, theatres found themselves in a catch 22 situation, as it proved impossible to attract the expected record audiences with a worthy repertoire nobody wanted to see. Audiences, however, did not only stay away from the classics because they craved light entertainment but also because the production of classical drama was often pretty dismal. The production of Goethe’s Urfaust at the Litzmannstadt theatre, for example, was called “respectable” by city officials,⁴⁶⁷ and the press stated that its actors were “trying very hard to give their best”.⁴⁶⁸ Concerning Shakespeare – one of the pillars of German theatre repertoires – commentators concluded that “for Shakespeare the time has not yet come in Litzmannstadt”.⁴⁶⁹ Out of all the productions at the Lille theatre, long-standing actress Edith Lechtape remembered only two which she found noteworthy “as offering any intellectual challenge or professional satisfaction”.⁴⁷⁰

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. In Oslo the German press praised Christoph Reuland’s performance as Fenton in Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor as testifying to an improvement in his singing, clearly achieved through “assiduous study”.⁴⁷¹ Similarly, at Litzmannstadt the actors in a production of Max Halbe’s Strom (Stream) had performed “as best they could” and had excelled particularly in those parts which “did not require too much intellectual depth”.⁴⁷² At Warsaw commentators were clearly disappointed with the German playhouse overall. Writing two years into its existence, Friedrich Gollert noted that it was too early for judgement as the theatre was still “under construction”. The fact that it was founded at all was cause for celebration in itself.⁴⁷³ At Marburg, although the need for a high quality dramatic repertoire was repeatedly stressed, this was neglected by artistic director Robert Falzari, who – a singer himself – was clearly more interested in grand opera. Although the theatre eventually introduced its own acting ensemble their performances were “poor” – particularly problematic in a region which was in desperate need of a good theatre “in the context of the process of Germanification of the Lower Styrian region”.⁴⁷⁴ Falzari’s ambition, mixed with his inexperience in senior management positions and his ignorance concerning the dramatic repertoire, led to a programme which was lacking in almost every department. Although he did not have the necessary personnel, with a makeshift musical theatre company and a small orchestra, he scheduled 13 opera and 20 operetta productions in his first year and opened with Beethoven’s Fidelio.⁴⁷⁵ In several internal notes both from the Regional Propaganda Office and the theatre office in the Berlin Propaganda Ministry officials were seriously uneasy about Falzari’s attitude, his “hypertrophy in planning and personnel issues” and the “embarrassing” quality of his productions (for example his “bombastic” direction of choirs in his opera productions). Despite these failings, however, they suggested renewing his contract because they feared they would not find a replacement.⁴⁷⁶

If things got out of hand, the Propaganda Ministry sent its staff out on control visits (see above). Worse still were the detailed and scrupulous investigations instigated by the National Auditing Office (Rechnungshof). In one of its audits the Rechnungshof criticised the Oslo theatre management not only for allowing the costs for the building works to double (from RM 600,000 to RM 1.2 million) but also for not putting this significant job out to tender and not submitting a cost estimate.⁴⁷⁷ In another audit at the Prague German theatres the Rechnungshof checked the proper deployment of national subsidies in 1940 and concluded that the taxpayers had not gotten value for the money. Although there were three stages in Prague only the Ständetheater/Schauspielhaus (capacity of 1,200) was used regularly. The Neues Deutsches Theater/Opernhaus (capacity of 1,600) was used only for guest performances by visiting opera companies, for concerts and for party events, and the Kleine Bühne/Kammerspiele (capacity of 270) only featured performances on some days a week. This was worrying, particularly as at that stage all the venues were entirely funded by the Reich. Similarly worrying was the fact that revenue from ticket sales was very low, at only 8% of the overall budget, and that utilisation was low. However, the Rechnungshof reckoned that even capacity houses would not raise this figure to a level comparable to other theatres (the report duly noted that the Berlin Deutsches Theater’s ticket sales contributed 42% to the theatre’s income). Only significantly higher ticket prices would change the situation, but these were not achievable in a city with a relatively small target audience. There were, however, a number of other issues which needed urgent attention. The report criticised that there were too many complimentary tickets – in fact, the best seats in the house were regularly given away for free. In terms of staff costs the report criticised the high number technical and support staff (in 1940 the theatres employed 32 administrators, 144 workers and over 60 ushers and cloakroom attendants), as well as the high salaries of leading ensemble members, combined with the fact that instead of a reduction a further increase was planned, with salary costs set to rise by another RM 100,000 (an almost 30% increase). There was a lot of to-ing and froing over the Rechnungshof report over the following years, and all protagonists took this incredibly seriously. The utilisation of available spaces, for example, was addressed by regular operetta performances from late 1942 onwards, and opera from late 1943 onwards. Attendances improved significantly, too; however, high salaries remained an issue, as did staffing.⁴⁷⁸ To address these “problems” another control visit took place – this time from the Propaganda Ministry. In February 1943 Gerhart Scherler came to Prague for three days to check “whether the German theatres were employing too much staff”, implying that savings could be made in this area. Walleck was adamant that his sums added up and noted that the money was vital to guarantee performances of the required standard. Interestingly, after Scherler’s visit, and in a compromise typical of the Nazi regime in such instances, Walleck was not fundamentally criticised and even seemed to be vindicated in some points. For example, Walleck had cleverly argued that the organisational structure with no direct access to the Propaganda Ministry (only via the Protectorate administration) made things difficult for him. This outcome – although it did not do him any favours in Prague – certainly kept him in Goebbels’ good books.⁴⁷⁹ In Litzmannstadt it was the symphony orchestra which faced scrutiny from the Rechnungshof. An administrative enquiry in 1943 found that musical director Adolf Bautze had never conducted a large orchestra before; not surprisingly, his work was deemed “diligent” at most, his first attempt at opera in a production of Puccini’s Tosca, despite the involvement of a notable guest conductor, an “experiment”, and no more.⁴⁸⁰ It got worse. In February 1944 the Rechnungshof carried out an audit to check the proper deployment of national subsidies.⁴⁸¹ The detailed report raised a number of issues and questioned the way the city had recorded income and expenditure in its books. The Rechnungshof criticised inflated salaries at both the theatre and the orchestra, particularly in view of the immense pressures on the city’s finances and the increasing deficits in the theatre’s budget. As mentioned above, artistic director Hesse saw his salary increase threefold between 1940 and 1943, and salary costs overall increased substantially year on year. Although musical director Bautze headed the symphony orchestra he did not conduct the orchestra when it played in the theatre although this was common practice at other places. Instead, the city appointed an additional conductor to conduct musical theatre, although Bautze was “hardly overworked”.⁴⁸² The orchestra musicians, too, received extra payments on top of their normal salaries – something which according to the Rechnungshof was not covered by existing employment law. These extra payments were all the more surprising since the orchestra as a whole was hardly on a sound financial footing. In 1940, for example, the orchestra’s outlays of RM 246,100 stood in sharp contrast to its box office takings, which amounted only to a meagre RM 18,300 – in other words: it managed to recoup only 7% of the subsidies it received.⁴⁸³ Interestingly, this discrepancy occurred despite the fact that the orchestra offered a popular programme which avoided too many “difficult” contemporary pieces and should have drawn in the crowds. Indeed, the Rechnungshof criticised the orchestra’s programming, as this did not feature the required number of contemporary orchestral works. Instead of the required share of 33% Litzmannstadt’s orchestra managed only 15%. In its report the Rechnungshof concluded that some key conditions for the national subsidy had not been met and that the municipal authorities should be asked to pay back some of the money, or indeed all of it – a devastating blow to the ambitions of Litzmannstadt’s cultural politicians. Audits did not hit only large theatres but even those on the periphery were subjected to them. The fact that the theatre in Marburg steadily increased its budget to RM 1.1 million in 1943/4 (comparable to that of the much larger playhouse in Lille) – despite its moderate size and the fact that it did not even have its own acting ensemble to begin with – raised more than a few eyebrows. After the theatre received a RM 400,000 Reich subsidy from the Propaganda Ministry in 1942/3, its deficit in the following season grew to a staggering RM 900,000. This raised serious concerns in both the Propaganda Ministry and the Rechnungshof, but a deal was still struck as the Interior Ministry teamed up with the Finance Ministry to provide RM 700,000 for each of the following two seasons.⁴⁸⁴

Despite unparalleled levels of funding overall and the generous support the Nazi regime offered to theatres in occupied Europe, significant financial pressures remained. Even if funding by the Propaganda Ministry, for example, had been agreed to, it often took considerable time for this money to arrive. In early 1940 none of the German language theatres in the Protectorate had received any money from Berlin, and even the prestigious theatres in Prague were affected. In the autumn of 1939 Walleck complained that because of subsidies not being paid in time he could not pay staff and contractors who had carried out urgently needed building work.⁴⁸⁵ Because of this situation the theatre in Iglau was facing closure. Like most German language theatres in the Protectorate, Iglau was at that time still being run by the local German theatre association, which was set up in 1918 and ran the playhouse as a business largely based on donations. A possible closure would have been a propaganda nightmare for the Nazis, and in January 1940 the head of the Office for Cultural Affairs at the Protectorate administration Karl Freiherr von Gregory wrote to Schlösser. He urged him to intervene at the Reich Finance Ministry as the playhouse’s closure would be a “completely unacceptable” proposition politically in the Protectorate.⁴⁸⁶

A number of leading appointments and promotions backfired, too. In Danzig, for example, artistic director Hermann Merz was replaced by Kurt Barré in 1941. Barré himself soon struggled, and despite being newly promoted to Generalintendant he was already replaced in November 1942, mid-way through the season.⁴⁸⁷ Johannes Maurach took over. This episode illustrated once again that Danzig’s geopolitical importance far outstripped its artistic one; in the end the Nazis had to realise that they had promoted an incapable artistic director for the sake of cultural politics – and, internally, they admitted as much. The Propaganda Ministry noted that they had become wary of promoting artistic managers solely to reward the political importance of their posting and not primarily for artistic reasons. The document specifically referred to Barré, who as a failed artistic director “decorated by the Führer now had to be offered up and down the country”.⁴⁸⁸ Barré was not an isolated case. Goebbels forced Posen’s artistic director, Karl Peter Heyser, to quit after only two years at his post.⁴⁸⁹ The situation was even worse in Marburg, where Falzari proved an incompetent artistic director. Internal sources frankly admitted that Falzari “was only able to take over the theatre’s management because of political reasons”. Opera productions were “embarrassing”, and other genres “did not really interest him”, although politically good dramatic performances would have been paramount (in the eyes of the Nazis) to Germanify the region. Falzari was, however, praised for his political commitment, as a “truly reliable National Socialist” who as an SS officer had taken part in fighting the resistance in Lower Styria. The Propaganda Ministry noted that even if he had failed as an artistic director in Marburg, a decent alternative posting was a must for such a worthy Nazi.⁴⁹⁰ Being politically “reliable” was of course a condition for appointment; however, this did not mean that senior appointments took their responsibility seriously. As the German theatre in The Hague closed, for example, artistic director Wolfgang Nufer disappeared from the scene. In the summer of 1944 the situation became increasingly difficult, activities were scaled down, and there were internal problems, too. When the company was forced to move to Arnheim in August 1944, Nufer went on holiday and took up residence in a hotel in Southern Germany. In Nufer’s absence heated arguments about various matters developed between the technical director and the operations manager, and other key people got involved, too. The company then moved on to Weimar and Gera; arguments continued, and chaos reigned.⁴⁹¹ And Nufer was still absent.⁴⁹² When the Propaganda Ministry found this out in November 1944, they asked him in no uncertain terms to report to Berlin. Nufer does not seem to have ever replied to this letter.⁴⁹³ There were other even more public cases, too. Oskar Walleck in Prague, for example, seemed to have been the perfect appointment – an experienced theatre manager who was born in the region and whose political “credentials” were beyond doubt. “He does a good job”, Goebbels contentedly remarked after having seen a “splendid” production of Schiller’s Kabale and Liebe at the “lovely” Ständetheater.⁴⁹⁴ After four years in charge, however, Walleck ended his high profile tenure in Prague at the end of the 1943/4 season. In the summer of 1943 the head of the Office for Cultural Affairs at the Protectorate administration Gregory in a letter to Staatssekretär Karl Hermann Frank criticised Walleck’s insufficient “staff policy”, problems with the repertoire (including complaints by party organisations – always a serious accusation), and his disastrous “budgetary policy” as reasons for a possible dismissal.⁴⁹⁵ When discussions took place in early 1943 about regular visits of opera companies to Prague, which should have been a comparatively reasonable expense, as it did not require setting up a resident company, Walleck still insisted this would cost RM 600,000. When asked to reduce this sum to RM 260,000 by cutting down on new appointments, costly properties, costumes and new workshops, Walleck flatly refused. He simply stated that his plans could not be materialised with a reduced sum and walked away from further discussions.⁴⁹⁶ As if to prove his point, he refused to even discuss a possible performance of Wagner’s Meistersinger by the prestigious Dresden Opera House unless significant building works had taken place. On the current stage performances of Wagnerian operas would simply look “ridiculous”, Walleck claimed. Not surprisingly, by that point Walleck had lost the support of key people in Prague.⁴⁹⁷ In April 1944 the Protectorate administration asked Walleck to hand in his resignation.⁴⁹⁸

Towards the end of the war, with many ensemble members having been called up, aesthetic ideas about grand productions with elaborate sets and large casts had to be reconsidered as plays with small casts became increasingly popular with theatre administrations. One of the reasons why the above mentioned comedy Karl III. und Anna von Österreich by Manfred Rössner was produced so often was that it was a two-hander and therefore easy to put on and tour.⁴⁹⁹ Apart from plays with small casts, plays with many female parts were popular, too. A. A. Zinn’s comedy Lucky Seven, for example, features one man and his six ex-wives, and Axel Breidahl’s comedy Aufruhr im Damenstift (Revolt at the Rest Home) required a cast of 12 – all female.⁵⁰⁰ To augment their choruses, theatres used pupils from local schools – hardly comparable to professionally trained singers. This practice appeared in the Altreich, too, and was heavily criticised by the Propaganda Ministry as inappropriate.⁵⁰¹ Still, at some theatres staff shortages were so acute that non-professional actors and singers were offered contracts. Some theatres enquired at the Reich Theatre Chamber about whether they were allowed to employ foreign citizens, which the Chamber reluctantly agreed to as long as they were Aryan and not prisoners of war.⁵⁰² Other theatres, particularly larger ones, did not even bother to ask. Almost all theatres considered in the present investigation employed foreigners: neither the stage hands and the technical staff, nor most of the musicians and dancers, tended to be German. In Lille and The Hague almost half of the employees were French and Dutch respectively,⁵⁰³ and in Oslo the orchestra and the technical staff were entirely Norwegian, as was the majority of the chorus and the dance ensemble.⁵⁰⁴ More worryingly for the regime, racial concerns were increasingly watered down, too, despite a legal framework which required artists to be of “Aryan” descent, paid up members of one of the sections of the Reich Culture Chamber, and professional performers. In March 1943 Walleck conceded that the operetta, which had started with regular performances in the autumn of 1942, almost entirely employed Czech performers – “chorus, ballet, and orchestra are almost 100% Czech”.⁵⁰⁵ The technical staff was not German either but had been requisitioned from the Czech Weinberg theatre. In a discourse which constantly referred to the need to counter the quality of Czech performances with outstanding German work, this situation was more than paradoxical, as Volker Mohn has recently convincingly pointed out.⁵⁰⁶ Decent enough performances were only possible by employing the same people whose work one wanted to surpass. The grand Philharmonic Orchestra of the Generalgouvernement consisted almost exclusively of Polish musicians.⁵⁰⁷ In June 1944 the male chorus at the Thorn theatre had 12 members, only 2 of which were Germans. The rest were foreign nationals, including Russians, Lithuanians and Dutch men. Some of them had only limited work permits and were not members of the Reich Theatre Chamber. Similarly, in the female chorus four singers were not paid up members of the Chamber. In view of both the Nazi propagandistic claims and the established legal framework, this was a chaotic situation.⁵⁰⁸

Theatre and the Holocaust

Despite their clear political mission, theatre managements in occupied Europe tried very hard to present their playhouses first and foremost as havens for the arts. In that sense Nazi occupation politics were characterised by a mix of approaches. Brutal oppression and arbitrary decision making went hand in hand with careful consideration and appeasement. For example, the printing of all German publications was changed in early 1941 from so-called Gothic letters (Fraktur) to the more readable Antiqua font as Hitler assumed that foreign nationals would find this easier to read.⁵⁰⁹ As mentioned above, the repertoires featured only very few outright propagandistic plays, and programme notes contained theatrical anecdotes, production photos and inconspicuous adverts for local businesses, rather than serious political articles. These, it seemed, were quite normal theatres. When one looks at their repertoires in isolation (both ideologically and geographically), it may seem as if these theatres successfully established parallel worlds in which life outside the theatre building was entirely blanked out, and neither the brutal reality of occupation nor the Holocaust existed.⁵¹⁰ German audiences wanted to be entertained, and they enjoyed civilised comedies, classical drama and visiting stars. They happily supported their local theatre, as audiences did in the Altreich. They were rewarded with a few hours of relaxed entertainment produced to professional standards in lovely theatre buildings. As these theatres fulfilled their role in the context in which they operated, however, any contemporary or subsequent claims that these theatres were politically neutral are misguided.⁵¹¹ Arguably, the role these theatres performed had wider political implications and was inextricably linked to the Holocaust. This link existed on an ideological level with constant reminders by politicians and theatre practitioners as to the vital role theatres played during the war and as “outposts of German culture”. It also existed on a more tangible level when one thinks about audiences, as the performances were attended by a mix of ethnic Germans, soldiers and other Wehrmacht personnel, and members of the civic administration, as well as police, guards and other “security” staff, some of whom played an active part in arrests, torture and murders, as well as the rounding up and “deporting” of thousands of Jews from their respective regions. Additionally, official German language theatres were also much more directly involved with the Holocaust. Individual performers and whole ensembles were invited to entertain SS guards and other staff at Auschwitz and other extermination camps. The company of the Gleiwitz theatre in Silesia performed Gerhart Metzner’s The Foreign Visitor in Auschwitz in June 1944.⁵¹² The theatres of Mährisch-Ostrau, Beuthen and Kattowitz presented light comedies and operettas in Auschwitz (all three companies came there regularly), as did the company of the Bielitz theatre.⁵¹³ The medical doctor who served the company at the Litzmannstadt theatre, Hubert Kleebank, also carried out selections in the ghetto.⁵¹⁴

The grand opening of Litzmannstadt’s new college of dance (Schule für Bühnen-, Kunst- und Laientanz) on 16 September 1942 took place only days after the infamous Gehsperre Aktion had finished, during which 12,000 Jews (and in particular children, the elderly and those in ill health) were sent to their deaths in the extermination camp at Chełmno. And in February 1943 Litzmannstadt’s municipal theatre presented Ino Wimmer’s Litzmannstädter Bilderbogen (A Picture Book from Litzmannstadt) under the title All on Board, Please (Bitte, alles einsteigen!) with a tram as a prominent feature in the production.⁵¹⁵ The link to the deportations from Łódź’s Radogast (Radogoszcz) train station must have been obvious to the audiences, and maybe was even intended and made light of in this humorous revue. The theatre’s artistic director proudly announced in the summer of 1943 that this show, which came across “fresh with local colour”, had been performed 25 times in the studio between February and the close of the season in June.⁵¹⁶

Another incident at the Prague New German Theatre illustrates not only the rapidly worsening situation for Jewish theatre practitioners but also the persistence and brutality the Nazis displayed in their persecution of them. The situation at the New German Theatre just before the occupation, and within the German Theatre Association, which ran it, played into the Nazis’ hands. As discussed earlier, after an eventful early history, which culminated in the opening of the new theatre in the 1880s, popular seasons and leading practitioners who became associated with the venture, the German Theatre Association fell on hard times in the late 1930s, and eventually had to close the two venues it ran in September 1938. In what must have seemed like a surprising development for many, the theatre ceased operation with immediate effect a few weeks into the 1938/9 season, and all contracts were declared null and void with only a small compensation being paid out.⁵¹⁷ Up until then the Association had been able to gather enough private donations to make up for the deficit caused by decreasing public subsidies. However, these generous contributions by “liberal and democratic Prague residents of German nationality or Jewish origin” were now no longer forthcoming as many of the sponsors were not in a position to support the theatre any longer or indeed had left the country. The situation got considerably worse when theatre staff sued for compensation and their case was upheld. As the German Theatre Association had no liquid assets, it was forced to sell the only asset it had left: the New German Theatre building itself.⁵¹⁸ The Czech government offered a good price and put insolvency procedures on hold.⁵¹⁹ When the Nazis occupied Prague half a year later, they immediately took the New German Theatre into Reich ownership and paid former employees the statutory compensation of three months’ wages. This, however, caused considerable embarrassment a few months later. In June 1940 the Nazi administration suddenly realised that the payouts had also gone to all the Jewish former members of the company. A note from the Propaganda Ministry confirmed that it had paid out Kc 76,000 to 13 Jewish theatre staff.⁵²⁰ It also appeared that for various reasons (i.e. they had handed in their notice) some of the non-Jewish members of the company had not received

Figure 4.37 Litzmannstadt theatre poster. From Łódź City Archives. Title of musical revue: All on Board, Please.

compensation, and these members now loudly complained. No one in the Nazi administration wanted to take the “blame” as lawyer Erich Schicketanz was asked to write to all Jewish former staff requesting them to pay back the compensation they had received. As payments trickled in, some former members stated they were not in a position to pay, and others simply did not reply. The cultural office in the Protectorate administration in early 1941 then contacted the Gestapo and asked them to check whether those who said they did not have the means really were in dire straits. Not surprisingly, after the Gestapo visits, bowing to their pressure, everyone agreed to pay although some could only afford to pay in small instalments. As various payments were being made the cultural office got impatient in early 1942. The Gestapo, however, reported in March that it was proving difficult to get hold of more money as “some of the former Jewish members of the Prague German Theatre have already emigrated or have been evacuated”. The cultural office then contacted the Nazi Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung in Prag) to obtain the outstanding payments from the funds of the Jewish community (Kultusgemeinde) which the Central Office had seized. They duly replied that the funds of the Kultusgemeinde could not be used for paying back any compensation as they were needed “to carry out the evacuations”. The cultural office still would not let go and received one payment for Julius Böhm from an “emigration fund” in 1943 but nothing for Herr Lederer or Herr Oppenheimer as they had been “entirely penniless”. They also received nothing for Julius Gellner as his estate had been confiscated “for the benefit of the Reich”. The relevant finance office (Vermögensamt) declined to make any payment, arguing that Otto Gellner could not be expected to pay back money his brother Julius had received – and it had been Otto’s name which had erroneously appeared on the original list compiled by Schicketanz. The files do not contain a final sum, but it appears that more than half of the compensation money was paid back. It is telling to note that from the spring of 1942 onwards different offices were being asked to make payments on behalf of the Jewish former members as they could not be asked themselves anymore – having been sent to ghettos or directly to extermination camps. In an extraordinary chain of events the Nazi administration went to significant lengths to obtain repayments of money which had been correctly awarded as compensation, and not even death held them back.⁵²¹

Corresponding to recent findings by Götz Aly, who has stressed the importance of economic gains, e.g. resulting from the ruthless persecution of the Jews, for the popular appeal of the Third Reich, the financial impetus played a significant part in Germany’s cultural policy.⁵²² In Latvia the director of Riga’s art gallery (Landesmuseum) was equipped with a warrant to seize “valuable antiques from Jewish or unidentified owners for the museum”.⁵²³ In March 1944 Litzmannstadt’s theatre director Hans Hesse personally went into the ghetto to obtain valuable instruments from Jewish musicians, who had been ordered to hand them in. The well-known conductor, soloist and musical expert Dawid Bajgelman was in charge of the collection. They were then valued by an outside “expert” who came to the collection point with Hans Biebow, head of the ghetto administration, and Hesse. Although Bajgelman explained the particularly fine quality of some of the instruments, the “expert” valued them at a fraction of their actual cost – to the delight of Hesse, who took the best instruments away and allocated them to the municipal orchestra, the mayor, the music school (Hitler Youth) and the Reich Music Chamber. There is a detailed entry in the Łódź ghetto chronicle concerning the event:

The expert interrogated Bajgelman as to the quality and the value of the individual pieces. Bajgelman tried to point out to him the particular quality of some of the instruments. The young man, probably an organist or some other small beginner, had no idea what to make of the various magnificent pieces he was shown and set prices which appeared like a joke. Two excellent cellos which before the war had a market value of RM 1,000 he valued at RM 120. There was a specially manufactured trombone made of silver, a rare and interesting build hardly known in musical circles, which cost RM 500 before the war. He valued it at RM 20. Forty-four violins for the Hitler Youth he valued at RM 1 each. There was a little accordion, a wonderful piece of art, which had cost RM 600. He valued it at RM 20 and reserved it for the mayor. The best instruments the expert bought from the Jews were to be sent to the Reich Music Chamber und he set the following prices: 15 world class violins, two of which were at least 300 years old and invaluable, he valued at RM 100, so less than RM 7 per violin. Two excellent saxophones which had cost at least RM 1,200 before the war were bought for RM 40. Four pianos, all leading makes and almost new and worth at least RM 7,000, the expert bought off the Jews for RM 600. Beautiful mandolins, guitars, zithers, lutes, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, timpani, cymbals, etc. were valued by the expert at an average of RM 2–3. For all instruments together […] the Elder received RM 2,400. This equals the cost for 2,000 pills of saccharin.⁵²⁴

Notes

1 Goebbels, Joseph. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Teil 1: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941. Ed. Elke Fröhlich. Munich: Saur, 1998–2008. Volume 8, entry 3 September 1940, p. 304.

2 For Kindermann’s report see BArch, R55/20503, p. 286.

3 See his two page report in BArch, R55/20545, pp. 51–52.

4 The meeting was attended by representatives of the armed forces, regional and civic administrations, various professional organisations, and the KdF and took place on 1 December 1941 (see BArch, Reichskommissar Ostland/Gebietskommmisare, Riga Stadt, R91/515 [file without pagination]).

5 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 Deutsche Theater, Prag (no pagination).

6 In 1925 Bromberg had a population of 104,000.

7 Zoppot featured the biggest open-air opera stage in the world. This stage was not founded by the Nazis, however, but had been operating since 1922.

8 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Theater in Brünn (no pagination).

9 After the opening of the Russian opera house in Kiev in 1867, the Russian imperial government had restricted stage performances in Ukrainian (for a more detailed discussion see Sereda, Ostap. “Imperial Cultural Policy and Provincial Politics in the Russian ‘South-Western Province’: The Kyiv City Theater, 1856–1866.” Ther, Kulturpolitik und Theater, pp. 233–245).

10 See report by Herr Jung in the Generalreferat Ostraum, sent to the Propaganda Ministry on 18 June 1942 (BArch, R55/1289, pp. 189–190). Jung stated that the Ostland now featured 14 theatres in 11 towns and cities; in Ukraine alone there were four theatres in four towns, three of which offered opera, operetta and ballet.

11 See Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, Signatur 21/57. Repertuary przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1945]. Bl. 1. See also Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 6 January 1941, and several other articles concerning this particular exhibition over the next few days and weeks. There were a number of similar exhibitions over the following years (e.g. Wartheland – uraltes deutsches Bauernland [Wartheland – an ancient German land] in February 1941 and the Festival of East German Culture in March 1941).

12 For more information see Mohn, Volker. “Literaturpreise und -wettbewerbe im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren (1939–45).” Becher, Peter and Anna Knechtel, eds. Praha – Prag 1900–1945: Literaturstadt zweier Sprachen. Passau: Stutz, 2010. pp. 143–145.

13 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 95.

14 The German Romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff was born in Ratibor in Upper Silesia, ca. 75 km west of Kattowitz.

15 See Archiwum Państwowe w Krakowie III, Starosty Miasta Krakowa, no. 220, pp. 241–243.

16 For a more detailed discussion of the institute, see Höpel, Thomas. “Kulturpolitik als Werkzeug nationalsozialistischer Hegemonie und Germanisierung im General-gouvernement.” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 63 (2015): 158–160.

17 See Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/55. Afisze programowe koncertów z okresu okupacji niemieckiej/Litzmannstadt 1942–44. pp. 1–2, 12. See also Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 3 May 1943.

18 See Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten, p. 129. See also Gollert, Warschau unter deutscher Herrschaft, p. 279.

19 Quote from the mayor’s preface to the 40 page “summer schedule” of the Volksbildungsstätte Litzmannstadt (Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/60. Materiały różne – teatry łódzkie z okresu okupacji).

20 See Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28595, p. 166.

21 See BArch, R43/II 1252, p. 89. Interestingly, the Sudeten Nazi administration with Konrad Henlein at its helm (now referred to as the Reich commissioner for the Sudeten German regions) did not seem particularly keen to report what they had done with the money. In the files referred to here, Henlein is repeatedly asked to present a list of how the money was used.

22 See Rischbieter, NS-Theaterpolitik, p. 269.

23 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, pp. 79–80.

24 See Schneider, Hansjörg. Meine böhmische Ecke. Erinnerungen an ein Projekt. Gransee: Edition Schwarzdruck, 2007. p. 99.

25 Although German was the official administrative language after 1939, Czech continued to be used even in official correspondence. As late as 1944, reports and correspondence between offices concerning fire regulations at theatres were often still in Czech, as presumably many people working in these offices were Czechs who could not speak German. Interestingly, the reverse was true as well. Well into the 1920s correspondence to and from the city of Prague’s theatre department was in German (see Archiv hlavního mesta Prahy, Divadelni Referat, Inv. 184, Signatura 2/2, box 9; and Inv. 738, Signatura 4/3, box 24).

26 Goebbels, Joseph. Die Tagebücher. Teil 2. Diktate 1941–1945. Ed. Elke Fröhlich. Munich: Saur, 1993–1996, volume 2, entry 11 October 1941, pp. 95–96.

27 See letter by the Regierungskommissar (name illegible) in Brünn to the president of the regional council in Brünn dated 10 August 1939 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Theater in Brünn [no pagination]).

28 See Národní archiv. Státní tajemník u říšského protektora v Čechách a na Moravě (State Secretary of the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia), 1799. File 1683. Shelf mark 109-4/1438 (from hereon in Národní archiv, State Secretary at the Reich Protectorate, 1799, file, signature).

29 See, for example, a letter from the Primator’s office to Walleck dated 31 December 1941 concerning an additional payment of Kc 200,000 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 Deutsche Theater, Prag [no pagination]).

30 See letter by the Ministry for Schools and Public Culture (name of signatory illegible) to the Office for Cultural Affairs dated 31 January 1941 listing Olmütz (as receiving Kc 250,000), Iglau (Kc 200,000), Pilsen (Kc 200,000) and Budweis (Kc 269.000) (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Theater in Iglau [no pagination]).

31 See letter dated 23 July 1941 confirming that the Office for Cultural Affairs at the Protectorate administration paid RM 50,000 to the German theatres in Prague in 1941. Part of the deal was that they put on special performances on the occasion of the spring and autumn fairs in Prague. Interestingly, the office also subsidised three Czech theatres (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 Deutsche Theater, Prag [no pagination]).

32 Oslo was a special case as it was run almost like a joint operation with the Berlin Theater des Volkes and, therefore, Goebbels had a bigger say here as well. The German theatre at The Hague was a “Reich theatre operated in conjunction with the Propaganda Ministry” (BArch, R55/160, p. 24). The take-over of the Riga National Theatre and Opera House by the Reich commissioner was facilitated by the fact that prior to the German occupation Riga’s city administration had already largely handed over control of these two flagship companies to the Latvian Ministry of Education (see note dated 13 September 1941, BArch, Reichskommissar Ostland/ Gebietskommmisare, Riga Stadt, R91/517 [file without pagination]).

33 See Schlösser’s report to Goebbels (BArch, R55/201513, pp. 205–206). Schlösser was impressed that the hotel had been refurbished as well. “Well appointed apartments were now available there at any time”, he told Goebbels, a sentence the minister underlined.

34 See BArch, R55/25, p. 184 (note from a meeting at the Propaganda Ministry on 13 June 1941).

35 See minutes of meetings between Mayor Zörner and Generalgouverneur Hans Frank in January 1940 (Archiwum Państwowe w Krakowie III, Starosty Miasta Krakowa, no. 224, pp. 47–49, 413).

36 See Drewniak, Das Theater im NS-Staat, p. 39.

37 “Agreed to grant new theatre subsidies for Posen, Oslo and Linz”, he noted on 14 January 1941 (Goebbels, Tagebücher, Teil 1: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, volume 9, p. 93).

38 Of the subsidies the Propaganda Ministry spent on the arts, 26% went to the theatre and only 12% to the cinema (see Evans, The Third Reich at War, p. 567).

39 The Westphalian city of Dortmund, for example, had regularly received extra funding from the Propaganda Ministry and for the upcoming season 1939/40 had again applied for RM 80,000. This time, however, the Ministry made it clear that further payments could not be made because the “existing funds need to be used to rebuild German theatrical life in the newly acquired territories of the German Reich” (see BArch, R55/20349, pp. 357–359, 363).

40 Based on the official currency conversion, which – as in other occupied countries – favoured the German Reichsmark by devaluing the foreign currency.

41 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 (no pagination).

42 Letter by Ministerialrat Naudé (head of the Moravian Office in Brünn) to Unterstaatssekretär Dr von Burgsdorff at the Protectorate administration dated 29 January 1940 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Theater in Brünn [no pagination]).

43 Note dated 2 December 1940 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Theater in Iglau [no pagination]).

44 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 94.

45 Note to Goebbels sent by Schlösser dated 29 January 1941 (see BArch, R55/20389, p. 87). Danzig received RM 50,000, Bromberg and Litzmannstadt RM 35,000 each. The Upper Silesian touring theatre received RM 50,000 in addition to the already paid out RM 80,000 to enable the management to invite “leading German theatres” to tour the region. The Silesian touring theatre received an additional RM 20,000 to extend its touring circuit. And the municipal theatres in Breslau, Königsberg and Görlitz got RM 30,000 each to increase their “activities in the East”.

46 See note by Kurt Schwebel (Propaganda Ministry) to Walleck dated 29 May 1940 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Theater, Prag [no pagination]).

47 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Theater, Prag (no pagination).

48 See letter dated 23 February 1943 by Herr Wolf in the Office for Cultural Affairs at the Protectorate administration (and following a note from Walleck) to Daluege and Frank. The Reich protector was happy to grant the increase (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Theater, Prag [no pagination]).

49 Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Theater, Prag (no pagination).

50 BArch, R55/20389, p. 90 (budget note for 1941/2 dated 17 October 1941).

51 In the end the Propaganda Ministry agreed to pay RM 400,000 of these, despite serious misgivings about overall expenditures reaching almost RM 1 million (see BArch, R55/20406, pp. 53, 193).

52 This sum reached RM 1.7 million in 1942 (see BArch, R55/20546, pp. 27, 89, 218, 512).

53 See BArch, R55/265, p. 9.

54 See Daiber, Schaufenster der Diktatur, p. 308; Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, pp. 126, 139.

55 See BArch, R55/20513, p. 249.

56 See BArch, R55/20545, pp. 2–8.

57 See BArch, R55/20389, p. 220.

58 Ibid., p. 8.

59 Ibid., pp. 14–16.

60 Ibid., p. 43. In the Altreich theatres could apply for financial help from the Propaganda Ministry, too, but these extra payments never reached six figure sums. During the late 1930s Dortmund received RM 80,000 in extra national subsidies, and Gelsenkirchen RM 60,000 (see Heinrich, Anselm. Entertainment, Education, Propaganda: Regional Theatres in Germany and Britain between 1918 and 1945. London: University of Hertfordshire Press/Society for Theatre Research, 2007. p. 102).

61 BArch, R55/20389, p. 45.

62 Ibid., pp. 294–295, 298.

63 Ibid., p. 124.

64 Ibid., p. 195. For 1944 the mayor asked for RM 250,000 and again received RM 170,000 from the Ministry (see ibid., p. 234).

65 In Litzmannstadt, for example, the article was featured in issue no. 9 of the 1940/1 programme notes (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58, Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1943]. p. 35).

66 Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 25 July 1943.

67 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1943], p. 88.

68 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 29056, pp. 69–71.

69 Ibid., p. 76.

70 See Ludová, Die kleine Bühne in Prag, p. 77.

71 In 1939 Posen had a population of 270,000.

72 The theatre was run by the German Theatre Association but in 1941 was taken over by the German Theatre Chamber in Romania, which itself was controlled by the Berlin Reich Theatre Chamber (see BArch, R56 III/646, no pagination in file).

73 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, pp. 67, 219–220.

74 Qtd. in ibid., p. 220.

75 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 101. See also below for more information on this promotion.

76 See ibid., p. 104.

77 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, p. 222.

78 At Lille Artistic Director Ziegler attempted to raise the orchestra to a higher salary grade in May 1942. Interestingly, he did not argue that the quality of the orchestra justified the promotion but, rather, that it was needed in order to attract sufficiently qualified musicians to Lille (BArch, R55/982, pp. 122–123).

79 See BArch, R55/20389, p. 221 (back page).

80 See Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 268.

81 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 101.

82 See BArch, R55/20546, p. 321. The context of this subvention was the fear that actors would quickly leave Oslo again because they could not take their families with them, because life in Germany was more comfortable and because they were afraid of losing their links to the German theatre.

83 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5342 (no pagination).

84 See BArch, R55/25, p. 186.

85 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 31601, pp. 2–3.

86 Ibid., p. 25.

87 See report by the National Auditing Office (Rechnungshof des Deutschen Reiches) to the Propaganda Ministry dated 18 February 1944 (see BArch, R55/20389, pp. 215 [back page], 220). See also Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28531, pp. 205–206. Smaller, less prestigious theatres paid a lot less, though. In early 1944, for example, the senior lighting technician at the municipal theatre in the Silesian town of Ratibor earned only RM 300, which, as the Reich Theatre Chamber made clear, was much too little. They suggested a monthly salary of between RM 400 and RM 450 (letter by the Reich Theatre Chamber dated 21 February 1944, BArch, R56 III/619).

88 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 31601, p. 144.

89 See Bielefeld City Archives, Städtische Bühnen und Orchester, no. 1678.

90 BArch, R55/20389, p. 219. See also Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28531, p. 216.

91 An internal preview of the 1940/1 season at Brünn listed all salary costs: as the highest earner the Intendant received a monthly salary of RM 1,000, the Oberspielleiter (leading director) got RM 550, the Kapellmeister (conductor) RM 450. The highest earners among actors got RM 500, but a rank and file actress (Chargenspielerin) was paid only RM 120. In the opera the lead male singer (Heldentenor) got RM 1,000, and the two highest earners in the operetta equally received RM 1,000. The lowest paid administrative staff got RM 100 per month (preview with no date, Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Theater in Brünn [no pagination]).

92 See BArch, R55/20406, p. 63, 67. Chorus members got RM 200, rank and file musicians RM 300, and the female “runner” RM 100 (budget note for 1941/2, dated 17 October 1941).

93 See BArch, R55/982, p. 5; BArch, R55/20513, pp. 295–304. The lowest paid employees were some of the dancers, who needed to get by on RM 100, and hair dressers, who got RM 140 per month (wages as of October 1941).

94 See BArch, R55/20543, pp. 389–390.

95 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 94.

96 See BArch, R55/160, pp. 15–16.

97 In Berlin Zindler earned another RM 30,000 annually as artistic director of the Theater des Volkes (see BArch, R55/155, pp. 4, 217).

98 In the late 1930s a Staatssekretär earned around RM 20,000 per annum, and a skilled worker took home RM 2,500 a year (see Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 149). In the early 1940s a civil servant in the occupied territories earned between RM 4,000 and RM 5,000 annually (see Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten, p. 166). These salaries were typically higher than those in the Altreich and offered additional benefits with regard to housing, clothing, etc.

99 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, pp. 101, 105. The salary increase was turned down by the Propaganda Ministry.

100 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5730 Deutsche Theater, Prag – Gagen und Verträge (no pagination). On several occasions Walleck risked open conflict with the Propaganda Ministry concerning salaries. Again and again he tried to obtain approval for salaries which the Ministry regarded as too high. Interestingly, though, the Ministry (and Goebbels personally) shied away from open conflict and regularly agreed to compromises which they were clearly unhappy with. For example, Walleck intended to offer stage designer Frank Schultes a contract worth RM 12,400, rising to a staggering RM 18,000 within two years. The compromise agreed to a smaller increase up to RM 16,000 – still a very significant sum. The annual salary of RM 27,000 for tenor soloist Raul was accepted, too, despite serious concerns (see BArch, R55/20101, pp. 5–7, 27, 29, 48, 51). Interestingly, this lenient approach was due to Walleck’s prominent status. Other less important theatres got more or less told which salaries were acceptable and which were not. The theatre in Kattowitz in early 1944, for example, suggested salaries for five members of the ensembles which the Propaganda Ministry deemed too high and subsequently reduced “with binding effect”. The tone of the respective letter was not conciliatory: the Ministry instructed the theatre of a decision made in Berlin, and there was no room for negotiation (see ibid., p. 252).

101 See Národní archiv, Urad risskeho protektora 114. Box 197. Shelf mark 114–199–1 (Reich Protectorate, Office for Cultural Affairs at the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia, IV-1 T 5030–5470, p. 14 [old German pagination in file]). From hereon in Národní archiv, Office for Cultural Affairs at the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia, file, signature/shelf mark.

102 Salaries at the Prague German theatres varied considerably with the leading artistic staff in particular being rewarded handsomely (annual salaries according to budget report dated 15 May 1941): Director Siems was on RM 22,000, and the highest earning actors were the “1. Salondame” on RM 14,000, and “1. Bonvivant” and director O.E. Hasse on RM 16,000. However, an administrative assistant only received RM 800, and rank and file actors (Chargenspieler) earned RM 3,600 a year (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Theater, Prag [no pagination]). For comparison, the highest earners among German theatre directors were Lothar Müthel who received RM 101,200 as general manager of the Vienna Burgtheater and state opera, and Eugen Klöpfer and Gustaf Gründgens on close to RM 100,000 as general managers in Berlin (see BArch, R55/20101, p. 98).

103 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 153.

104 See BArch, R55/155, p. 5.

105 See ibid., p. 28.

106 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Theater, Prag (no pagination).

107 See letters by the Office for Work and Pensions at the Latvian General Commissioner’s administration to the Riga Department for Culture (in the city council presumably) dated 29 May 1942, 3 July 1942, 4 August 1942 and 13 November 1942 (see BArch, Reichskommissar Ostland/Gebietskommmisare, Riga Stadt, R91/424 [file without pagination]).

108 For a discussion of Nazi plans and activities concerning new theatre buildings see Backes, Hitler und die bildenden Künste, pp. 181–185.

109 See Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 266.

110 See Pohl, Karl Georg. “Die Neugestaltung der Theater in Posen.” Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 22 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

111 Kurtz, Heinrich. “Deutscher Kulturaufbau im Generalgouvernement.” Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte 12 (1941): 125.

112 See BArch, R55/20545, p. 52.

113 See Präsident der Reichstheaterkammer, ed. Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch 1942. Berlin: Reichstheaterkammer, 1942. p. 3.

114 See letter by Baurat Luther dated 22 June 1942 (National Archives of Norway, RAFA-2188 Tyske archiver [German archives]: Organisation Todt, Einsatzgruppe Wiking, series Hfs, box 28). See also note by the Reich Finance Ministry from April 1942 concerning the increased renovation costs, which they criticised but still covered (BArch, R2/27717, note dated 16 April 1942, no pagination in file). See also BArch, R55/865, passim. In January 1941 the regime had anticipated that building costs would not exceed RM 600,000 (see BArch, R55/20543, p. 449).

115 For more details see Ludová, Die kleine Bühne in Prag, pp. 80–81.

116 See BArch, R55/1289, p. 190. This was a phrase often used (see, for example, BArch, Reichskommissar Ostland/Gebietskommmisare, Riga Stadt, R91/515 [file without pagination]).

117 At the time these deliberations took place, in December 1941, there were four thea-tres in Riga. Both the opera house and the Dailes Theatre were under Latvian leadership, as was an acting ensemble attached to the opera and a so-called people’s thea-tre. The Germans operated two soldiers’ theatres in the city (see BArch, R55/20533, pp. 425–426, 429).

118 Ibid., p. 426.

119 See several letters by senior civil servants in Litzmannstadt’s council to the Berlin Propaganda Ministry written in 1940 (BArch, R55/20389, pp. 25, 37). A site for the new theatre building was acquired in 1941, and the project reached the planning stage at the end of the year (see BArch, R4606/6167). This file contains the architect’s drawings for a substantial new theatre and is dated 15 December 1941. Unfortunately, the file does not contain any additional information concerning location or any other narrative, not even the name of the architect. The proposed theatre building itself seems of normal size with no technical extras (e.g. there is no revolving stage, which the bigger theatres in Germany increasingly had from the mid-1930s). It seems as if these plans were soon superseded or added to. The 1943 administrative report mentioned a substantially increased number of seats and a revolving stage for the new theatre. (See Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28595, p. 178. For a detailed budget concerning the building cost see BArch, R55/20389, pp. 223–227.) The new theatre building apparently made use of an older structure (in the vicinity of the existing playhouse on Moltke Street), and the shell construction was finished by early 1943. However, on 1 July 1943 work on the site was halted as the building project was no longer deemed of strategic importance for the duration of the war (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 31602, p. 217).

120 Litzmannstadt’s mayor in a letter to the Propaganda Ministry concerning subsidies for 1944/5 dated 8 February 1944 (see BArch, R55/20389, p. 227).

121 See ibid., p. 98.

122 See report from November 1940 (Archiwum Państwowe w Krakowie III, Starosty Miasta Krakowa, no. 224, pp. 515–527).

123 See Kurtz, Deutscher Kulturaufbau im Generalgouvernement, p. 125.

124 See Wąsik, Monika. “Theater der Stadt Warschau”. pp. 2–3. Unpublished research paper.

125 See Herder Institut Marburg, S 1714, Die Theater in Posen 1941/42.

126 See BArch, R55/20515a, pp. 605–608.

127 See BArch, R55/864, p. 2 (minutes of meeting at the Propaganda Ministry in August 1941). This sum quickly rose and in late 1941/early 1942 already stood at RM 1.1 million (see ibid., p. 24). Over the following years there was much to-ing and fro-ing over detailed costs and schedules as the completion dates of the building works were postponed further and further. In the summer of 1942 works began in Cilli, and officials expected them to take up to eight months (ibid., p. 58). In Marburg initial work had been undertaken by November 1943 (p. 72), but by April 1944 this was still far from complete (p. 72).

128 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, p. 175.

129 See Podlasiak, Deutsches Theater in Thorn, pp. 156–157.

130 See letter by the touring company’s artistic director Rainer to the Reich Theatre Chamber dated 15 December 1943. Rainer was nervous about the development because it resulted in fewer performance venues for him and loss of revenue. He received a letter from Berlin dated 12 January 1944 confirming the plans (BArch, R56 III/235).

131 The printing ban was decided by the Advertising Council of the German Economy, backed by Goebbels, but it met with resistance from the Reich Theatre Chamber and many individual theatres. In answering his enquiry the Reich Theatre Chamber suggested to Litzmannstadt’s Hans Hesse that he should refer to the theatre in Teschen in Upper Silesia, which had received special permission based on “ethnic reasons”, to get a similar deal based on Litzmannstadt’s location in the “utmost East” (see BArch, R56 III/314).

132 The only historical reference point the Germans had was the fact that they had operated a theatre in Lille during the First World War as well. Nazi commentators were keen to stress this connection. The theatre historian Carl Niessen, for example, in an essay entitled “Soldiers’ Theatre through the Centuries”, referred to the Lille venture. It is interesting to note that he added a comment about the “hard work” which actors were putting into this important undertaking for the soldiers’ benefit and stated that theatre critics should be aware of this and show some restraint (Niessen’s essay was reprinted in the programme notes of the Posen theatre in 1942: Niessen, Carl. “Soldatentheater im Wandel der Jahrtausende.” Die Blätter Reichsgautheater Posen (1942/3): 24 [Herder Institut Marburg, G/34 VIII P120 Z23]).

133 Interestingly, there were only two productions in the theatre’s repertoire which corresponded to this agenda: a dramatisation of a novel by Flemish author Stijn Steuvels by Nora Reinhard entitled The Flax Field (Der Flacksacker), which premiered at Lille in 1942 (see Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 272), and an opera by Jan Blockx called The Princess of the Inn (Die Herbergsprinzessin, set in 1750s Brussels). This was specifically produced as part of the “theatre’s cultural and political mission to produce German and generically related art”, as the programme notes stressed (see BArch, R55/20513a, p. 329).

134 Not surprisingly, therefore, the artistic manager of Lille’s theatre, Ziegler, vehemently protested when an article in the leading German newspaper Das Reich claimed that the Lille theatre’s sole purpose was to entertain the troops in the region (article entitled “German Theatres in Europe”, Das Reich, 7 March 1943). Ziegler also wrote to Rainer Schlösser, who was equally appalled. In June even the government’s press office got involved and asked the newspaper for a correction as Lille was not “a more or less provisional soldiers’ playhouse [but a] Reich theatre similar to the state theatres in Berlin” (see BArch, R55/20514, pp. 61, 62, 68, direct quote on page 68).

135 See, for example, with reference to Posen, Pohl, Georg Karl. “Zur Spielplangestaltung und Theaterwerbung.” Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1942/3): 225–232 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

136 The Łódź City Archives hold a relatively large collection of theatre posters, most of which were printed in three colours and not just in plain black and white (see Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/56. Repertuary przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1945]).

137 See Herder Institut Marburg, S 1714, Die Theater in Posen 1941/42. See also Reichsgautheater Posen 1941/2, review of 1941/2 season, pp. 197–208 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

138 See Reichsgautheater Posen 1942/3, review of 1942/3 season, pp. 270–277 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

139 See Schneider, Meine böhmische Ecke, pp. 103, 111.

140 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 103.

141 See last programme note of the 1941/2 season published in July 1942 (Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1943]. p. 73).

142 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28595, p. 171.

143 See BArch, R55/215, p. 125.

144 See BArch, R55/20389, pp. 219–220.

145 The theatre in the Westphalian city of Hagen, for example, in 1942/3 employed little more than half this number of staff (see Hagen City Archives [Stadtarchiv Hagen], Ha1/9272).

146 Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 266.

147 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 92. For a fuller discussion of the programme of renovation, see Podlasiak, Deutsches Theater in Thorn, pp. 135–140.

148 BArch, R55/865, p. 26.

149 The grand title was a little confusing, though, as the Oslo opera house was attached to the Deutsche Volksoper Berlin and functioned almost as their studio theatre, with performances of operettas and “small operatic works” in a “small refurbished thea-tre” (see note by Burgsdorff to Gregory [both in the Office for Cultural Affairs at the Protectorate administration] dated 18 February 1942; see also Rainer Schlösser’s reply dated 21 February 1942. Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Oper Prag [no pagination]). See also letter by Müller-Scheld at the Reich commissariat for the occupied Norwegian territories dated 22 June 1942 (National Archives of Norway, RAFA-2188 Tyske archiver [German archives]: Organisation Todt, Einsatzgruppe Wiking, series Hfs, box 28).

150 See review in Deutsche Zeitung in Norwegen, 27 September 1944 (National Archives of Norway, RAFA-2174 Tyske archiver [German archives]: Reichskommissariat, series Ed, Hauptabteilung Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, box 57).

151 Wolting, Danziger Theater, pp. 67, 76.

152 Qtd. in Podlasiak, Deutsches Theater in Thorn, pp. 146–149.

153 The other stages were used for the entertainment of the armed forces with no permanent companies but visits mainly by KdF ensembles.

154 See Levi, Mozart and the Nazis, p. 211.

155 See ibid., pp. 215–220, 223–227.

156 See ibid., pp. 192–208.

157 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5099 (no pagination). Walleck submitted a 16 page strategy paper to the Propaganda Ministry and the Protectorate administration in October 1940 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Oper Prag [no pagination]).

158 See letter by Schlösser to Walleck dated 18 October 1940 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Oper Prag [no pagination]).

159 Fax from Gregory (head of Office for Cultural Affairs at Protectorate administration) to Rainer Schlösser, dated 19 February 1942 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Oper Prag [no pagination]).

160 See fax by Karl Freiherr von Gregory to Rainer Schlösser dated 6 June 1941, reply on 18 July 1941, note of meeting with Schlösser in Prague dated 21 July 1941, letters concerning Goebbels’ support dated 25 July 1941 and 11 August 1941, replies by Oskar Walleck dated 22 August 1941 and 27 August 1941, letter by Kurt von Burgsdorff dated 30 August 1941, Gregory letter to Schlösser dated 10 September 1941, note by Office for Cultural Affairs dated 15 December 1941, note from Walleck to Fritz Oehmke dated 27 January 1942, letter by Otto Schwebel to Oehmke dated 10 March 1942, Oehmke letter dated 19 May 1942 confirming Reich funding for operetta, finance minister Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk letter to Reinhard Heydrich dated 19 May 1942, fax from Propaganda Ministry to Office for Cultural Affairs dated 6 January 1943, followed by another letter dated 4 February 1943 concerning Gerhart Scherler’s visit, Walleck’s reply to financial allegations (six pages!) dated 5 February 1943, note of meeting between Scherzer and Walleck dated 16 February 1943 (Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Oper Prag [no pagination]).

161 See Rischbieter, NS-Theaterpolitik, p. 273.

162 See BArch, R55/20513a, pp. 657–663. In his pre-season plans for the theatre from early 1941 (which he submitted to the Propaganda Ministry), Ziegler had had even grander plans. He wanted to produce no fewer than 36 plays, 20 operas and 17 operettas – a real “mingle-mangle” of works, as the Propaganda Ministry noted internally (see BArch, R55/20513, pp. 47–48).

163 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 108.

164 This figure rose by 13% to 593 performances two years later (see Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, pp. 98–99).

165 See ibid., p. 123.

166 See ibid., p. 95.

167 See ibid., p. 136.

168 See ibid., p. 139. These plans were not materialised as the city was liberated on 6 November 1943.

169 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, p. 173.

170 See review in BArch, R55/21761, no pagination (report almost certainly written in spring 1942).

171 Letter by the National Auditing Office (Rechnungshof des Deutschen Reiches) to the Propaganda Ministry dated 18 February 1944 (see BArch, R55/20389, pp. 218 [back page], 221 [back page]).

172 See Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 277.

173 Mettin was dramaturge at the Vienna Burgtheater and one of the leading commentators in the Third Reich (see Mettin, Hermann Christian. Die Situation des Theaters. Vienna: Sexl, 1942. p. 29).

174 Chief dramaturge Karl Peter Biltz in The Hague’s season preview 1942 (see BArch, R55/20545, p. 194).

175 See Epstein, Catherine. Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. pp. 232, 247.

176 Qtd. in Podlasiak, Deutsches Theater in Thorn, p. 139.

177 Künkler, Karl. “Die kulturpolitische Aufgabe des deutschen Theaters in den neugewonnenen Gebieten.” Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 107 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

178 Kindermann, Die europäische Sendung des deutschen Theaters, p. 5.

179 Künkler, Kulturpolitische Aufgabe des deutschen Theaters, Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 108 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

180 Pohl, Spielplangestaltung und Theaterwerbung, Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1942/3): 225, 228 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

181 Hepke, Marian. “Die Aufgaben des Theaters. Zum Abschluss der Spielzeit 1941/42.” Deutsche Rundschau [Bromberg], 5 April 1943.

182 Schrade, Hans Erich. “Verpflichtung und Aufgabe der deutschen Theater.” Präsident der Reichstheaterkammer, ed. Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch 1943. Berlin: Reichstheaterkammer, 1943. p. 2.

183 Curt Goetz, for example, a prolific and successful author of comedies during the Third Reich, was sometimes “accused” of being Jewish. In 1942 a SS officer complained to the Protectorate Office for Cultural Affairs about Goetz’ comedy Ingeborg; he had seen a production of it by the Prague German Theatre and disapproved of it as Goetz was part of an “international and Jewish authors’ family”. Interestingly, the Office then wrote to Walleck informing him about the complaint and basically asking him (but only between the lines) not to produce the play ever again. Walleck did not take note of the letter. It was resent six weeks later, but there is no reply by him in the file (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5030, pp. 630–631).

184 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5030 (Examination, Evaluation and Monitoring of Works), p. 196. Needless to say, the Czech stages were closely monitored, too, and plays were regularly banned by the German authorities.

185 See Daiber, Schaufenster der Diktatur, p. 308.

186 Künkler, Kulturpolitische Aufgabe des deutschen Theaters, Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 107 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

187 See Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, pp. 272, 276.

188 Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9, Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag, Ständetheater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) 1940/41.

189 Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9, Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag, Ständetheater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) 1941/2.

190 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5298 (no pagination).

191 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 99.

192 See Reichsgautheater Posen 1941/2, review of 1941/2 season, pp. 203–205 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

193 The season preview also announced a number of dance productions, matinees and guest performances by some of the leading stars of the time, including conductors such as Hans Knappertsbusch and Clemens Krauss, actors such as Käthe Gold, Heinrich George and Gustaf Gründgens, and choreographer Harald Kreutzberg (see BArch, R55/20545, pp. 194–195). The end of the 1942/3 season was equally celebrated with an array of “guests from the state operas in Vienna, Munich and Hamburg, and the state theatres in Berlin and Dresden” (see ibid., pp. 286–287).

194 See BArch, R55/20545, p. 301. The Propaganda Ministry noted “agreed” in its reply (ibid., p. 302).

195 See letter by Herr Schwammberger in Thorn’s city’s administration to the Reich Theatre Chamber dated 23 May 1944 (BArch, R56 III/253). See also Podlasiak, Deutsches Theater in Thorn, pp. 166–168.

196 For a brief discussion of Kleist’s play during the war see Weigel, Alexander. Das imaginäre Theater Heinrich von Kleists. Heilbronn: Kleist-Archiv Sembdner, 2015. pp. 240–249.

197 Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 14 January 1940.

198 Walter Jacobs in Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 15 January 1940.

199 Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/56. Repertuary przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji (1940–1945).

200 See, for example, the detailed article in the programme notes (note 20, 1941/2 season, Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1943], p. 68).

201 Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/56. Repertuary przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji (1940–1945).

202 BArch, R55/20389, p. 358.

203 See ibid., p. 345.

204 See with respect to Danzig/Gdansk, Wolting, Verwicklungen und Verwirrungen, p. 68.

205 Krakauer Zeitung as qtd. in Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten, p. 128. During the 1940/1 season the Warsaw German theatre presented 187 performances, mostly operettas and comedies, but not a single drama. However, the 1941/2 season opened with Goethe’s Egmont and also featured Heinrich Zerkaulen’s Der Reiter later on (see Gollert, Warschau unter deutscher Herrschaft, p. 287).

206 Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, pp. 273–274.

207 The theatre presented a string of comedies and farces by the popular playwrights of the day, such as Ralph Benatzky, August Hinrichs and Curt Goetz. Examples from 1941 are Bezauberndes Fräulein (Charming Fräulein), Frischer Wind aus Sumatra (Fresh Breeze from Sumatra), Besuch am Abend (Evening Visit), Trockenkursus (Dry Run), Flitterwochen (Honeymoon), Ingeborg and Krach um Jolanthe (Trouble with Jolanthe) (see, for example, BArch, R55/20513a, pp. 458–460).

208 Abbey/Havekamp discuss a typical revue in German Theatre in Lille, p. 277.

209 For more information on play and author see Panse, Barbara. “Zeitgenössische Dramatik 1933–44. Autoren, Themen, Zensurpraxis.” Rischbieter, Theater im “Dritten Reich”, pp. 659–661.

210 Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9, Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag, Ständetheater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) 1941/2. See also the review of the first half of 1941/2 season dated 20 December 1941 (Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 [no pagination]), and a number of reviews from 1943 and 1944 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 reports from German theatres, pp. 52–55, 63–66, 110–115, 129–132, 163–165).

211 See Reichsgautheater Posen 1941/2, review of 1941/2 season, pp. 203–205 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

212 See Reichsgautheater Posen 1942/3, review of 1942/3 season, pp. 276–280 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

213 See Podlasiak, Deutsches Theater in Thorn, p. 145.

214 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, p. 174.

215 See ibid., pp. 178, 191.

216 See ibid., pp. 193–194.

217 See Nowikiewicz, Elżbieta. “Das deutsche Theater in Bromberg in den Jahren 1939–44.” Fassel/Ulrich, Alltag und Festtag im deutschen Theater im Ausland, pp. 247, 249.

218 For Brünn see the detailed review of 1942/3 season dated 6 July 1943. The four most successful plays were farces. In Budweis the management in 1942/3 at least attempted to infuse classical plays into the repertoire, but in terms of popular appeal they were totally outdone by farces and comedies (report 14 July 1943. For both references see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 [no pagination]). Interestingly, the theatre in Iglau-Znaim managed to produce a number of highly popular classics in 1940/1, including Shakespeare, Schiller and Kleist (report with no date, but almost certainly from July 1941. See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 [no pagination]). For Olmütz see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 reports from German theatres, pp. 15–17.

219 See Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9, Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag, Ständetheater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) 1940/1.

220 Stahl, Ernst Leopold. “Das neue deutsche Lustspiel.” Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 134–135 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

221 Schulenburg, Werner von der. “Das Lustspiel in diesem Krieg.” Blätter der deutschen Theater Prag (1941/2): issue 1, pp. 4–5 (Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9).

222 Baumann, Max. “Großes Drama oder Unterhaltungstheater?” Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1942/3): 37–55 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

223 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji (1940–1943). Bl. 2. Similarly Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 17 March 1940.

224 Interestingly, even at the time this line of argument was never entirely successful – the Litzmannstadt press certainly did not buy it. Commentators criticised the theatre for avoiding the serious contemporary repertoire as Litzmannstadt audiences did not “necessarily demand light weight plays” (Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 20 August 1942).

225 Lorenz, Peter. “Das Theater in der sudetendeutschen Kulturpolitik.” Volk an der Arbeit (1938): 212–215.

226 Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 269. The authors carried out a number of interviews during the early 1990s.

227 See, for example, a note by the theatre department in the Propaganda Ministry from late 1942 (BArch, R55/20513a, p. 687).

228 See review in Deutsche Zeitung in Norwegen, 28 March 1944 (National Archives of Norway, RAFA-2174 Tyske archiver [German archives]: Reichskommissariat, series Ed, Hauptabteilung Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, box 57).

229 See Ziegler, Ernst Andreas. “Deutsches Theater in fremdem Land.” Feldzeitung der Armee an Schelde – Somme – Seine. No. 252, 11 May 1941.

230 Members of the Moscow Arts Theatre performed in Berlin on a number of occasions in 1940 and 1941, and as late as 28 June 1941. Further performances they envisaged for early 1942, however, do not seem to have materialised (see correspondence between Vera Zinger-Pawlowa, the Berlin police and the Propaganda Ministry, BArch, R55/20503, pp. 177–178).

231 The programme notes at the Litzmannstadt theatre, for example, in the autumn of 1940 repeatedly discussed Ostrowski’s plays and the success they had recently enjoyed on Berlin stages (see, for example, issue no. 4 during the 1940/1 season, published in October 1940. pp. 80–83, 89–91). Reinecker was a leading figure in the Hitler Youth and an SS war correspondent and after the war continued his successful career as a script-writer for German television (e.g. Derrick). The Village near Odessa is set in a Ukrainian village days before the German occupation in the summer of 1941 and presents the corruption and tyranny of the Soviet “system” and the desire of the villagers for change. An added “topical” interest was the presence of a German minority – honest, brave and “Aryan” – who could not wait to see their homeland “freed” by the Wehrmacht. The play was performed all over Germany and received 61 productions in 1942/3 and 13 in 1943/4 (see BArch, R55/21, letter by Schlösser to Johansson in the Propaganda Ministry dated 4 November 1942; letter from Schlösser to Reinecker, same date; circular by Schlösser to theatre managers dated 14 November 1942; letter from Schlösser to Eugen Klöpfer dated 21 December 1942).

232 For a more detailed discussion see Pryt, Befohlene Freundschaft, pp. 309–337. For an interesting account of what the changed political climate after 1934 meant “on the ground” in formerly German and now Polish towns see, with reference to Thorn, Podlasiak, Die Deutsche Bühne Thorn, pp. 97–106.

233 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, pp. 136–137.

234 See ibid., p. 133.

235 A dossier compiled by Rainer Schlösser of the programmes of Berlin theatres between April und October 1938 showed the immense popularity particularly of comedies by British playwrights (dossier sent to Goebbels’ office dated 9 November 1938 [BArch, R55/20258, pp. 155–162]).

236 See Heinrich, Nazi Claims on Shakespearean Drama, pp. 230–242.

237 See circular from the Propaganda Ministry dated 9 November 1939 (BArch, R55/20111, p. 121). See also Schlösser’s letter to Goebbels two months earlier regarding the foreign repertoire on German stages (see BArch, R55/20258, pp. 224–226). Bizet’s presence in the programmes was not questioned even after plausible rumours emerged that he might have been of Jewish descent (see Wulf, Joseph. Theater und Film im Dritten Reich. Eine Dokumentation. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1983. pp. 114–115).

238 Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5040.

239 See BArch, R55/20533, p. 426.

240 In the Generalgouvernement the Germans were intent on separating Germans and Poles as much as possible, including in the theatre. The “Guidelines for Cultural Policy” published in 1940 focussed on a strict division between German and Polish events, artists and audiences. They allowed the Poles some theatrical activity in attending operettas, revues and “light comedies”, but not operas and serious dramas, which were reserved for the Germans. Interestingly, the Nazis distinguished between Poles and Ukrainians, as the latter were in fact allowed to take part in German cultural events (see “Kulturpolitische Richtlinien” im Generalgouvernement 1940 [no exact date given]. Pospieszalski, Karol Marian. Hitlerowskie ‘Prawo’ Okupacyjne w Polsce. Częsć II. Generalna Gubernia. Wybór Dokumentów i Próba Syntezy [Documenta Occupationis, vol. 6]. Poznań: Instytut Zachodni, 1958. pp. 408–410).

241 For the Thorn reference see Podlasiak, Deutsches Theater in Thorn, p. 139.

242 BArch, R55/155, p. 5 (letter from June 1940). The Germans appeared bewildered that this boycott extended even to popular and quite unpolitical operettas.

243 The revenue consisted of RM 100,000 in the form of Reich subsidies and RM 33,000 via the KdF agreement (see BArch, R55/20513a, p. 638).

244 See review of the beginning of the 1941/2 season dated 20 December 1941 (Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 [no pagination]). Only when the opera company of the Milan Scala visited Prague did the percentage of Czech audience members rise to 20% (underlined in a report by Walleck dated 4 June 1941. See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 [no pagination]).

245 See BArch, R55/21761, file without pagination.

246 See Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, pp. 276–277, 283–285.

247 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 92. In occupied Poland the criteria for being entered on the Volksliste, and thereby obtaining the right to German citizenship, were published in March 1941 and related to people being of German descent and/or actively supporting the German cause (see Kochanowski, Jerzy and Beate Kosmala, eds. Deutschland, Polen und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Geschichte und Erinnerung. 2nd rev. ed. Potsdam/Warsaw: Deutsch-Polnisches Jugendwerk, 2013. p. 60). For a detailed discussion of how the Volksliste operated in the Warthegau, where it had already been introduced in October 1939, see Kranz, Alexander. Reichsstatthalter Arthur Greiser und die “Zivilverwaltung” im Wartheland 1939/40. Die Bevölkerungspolitik in der ersten Phase der deutschen Besatzungsherrschaft in Polen. Potsdam: Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, 2010. pp. 56–66. See also the collection of original documents relating to the Volksliste and other measures relating to Nazi ethnic policies in Poland in Pospieszalski, Karol Marian. Niemiecka Lista Narodowa W “Kraju Warty”. Wybór Dokumentów. Z Objaśnieniami w Jęzkyu Polskim i Francuskim (Documenta Occupationis Teutonicae, vol. 4). Poznań: Instytut Zachodni, 1949.

248 Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/56. Repertuary przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji (1940–1945).

249 See Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten, p. 127.

250 If, however, a theatre did manage to make a profit (although this was very rare in occupied Europe due to the small pool of possible audience members and the low income due to elaborate systems of concessions), theatres were rewarded by the city authorities, who closely watched audience figures. In the Altreich before the war, one such case was the Westphalian city of Bielefeld. There, Mayor Budde declined to raise the annual subsidy from RM 278,000 in 1936 to RM 324,000 in 1937 unless the theatre achieved better attendances (see Bielefeld City Archives, Beirat Theater und Orchester 1936–1938, meeting 29 December 1936). When this happened due to artistic manager Alfred Kruchen’s popular programming, Kruchen duly received a rise in subsidies for 1938 (see Heinrich, Theater in der Region, pp. 160–161).

251 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 86.

252 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 29056, p. 10.

253 See, for example, a detailed contract between KdF and the “German Theater Lille” from October 1942 (BArch, R55/20513a, p. 702).

254 See Reichsgautheater Posen 1941/2, review of 1941/2 season, p. 206 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

255 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, p. 175.

256 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28531, pp. 217–219 (the week in question was 3 to 9 May 1940).

257 See Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 283.

258 There are at least two further interesting facets to this dispute. First of all, there were repeated and substantial conflicts within the Nazi administration not only in Prague but elsewhere, too, and these continued well into the war. Second, the Waffen-SS as an elite unit clearly did not like to be criticised and certainly could not be expected to offer an excuse. In this dispute they never replied directly to Walleck and even declared that they would in future “very carefully” scrutinise what was being offered to them by the theatre. They would attend only if the performance was “suitable” for them (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5030, pp. 83–86).

259 As a note of caution, however, we need to be aware that the figures quoted here are figures produced by the Nazis themselves. It is impossible to verify these, although in some cases audience figures also appear in internal communications. Wherever they differ from the published figures this will be made clear, although they are mostly identical.

260 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 84.

261 See ibid., p. 95. See also Reichsgautheater Posen 1941/2, review of 1941/2 season, p. 207, and Reichsgautheater Posen 1942/3, review of 1942/3 season, pp. 282–283 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

262 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 104.

263 See ibid., p. 137.

264 See BArch, R55/20513a, pp. 657–659.

265 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 93.

266 See Nowikiewicz, Das deutsche Theater in Bromberg, p. 213.

267 See Podlasiak, Deutsches Theater in Thorn, p. 153.

268 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, pp. 98–99.

269 See ibid., pp. 108–109.

270 See ibid., p. 97.

271 These figures for January 1942 (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28961, p. 87). Figures for the following months substantiate this trend (see pp. 125, 156, 169, 206, 236).

272 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 29056, pp. 51–56.

273 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28595, p. 179.

274 During the first half of 1942 the studio presented an average of 12 shows per month, attracting around 5,000 patrons (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 29056, pp. 59–64).

275 See Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28961, pp. 244, 251, 259. See also Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 29056, pp. 82–101. Although slightly lower, audience figures in 1943 generally held up, with utilisations of well over 80% (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28961, p. 264).

276 See Leyko, Das deutsche Theater in Lodz, p. 136.

277 Rise from August 1941 to August 1942 (see Reichsgautheater Posen 1941/2, review of 1941/2 season, p. 208 [Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23]).

278 See Chapter 2, “Discourses”, and comments by (for example) Saladin Schmitt, who in the 1920s declared that supporting one’s local theatre was a matter of both pride and duty for the enlightened citizen.

279 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, pp. 105–106. See also Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten, p. 131. The quality of performances by Polish ensembles was already commented upon during the 1920s and early 1930s when the German Beuthen theatre company performed in the now Polish city of Kattowitz. Contemporary commentators stressed that the German performances needed to be first class to compete with the excellent theatre work offered by Polish ensembles (quote from German theatre journal Das Theater as referred to by Drewniak, Polen und Deutschland 1919–1939, p. 190).

280 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 127.

281 Qtd. in ibid., p. 119.

282 Walter Stang following a tour of Holland in the autumn of 1941, quoted in Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 122.

283 See BArch, R55/20533, p. 429.

284 This also concerned the opera, as Prinz has pointed out (Prinz, Friedrich. Böhmen und Mähren [Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas, vol. 2]. Berlin: Siedler, 2002. p. 461).

285 See, for example, the programme of the Czech National Theatre from the autumn of 1942 (Národní archiv, State Secretary at the Reich Protectorate, 1799, file 1724, sg. 109–4/1479). The National Theatre throughout the war offered opera, drama and ballet as a matter of course and employed some 600 people.

286 Goebbels, Tagebücher, Teil 1: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, volume 7, entry 22 December 1939, pp. 241–242.

287 Report by the head of the Special Office for Cultural Politics (Leiter der Sonderabteilung Kulturpolitik) dated 14 April 1943 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5099 [no pagination]).

288 “Die Lehrkräfte der Deutschen Akademie für Musik in Prag”, as qtd. in Stoff, Franziska. “Zwischen den Stühlen. Zum Angliederungsprozess der Deutschen Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Prag an die Deutsche Karls-Universität 1938–1945.” Acta Universitatis Carolinae – Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis 2 (2013): 143.

289 Štāls, Georgs. Das lettische Ballett der Rigaer Oper. Riga: J. Kadilis, 1943.

290 At RM 19 the volume was expensive to buy, too. By comparison, nicely produced bound copies of Hitler’s My Struggle or Rosenberg’s Myth of the 20th Century sold for under RM 6.

291 Štāls, Das lettische Ballett, p. 6.

292 BArch, R55/20534, p. 105.

293 See ibid., pp. 1–2.

294 See BArch, R55/20533, pp. 127–128.

295 See BArch, R55/20534, pp. 8, 21. In April 1936 the theatre received another RM 10,000 (see ibid., p. 31). Monthly audiences at the Riga German theatre rose from around 5,000 in 1934 to around 7,000 in 1936 (see ibid., p. 64). The repertoires during the 1935/6 and 1937/8 seasons looked similar and also toed the party line (ibid., p. 126; BArch, R55/20533, pp. 127–128).

296 See BArch, R55/20534, pp. 26–28, 73, 104–105, 120. See also BArch, R55/20533, p. 362.

297 See BArch, R55/20534, pp. 150–151.

298 See BArch, R55/20533, p. 362 (note dating from February 1938). Prior to his taking over of the Riga German theatre in early 1939, Heinrich Voigt had been sent on a fact-finding mission to Riga and Reval by the Propaganda Ministry (Voigt’s personal account as qtd. in Nowikiewicz, Das deutsche Theater in Bromberg, pp. 211– 213).

299 See BArch, R55/20533, pp. 408, 411.

300 The report contained a whole list of German plays, operettas and operas produced in the Baltic states. The regime was clearly interested in its cultural reach (see BArch, R55/20533, p. 423).

301 See BArch, R55/20533, p. 424.

302 See BArch, R55/20532, pp. 3, 16–19, 21, 26–28, 38, 41, 62.

303 See London, Non-German Drama in the Third Reich, p. 251; Fassel, Die feldgrauen Musen, p. 138.

304 Despite this urgency, however, only five theatres responded to Schlösser, and two said they thought about producing the piece, but in the end no theatre took it up (see BArch, R55/20235, p. 282).

305 BArch, R55/20532, pp. 195–196, and response on p. 197.

306 See ibid., p. 364.

307 See ibid., pp. 225–227.

308 See BArch, R55/20503, p. 286.

309 See BArch, R55/20543, pp. 606–609, 621, 623.

310 A thick file on “foreign tours” held by the Propaganda Ministry documents the lively activity and visits to Western as well as Eastern Europe before and after the outbreak of war in 1939 (BArch, R55/20503).

311 See ibid., pp. 81, 87, 90. The regime was also keen to see him perform further afield, for example in Lisbon and Cambridge. This support is all the more noteworthy since Swaine performed under an English name and was openly gay (see ibid., pp. 74–76, 79, 94).

312 The embassy noted that they had started with German language courses, which had proved to be popular. There was also a German cultural institute now, and a German library would be opening soon, too. The embassy added that ticket prices would have to be low because of the limited resources of the Romanian people, so a Reich subsidy would be in order (see BArch, R55/20503, p. 271).

313 See ibid., p. 276.

314 The Propaganda Ministry also noted that there were enough people capable of understanding German in the region for the tour to find a receptive audience (see BArch, R55/20503, p. 279). In the end the company of the Schiller-Theater only went to Budapest (see ibid., pp. 322, 351).

315 See BArch, R55/20532, pp. 161–164. In the end the overall cost seems to have been closer to RM 180,000 (see BArch, R55/20543, p. 166).

316 See BArch, R55/20532, pp. 195–196.

317 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, pp. 100, 102.

318 See ibid., pp. 103–104.

319 See Reichsgautheater Posen 1941/2, review of 1941/2 season, p. 201 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

320 See Weißenbach, Hans. “Der Aufbau und die Entwicklung der beiden Reichsgautheater.” Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1942/3): 264 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

321 See Rühle, Theater in Deutschland 1887–1945, p. 927.

322 See Schneider, Meine böhmische Ecke, p. 105.

323 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 108.

324 There were numerous other visits by less prestigious theatres, including Bochum, Schwerin, Cologne, regional touring companies, orchestras and countless smaller ensembles (see Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 122).

325 See BArch, R55/20543, pp. 93, 140, 191, 364, 377.

326 See ibid., pp. 646, 694, 704, 743. These performances took place in January and February 1941. See also p. 743 for a letter by Karl Wüstenhagen (Hamburg’s artistic director) to Schlösser in which he stressed the extraordinary success the theatre had had with their sell-out tour of Faust, particularly in Bergen, a city previously considered “150% English”. Both tours combined cost RM 190,000 (see BArch, R55/20543, p. 704).

327 For more information on the theatres in Lille and Brussels during the First World War see Baumeister, Kriegstheater, pp. 270–279. See also Ketelsen, Ein Theater und seine Stadt, pp. 83–89, 145–146.

328 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5342 (no pagination). The Prague theatres also regularly performed in Pilsen, Olmütz and Passau.

329 See Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 270.

330 See BArch, R56 III/179.

331 Kindermann, Theater und Nation, p. 60. See also Kindermann, Die europäische Sendung des deutschen Theaters, pp. 51–53.

332 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 114.

333 See BArch, R55/20543, pp. 166–169.

334 See, for example, concerning the Protectorate, Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 (no pagination). For the regular reports produced at the theatre in Lille see, for example, BArch, R55/20513a, pp. 524–527.

335 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 (no pagination). However, Oskar Walleck was not always that diligent, and many reports are considerably shorter (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5400 Deutsche Theater, Prag [no pagination]).

336 See BArch, R55/155, p. 54.

337 Letter by the propaganda office “Danzig-Westpreußen” to Thorn’s mayor dated 28 March 1944. The theatre had a capacity of 600 and an annual Reich subsidy (on top of the municipal one) of RM 170,000 (see BArch, R55/20430, p. 3).

338 For contemporary statements regarding the duties of the national dramaturge see Laubinger, Otto. “Die Aufgaben der Reichsdramaturgen.” Der Autor September 1933: pp. 4–6. Laubinger was the first president of the Reich Theatre Chamber. Rainer Schlösser was national dramaturge between 1933 and 1945.

339 In that sense the role of the dramaturge turned decidedly political under the Nazis, a welcome opportunity for control from within over theatrical institutions. Not surprisingly, the number of dramaturges rose sharply after 1933 (see Deutsch-Schreiner, Evelyn. Theaterdramaturgien von der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart. Vienna: Böhlau, 2016. p. 154).

340 See Dussel, Ein neues, ein heroisches Theater?, pp. 89–100. The question of the actual powers of the national dramaturge is still contested. Eicher, for example, claims that Schlösser’s influence had been “extraordinary” (see Eicher, Spielplanstrukturen, p. 484. Similarly Rischbieter, Henning. ‘“Schlageter – der erste Soldat des Dritten Reiches.” Theater in der Nazizeit.’ Sarkowicz, Hans, ed. Hitlers Künstler. Die Kultur im Dienst des Nationalsozialismus. Frankfurt: Insel, 2004. p. 218).

341 See, for example, an internal report on the chaos within the Reich Theatre Chamber written by its deputy head, Helmuth Steinhaus, in 1936 (see BArch, R56 I/91, pp. 150–158). Another report less than half a year later illustrates the continuous chaotic financial situation (see BArch, R56 I/128, pp. 46–50).

342 Göring claimed control over all Prussian theatres. This made him a major player in the cultural sector as Prussia comprised about two thirds of the German territory. In a telegram to the heads of all Prussian districts in April 1933, Göring made it clear that “all affairs of the municipal theatres are with immediate effect subject to my control entirely” (State Archives Münster [Staatsarchiv Münster]. Oberpräsidium no. 5501. Theaterplanwirtschaft. p. 327). Göring repeatedly renewed this claim in official circulars. In May he publicly warned Rosenberg’s organisations against exercising influence on municipal theatres, and in July 1933 he stated that every senior official in a Prussian theatre was subject to his confirmation (see Bochum City Archives [Stadtarchiv Bochum], D St 15, p. 28; Wulf, Theater und Film im Dritten Reich, pp. 63, 83). Göring’s statements were widely publicised and reprinted, even in local programme notes. After Goebbels had successfully established his preeminence in the cultural sector, Göring continued to play an important role with regard to the Prussian state theatres in Kassel and Berlin, where Gustaf Gründgens was his famous protégé.

343 See letter by Hesse on 1 August 1941 (not in file), reply by Frenzel at the Propaganda Ministry dated 14 August 1941, and Hesse’s letter back to Berlin dated 27 August 1941 (BArch, R55/20389, pp. 309–310).

344 Abbey/Havekamp are certainly correct in noting that these reports are “coloured” by the individual assessments and tastes of their authors, and they were clearly written with the knowledge that Goebbels was going to read them (see Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 279). At the same time, these internal reports are immensely useful simply because they were meant for internal consumption only. Some of the assessments were almost brutally frank (e.g. in relation to Walleck) and offer an insight which is otherwise difficult to gain.

345 Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5030, pp. 232–259.

346 See ibid., pp. 152–160. For a more detailed discussion of this case see Mohn, Volker. “‘Albernes und geschmackloses Machwerk’ – Die literarischen Bemühungen des Polizeihauptwachtmeisters Andreas Marx.” Brücken – Germanistisches Jahrbuch Tschechien – Slowakei. NF 18/1–2 (2010): 375–388.

347 Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5030, pp. 128–133.

348 Ibid., pp. 208–210. However, Goebbels had already in early 1941 noted in his diary that he “rejected” Langenbeck (Goebbels, Tagebücher, Teil 1: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, volume 9, entry 31 January 1941, p. 119).

349 Kindermann noted that during the present war the representative function of the German theatre was more important than ever before (see Kindermann, Die europäische Sendung des deutschen Theaters, p. 6).

350 Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 25 July 1943.

351 Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 281.

352 See Waidelich, Essen spielt Theater, vol. 2, p. 149.

353 Petersen, Was wir uns erwarten, Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 63 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

354 See Ludová, Die kleine Bühne in Prag, p. 82.

355 Kindermann, Heinz. Hölderlin und das deutsche Theater. Vienna: Wilhelm Frick, 1943. pp. 38–39. Similarly Künkler, Kulturpolitische Aufgabe des deutschen Theaters, Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 112 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

356 Kindermann, Hölderlin, p. 43.

357 Kindermann, Heinz, ed. Wend Unmut. Das Buch der deutschen Schwänke. Vienna: Wiener Verlagsgesellschaft, 1943.

358 See BArch, R55/20101, pp. 48–49.

359 See Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 278.

360 The American journalist William L. Shirer noted in 1937 that the performances of the Berlin Philharmonic and the State Opera were the best he had experienced outside New York and Vienna (see Shirer, William L. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1942. p. 73).

361 See Schneider, Meine böhmische Ecke, p. 101. Similarly, Stuckenschmidt, Hans Heinz. Zum Hören geboren. Ein Leben mit der Musik unserer Zeit. Munich: dtv, 1982. p. 167.

362 See Podlasiak, Deutsches Theater in Thorn, pp. 169–171.

363 Arent, Benno von. “Das Theater im Neuen Deutschland mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Bühnenbildes.” Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 125 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23). An almost identical article was published in the Prague programmes during the same season.

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

365 Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag, Ständetheater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) 1939/40 (Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9).

366 Die Theater in Posen 1941/2 (Herder Institut Marburg, S 1714). For more comments see Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 1–9 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

367 See BArch, R55/20543, pp. 52–91.

368 Die Prager deutschen Theater in Florenz. Hg. von der Generalintendanz. Prag: Böhmisch-Mährische Verlagsdruckerei, 1942. Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9, Deutsche Theater in Prag.

369 Reichsgautheater Posen 1941/2: 173–184 (Herder Institut Marburg, G/34 VIII P120 Z23).

370 See Arent, Das Theater im Neuen Deutschland, Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 130 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

371 Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag, Ständetheater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) 1940/1 (Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9).

372 Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag, Ständetheater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) 1941/2, issue no. 2 (Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9).

373 The notes feature only one overtly political contribution in the whole year. Rudolf List in his essay on Hermann Heinz Ortner (issue no. 4) presented Ortner as a true Blood and Soil playwright who was shocked when he arrived in Vienna at the age of 25 to find the city’s “Volkstum […] vom Judentum unterworfen[e] und verschüttet[e]” (see Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9, Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag, Ständetheater [Deutsches Schauspielhaus] 1940/1).

374 See Heinrich, Theater in der Region, pp. 167–168.

375 Die Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen 1942/3 (Herder Institut Marburg, G/34 VIII P120 Z23 and G/34 VIII P120 Z23b).

376 The size of the programme notes was only reduced during the 1943/4 season, but was still published on four A5 pages with some basic information concerning the play, the production and the actors (Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1943]. Bl. 94–99).

377 See, for example, an article on the Hermannstadt ensemble entertaining the armed forces in the Balkans in issue 22 of the Litzmannstadt programme notes 1941/2, published in June 1942 (pp. 161–162).

378 For a full run of Litzmannstadt’s programme notes see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1943]. The university library of the University of Łódź holds a run, too, although this is incomplete.

379 See Heinrich, Entertainment, Education, Propaganda, p. 193.

380 See various articles in Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1942/3): 222–256 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

381 See, for example, the theatre’s large poster campaigns to recruit season ticket holders. These read “Become Season Ticket Holder. You Foster the Cultural Development” (Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/57. Repertuary przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1945]. Bl. 29).

382 For this and the following see Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1943]. Bl.73.

383 As Reich commissioner Himmler was responsible for the resettlement of German nationals living outside the German borders to the newly acquired “German” territories in Poland. Litzmannstadt received its own Einwandererzentralstelle (Central Immigration Office) in 1940. In 1940 Himmler laid out his long-term strategy for “the East” in a memorandum entitled “Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Ethnic Aliens in the East” (see, for example, Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, pp. 186–188).

384 Hoensch, Jörg K. “Grundzüge und Phasen der deutschen Slowakei-Politik im Zweiten Weltkrieg.” Hoensch, Jörg K. and Hans Lemberg, eds. Begegnung und Konflikt. Schlaglichter auf das Verhältnis von Tschechen, Slowaken und Deutschen 1815–1989. Essen: Klartext, 2001. p. 154.

385 Heydrich in a speech on 4 February 1942 to leading functionaries of the German Protectorate administration (qtd. in Becher, Peter. “Prag in Schwarz und Braun”. Dzambo, Praha – Prag, pp. 63–64).

386 Wolf spoke at the “Leitertagung der Reichspropagandaämter in Berlin” on 18 April 1943 (qtd. in Becher, Prag in Schwarz und Braun, p. 63).

387 Around 282,000 acres had been requisitioned by the German occupiers by the end of 1943 (see Brandes, Detlef. “Nationalsozialistische Tschechenpolitik im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren.” Hoensch/Lemberg, Begegnung und Konflikt, p. 134).

388 See Greiser, Arthur. “Die Großdeutsche Aufgabe im Wartheland.” National-sozialistische Monatshefte 12 (1941): 49.

389 See Greiser, Aufbau im Osten, p. 9. At a smaller event at the Thorn theatre Greiser was more specific. In “five years time this whole land will have become so fully German that not a single Polish word will be heard anymore” (qtd. in Podlasiak, Deutsches Theater in Thorn, p. 171).

390 Epstein, Model Nazi, p. 231. Similarly, Weber, Karl. Litzmannstadt. Geschichte und Probleme eines Wirtschaftszentrums im deutschen Osten (Kieler Vorträge 70). Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1943. pp. 14, 30.

391 Volksdeutsche were ethnic Germans who were living outside of Germany’s borders before the war and had no German citizenship. Some of them hardly spoke German, but the Nazis were keen for them to become full citizens. Reichsdeutsche were Germans living in the Altreich who already held German passports (for more on how the interplay between the two groups manifested itself in occupied Eastern Europe see Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten, pp. 65–77).

392 In 1940 the city had a population of 680,095. This figure decreased to 481,000 in 1943, of which an impressive 28% were now German (see Verwaltungsbericht der Stadt Litzmannstadt 1939–42, Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28595, p. 54). See also Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi/ Stadtverwaltung 28952, which contains further statistical reports up to 1944, and Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28510, p. 1.

393 See Brandes, Nationalsozialistische Tschechenpolitik im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren, p. 132.

394 In 1939 there had been only 500 Germans in Krakau (for both figures see official German report on “five years of German administration in Krakau” published in June 1944. Archiwum Państwowe w Krakowie III, Starosty Miasta Krakowa, no. 16, pp. 829–857). See also Höpel, Kulturpolitik als Werkzeug nationalsozialistischer Hegemonie und Germanisierung im Generalgouvernement, pp. 147, 151.

395 See Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, pp. 200–201.

396 Garleff, Michael. “Die Deutschbalten als nationale Minderheit in den unabhängigen Staaten Estland und Lettland”. Pistohlkors, Gert von, ed. Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas. Baltische Länder. Vol. 3. Rev. ed. Berlin: Siedler, 2002. pp. 534–547. There were numerous contemporary publications celebrating the alleged success of the programme of relocation. Some of these commentators were almost taken aback by the speed of the movement (see, for example, Gerlach, Fritz. Auf neuer Scholle [Volksdeutsche Heimkehr, vol. 6]. Berlin: Nibelungen, 1941; and Hoffmann, Emil and Alfred Thoß. Der vierte Treck. Leistung und Heimkehr der Deutschen aus Bessarabien [Volksdeutsche Heimkehr, vol. 7]. Berlin: Nibelungen, 1941).

397 See, for example, the essay “Die Volkstumsneuordnung. Litzmannstadt Mittelpunkt der Umsiedlung” in Gissibl, Osten des Warthelandes, pp. 282–301. See also Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, pp. 189–191.

398 See Kochanowski/Kosmala, Deutschland, Polen und der Zweite Weltkrieg, p. 59.

399 See BArch, R55/20389, p. 26 (letter by acting mayor Franz Schiffer to the Propaganda Ministry dated 16 February 1940). Until the end of the nineteenth century Łódź had been mainly inhabited by Germans or people of German origin. In 1839, for example, 80% of the population were German, and by 1897 this figure still stood at 40%. After the First World War the German population constantly declined, and in 1939 40% of the textile industry, which had originally been controlled by German businessmen, was owned by Jewish entrepreneurs.

400 See Prykowska-Michalak, Deutsche Dilettantenbühne in Lodz, p. 114. See also Kranz, Reichsstatthalter Arthur Greiser, p. 32.

401 On the city’s trams the first coach was reserved for Germans, and the Polish inhabitants were only allowed to use the last two coaches. The curfew for Polish citizens began at 9 pm and lasted until 5 am. A German newspaper article applauded: “From 9 pm Litzmannstadt is reserved for the Germans!”, and its author promised with similar enthusiasm that the ghetto would soon be history, too. Instead, “in kurzer Zeit wird die gleiche Straßenbahn ihren Weg durch schöne Schmuckplätze nehmen, und vom Getto wird nichts weiter sein als die Erinnerung, als ein paar Photos” (Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 26 February 1941).

402 See, for example, with respect to the Warthegau, Epstein, Model Nazi, p. 231.

403 Uebelhoer, Friedrich. “Zum Geleit.” Theater zu Litzmannstadt. Spielzeit 1940/41. Issue 1, September 1940: p. 2.

404 A detailed 250 page administrative report (Verwaltungsbericht der Stadt Litzmannstadt 1939–42) published in 1943 stressed the “enormous efforts” of the occupiers to establish the arts in a city which hitherto had been “alien” to culture. The first task was, therefore, to “eliminate” all the “alien, in particular all Jewish influences” (Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28595, p. 165). These attitudes were not only displayed in the Warthegau but throughout Poland, as a recent study of the German district officers (Kreishauptleute) has shown (Roth, Markus. Herrenmenschen – die deutschen Kreishauptleute im besetzten Polen. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009). Similarly Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat, pp. 11–15.

405 The German language newspaper had real difficulty keeping up with all the name changes. Originally named the Freie Presse, it changed its name to Deutsche Lodzer Zeitung, then Lodzer Zeitung, Lodscher Zeitung and, finally, Litzmannstädter Zeitung in May 1940.

406 In the course of this radical reduction, the Nazis were keen to obliterate Warsaw’s role as Poland’s capital and the focal point of Polish nationalism and identity (see Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten, pp. 82–83).

407 See BArch, R4606/3366. Hallbauer sent this report to Albert Speer (in his function as general building inspector [Generalbauinspektor]), which initiated a number of meetings in Speer’s Berlin office.

408 The report claimed that on average there were 5.8 people living in each room, and that most flats had only one bedroom. In large parts of the city there was no running water and no sewer (see BArch, R4606/3366).

409 See ibid.

410 As noted at meeting on 14 January 1941 (see BArch, R4606/3366).

411 See letter by Hans Pfundtner in the Reich Interior Ministry to Speer dated 30 April 1940 (BArch, R4606/3366 – file without pagination).

412 The number of people owning a radio set rose from 19,300 in January 1941 to 27,500 a year later (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28961, p. 89).

413 Car ownership rose from 764 in January 1941 to 1,161 a year later (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28961, p. 98).

414 The library’s stock rose from 18,100 books in May 1941 to 34,100 a year later, and the number of people using the library jumped by almost 100%, from 8,000 to 15,600, during the same period. Frustratingly, however, and despite all the efforts, the number of people visiting the city remained static (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28961, p. 168).

415 Ibid., p. 144.

416 See BArch, R153/300. See also BArch, R153/630, concerning a new book entitled Litzmannstadt – Vom Dorf zur Großstadt (Litzmannstadt – From Village to Metropolis), for which the publishers Hirzel from Leipzig had commissioned E.O. Kossmann, an employee of the Publikationsstelle.

417 The progress of the “Germanification” of city and region was closely monitored by the authorities and summarised in regular reports (Volkspolitische Lageberichte) (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 31772).

418 The film, which even contained a few scenes from the ghetto, was finished in 1944 and was meant to enter cinemas in the autumn of that year.

419 Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 26 February 1941.

420 The Germans quickly established a system of oppression against the Jewish community. Within a few weeks the bank accounts of Jewish business leaders were frozen and Jews were not permitted to own more than 2,000 złoty in cash. By the end of 1939 synagogues had been destroyed and Jewish schools closed. Following a ministerial decree by Göring substantial Jewish and Polish assets were seized by the German authorities and came under the control of the so-called Treuhandstelle (trust) in Litzmannstadt. In February 1940 police chief Johannes Schäfer issued a decree concerning the area the Jewish population was allowed to live in and had to move to (the urban district of Bałuty, to the north of the city centre, which subsequently became the Litzmannstadt Getto), and on 1 May 1940 the ghetto was sealed off.

421 It was not until June 1940 that the Litzmannstädter Zeitung published a detailed article about the ghetto. Under the heading “250,000 Jews Govern Themselves” (9 June 1940) the newspaper produced a long article with many pictures claiming that the German authorities had finally offered the Jewish population the possibility to take control of their own affairs, something “which the Germans of this city never enjoyed during Polish rule”. The article goes on to compare the ghetto’s Jewish inhabitants to the “parasitic plant ivy […] which entwines around the oak tree [but] is destined to die”. The paper assured its readers that the founding of the ghetto was “only a temporary interim solution on the way to the final settlement of the Jewish question”. It concluded that “we are convinced, however, that in contrast to the ivy the fate of the Jew is that he is unable to die in a beautiful and dignified way.”

422 BArch, R55/20406, p. 34 (letter by the Regional Propaganda Office in Styria to the Berlin Propaganda Ministry dated 26 August 1941).

423 Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1943], p. 23. Uebelhoer is quoted at length in the first programme note of the 1940/1 season.

424 BArch, R55/864, p. 5 (letter Reich Propaganda Office Styria [signature illegible] to Propaganda Ministry dated 12 August 1941).

425 See ibid., p. 6.

426 See ibid., p. 9.

427 Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji (1940–1943), p. 6. See also Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 14 January 1940.

428 Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 25 July 1943.

429 See Benz, Wolfgang. “Der Generalplan Ost. Zur Germanisierungspolitik des NS-Regimes in den besetzten Ostgebieten 1939–1945.” Benz, Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten, pp. 45–46.

430 See Benz, Generalplan Ost, p. 46.

431 In fact, this phenomenon was true for politics in the Third Reich in general and has been referred to as its polycratic character (see Kißener, Das Dritte Reich, pp. 19–28).

432 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Theater in Brünn (no pagination).

433 See BArch, R55/20513, p. 215.

434 See letter by Herr Kaehler, which was received by the Propaganda Ministry on 12 April 1943. Schlösser’s reply is hardly legible (only handwritten notes on the original letter), but he seems to have written to KdF urging them to exercise restraint particularly in view of the small size of the company, with fewer than ten actors, which would only allow for a specific repertoire (see BArch, R55/20165, p. 1).

435 See BArch, R55/265, pp. 9, 10 (but also at various other points throughout this file).

436 See ibid., p. 10. The opposition of the Propaganda Ministry, however, did not prove decisive here. Much more important was the support Lille’s theatre received from the German army, which wished for the opera to continue (see, for example, ibid., pp. 29–40).

437 Schlösser added that the Krakau stage had not reached the quality of Lille’s theatre, for example. He insinuated that this was because Frank wanted to be solely responsible for “his” theatre and did not accept Schlösser’s help (see BArch, R55/20514, p. 66).

438 For the Propaganda Ministry’s position on this, see letter to Goebbels from December 1941 as well as Goebbels’ subsequent letter to finance minister Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk (BArch, R55/20545, pp. 53–55).

439 See BArch, R55/160, pp. 27–31, direct quote on p. 31.

440 See BArch, R55/20545, passim. This situation was not sustainable, however, and Seyss-Inquart did indeed end up having to ask the Reich for money.

441 See, for example, BArch, R55/20101, p. 136.

442 See internal report by Gerhart Scherler in the Propaganda Ministry dated 18 February 1943 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Oper Prag [no pagination]). The fact that the celebrated SS general Reinhard Heydrich had been assassinated in 1942 and could not be asked anymore to verify the claims also played a part in this.

443 BArch, R55/20543, p. 449.

444 See letter dated 4 August 1940 as quoted in Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, pp. 102–103.

445 See ibid., pp. 104–105. There was a direct altercation between Goebbels and Frank in Berlin a few days later, which Goebbels noted in his diary (Goebbels, Tagebücher,Teil 1: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, volume 11, entry 29 February 1944, p. 367).

446 See letter by Otto Müller-Hanno (Krakau) to Regierungsdirektor Friedrich Arnold, deputy head of the Main Office for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Hauptabteilung Volksaufklärung und Propaganda) at the Generalgouvernement’s administration dated 16 February 1945 (BArch, R56 III/285).

447 Heyser, Karl Peter. “Vorwort.” Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1942/3): 1 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).

448 Mettin, Die Situation des Theaters, p. 29. The geographical remark is from Mayor Schiffer (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji [1940–1943]. p. 6).

449 Incidentally, the whole undertaking proved to be a disaster as the productivity of farms decreased dramatically and security issues increased (see Benz, Generalplan Ost, p. 48).

450 See letter by Hans Pfundtner in the Reich Interior Ministry to Albert Speer (Generalbauinspektor) dated 30 April 1940 (BArch R4606/3366, no pagination).

451 See Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 17 October 1939.

452 Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 14 October 1939.

453 Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 29 October 1939.

454 The article claimed that the Reval company would be enlarged by other German actors, including stage designer Wilhelm Terboven from Berlin (see Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 7 December 1939).

455 BArch, R55/20389, p. 263.

456 Ibid., pp. 264–265.

457 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 29056, pp. 25–30.

458 Attendance figures were (rounded) 19,000 for January, 29,000 for February, 30,000 for March, 22,000 for April, 17,000 for May, 22,000 for June and 19,000 for July (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 29056, p. 46).

459 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji (1940–1943). p. 2.

460 Figures for April 1942 (see Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 29056, pp. 51–56).

461 See Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, pp. 273–274.

462 See Leyko, Das deutsche Theater in Lodz, pp. 143–144. At Lille the situation was not much different; there, the celebrated Nazi playwrights were “notable for their absence” (Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 274).

463 See Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 14 January 1942; Walleck, Oskar. “Kammerspiele.” Blätter der deutschen Theater Prag (1940/1): issue 8, p. 4 (Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9).

464 Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 24 March 1940.

465 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28595, p. 176.

466 Ibid., p. 177.

467 Ibid., p. 179.

468 Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 24 March 1940.

469 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28595, p. 181.

470 Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 278.

471 See review in Deutsche Zeitung in Norwegen, 22 January 1944 (National Archives of Norway, RAFA-2174 Tyske archiver [German archives]: Reichskommissariat, series Ed, Hauptabteilung Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, box 57).

472 Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 7 October 1940.

473 See Gollert, Warschau unter deutscher Herrschaft, p. 288.

474 See BArch, R55/20406, p. 274.

475 Until 1942 Marburg did not have its own acting ensemble. Dramatic performances were provided by the Styrian Regional Theatre (Steirisches Landestheater) (see BArch, R55/20406, p. 103).

476 See, for example, correspondence from November 1943 and February 1944 in BArch, R55/20406, pp. 225, 274.

477 See BArch, R55/865, pp. 44, 57, 71.

478 See report by the Rechnungshof dated 6 February 1941, following a visit in December 1940. The theatre responded on 3 March 1941 through Fritz Kaiser, who refuted all charges in a four page report (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Theater, Prag [no pagination]).

479 See internal report by Propaganda Ministry’s Gerhart Scherler following his inspection visit to Prague (dated 18 February 1943 and sent to the cultural office within the Protectorate administration (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Oper Prag [no pagination]).

480 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Akta Miasta Łodzi 28595, pp. 172–174, 180.

481 For this and the following see BArch, R55/20389, pp. 213–222. For the Rechnungshof’s report on the orchestra see BArch, R55/215, pp. 124–132.

482 BArch, R55/215, p. 124.

483 See BArch, R55/215, pp. 124–128 (also for the following).

484 See BArch, R55/20406, pp. 196, 218, 225.

485 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Theater, Prag (no pagination).

486 Fax sent by Gregory to Schlösser on 6 January 1940 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Theater in Iglau [no pagination]).

487 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, p. 174. Wolting concluded that under Barré Danzig’s theatre experienced its “weakest” seasons ever (ibid., p. 175). It was quite unusual for an artistic director to be replaced during a season and not at the end of it.

488 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, p. 222.

489 The Gestapo accused Heyser of critical remarks and appeared surprised that he was still at his post and not in a concentration camp already (see Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 94).

490 See BArch, R55/20406, p. 274 (note dated February 1944).

491 See, for example, one letter dated 12 December 1944 from the Reich Theatre Chamber (BArch, R56 III/556 [file without pagination]).

492 See BArch, R55/20545, pp. 399–408.

493 See BArch, R55/160, p. 32.

494 Goebbels, Tagebücher, Teil 1: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, volume 8, entry 6 November 1940, p. 408.

495 Some of these accusations are of course impossible to verify. What the files do suggest, however, is that Walleck was a difficult, not to say moody and sometimes inept manager. There were numerous occasions when he clashed with staff and acted quite disproportionally. After one particular actor had made a loose remark about him Walleck reacted like a bull in a china shop and barred the actor from ever entering the theatre again (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5000 [no pagination]). Walleck’s dealings with the press and the public were similarly heavy handed. After having received some letters by audience members voicing misgivings concerning the programme, Walleck called the two lawyers who had raised particular concerns to attend a formal meeting with him at which he put them in their place and reminded them of their duties in wartime (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5298 [no pagination]). In another case from the spring of 1940 the actor Josef Liszt (who does not seem to have had a permanent contract at the theatre but was more like a paid extra) complained to the Office for Cultural Affairs at the Protectorate administration about the “anti-Nazi spirit” at the theatre and the fact that Walleck predominantly employed “communists and Jews”. Instead of talking to the individual Walleck filed a libel suit at the Prague district court, and the case ended in an out of court settlement (see Národní archiv. Urad risskeho protektora 114. Box 202. Shelf mark 114-204-1 [Reich Protectorate, Office for Cultural Affairs at the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia, IV T 5000, General Legal Matters at the Theatre (old German pagination in file)]).

496 See note (not sure by whom, but definitely someone in the Office for Cultural Affairs) dated 12 February 1943 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5099 [no pagination]).

497 See internal note by Herbert Hiebsch (not entirely legible) dated 2 January 1943 (Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Oper Prag [no pagination]).

498 Národní archiv. Nemecke statni ministerstvo (German State Ministry for Bohemia and Moravia), 1464. File 681, sg. 110-4/530 (from hereon in Národní archiv, German State Ministry for Bohemia and Moravia, 1464, file, signature).

499 See Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 275.

500 See ibid., pp. 275–276.

501 See report by Herr Esser to Herr Lang in the Propaganda Ministry, dated 19 November 1942, in relation to the theatre in Hagen in Westphalia (BArch, R55/20700, p. 106).

502 See, with reference to Stettin, BArch, R56 III/2b, pp. 20–21 (correspondence from July 1944).

503 See BArch, R55/20545, p. 53; BArch, R55/25, p. 184. Although it appears that the wages for French employees at the German theatre in Lille were attractive in comparison to other local jobs, Flemish musicians were considerable worse off than their German counterparts. Whereas monthly salaries for German musicians amounted to RM 300 to 400, Flemish musicians got between RM 180 and RM 240 (see BArch, R55/982, p. 5).

504 See BArch, R55/155, p. 11.

505 Note by Walleck to Oehmke dated 27 March 1943 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Oper Prag [no pagination]).

506 See Mohn, Volker. NS-Kulturpolitik im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren. Konzepte, Praktiken, Reaktionen. Essen: Klartext, 2014. p. 333.

507 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 102.

508 See letter by chorus leader Herr Wagner to the Reich Theatre Chamber containing a list of all chorus members at the Thorn theatre dated 22 June 1944 (BArch, R56 III/2b, p. 229).

509 Circular by Hans Heinrich Lammers (head of the Berlin Reich Chancellery) dated 13 January 1941 (see National Archives of Norway, RAFA-2174 Tyske archiver [German archives]: Reichskommissariat, series Ed, Hauptabteilung Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, box 96).

510 Hansjörg Schneider in briefly discussing the history of German theatre in Prague during the war noted that the productions of the German theatre did not reveal anything about the years of terror and murder during the occupation (see Schneider, Meine böhmische Ecke, p. 107).

511 Such claims were put forward after the war by countless artists in defence of their remaining in Nazi Germany.

512 See BArch, R56 III/179.

513 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 99.

514 See Klee, Ernst. “Heitere Stunden in Auschwitz. Wie deutsche Künstler ihre mordenden Landsleute im besetzten Polen bei Laune hielten.” Die Zeit 27 January 2007.

515 Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/56. Repertuary przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji (1940–1945). Wimmer was one of the directors at the theatre.

516 Litzmannstädter Zeitung, 25 July 1943.

517 A letter dated 27 October 1938 composed by the association’s directorate and sent by Ferdinand Gross to all members of the association confirmed that it had gone into administration and asked members for donations. Gross noted that the 161 staff at the theatre had received payments up until 30 September 1938 plus “a small additional pay out” collected from the members of the executive. After that date no money had been coming forward (see Archiv hlavní ho mě sta Prahy, Deutscher Theaterverein, Praha NDT 7).

518 Eckstein, Road to State Opera Prague, pp. 17–18.

519 Ludová, Die kleine Bühne in Prag, pp. 76–77.

520 Propaganda Ministry note dated 30 March 1939 (see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Deutsche Theater, Prag [no pagination]). For a table listing all payments to the Jewish former members dated 10 June 1940 see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5000 Abfindung von jüdischen Mitgliedern (compensation to Jewish members), p. 676.

521 For the entire sequence of events see Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5000 Abfindung von jüdischen Mitgliedern (compensation to Jewish members), pp. 674, 676, 697, 698, 701–704, 724, 726–727, 734, 736.

522 Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat.

523 Warrant for Herr Prof. Dr. Hans Schröder dated 27 September 1942 (see BArch, Reichskommissar Ostland/Gebietskommmisare, Riga Stadt, R91/515 [file without pagination]). This file contains a number of other similar letters concerning the requisition of flats.

524 Entry 8 March 1944, chronicle Litzmannstadt Ghetto (Tageschronik Nr. 68. Chronik des Gettos Lodz/Litzmannstadt. Das letzte Jahr. www.getto-chronik.de/de/chronik, accessed 20 June 2016). It is not quite clear why the chroniclers assumed the “expert” was in fact a “small beginner” who did not know anything about instruments. On the contrary, the offensively low prices he suggested (and which had to be accepted) seem deliberate. The fact that he chose a particularly magnificent accordion for the mayor and the best instruments overall to go to the Reich Music Chamber shows that he knew exactly what he was doing. None of the Jewish protagonists mentioned in this incident survived the war.