Chapter 6
Nowhere does the cultural might of today’s Germany become more obvious than in the realm of the theatre. A nation which manages to create for herself 25 theatres in three hard war years is fundamentally healthy and Europe’s future is hers: Prag, Iglau, Budweis, Teschen, Posen, Bromberg, Graudenz, Thorn, Gotenhafen, Litzmannstadt, Krakau, Warschau, Lublin, Oslo, Lille, Strassburg, Metz, Kolmar, Mühlhausen, Luxemburg, Marburg, Riga, Lemberg – and now the German Theatre in the Netherlands.1
This study has shown that quotes such as the one above were not empty rhetoric: theatre played a crucial role in Nazi Germany’s war effort. Ahead of the 1943/4 season Germany had by far the biggest theatre “empire” in the world. Overall, there were 293 publicly funded municipal and state theatres and 224 fully or partially subsidised touring, open-air, summer or dialect theatre companies, employing over 45,000 people in total.2 These figures rose rapidly after 1939, despite the war effort, and Ludwig Körner expressed a widespread notion when he posited in 1942 that German wartime theatre had experienced an “unimaginable upsurge”.3 German companies performed all over Europe, and theatres all over the continent produced German plays, operas and operettas – the reach of German thea-tre seemed almost global. There “is hardly a nation in Europe today which is able to ignore […] the eternal German […] theatre”, Heinz Kindermann posited.4 It was clear to commentators at home and abroad that in contrast to other military conflicts or other countries the theatre for Nazi Germany was not seen just as a welcome add-on to its military efforts but as vordringlich kriegsnotwendig (essential for the war).5 The theatre’s essential importance rested on a discourse which claimed German leadership in theatrical matters in Europe since the Middle Ages. According to this discourse, German plays, German practitioners and an essentially German understanding of theatre had swept across Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and dominated ever since. Even if the leading practitioners in other countries did not manage to establish a theatre system based on the German model of a network of subsidised playhouses there and then, they certainly strove for it. The war finally fulfilled these wishes and confirmed Germany as the leading European theatre nation – one granting benign support for other countries, looking after local traditions and providing guidance. Essentially, theatre was woven into the fabric of the German war effort. In fact, the pre-war reach of German drama and the European dimension of the German theatrical discourse had prepared the ground for military expansion, and even provided the justification for it. The theatre’s role, therefore, was not just to “represent German culture” in wartime Europe, as Günther Rühle has recently put it, but to aggressively advance the German sphere of influence across the whole continent.6 As German soldiers occupied ever larger areas in Europe, so did German artists – and the apparent analogy between soldiers and actors was repeatedly stressed by propagandists, for example Ludwig Körner and Heinz Kindermann. To see a production of Mozart’s Figaro in Northern Norway, 3,000 km away from home, or Richard Strauss’ opera Elektra in the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus theatre just beneath the Acropolis in Athens, was a feat only the Nazis were able to achieve, it seemed. It also suggested that theatre had come full circle, that the Germans were the true heirs of the ancient Greek performance tradition and that they were fulfilling the promises of the past – a European theatre under German leadership.7
The image of the German artist fighting alongside the German soldier but with different means – an ideal constantly referred to by Hitler and Goebbels, and a popular motif in paintings and sculpture – here, during this war, was finally put into practice.8 Thus, the message of the “lyre fighting alongside the sword” was constantly hammered home by cultural politicians, practitioners and party leaders:9 “And when the sword has spoken the singer strikes a chord. This is a part of our Germanic myth – never understood by a materialistic world, but eternally alive in the Germans’ hearts.”10
Litzmannstadt’s dramaturge, Hanns Merck, claimed that the actors eagerly followed in the footsteps of the soldiers and moved into the “captured emplacements”.11 Their mission was not solely an artistic one but had become political as these artists were charged to foster and defend the German national spirit in the conquered territories. With regard to Litzmannstadt, Merck went on to claim, “In this Polish Manchester, hitherto a dirty city of obtrusive Jewish character, they are faced with particular circumstances – under the unerring guidance of Hans Hesse.” The theatre was, therefore, not only meant to be an expression of the superior German culture which had rightfully conquered Europe but was also charged to uplift, encourage and equip German minority populations (and those deemed fit to belong to them in the future) with the necessary ammunition to continue their struggle once the German army had moved on. In this context the role of the artistic director was not solely artistic but highly political, too. In no uncertain terms Hesse was reminded to play his part to help “free” Litzmannstadt of its “Jewish character”. Particularly in those areas earmarked for annexation by Germany, these minority populations were needed to “educate” the Germans moving in, for example from the Baltic, who may not have been exposed to German culture before. It was, therefore, not only the theatre which had a particular function to fulfil but also its audience. This audience, too, could not go to the theatre solely to be entertained or to blank out reality and enter into a carefree space. Matthias Wiemann reminded theatre-goers that during the present war this attitude was impossible. Attending a performance of Faust was not and could not be “taking flight from reality, there was no losing oneself in an oasis of peace, in well-demarcated spiritual realms”, but it should be a conscious decision to be properly equipped for war by one of Germany’s greatest playwrights.12
Not surprisingly, the regime supported the theatre with enormous efforts and record subsidies. The regime saw these efforts as part of wider political, cultural, military and economic goals, and they were incorporated into an aggressive propaganda. Nazi theatre in occupied Europe was to provide not just entertainment but elevation, and an artistic seal of approval for Germany’s territorial ambitions. Under Berlin’s leadership German drama and music featured in repertoires across the continent as existing amateur ensembles were wound up and replaced by professional troupes. Companies and budgets were significantly extended, new buildings added or renovation programmes realised. The new theatres played host to the theatrical and musical stars of the era – internationally renowned musicians such as Wilhelm Kempff and Wolfgang Schneiderhan and conductors such as Eugen Jochum toured Poland and Romania; the Berlin Philharmonic went to France and Serbia; the Hamburg State Opera and the world famous Wiener Sängerknaben (Viennese boys’ choir) travelled to Norway, as did Wilhelm Furtwängler, who conducted the Oslo Philharmonic just a few days before the German occupation there; and Gustaf Gründgens took his Staatstheater ensemble to Holland, to name but a few. The 1941 Mozart celebrations with their focus on presenting the composer as a “German genius” and part of Germany’s cultural cosmos took place all over Europe and were lavishly funded.13 Towards the end of the war, when fortunes had turned decidedly against Germany, the regime still sent leading actors, conductors and soloists as well as some of the world’s finest ensembles on tour throughout Europe. Even at this stage existing companies were extended, subsidies and salaries raised further, and new buildings planned. The regime did so not only to win over local populations but also to show that Germany’s superiority did not rest solely on her military and economic power. German culture ruled as well.
In quantitative terms and in relation to attendance figures, funding and infrastructure, these efforts are unprecedented. Never before did a country invest so much time, money and purpose to use theatre as a tool in its military campaign – and never since. As with so many other spheres, however, the Nazi regime built on already existing histories and discourses. The substantial Nazi efforts concerning the theatre have to be seen in the context of a discourse which since the late eighteenth century had assigned certain qualities to theatre and theatre-going in Germany. As discussed above, for German commentators theatre has always had a cultural, social and political role in society and not just an economic one with the primary aim of entertaining audiences. In those parts of Europe with significant German minorities during the nineteenth century, and particularly after 1918, this socio-political role became more pronounced. When one reads contemporary accounts, two things become obvious: first, that it was difficult for the Germans to exercise their nationhood, particularly in those areas which used to belong to the German or Habsburg Empires;14 and, second, that attending the local German language theatre almost became a substitute for this performance of nationhood. With reference to 1930s Prague Heinrich Teweles (who was the director of the Neues Deutsches Theater between 1911 and 1918) noticed that audiences after the performances rushed out of the auditorium to reach the foyer and other communal spaces as “the corridors substituted for the social gathering [gesellschaftliches Rendezvous] which is now missing for the Prague Germans”.15 In occupied Eastern Europe the Nazis saw a particular opportunity to continue, build on and extend a theatrical tradition which went back hundreds of years in some places. In fact, they saw themselves as the true heirs of a development which through their substantial funding would now reach its fulfilment. Therefore, the strongest argument against possible cuts in funding for the theatres in the Protectorate, for example, was to say (a) that if the German minorities had been able to sustain their theatres under difficult circumstances after 1918 there was no way for the new regime not to match (and ideally top) their efforts and offer substantial financial help; and (b) that it would play into the hands of the Czechs if the new Germany was not able to properly support its theatres.16 Looking back at German theatre practice in Posen between the wars, Herbert Petersen confirmed in 1942 that
owning a theatre became a issue of national prestige, and not owning such a temple of the muses was equal to confessing “that one was not enough of a national community to provide for such an fundamental expression of culture”.17
The Nazi investment in the performing arts also reflected a real faith in theatre’s transformative powers.18 Theatre could influence and change people’s beliefs, political convictions and preconceptions – or so Goebbels and other leading Nazis thought. The chief “political goal” of the Oslo German theatre, for example, was the “strengthening of the cultural ties between the Reich and Norway”19 – quite a task for one theatre. In Slovenia the theatre was charged to change people’s perceptions of their own nationality and turn them into German citizens. The guest performances by the Lille theatre in Belgium strengthened Flemish nationalism and made the population susceptible to the idea of a separate Flemish state under German “protection”, and the German theatre in The Hague persuaded Dutch audiences of the need for a Germanic super-state. Thus, not only did Germany’s supremacy in the theatre find expression in superbly crafted and expensively produced performances of an established canon, proving to the world that the leading theatre ensembles, orchestras, soloists and conductors were German, but also, wherever these prime cultural exports went, they had an immediate effect on even the most stubborn of audiences. Norwegian audiences mellowed after having witnessed the tours of the brilliant Hamburg State Opera and theatre in 1940, Hungarian and Romanian audiences were successfully steeled in preparation for the joint offensive against the Soviet Union by Wagnerian opera performed by the superior Berlin state opera in 1941, and doubts about the progress of the war vanished in late 1943 after having witnessed Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro as performed by the world famous Vienna State Opera under Karl Böhm in Croatia.20 Contentedly, the German embassy in Zagreb reported to Berlin that the population had been reassured by the performances because if the Germans managed to pull off such a magnificent “visit with over 100 soloists and their own stage properties” brought over from Germany, the military situation in Northern Africa and on the Eastern front could not be that bad.21
Artistic quality, then, remained key for the regime throughout the war. Upon occupation the Nazis made the most of the fact that German language theatres in Eastern Europe had been struggling after 1918. Subsidies were lost and companies were disbanded, although amateur groups tried their best to keep going. Despite the quality of some of these endeavours and their links to wider non-German communities, however, the Nazis did not want to be associated with non-professional activity and instead established a story of their failure, oppression and neglect. They lavishly funded new fully subsidised and professional German companies with astronomical sums, invested in new buildings and renovation programmes and had even grander plans for the future (see, for example, Oskar Walleck’s idea of a European touring opera company based in Prague). This tabula rasa approach also meant that the theatres now operating in occupied Europe by and large made no attempts to relate to local or regional identities but replicated the Stadttheater model as developed in the Altreich. For actors, working at any of these playhouses did not seem much different to working at any other German theatre. They were part of all-German ensembles; they mostly conversed in German and probably had exclusively German friends who, like them, originated from elsewhere. They saw their postings in Oslo, Lille or Posen as a stepping stone in their acting careers which would hopefully soon lead them to a larger theatre back in the Altreich. Companies like those in Litzmannstadt or Bromberg had no link to local communities; there was no interest in engaging with local or regional performance traditions, identities and sensibilities; and the repertoire performed could have been seen at any German theatre.22 Prague’s German thea-tres displayed a “colonial character” and did not pay any attention “to local talent and expectations” as their repertoire “was decreed from above”.23 Even where opportunities existed to relate to local or regional topics, and even where this relation could have been useful for Nazi propaganda, these opportunities were not seized upon. The theatre in Lille, for example, never produced Albert Lortzing’s opera Das flandrische Abenteuer (The Flemish Adventure) despite the fact that the theatre was meant to play a role (though largely unspecified) in furthering the idea of an independent Flemish nation as part of Germanic super-state.24 Despite so vigorously celebrating poets and poetry from the Wartheland region before the war (see, for example, Kindermann’s publications), hardly any plays by local playwrights were ever produced on the former Polish stages. The production of Once Again, Napoleon? (Noch einmal, Napoleon?) by Wartheland poet Herybert Menzel during the 1942/3 season at Posen was a rare exception.25 A similar picture emerged at Danzig, a city desperately stressing its German identity and seeking to affirm a distinctiveness during the 1920s and 1930s. Only one play by a Danzig playwright (I am Doctor Eckart by Arthur Brausewetter, in October 1942) was produced throughout the entire war.26 As a result, theatres in the occupied and annexed territories seemed interchangeable, alien and artificial. The concept of municipal theatres which were keen to represent proud civic institutions with strong links to their communities and a distinct local identity, and which developed their own artistic profile, was lost or in fact never developed in occupied Europe.27 Instead of growing unique identities, theatres in Lille and Krakau, Oslo and Litzmannstadt, The Hague and Prague, subscribed to a universal “German” repertoire, which was in fact narrow and parochial.28 These enterprises had grown no roots in their respective communities, a fact which made their demise in 1945 seem logical and inevitable, and a fact which contributed to commentators labelling these theatres “unique failures”.29
The German theatres in occupied Europe spearheaded a cultural colonisation which had no interest in relating to local sensitivities. The German occupiers were convinced of the quality of their cultural production and its power to influence people. Interestingly, at least to a degree, the Germans were not alone in this belief. In what seemed to resemble the race for colonies among the imperial European powers during the late nineteenth century, the Nazis attempted to counter the cultural presence of the French and British in the Balkans in the late 1930s and early 1940s. As discussed above, the Propaganda Ministry was very aware of prospective tours by the Comédie Française and the Old Vic and attempted to counter these with a massive theatrical presence in the Balkans. What was indeed different to the French and British cultural interests was the fact that the Germans regarded Eastern Europe by and large as within their natural sphere of influence and, in fact, as Germany’s backyard. The way the Nazi regime interfered in the architectural competition in Belgrade or cultural matters throughout the Baltic states, for example, illustrated the arrogance and determination of a colonial power. This interference also showed again the importance the Germans attached to the performing arts even before the war had started. After 1939 theatres across occupied Europe, once established, were meant to play a crucial part in strengthening the “Germanness” (Deutschtum) of both existing German minorities and those parts of the audience with worthy racial “credentials”. In the Netherlands, for example, ahead of the opening of the German theatre in late 1942, the head of the cultural department at the Reich commissioner’s office suggested that the theatre would help the Dutch “to find a greater home. It is called the Germanic Empire”.30 In fulfilling their role right up to the end, German theatres across occupied Europe subscribed to the same underlying agenda of showcasing and advancing an alleged German cultural superiority. Efforts to sustain and extend German theatrical activity were similar across Europe with major investment in a range of countries, although theatres in formerly Czech and Polish territories featured the largest number of German theatres. For example, Goebbels’ demand on the opening night of the Prague Deutsches Schauspielhaus in 1939 that the German theatre “should prove itself to be an outpost of our cultural intentions” was typical of Nazi rhetoric across Europe.31 Although the origins of German theatrical practice were diverse across Europe, as has been shown, the way German language theatres operated in occupied Europe was almost interchangeable and defies claims of a simple East-West divide.
One of the similarities, for example, relates to the fact that theatre politics everywhere were characterised by competition (for funding, posts, influence etc.). A number of theatres across Eastern Europe, for example, claimed a “cultural leadership” role “in the German East”.32 All over occupied Europe Nazi leaders used artists to aggrandise themselves in similar ways. Generalgouverneur Hans Frank, for example, invited internationally leading actors, soloists and conductors to Krakau; organised glittering receptions; and founded the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Generalgouvernement (Philharmonie des Generalgouvernements). Reich commissioner Arthur Seyss-Inquart, like Frank, resided in a comfortable castle in the Netherlands and, like him, surrounded himself with actors, singers, composers and musicians.33 The alleged East-West divide in Nazi occupation politics is further put into question by the fact that theatrical activity in occupied Riga or Kiev, for example, had a lot more in common with that in Oslo or The Hague than with that in Litzmannstadt or Warsaw, where the Polish culture was to be annihilated in the long run and where access to theatres illustrated and advanced a policy of disaggregation of Germans and assimilated Germans from the rest of the population, which was seen as “racially inferior”.34 Still, even within occupied Poland a more diverse picture emerges which undermines claims of a simple contrast put forward by Abbey/Havekamp, who have posited that “winning over local (Germanic) populations” mattered only in the West but was no motive in Poland and the Soviet Union.35 In Thorn, for example, the Polish population was explicitly invited to attend the German theatre.36 In Warsaw, too, segregation was only partially practised. Although Polish audiences were not allowed to attend performances in German, the German theatre still offered shows in Polish for the Polish population. These shows were so popular, in fact, that they in turn subsidised the German repertoire. Similarly, in Kiev the resident company performed in German as well as in Ukrainian.
Another factor which linked German theatres across occupied Europe was the discrepancy between a politically charged discourse and the reality of cultural production. Reliable and well-deserving party members were elevated to positions of artistic leadership, in which some of them failed, some quite disastrously (as in Danzig). Others, such as Oskar Walleck in Prague, seemed to deliver (for example concerning the highly popular operetta performances) but were still seen as loose canons. Walleck, a party member since 1931, SS-Standartenführer since 1943, and wearer of the SS-Totenkopfring, annoyed the Nazi administration with suggestions of co-operating with the Czech National Theatre and his quite outrageous financial demands in view of setting up of an opera ensemble. He also seems to have been a difficult person to work with – both as a line manager within the theatre and in co-operation with cultural politicians in the Protectorate administration. Across occupied Europe the Rechnungshof carried out checks, as financial irregularities and overspending remained a thorny issue throughout the war. Despite enormous levels of funding the regime remained concerned about getting value for its money. However, it is worth noting that drastic measures were rarely taken. Neither Walleck nor Hesse was properly reprimanded for paying exorbitant salaries and consultancy fees, employing too many staff or neglecting the box office, and they continued to waste public money. Ernst Andreas Ziegler received only a mild telling off for his imaginative book-keeping and the fact that he carried large amounts of cash in his pockets and paid actors their wages as he passed them in the corridor.37 Also, despite high levels of funding, small theatres in particular faced a constant struggle to keep their ventures alive. Payments came in late, actors were being called up, raw materials such as paper became increasingly scarce, etc. In this respect, the demands put on the theatres were almost impossible to achieve. Cultural politicians expected a programme of classics as well as völkisch and nationalistic drama, for which a mass audience proved difficult to find. Many towns and cities now operating German theatres had substantial spaces to fill as almost all of them featured a main stage plus a smaller studio theatre. This proved challenging in cities with negligible German speaking populations – despite the efforts to attract more Germans to move into these areas. Spaces, too, and despite significant investment overall, all too often were far from ideal with limited audience facilities, poor heating and basic stage technologies. To make matters worse, the authorities closely monitored audience figures, and the cities’ statistical offices were keen to receive the monthly balance sheets. They or regional authorities complained if these did not arrive on time and made sure the calculations added up. On the other hand, the presentation of comedies and farces, which attracted larger audiences, hardly related to a discourse which proclaimed the need for an uplifting, serious and völkisch repertoire, particularly in areas earmarked for later incorporation into the “Greater German Empire”. According to Nazi propaganda these regions were in desperate need of German culture and a seriously educational repertoire. Despite all the proclamations and record levels of funding, however, these goals were rarely achieved – neither in Western nor in Eastern Europe. The failure to present worthy classics, heroic tragedies and serious political plays and the reliance instead on largely entertaining fare should not distract from its popular success with German speaking audiences, though. In fact, the resulting record attendances at many places were seen as vital by the Nazi regime. Research which claims that these thea-tres “can under no circumstances be called Fascist” because they rarely produced plays which toed the party line does not acknowledge the attractiveness of such popular fare for the Nazis.38 Put in a wider context, the repertoires at the official German language theatres across Europe followed a pattern which had already been established at Reich theatres after 1933. After a period of one or two seasons in which particular attention was paid to the new political writing and völkisch plays, artistic directors – not least because these plays had largely proved unpopular with audiences – turned to producing lighter and tried fare. “Entertaining thea-tre for propaganda purposes” (Unterhaltungstheater zu Propagandazwecken), as Wolting calls it with reference to Danzig, stayed clear of contemporary political drama and instead aimed at entertaining growing audiences with more accessible light comedies and operettas.39 This approach proved popular, and some theatres eagerly reported the capacity audiences and attendance records they so desperately needed, and they were in turn generously rewarded for these by the regime.
This pragmatic approach concerning theatre programming can also be related to the historiographic debate about the “intentionalist” or “functionalist” character of the Nazi dictatorship. This study has shown that although the Nazis wanted the theatre to play its part in the war effort, detailed plans as to where playhouses were to be opened and how they were going to be funded did not exist. Generalgouverneur Hans Frank is a good example to illustrate competing agendas within the higher echelons of Nazi leadership when it came to the role of the theatre. Both Himmler and Hitler opposed plans for elaborate theatrical entertainment in the Generalgouvernement because its main raison d’être was to provide a cheap labour force for Germany, yet Frank wanted to turn his Nebenland (literally a secondary territory, not fully German but attached to it) into a model region which warranted significant investment in the arts. In an area Himmler had earmarked for a blanket destruction of society, civilian life and the very fabric of communities, Frank was keen to establish a “beacon of German culture”. In line with this approach the governor of the Warsaw district, Ludwig Fischer, wanted to turn the city into the “cultural epicentre of the East”.40 To be sure, by staking their cultural claims, neither Frank nor Fischer had the well-being of the general population in mind but rather the furthering of their own careers.41 Even the new political borders in occupied Poland – which were not drawn up according to historical precedents – were artificial and often resulted from rivalries between Nazi leaders or were based on ad hoc decisions.42 Cultural policy did not follow a top down model either, and – as we have seen throughout this investigation – multiple layers of influence and attempted control by sometimes competing authorities meant that various possibilities for non-conformist behaviour remained – at least in theory.43 Recent research has also shown that even crucial aspects of the Holocaust did not follow a “grand plan” but that the radicalisation of the persecution of Jews mainly depended on individual interpretations of general orders, on personal dispositions, on competing influences and on local interests.44 On the other hand, the generous support for the performing arts reflected Hitler’s interest in high culture and was part of an overall programme of forwarding superior German culture in occupied Europe. As we have seen, the repertoire, too, was largely the same across the continent and exemplified attempts at a centralised cultural production, with Berlin providing the lead.45 The incident in the Litzmannstadt ghetto referred to above usefully exemplifies the general character of the Nazi regime, but also the fact that neither theoretical position can fully grasp its nature. The Holocaust, the context within which the “acquisition” of classical instruments in August 1944 took place, was already strongly alluded to by Hitler in Mein Kampf, yet the incident itself was almost certainly born out of a relatively spontaneous decision – the newly formed municipal orchestra needed good instruments, and so did the new Hitler Youth ensemble.
Although – as has been shown above – it is questionable whether we can term the theatres’ focus on a largely entertaining repertoire as a “failure”, another aspect may be more difficult to dispute, or so it seems. Commentators who point out that the Nazi efforts to establish after 1945 a network of German language theatre across occupied Europe “left no traces” are certainly correct insofar these claims relate to the physical evidence.46 The former Nazi theatres were turned into Polish, Czech, French, Norwegian etc. playhouses and cinemas, put to other uses or demolished entirely. Ahead of the advancing Allied forces theatre ensembles moved, lock, stock and barrel, and they often took properties, costumes, machinery and libraries with them. In most places even their German audiences fled with them.47 Once these areas were liberated, these theatres became empty shells; the “spirit of German culture” had vanished, and they seemed to fall into oblivion. The Polish, Czech, French, Norwegian, etc. majorities reclaimed and once again dominated local cultures.48 The legacy of the substantial Nazi efforts, however, lived on for a long time, sometimes until today – in terms of the repertoire produced, some of the protagonists and, perhaps most importantly, a particular discourse. After all, setting up, financing and populating theatres all over Europe was a powerful statement of intent. Most of the theatres the Germans moved into were large representative buildings in city centres at the heart of bourgeois life.49 For the Germans to take over these proud symbols of civic life illustrated Germany’s supremacy – not only on the battlefield, or economically, but also spatially and as ruling the cultural discourse. Renovating existing theatre buildings further illustrated Germany’s powerful intent as only Germany had the means, the interest and the expertise to turn these stages into modern, professional and well-equipped playhouses. Even relatively minor investments “unmistakably” illustrated “the cultural intention of the Greater German Empire”.50 This supremacy did not find expression in conciliatory gestures towards local populations but in a representation of power bordering on humiliation. In discussing the Deutsches Theater at Lille during the First World War Martin Baumeister has persuasively argued that the Germans put considerable care into making sure that the theatre was read as a symbol of German might – with images of Berlin’s cathedral, Dresden’s Frauenkirche and Munich’s royal palace as well as portraits of the Kaiser alongside a gigantic 10 m Christmas tree in the theatre’s foyer.51 In the Second World War the occupiers not only took control of national theatres and state operas across Europe but also moved the resident companies which had previously occupied these buildings around at will – or disbanded them altogether. The Latvian ensemble of the National Theatre was driven out of the Riga Opera House and moved into much smaller premises, the Norwegian State Theatre had to share with the Germans whenever the latter needed the space, and in the Generalgouvernement Polish theatre performances were prohibited entirely. Even local German populations were not spared, as their amateur activity was heavily curtailed and replaced by professional companies from elsewhere. Although continuities were stressed in terms of classical German culture and German history, these companies represented a radical new start with new personnel and a largely new repertoire performed in refurbished playhouses. The fact that the German regime managed to open, sustain and lavishly fund professional theatres in sometimes challenging material conditions and despite an increasingly desperate war effort across a large geographical area was duly noted both at the time and after the war. Audiences in Croatia, Portugal and Spain watched in awe as the Germans managed to move the Berlin Philharmonic around Europe to perform monumental Wagner operas as late as 1944. These efforts to stage power were not simply forgotten overnight by audiences after 1945. Instead, the ruthless establishment of German theatres across Europe during the war contributed to a slow process of renewed recognition of theatre originating in the country of the former oppressor post-1945. With reference to Poland, for example, Małgorzata Leyko has argued that the wounds were so deep and mistrust so pervasive that the Polish government in 1947 had to issue a decree stating that eliminating Bach, Beethoven and Mozart from repertoires was unacceptable as the rise of Hitler had not been their fault.52 Commenting on more recent developments, Leyko pointed to the perception by many Polish commentators today that contemporary German playwriting and aesthetics were (once again) “colonising” the Polish theatre, with Germany being perceived as “taskmaster”.53
A reading of theatres in occupied Europe as having left no traces (Abbey/ Havekamp) apart “from a few documents” (Drewniak)54 is, therefore, problematic on a number of levels. As we have seen, “traces” are not left only by written documents but also by embodied memories, experiences or trauma. Aby Warburg’s theory of memory as Leidschatz (treasure of woe), as subconscious traces which can be reactivated or released on a later occasion, illustrates that remembering occupation, cultural domination and terror does not hinge on the survival of physical evidence.55 According to this theory, traumatic experiences, for example, “can be neither remembered nor forgotten by the collective. They become part of a collective unconscious, […] the permanent trace of a social mneme.”56 As historians we are well advised not to disregard evidence which goes beyond the material.57 The fact that a theatre building does not exist in its physical form anymore does not mean that it does not continue to exist in discourses and memories. The “reach” of a theatre performance, a particular reading of a play, its physicality or aesthetic, does not end with the evening’s performance. The fact that former actors at the Deutsches Theater in Lille, for example, remember so clearly what happened there in the early 1940s illustrates that this venture did in fact leave traces, not the opposite, as Abbey/Havekamp claim. This incident also shows the futility of subscribing to a reading of 1945 as a major historical break with a clear and definable “before” and “after”.
The popular construct of the “zero hour” (Stunde Null) claimed that the end of the war was a moment when everything stood still and a genuine new start was achieved. The closure of all theatres on 31 August 1944 assisted this reading as theatres in May 1945 could not pick up where they had left off – ensembles were dispersed, buildings destroyed and administrative structures non-existent.58 However, even in the theatre and in the context of a general phenomenon, the continuities far outweighed the breaks.59 In terms of the repertoire, although thea-tres stayed clear of the more overtly political plays, many of the writers of comedies and farces who had enjoyed success (and official support) during the Third Reich celebrated a return particularly to West German stages after the war. Leo Lenz and Curt Goetz in particular continued to entertain audiences.60 The classics, naturally, remained on German stages; instead of supporting the “Thousand Year Reich” Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and Shakespeare were now re-imagined as advocates of a new democratic Germany. Commentators and theatre academics largely remained in positions of influence, too. Hans Knudsen, Carl Niessen and Heinz Kindermann continued to hold the most prominent chairs in theatre studies at German universities and continued to influence their academic fields despite having been fervent supporters of the Nazi cause.61 A spate of popular publications, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, lamented the end of the “good old days” of German language theatre across Europe before 1945,62 and the conservative political discourse in West Germany for decades referred to the “lost territories” east of the Oder and Neiße Rivers and refused to accept (well into the 1980s) that these were in fact no longer German.63 An official publication by the press office of the West German government in 1957 stated that until a peace treaty was signed all geographical areas which had been German in 1938 were still legally part of Germany and were only “temporarily under foreign administration”.64 In 1977 the West German Society for State and Economic Politics (Staats- und wirtschaftspolitische Gesellschaft) declared that Eastern Prussia was still a “German landscape” – more than 30 years after the end of the war and seven years after the new eastern borders had been formally accepted by the German government.65 In 1985 the influential West German Federations of Expellees (Vertriebenenverbände) opened a national meeting in Hanover under the slogan “Silesia remains ours”.66 The revisionist undertone of some of these statements aside, post-1949 German societies had perhaps understandable difficulty in locating their identity.67 Neil MacGregor in his masterful Germany: Memories of a Nation has recently argued that the numerous German “outstations and satellites” across the whole continent remain in the German cultural memory even today, “like phantom limbs: once constituent parts of the body, greatly valued, now definitely amputated and lost”.68
It may, in fact, be argued that the strongest propagandistic impact of the network of German theatres across Europe was not there and then and in the occupied territories themselves but at the home front and over a much longer period of time. The above mentioned tours by leading ensembles and performances to even the remotest parts of occupied Europe were meant to have an effect not only on live audiences but equally so (or perhaps even more so) on those back home. The German public was impressed by what Germany was able to achieve not only militarily but also culturally, as both benign benefactor and imperialist oppressor. Abstract geographical gains were made manifest by performing the classical canon all over Europe. Only a truly great empire would be able and self-confident enough to pull this off. The geographical reach combined with the quality of the performances also had a significant and lasting impact on German audiences. Authors in a spate of popular as well as academic publications after 1945 reminisced about the quality of wartime theatre, the possibilities of touring to Europe’s remotest corners, and the good salaries. They often contrasted this with what they perceived as the sad reality of post-war theatre in the countries concerned. They appreciated, sometimes celebrated, what the Nazis had “achieved” during the war, i.e. the rightful re-establishment of an old German theatre-land in the East.69 In a well-respected seven volume theatre dictionary Wilhelm Kosch, for example, referred to a number of places in what is now Poland. Writing about Danzig, he lamented that with the expulsion of the Germans from the city “this outpost of Western European culture was lost”.70 Wilhelm Formann in his reminiscences of German theatre during the war praised Generalintendant Oskar Walleck in Prague as a “widely travelled, experienced” and modest artistic manager who led the theatre through “challenging” times and was well respected by the Czechs, too.71 Ernst Schremmer added as late as 1992 that Walleck “remained artistically as well as politically independent” and that the network of subsidised German theatres in what was now Czechoslovakia was “today a distant fairy tale”.72 Kurt Honolka, too, praised the rich theatre landscape of the Bohemian and Moravian lands and the fact that during the Second World War “one could still see the Ring des Nibelungen in Aussig, and twenty kilometres down the road in Teplitz Aida”.73 Leo Müller proudly remarked that under the Nazis Łódź had had a first class thea-tre.74 And Hans Knudsen in a 1961 book about the Posen theatre acknowledged not only its artistic achievements but also the “duress” under which these were achieved with a “German ethnicity in a position of defence”.75 Although he stayed clear of the war years the underlying argument is clear: a rich German culture – as expressed foremost by its theatre – had been lost forever despite its good work in difficult circumstances. What most of these publications have in common is the synthesising of an apologetic attitude with a colonial one; the “Kindermann discourse” of the supremacy of the German Kulturwillen (cultural might) was still very much intact. Until today, ambiguous remarks still appear in the literature, even if not particularly intended this way. Günther Rühle, for example, in his recent remarkable two volume history of German theatre, posited that during the German occupation the Prague theatre “quickly revitalised” and “for the first time received generous subsidies from the state”.76
What becomes entirely sidelined in this discourse of a “lost theatre culture in the East” is not only the propagandistic role official German language theatres fulfilled but also their involvement in the Holocaust and the very direct financial gains that resulted from this involvement. Orchestra and theatre ensembles regularly entertained SS personnel in concentration camps and received generous remunerations for doing so. Litzmannstadt’s Hans Hesse “acquired” priceless classical instruments for a fraction of their worth from ghetto inmates in an incident which illustrated the infamous approach of acting by the law (obtaining these instruments in a formal transaction watched over by an “expert”) within a lawless and entirely arbitrary environment in which human lives did not account for much. The prices paid were a “joke”, as the ghetto chronicle remarks; the money was not paid out to the owners but remained with the Jewish Council of Elders and in one way or another almost certainly came back into German hands; and the whole transaction took place in a deliberately overcrowded ghetto in which almost 200,000 people were working and living in filthy conditions, waiting for almost certain death – either through starvation or illness in the ghetto or after transporation to death camps in Chełmno and Auschwitz. The apparent normality of a financial transaction in the utterly brutal and inhumane context of the ghetto, the contrast between some of the world’s most beautiful instruments (introduced by the well-known musician and expert Dawid Bajgelman) and the reality of extermination on an industrial scale which none of the Jewish protagonists in this transaction survived, was typical of the Nazi regime and illustrates in one seemingly small and insignificant scene (which has never before been discussed in the literature) the fundamental discrepancy between the regime’s cultural claims and the brutal reality of occupation and annihilation.
Many commentators have of course rightly pointed out that these cultural claims were hollow – but are they therefore not worthy of our interest? The fact that theatres in occupied Europe did for the most part not present a programme of works favoured by the Nazis or one which directly reflected Nazi propaganda ideals has led many to claim that the regime failed in its attempts altogether. Hans Daiber posited that the repertoire at official German language theatres in occupied Europe’s was “harmless” and “naive”,77 Abbey/Havekamp described the programme at Lille as “shallow and unadventurous”,78 and Wolting branded Danzig’s wartime repertoires as “unimaginative” and “mediocre”.79 The uncomfortable truth, however, is that it was exactly this kind of light-hearted repertoire which presented the Nazis with the attendance records they so desperately wanted. We might even want to argue that what Siegfried Kracauer termed the “pleasant splendour of the superficial” was ultimately intended, with demands for a repertoire dominated by the mighty classics and völkisch drama acting as a smokescreen.80 The fact that this kind of repertoire was more or less the same across Europe with only minor variations was also intended in a dictatorship keen to influence and streamline theatre repertoires. Producing the same Carl Laufs comedy, August Hinrichs farce or Franz Lehár operetta all over Europe – from northern Norway to Greece, from the Atlantic to the Caucasus – seemed a powerful symbol of German might. It is therefore problematic to play down the success and usefulness of the popular. For example, Suzanne Marchand in a 1998 review article asked whether arts and culture under the Nazis were “banality or barbarism”.81 By doing so she established a highly problematic dichotomy which seemed to suggest that presenting a banal repertoire featuring light operettas and comedies could hardly be seen as barbaric. In fact, officially sanctioned theatre in occupied Europe seems to be better described as “banality and barbarism”. Audiences in Litzmannstadt and Lille, in Prague and Riga, were entertained with an ordinary, brutally trivial repertoire at give-away prices. Hannah Arendt’s dictum of the “banality of evil” never rang more true. Her portrayal of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust, as an unimaginative and eager career bureaucrat, but not a sadist monster, not even a fanatic anti-Semite, and thus as “frighteningly normal”, seems to relate well to German theatres in occupied Europe, which during exceptionally brutal times presented a chillingly unexceptional repertoire.82
Spreading German Theaterkultur across occupied Europe can never be seen as anything but intimately linked to the German war effort. I argue that the claim that culture and National Socialism can somehow be separated – put forward in a number of studies on the arts under National Socialism, and exemplified by books such as Bettina Schültke’s Theater or Propaganda? – cannot be upheld when discussing German theatre in occupied Europe during the Second World War.83 On the contrary, the Kulturgüter (documents of high culture) presented on stages across Europe were part and parcel of the “rulers’ victory parade”.84 According to Walter Benjamin, their status as Kulturgüter was inextricably linked to issues of oppression and power because their production was as much the result of an “artistic genius” as it was reliant on the suppression of others. When applying this thought to theatre under the Nazis I contend that Benjamin’s argument can be extended to the performance of “documents of culture”, i.e. opera, dance and drama, and not only their initial production. During the Second World War in particular their performance cannot be separated from the context of oppression and terror in which they were staged. Culture and barbarism were, therefore, not on opposite ends of the spectrum but at one and the same end. No one should, therefore, be surprised at the Nazi efforts vis-à-vis the performing arts and an established theatrical canon – which included comedies, operettas and farces, as discussed above – as their performance confirmed, legitimised and sanctioned Nazi rule. Thus, the performance of a wide spectrum of works, including ones not directly supporting the regime, can never be interpreted as opposition to the regime or as an indication of failure but must be seen as part and parcel of its very nature.
Notes
1 Welcome note by the head of the cultural department at the Reich commissioner’s office, Joachim Bergfeld, in the first programme note of the theatre in The Hague ahead of the 1942/3 season (see BArch, R55/20545, p. 191).
2 See Präsident der Reichstheaterkammer, ed. Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch 1944. Berlin: Reichstheaterkammer, 1944. p. 774.
3 See Ludwig Körner in his preface to the Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch 1942 (ed. Präsident der Reichstheaterkammer. Berlin: Reichstheaterkammer, 1942. p. 1).
4 See Kindermann, Die europäische Sendung des deutschen Theaters, pp. 54–55.
5 See Künkler, Kulturpolitische Aufgabe des deutschen Theaters, Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 103 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23). Theatre managements could invoke legislation (the so-called Kriegsdienstverpflichtung, which was introduced in October 1943) which allowed them to force employees to remain at their theatre if staff levels would otherwise become unsustainable (see BArch, R56/III 616, as an example from Posen).
6 See Rühle, Theater in Deutschland 1945–1966, p. 26.
7 This was the approach the Nazis had already used in the early days of the regime. The Day of Potsdam in March 1933, for example, not only made the link between the Third Reich and the Wilhelmine Empire obvious but also suggested a direct lineage between Prussian militarism and the new Germany. As in so many other spheres, here, too, Hitler seemed to fulfil the promises of the past (see, for example, Wette, Wolfram. Militarismus in Deutschland. Geschichte einer kriegerischen Kultur. Frankfurt: Fischer, 2008. pp. 176–178).
8 See also Kindermann, Die europäische Sendung des deutschen Theaters, p. 51.
9 See, for example, Ludwig Körner, who claimed in 1941 “that the German theatre and the German actors […] have adapted the soldiers’ tactics and methods in being agile, versatile, fitted out with the latest technology, responsible, reliable, disciplined” (Körner, Ludwig. “Deutsches Bühnenschaffen im Kriege.” Präsident der Reichstheaterkammer, ed. Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch 1941. Berlin: Reichstheaterkammer, 1941. p. 12).
10 Quote by Bergfeld (see footnote 1) in The Hague (see BArch R55/20545, p. 191).
11 Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Zbiór Teatraliów Łódzkich, 21/58. Programy przedstawień teatralnych teatrów łódzkich z okresu okupacji (1940–1943). p. 2 (preview of 1940/1 season). For the following please compare with this programme note, too.
12 See Wiemann, “Faust” im Kriege, p. 256.
13 This included performances in countries allied with Germany. The Hamburg State Opera performed in Bulgaria, the Frankfurt opera regularly performed in Barcelona, and the Berlin State Opera visited Hungary.
14 Richard Rosenheim claimed he had to end his account of German theatrical activity in Prague in 1918, instead of extending it into the post-war years, for political reasons (Rosenheim, Geschichte der Deutschen Bühnen in Prag 1883–1918, preface).
15 Mordo/Schluderpacher, 50 Jahre Neues Deutsches Theater in Prag, p. 19.
16 See Národní archiv, Office of the Reich Protector, Office for Cultural Affairs, T 5411 Theater in Iglau (no pagination).
17 Petersen, Was wir uns erwarten, Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen (1941/2): 63–64 (Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23).
18 This faith in turn justified the substantial involvement of the state in cultural matters, as expressed in its cultural policy. John Willett has rightly posited that this “whole principle of cultural policy or Kulturpolitik […] comes from an acceptance of the somewhat un-English notion that the arts have a social and political role and can make an impact on the world” (Willett, John. Brecht in Context: Comparative Approaches. Rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1998. pp. 221–222). For a typical contemporary comment on the theatre’s “important cultural [kulturpolistische] mission” see, with reference to Prague, Weber, Otto. “Das deutsche Schauspiel in Prag.” Schluderpacher, Prager Theaterbuch, p. 155.
19 BArch, R55/155, p. 5.
20 Goebbels was satisfied that the German cultural endeavours were appreciated greatly by the Norwegian population and remarked that he was going to “intensify” his efforts in this area. In terms of “cultural propaganda” the foundation of a German theatre in Oslo would have “a strong impact” (Goebbels, Tagebücher, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, volume 8, entry 15 November 1940, p. 420; volume 9, entry 22 December 1940, p. 65).
21 Qtd. in Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 131. Similar comments were received after performances of the Berlin state opera in Portugal and Spain in April 1944.
22 It is interesting to note that the regime did in fact realise the need for theatres to establish links to their respective communities (see Neumeyer, Hermann. “Gestalt und Bild Posens.” Blätter der Reichsgautheater Posen [1942/3]: 194 [Herder Institut Marburg, 34 VIII P120 Z23]).
23 Demetz, Peter. Mein Prag. Erinnerungen 1939 bis 1945. Vienna: Paul Zsolnay, 2008. p. 255.
24 Elsewhere in Germany Flemish art was celebrated, and increasingly so after 1940. In 1942, for example, the Flemish poet Felix Timmermanns received the prestigious Rembrandt Award from the University of Hamburg (see Wolting, Danziger Theater, p. 152. See also Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 280).
25 See Weißenbach, Aufbau und die Entwicklung der beiden Reichsgautheater, p. 264.
26 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, pp. 187–188.
27 See, for example, the discourse around municipal theatre as being “the motor of public life” (Paul Bekker) and Saladin Schmitt’s advocacy of the civic theatre model as referred to in Chapter 2 (“Discourses”). Another reason for failing to develop any roots was of course also a lack of time. Julius Bab reckoned in 1931 that it would take at least three years for a theatre management to fully establish itself in any given locality and for its work to “bear fruit” (see Bab, Das Theater im Lichte der Soziologie, p. 154).
28 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, pp. 171–172.
29 Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 285.
30 Quote by Bergfeld (see footnote 1) ahead of the 1942/3 season (see BArch, R55/20545, p. 191).
31 Herder Institut Marburg, 23 VIII P550 Z9, Blätter der deutschen Theater in Prag, Ständetheater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) 1939/40.
32 See, for example, a quote by Posen’s mayor Gerhard Scheffler to that effect in a booklet published as a preview of the coming season in March 1941 (Herder Institut Marburg, S 1714, Die Theater in Posen 1941/2).
33 Across Europe, too, leading Nazis looted art on an unprecedented scale (see Petropoulos, Art as Politics, passim).
34 In Minsk, despite the fact that the local places of entertainment were mostly closed, an official directive asked German soldiers to act in “a friendly and humane manner” towards the city’s population (quoted in Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten, p. 213).
35 Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 263.
36 Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 92.
37 See Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 281.
38 See, for example, Nowikiewicz, Das deutsche Theater in Bromberg, p. 217. See also similar claims by Zbigniew Raszewski qtd. in the same essay.
39 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, p. 143.
40 See Kershaw, Ian. The End: Hitler’s Germany, 1944–45. London: Allen Lane, 2011. p. 120. For the Hans Frank reference see Caplan, Jane. “Jetzt judenfrei”: Writing Tourism in Nazi Occupied Poland (GHIL 2012 Annual Lecture). London: German Historical Institute, 2013. pp. 15–19. For the Fischer quote see Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten, p. 131. Similarly, see Gollert, Warschau unter deutscher Herrschaft, pp. 280–288. In fact, Himmler and Hitler did not wish to see any kind of order established in the Generalgouvernement – in preparation for the German colonisation of the whole region (see Umbreit, Weg zur Kontinentalherrschaft, p. 45).
41 Support for the arts also followed Frank’s own disposition as a keen musician and friend to Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner, for example.
42 Lodsch/Litzmannstadt, for example, was not initially part of the Warthegau but was included not least due to its economic importance. See Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, pp. 72–73.
43 John Klapper has recently argued that the Nazi regime never entirely succeeded in controlling literary output either (see Klapper, Nonconformist Writing in Nazi Germany, p. 28).
44 See Klein, Peter. Die “Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt” 1940–1944. Eine Dienststelle im Spannungsfeld von Kommunalbürokratie und staatlicher Verfolgungspolitik. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition/HIS Verlag, 2009. pp. 639–640.
45 A similar development happened with respect to other media. In Romania, for example, the leading German language newspaper Bukarester Tagblatt was increasingly staffed with journalists from the Altreich who largely reported events from within Germany itself without acknowledging the activities (or even existence) of the German minority in Romania (see Fassel, Die feldgrauen Musen, pp. 136–137).
46 These claims are put forward, for example, by Abbey/Havekamp as discussed above (German Theatre in Lille, pp. 285–286).
47 In Warsaw stage properties, chairs and decorations were used to erect barricades outside the theatre during the uprising in August–September 1944 (see Wąsik, Theater der Stadt Warschau, p. 7).
48 See Leyko, Das deutsches Theater in Lodz 1939–1944, pp. 146–147.
49 In the course of the nineteenth century, grand theatres, opera houses and concert halls had been erected all over Europe and largely financed by the rising middle classes as a monument to their cultural credentials. The opera house in particular developed into “the central spiritual icon of European culture” (see Carlson, Marvin. Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. pp. 81–84, 88).
50 Here in relation to renovation programmes in Marburg and Cilli in the former Slovenia after 1941 (BArch, R55/864, p. 5).
51 The Christmas tree was not meant to be read as a symbol of peace but was associated with the culture of the occupiers (see Baumeister, Kriegstheater, p. 271).
52 See Leyko, Das deutsche Theater in Lodz, p. 146.
53 See Leyko, Małgorzata. “Museales aus Deutschland im polnischen Theater?” Unpublished paper at international conference in Unienow/Poland, November 2012.
54 See Drewniak, Theater im NS-Staat, p. 96.
55 See Aby Warburg’s 1928 Hamburg lecture as published in Warnke, Martin. “Der Leidschatz der Menschheit wird humaner Besitz.” Hofmann, Werner, Georg Syamken, and Martin Warnke, eds. Die Menschenrechte des Auges. Über Aby Warburg. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1991. pp. 113–165.
56 Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization, p. 359.
57 See introduction.
58 See, for example, Rühle, Theater in Deutschland 1945–1966, pp. 34–37. Rühle provides a vivid account of Germany’s destroyed theatre landscape after the war.
59 Today’s leading histories of the Third Reich and after do not subscribe to the concept of the “zero hour” anymore but discuss the many continuities (see, for example, Evans, The Third Reich at War, pp. 738–764). Interestingly, already in the months preceding the German surrender in May 1945 Germans had begun to largely see themselves as victims, as unfortunate objects of Nazi oppression, and not as guilty subjects who needed to accept at least some responsibility (see, for example, Stargardt, The German War, pp. 545–548).
60 See Eicher, Spielplanstrukturen 1929–1944, p. 486.
61 Hans Knudsen was appointed chair of theatre studies and director of the Institute for Theatre Studies at the Berlin Free University in 1948, Carl Niessen remained professor in Cologne, and Kindermann retained his chair in Vienna. Kindermann remained one of the most influential German theatre scholars for years to come despite having happily testified his allegiance “to the Führer and the National Socialist Reich” in 1939 (Kindermann, Danzigs Dichter bezeugen Danzigs Deutschtum, [no pagination]) or describing Mendelssohn as exemplifying the “noble Jewry [Edel-Judentum] from its most vile and characterless side” (Kindermann, Theater und Nation, p. 51). In a Festschrift for Carl Niessen in 1952 his support for the Nazi regime was not noted (e.g. the list of his publications failed to mention those studies which toed the party line, instead featuring the apparently non-political stuff); instead, the editors presented Niessen as having suffered under the Nazi regime. They claimed that he had been designated as “director of the Berlin theatres” in 1932 but that this had not come to fruition because of the Nazi take-over (see Malms, Ria and Hans-Günther Auch. Mimus und Logos. Eine Festgabe für Carl Niessen. Emsdetten: Lechte, 1952. Dust wrapper).
62 See, for example, Formann, Wilhelm. Der Vorhang hob sich nicht mehr. Theaterlandschaften und Schauspielerwanderungen im Osten. Munich: Delp, 1974. And, to a lesser degree, Steiner, Die Brünner und ihr Stadttheater. There are many more publications with general revisionist undertones, for example Stamm, Hans-Ulrich. Schicksal in sieben Jahrhunderten. Aus der leidvollen Geschichte Ostpreußens. 2nd ed. Hamburg: Staats- und wirtschaftspolitische Gesellschaft, 1976.
63 In a publication from 1968, for example, Leo Müller claimed that “as everyone knows” Łódź owed its “development and importance to German immigrants” (Müller, Das deutsche Theater in Lodz, p. 6). Even today we sometimes come across publications that display slightly revisionist tendencies, such as Wilfried Gerke’s Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Polen während des Zweiten Weltkriegs 1939–1945. 2nd rev. ed. Herne: Stiftung Martin-Opitz Bibliothek, 2008. More disturbingly, the printing of this book was made possible by funding received from the esteemed Herder Institute for East and Central European History in Marburg. For a more general discussion of sentiments and policies towards “the East” after 1945 see Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, pp. 212–216; similarly, Bessel, Richard. Nazism and War. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004. pp. 168–171.
64 See Arntz, Helmut. Tatsachen über Deutschland. Herausgegeben vom Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung. Munich: Volk und Heimat, 1957. pp. 9–10 and map between pp. 16 and 17. For another typical publication of the time see Bierschenk, Theodor. Die deutsche Volksgruppe in Polen 1934–1939. Kitzingen: Holzner, 1954. Although the author attempted to give the impression that this was a scholarly publication, the revisionist undertone is clear throughout. He stated that the German minority had to suffer throughout the 1930s without mentioning either the German prejudices against the Poles or the aggressive German foreign policy which fuelled tensions. Bierschenk even seemed to buy into the Nazi rhetoric when attesting to “the cultural advantage” the Germans had over the Poles and establishing a dichotomy between German “industry and diligence” and the “Slavic abandon” and “lust for life” (p. 83).
65 See Tautorat, Hans-Georg. Schwarzes Kreuz auf weißem Mantel. Die Kulturleistung des Deutschen Ordens in Preußen. Düsseldorf: NWZ-Verlag, 1977. p. 7. In 1970 Willy Brandt and Walter Scheel signed two treaties with the Soviet Union and with Poland. In these treaties the so-called Oder-Neiße-Linie (Oder-Neiße line) was officially accepted as the Polish western border and any German territorial claims east of that border were formally given up. This affected Silesia, Eastern Prussia and Pomerania, among other geographical areas which had been German before the war.
66 See Strothmann, Dietrich. “‘Schlesien bleibt unser’: Vertriebenenpolitiker und das Rad der Geschichte.” Benz, Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten, pp. 265– 276.
67 In tracing Germany’s complicated cultural history, for example, Neil MacGregor has recently illustrated this difficulty by looking at Germany’s intellectual history, as two of the country’s most influential universities, including its oldest, are not part of Germany any longer today (Prague/Praha and Königsberg/Kaliningrad) (Germany: Memories of a Nation. London: Penguin, 2016. pp. 39–58).
68 Ibid., p. 40. Although this is not the focus of this present study, one might usefully expand this research to discuss the role the memory of Germany’s “lost theatres” played in post-war German society (and referring to Maurice Halbwachs [1980], Pierre Nora [1989] and more recently Assmann [2013]).
69 See Rühle, Theater in Deutschland 1887–1945, p. 926.
70 Kosch, Wilhelm. Deutsches Theater-Lexikon: Biographisches und bibliographisches Handbuch. Vol. 1. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1953. p. 298. Two volumes were published in 1953, the subsequent three (plus two supplementary ones) in the 1990s and early 2000s.
71 Formann, Der Vorhang hob sich nicht mehr, p. 135.
72 Schremmer, Deutsche Theatergeschichte in Böhmen, pp. 105–106.
73 Honolka, Kurt. Die Oper ist tot – die Oper lebt. Kritische Bilanz des deutschen Musiktheaters (1986), qtd. in Schremmer, Deutsche Theatergeschichte in Böhmen, p. 104.
74 See Müller, Das deutsche Theater in Lodz, p. 38.
75 Knudsen, Hans. Deutsches Theater in Posen. Bau Nauheim: Christian Verlag, 1961. p. 9.
76 Rühle, Theater in Deutschland 1887–1945, p. 926.
77 See Daiber, Schaufenster der Diktatur, p. 288.
78 Abbey/Havekamp, German Theatre in Lille, p. 272.
79 See Wolting, Danziger Theater, pp. 173, 197.
80 See Kracauer, Das Ornament der Masse, p. 311. Although Kracauer referred to mass entertainment at the cinematic temples of Berlin during the late 1920s this comment also seems apt to describe the majority of German theatre programmes during the 1930s and early 1940s. Kracauer had no time for the theatre, which, although it shared some common ground with the cinema, was ultimately “a lot more boring” (ibid., p. 282).
81 Marchand, Suzanne. “Nazi Culture: Banality or Barbarism?” The Journal of Modern History 70 (March 1998): 108–118.
82 See Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 56–57, 400. Eichmann’s “normality” is mirrored in the latest trial (and possibly one of the last) of an SS officer involved in the Holocaust (Oskar Gröning, who was tried in the German city of Lüneburg for his involvement in the camp administration at Auschwitz). Nora Bossong described Gröning as decidedly “normal” (Die Zeit, 16 July 2015, p. 39).
83 The close connection between arts and Fascism had already been discussed by Walter Benjamin in 1936. In the epilogue to his famous essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” he characterised Fascism as an attempt to aestheticise politics and with war as its ultimate goal (Benjamin, Walter. Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Drei Studien zur Kunstsoziologie. 34th ed. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2015. p. 42).
84 See Benjamin, Walter. “Über den Begriff der Geschichte.” Illuminationen. Ausgewählte Schriften 1. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977. p. 254. The English translation of the full sentence reads, “Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate” (“Theses on the Philosophy of History”).