Covering German-language theatre from the Middle Ages to the present day, this study demonstrates how and why theatre became so important in German-speaking countries. Written by leading international scholars of German theatre, chapters cover all aspects of theatrical performance, including acting, directing, play-writing, scenic design and theatre architecture. The book argues that theatre is more central to the artistic life of German-speaking countries than anywhere else in the world. Relating German-language theatre to its social and intellectual context, the History demonstrates how theatre has often been used as a political tool. It challenges the idea that German theatre was undeveloped in contrast to other European countries in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, provides a thematic survey of the crucial period of growth in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and discusses modern and contemporary German theatre by focusing in turn on the directors, playwrights, designers and theatre architecture.

First published in 1990. The book surveys of the development of German theatre from a market sideshow into an important element of cultural life and political expression. It examines Schiller as ‘theatre poet’ at Mannheim, Goethe’s work as director of the court theatre at Weimar, and then traces the rapid commercial decline that made it difficult for Kleist and impossible for Büchner to see their plays staged in their own lifetime. Four representative texts are analysed: Schiller’s The Robbers, Goethe’s Iphigenia on Tauris, Kleist’s The Prince of Homburg, and Büchner’s Woyzeck. This title will be of interest to students of theatre and German literature.

The Second World War went beyond previous military conflicts. It was not only about specific geographical gains or economic goals, but also about the brutal and lasting reshaping of Europe as a whole. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation explores the part that theatre played in the Nazi war effort. Using a case-study approach, it illustrates the crucial and heavily subsidised role of theatre as a cultural extension of the military machine, key to Nazi Germany’s total war doctrine. Covering theatres in Oslo, Riga, Lille, Lodz, Krakau, Warsaw, Prague, The Hague and Kiev, Anselm Heinrich looks at the history and context of their operation; the wider political, cultural and propagandistic implications in view of their function in wartime; and their legacies. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation focuses for the first time on Nazi Germany’s attempts to control and shape the cultural sector in occupied territories, shedding new light on the importance of theatre for the regime’s military and political goals.

This landmark study provides a comprehensive overview of the rich history of German theater, from its early roots in medieval religious drama to the avant-garde experimentation of the modern era. With detailed analyses of key plays and major theatrical movements, Benjamin Thompson offers readers a fascinating glimpse into the vibrant and diverse world of German theater. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Publisher description

This is the third volume to be published in the series Theatre in Europe. This book makes available for the first time an overview of a significant segment of European theatre history and, with few exceptions, none of the documents presented have been published in English before. Gathered from a rich variety of sources, including imperial and municipal edicts, contracts, architectural descriptions, playbills, stage directions and actors' memoirs among others, the book sheds light on one of the most fascinating areas of cultural life in the German- and Dutch-speaking countries. Explanatory passages put these documents into their historical context, and numerous illustrations bring the material even more vividly to life. Also included is the source location for each document and a substantial bibliography.

While it is common knowledge that Jews were prominent in literature, music, cinema, and science in pre-1933 Germany, the fascinating story of Jewish co-creation of modern German theatre is less often discussed. Yet for a brief time, during the Second Reich and the Weimar Republic, Jewish artists and intellectuals moved away from a segregated Jewish theatre to work within canonic German theatre and performance venues, claiming the right to be part of the very fabric of German culture. Their involvement, especially in the theatre capital of Berlin, was of a major magnitude both numerically and in terms of power and influence. The essays in this stimulating collection etch onto the conventional view of modern German theatre the history and conflicts of its Jewish participants in the last third of the nineteenth and first third of the twentieth centuries and illuminate the influence of Jewish ethnicity in the creation of the modernist German theatre. The nontraditional forms and themes known as modernism date roughly from German unification in 1871 to the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933. This is also the period when Jews acquired full legal and trade equality, which enabled their ownership and directorship of theatre and performance venues. The extraordinary artistic innovations that Germans and Jews co-created during the relatively short period of this era of creativity reached across the old assumptions, traditions, and prejudices that had separated people as the modern arts sought to reformulate human relations from the foundations to the pinnacles of society. The essayists, writing from a variety of perspectives, carve out historical overviews of the role of theatre in the constitution of Jewish identity in Germany, the position of Jewish theatre artists in the cultural vortex of imperial Berlin, the role played by theatre in German Jewish cultural education, and the impact of Yiddish theatre on German and Austrian Jews and on German theatre. They view German Jewish theatre activity through Jewish philosophical and critical perspectives and examine two important genres within which Jewish artists were particularly prominent: the Cabaret and Expressionist theatre. Finally, they provide close-ups of the Jewish artists Alexander Granach, Shimon Finkel, Max Reinhardt, and Leopold Jessner. By probing the interplay between “Jewish” and “German” cultural and cognitive identities based in the field of theatre and performance and querying the effect of theatre on Jewish self-understanding, they add to the richness of intercultural understanding as well as to the complex history of theatre and performance in Germany.

Following World War II, German antifascists and nationalists in Buenos Aires believed theater was crucial to their highly politicized efforts at community-building, and each population devoted considerable resources to competing against its rival onstage. Competing Germanies tracks the paths of several stage actors from European theaters to Buenos Aires and explores how two of Argentina's most influential immigrant groups, German nationalists and antifascists (Jewish and non-Jewish), clashed on the city's stages. Covered widely in German- and Spanish-language media, theatrical performances articulated strident Nazi, antifascist, and Zionist platforms. Meanwhile, as their thespian representatives grappled onstage for political leverage among emigrants and Argentines, behind the curtain, conflicts simmered within partisan institutions and among theatergoers. Publicly they projected unity, but offstage nationalist, antifascist, and Zionist populations were rife with infighting on issues of political allegiance, cultural identity and, especially, integration with their Argentine hosts. Competing Germanies reveals interchange and even mimicry between antifascist and nationalist German cultural institutions. Furthermore, performances at both theaters also fit into contemporary invocations of diasporas, including taboos and postponements of return to the native country, connections among multiple communities, and forms of longing, memory, and (dis)identification. Sharply divergent at first glance, their shared condition as cultural institutions of emigrant populations caused the antifascist Free German Stage and the nationalist German Theater to adopt parallel tactics in community-building, intercultural relationships, and dramatic performance. Its cross-cultural, polyglot blend of German, Jewish, and Latin American studies gives Competing Germanies a wide, interdisciplinary academic appeal and offers a novel intervention in Exile studies through the lens of theater, in which both victims of Nazism and its adherents remain in focus.

German Expressionist Theatre: The Actor and the Stage considers the powerfully stylized, anti-realistic styles of acting on the German Expressionist stage from 1916 to 1921. It relates this striking departure from the dominant European acting tradition of realism to the specific cultural crises that enveloped the German nation during the course of its involvement in World War I. This book describes three distinct Expressionist acting styles, all of which in their own ways attempted to show how symbolic stage performance could be a powerful rhetorical resource for a culture struggling to come to terms with the crises of historical change. The examination of Expressionist script and actor memoirs allows for an unprecedented focus on description and analysis of acting itself.