Shylock in Germany: Antisemitism and the German Theatre from the Enlightenment to the Nazis (review)

Few Shakespeare characters besides Shylock have provoked such intense discussions about their political and ideological impact. While academic discourse can deliberate the different arguments, onstage the character is perceived by a concrete audience in a specific historic moment. Thus, in the theater, the character of Shylock gains an additional political dimension that transcends the abstract possibilities of the literary text. In this light, Shylock on the German stage is a topic that requires no further justification, as the stage genealogy promises to reflect the complex history of German-Jewish interrelations in a condensed form. Bonnell's timeline comprises the early attempts at legal emancipation of Jews in Germany, the heyday of German Jewry from the late nineteenth century to the end of the Weimar Republic, and the period of the oppression and the organized mass murder of European Jewry during the Third Reich.

The study proceeds in three chronological steps. Focusing in the first chapter on the nineteenth century and imperial Germany, Bonnell traces the theatrical virtuosi who embraced the role of Shylock as a core part of their repertoires. As in England and the United States, The Merchant of Venice became a standard piece for these touring actors who emphasized a tragic interpretation of the play, which led to the omission of the last act. From August Wilhelm Iffland to Rudolf Schildkraut and Albert Bassermann in the early twentieth century, most of these actors played Shylock as an energetic, revengeful, and exotic character who left the stage a broken but heroic man.

The book's second chapter is dedicated to the Weimar Republic and its vibrant culture. While earlier performances accompanied the process of an increasing Jewish emancipation in Germany, interpretations of Shylock in the 1920s occurred in a much more controversial period. After the Kaiser's abdication in 1918 and the establishment of a democratic republic, culture and theater in particular were battlefields for the agonistic forces that dominated political discourse: liberal parties embraced the time as the fulfillment of a long-given promise, while aggressive reactionary groups fought all signs of change.

Staging Shylock in this context inevitably meant contemplating ideas of tolerance, integration, and cultural participation. However, the intricacies of the situation became even more evident in productions seemingly unaware of this challenge. When Max Reinhardt, who had done several productions of The Merchant of Venice since 1905, returned to the play in 1921, he failed to address the political dimension. His interpretation was based on the contrast between a lavishly portrayed, enchanting Venice and the outsider Shylock. Stressing the humorous elements and offering the audience numerous opportunities for comic relief and amazement, Reinhardt read the play as a comedy. While this strategy had worked well during the 1910s, a decade later Reinhardt's apolitical take on the play yielded a very uneasy message which made right-wing groups applaud Werner Krauss's demonic Shylock and his defeat in the court scene. Reinhardt's entrancing Venice now revealed a lack of political consciousness. Krauss fostered this shift by caricaturing Shylock as an inhuman character, while his famous predecessor, Rudolf Schildkraut, had presented a comic but pitiful figure who inspired sympathy but not hatred. In contrast, Fritz Kortner conceived his Shylock as a self-confident, active figure whose desire for revenge was fueled by discrimination and violence. When this Shylock approached Antonio in the courtroom, he was determined to obtain his rights at any price. Kortner, then a well-known theater and film actor and one of the most visible proponents of the new republic, likewise responded vigorously to the ongoing anti-Semitic campaigns against himself.

The last chapter of Bonnell's study addresses the Fascist period, when many liberal artists, Jewish and non-Jewish, went into exile, at first mostly in neighboring countries such as Czechoslovakia or Austria. The effects on the German theater were far reaching, as...