The Swastika and the Stage: German Theatre and Society, 1933–1945 (review)

The theatre of National Socialism is perhaps one of the most difficult topics for theatre scholars to research. It is easy to dismiss its offerings as amateurish, facile propaganda—to do otherwise would risk being labeled as an apologist for the regime. Gerwin Strobl’s addition to this arena, however, enriches our understanding of theatre under the Nazis, while not understating the consequences of the regime’s policies on both theatre practitioners and theatergoers. She takes a two-pronged approach to her study of theatre under National Socialism. First, she foregrounds the primacy of culture within Germany, and its centrality to the formation of German national identity, in order to show why theatre was important to the Nazis in the first place. She then follows the mode of operation common in contemporary studies of Nazi Germany, focusing on the complex and paradoxical forces brought to bear on the theatre community in Germany. The resulting picture is not that of a relentless, faceless machine moving with single-minded purpose, but of a vast array of characters at all levels of the Nazi administration struggling to assert individual dominance over the German theatre scene.

The book begins with a studied look at the theatre of the Weimar Republic and how it fed the resentments and frustrations of people who would later assume key roles in the National Socialist theatre hierarchy. Strobl asserts that Weimar’s intellectually oriented, politically minded theatre served to disenfranchise many of these individuals by depriving them (or their families) of their livelihoods. Productions such as Leopold Jessner’s Wilhelm Tell also alienated many German theatre audiences with its anti-imperial sentiments. As a result, Strobl states, both audiences and many practitioners (such as Rainer Schlösser, who became Reichsdramaturg) were supportive of productions that would later become associated directly with National Socialism, even if they did not in fact agree with the ideological aims of the Nazis themselves. This chapter is, quite possibly, the most novel contribution the author makes. Strobl strongly takes to task the role of Weimar theatre in the rise of theatre that was more amenable to the National Socialist regime.

While this approach may make it seem initially as if Strobl is somewhat sympathetic to the Nazis, nothing could be further from the truth. The remainder of the book is devoted to a detailed study of how National Socialism tried to use the theatre to promulgate its ideology, including its views on German history, racism, and Christianity. In these chapters, her approach is straightforward in condemning the regime for its actions, while also highlighting the extreme level of disorganization present within the Reich’s theatre wing. Each chapter makes clear how Nazi policy on theatre was a hodgepodge of last-minute decisions, changing beliefs, and continuous struggles among competing groups for control of the form. Choices on everything—from the content of a given theatre’s season to the employment of actors to publication of the plays themselves—were part of a complex web of competing agencies and official positions, each of which claimed the sole right to determine what passed for acceptable Nazi theatre and what did not. The chapters are packed with anecdotes, excerpts from letters, and other examples of the regime’s attempts to regulate the theatres and their output, often with conflicting results. Strobl illuminates how even those in the highest positions of power found their authority undercut by the maze of bureaucracy that encompassed theatre regulation. Stories of conflicting orders, productions cancelled at the last minute due to shifts in the regime’s official ideological position toward a given ethnic group or country, promising careers of prominent dramatists derailed due to changes in what was considered “appropriate” play content—all serve as indicators of the regime’s fractious and often discomfiting stance toward theatre.

The opening and closing examples reveal much about Nazism’s uneasy views of theatre. Strobl...