Despite this opinion the Nazi propaganda industry of the Third Reich would adopt William Shakespeare of several reasons. A motive they probably never would have admitted was stated a very long time before the Nazis' excesses on european culture: Ben Johnson's poem “To the memory of my beloved master Shakespeare” in the prefatory of the First Folio 1623 “To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not for an age, but for all time” (Shakespeare, Shakespeare's First Folio 42-43).
Great art can be used in any society, quite irrespective of its proper domicile or intentions - if it ever had – that is Shakespeare's authorship an example of. Even Francis Meres (1565-1647) used Shakespeare's works of art in his Palladis Tamia (1598) for purposes that Shakespeare himself likely did not intend to use them to. But schooled in classical rhetoric and literature as he was, Shakespeare did probably not oppose the matter; maybe he just received it as good advertising – Francis Meres claiming England and in the manner its Bard handled the English language as a world heritage, in comparison with the ancient classical literature of Greece and Rome.
That kind of Shakespearean expressions, as, "brotherhood of men", were something that thrilled young Nazi racial theorists in the 1920's and made them started arguing that Shakespeare was of German and Scandinavian origin (probably Shakespeare would not in substance have disagreed). Peculiar, one might think bearing in mind the enmity and the World War II the Nazis would soon be fighting against Britain, and of the tremendous restrictions and prohibitions the Nazis imposed on art and literature. On the 10 May 1933 Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), the Nazi propaganda minister, organised the first public burning of all non-German literature.
In a convention of theatre directors a few months after Hitler had come to power Goebbels confirmed that the German future of stage was to be “'heroic, steely-romantic, unsentimentally direct' and 'national with grand pathos'” (Habicht).
The Nazi seizure of the power was extremely brutal and violent even to the life of theatre in Germany; private playhouses under Jewish ownership were closed down or confiscated; communist or Jewish actors were forced to flee Germany; those representatives of dramatic art by the Nazis considered uncomfortable who remained within the country were in danger of falling into the hands of irregular units of Nazis engineering bestial murders: the communist actor Hans Otto (1900-1933) who, according to some data, was thrown out of a window and clubbed to death. The persecution for ideological and racial reasons was kept up during the whole of the Nazi period.
As the Third Reich just had begun its transformation of the world and not yet was managing a domestic orthodox Nazi theatre canon of its own Goebbels decreed the classics during an interim period – many of the classics were banned of course, and many became fuel in the countless book burning that was going on. Allowing Shakespeare was also means to politically respond to the culturally educated middle class, who frequented the playhouses and willingly viewed Shakespeare's plays. It was also due to Goebbel's political need of the stage for Nazi rhetorical propaganda, to educate the 'sluggish middle class' in how men and women should grow up to real Germans. And the party members Goebbels' had appointed as temporary theatre directors at the seizure of power had miserably failed with mediocre productions which playgoers ignored.
The Nazi's propaganda machine undertook Shakespeare's writings and ensured to reinterpret the individual expressions in the form of a collective expression of the Nazi conception of the Volk (culture, folklore and customs). Goebbels made sure to instil courage in the German theatre, claiming that Shakespeare embodied German ideas about leadership and patriotism. Of course, there were polemical warfare within the Nazi government, and within the dictatorship as well, as the press and universities, whether Shakespeare was compatible with the ideology of the national and racial community, as the binding force to which the individual person was to be rigorously subordinated.
In the beginning of World War II, when all foreign writers who belonged to the enemy side were banned, the Nazis made one outstanding exception of Shakespeare. Strobl states that “the initial ban on Shakespeare as enemy dramatist after the outbreak of the war // was lifted on the Führers personal orders” (The Swastika and the Stage 153).He would by now be regarded as a German author.
Shakespeare had, of course, a long tradition in Germany before the emergence of the Nazi regime. In the 19th century discussions had gained momentum about Shakespeare's unparalleled influence on the growth of German literature. “So forceful was this appropriation of Shakespeare for nationalistic purposes that German writers, scholars and theatre managers [during the German Romanticism] claimed the Bard as a compatriot //” (Bosman 286). The Nazi press did not withheld that he was an Englishman, but, above all, he was German thanks to his Scandinavian origin; his plays bear evidence of that, just look at the Nordic noble expressions of the Kings or the mythological Nordic features of the tragedies or the fairies and other beings buzzing around in his works.There were even Nazi-schooled researchers that pointed out Shakespeare's women as archetypes and as role models for the German women and the idea of the Volk, because they chose “efficient lovers and valuable husbands” (Habicht 112).
Of course it happened that moderate academic expertise gently objected by pointing out Hamlet's melancholy expression which they meant not at all was the one of a hero. Scholars of such official opinions could soon look for another work or were forced to flee the country; the Nazi machinery discharged those who did not follow the opportune policy of the universities: the staged ideology of the Volk for the good of the people directed by Goebbels.
From the Nazi takeover of the German stage until the curtain goes down on all government Nazi theatre operations in 1944 nearly all of Shakespeare's 37 plays were produced and performed. That stresses that Hitler's regime had managed to transcribe Shakespeare to be of the German timber the Nazi ideology needed. But theatre directors argued after the war that by putting up Shakespeare's plays they could be excused from not staging the mediocre contemporary Nazi pieces of totally inferior quality as, after all, had begun to take shape due to Goebbels' autocratic treaty.
By the echo of Ben Johnson's phrase “To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not for an age, but for all time” (Shakespeare, Shakespeare's First Folio 42-43) one might also argue that Shakespeare infused courage among both actors and playgoers during the war and the playhouses became a free zone in the Nazi tyranny; theatre people could outwardly claim that they followed Nazi decrees, but each one, individually, could breathe and survive both the intellectual and emotional poverty thanks to Shakespeare.
When the war against England was intensified by the Blitz on London the productions of Shakespeare's plays were however influenced by warmongering against Britain because the author, after all, was born in England and the propaganda machinery had to mark the Nazi German favourable in contrast to the degenerated English regarding the interpretations of the plays. When Churchill refused to agree a separate peace with Nazi Germany in April 1941 Hitler stopped all productions and gatherings for at least half a year of Shakespeare's plays, since continued performance could be taken as a concession versus England and having a negative psychological effect on German war morale. The Nazis lost however the battle of England. Then it became tougher for stage directors; the historical plays disappeared from the repertoire because they carried a great deal of succumbing Kings.
performance in the outskirts of Berlin. It became the delight for thousands of Berliners for several years. George focused the play on Oberon with antlers on his head, whom he played himself, and turned the attention away from the courtly lovers; no more than pretty marionettes in his eyes. A plausible political adaption:
The art of Modernism that had characterized the theatre productions in the Weimar Republic (The German Reich, 1919-1933) became, with the Nazi takeover, banned because it was considered degenerate art, and not at all in line with Goebbels' intentions with the delicate inner balances of Shakespeare's dramaturgy and of an art for the Volk, i.e. the German people as a racial and national community.
1940 Heinz Hilpert directed AMND for Deutsches Theater in Berlin. Hilpert was like the other theatre directors of the time appointed by Goebbels, but the Propaganda Minister was not satisfied with Hilpert's liberal interpretations and was noted on the secret hit list in order to be liquidated after the final Nazi victory.
In January 1943, the Reichsmarschall of the Third Reich, Hermann Goering celebrated his 50th anniversary – with a specially selected circuit guests of 'rude mechanicals' at the Preussisches Staatstheater in Berlin – by setting up a scene from AMND. On stage there were the cream of the Third Reich's acting profession who portrayed The Duke of Athens, Theseus, and his Court.
AMND lost however its prominent position as the most-played comedy during the war because directors had to abandon Mendelssohn's (1809-1847) beloved Overture and incidental music A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826) which previously traditionally had been used in conjunction with the play. The composer was of Jewish origin. But generally speaking Shakespeare’s comedies were staged throughout the Nazi period; theatre directors preferred not to take any risks.
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark [Hamlet]. The Nazi machine also made sure to recast Hamlet into the kind of leadership and loyalty to the country the propaganda needed in order to strengthen the morality of the German people.
The modern art interpretation of Hamlet as the German theatre director Leopold Jessner (1878-1945) had put up at the Preußisches Staatstheater in Berlin 1926 created a major scandal and offended many German hearts. Later, during the Nazi era the production was used as the typical example of 'what was rotten in the state of the Weimar Republic' and a genuine example of degenerate art. The actor who played King Claudius had been wearing the Kaiser Wilhelm II's famous robe, he also gave form to the Emperor's disability, his withered left arm.
Hamlet, according to the director Lothar Müthel with the actor Gustaf Gründgens (1899-1963) in the title roll, had its premiere on 20 January 1936 at the Preußisches Staatstheater. They performed it 130 times. Gründgens projected a new conception of the role, of a more energetic, dressed all in black, active and heroic Hamlet; ready to act and to play the fool; the director had cut a number of scenes and lines of passiveness to emphasise a more Aryan hero. Maybe this was the Nazi tribute to Hamlet. “The audience is enthusiastic. A really great success. What a genius Shakespeare is!” Goebbels noted in his diary (London, 245). Despite the success at the premiere two pro Nazi journalists were critical– as a couple Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern – complaining Gustaf Gründgens' performance of Hamlet was not of the right heroic expression, they insinuated that Hamlet can not be acted as Oscar Wilde's character Dorian Gray. Gründgens, who was gay (as Wilde), saw it not only as a threat to his career but also to his life and fled immediately to Switzerland. Hermann Goering phoned, begging him to return home; Gründgens did not have to be worried, the journalists were imprisoned, which Goering personally had ordered. Back in Berlin Gründgens asked Goering, unlike Hamlet, about the releasing of 'Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern', which Goering granted. Goering also made sure that Gründgens was awarded the title of Prussian State Councillor, which normally meant political immunity, but now to be under the personal patronage of Goering. A new Hamlet was born with Gründgens conception, one that had not been seen before; no longer the delicate Renaissance prince struggling under the weight of a barbaric fate. In fact, Nazi scholars had been busy clearing Hamlet of the animosity of being weak and of withering hesitation. Newspaper called it a Hamlet-renaissance. Nowadays reviewers have said that the political and physical survival, of both Hamlet and Gründgens, depended on play-acting and pretence; Gründgens played Hamlet as a man who had to act as he himself had to act to save himself, every day, every hour to rescue those he loved. Gründgens was disguising his political views before his Nazi superiors. There are also comments on Gründgen's role saying it was a means for him to come to terms with his own family relationships. He strongly disliked his father and deeply loved his mother, who recently had passed away. Gustaf Gründgens is perhaps most famous for being the role model to Klaus Mann's novel Mephisto – Novel of a Career (1936). The novel adapts the Mephistopheles/Dr Faustus theme by having the main character abandon his conscience and continue to act and ingratiate himself with the Nazi Party to keep and improve his job and social position. Gründgens did even act Mephisto in Goethe's Faustus I & II in several productions, both on stage and in movies, during all his lifetime. Mephisto became also the title of a 1981 film adaptation of Mann's novel, in hungarian, directed by István Szabó, starring Klaus Maria Brandauer as Gustaf Gründgens' alter ego Hendrik Höfgen.
The outbreak of the war in September 1939, postponed the premiere of Hamlet two months at Münchner Kammerspiele in Munich.
During the years 1937-1939 Hamlet was the most performed play at the Nazi German scene.
Another celebrated, Nazi-friendly, German actor, Werner Krauss (1884-1959), was a living example of the duality of politics, theatre and everyday life that prevailed in Nazi Germany. Krauss had a friend of Jewish origin who was in imminent danger of being arrested by the Gestapo when Krauss secretly escorted him by night train into the safety in Prague. The next day Krauss took the train back to Berlin and the Deutsches Theater to act Hamlet the same evening. Perhaps he had been influenced by his character's soliloquies, i.e.:
As the war went worse for the Nazis the productions of Hamlet decreased: it became increasingly difficult to disguise a soft hesitating hero when the Nazi Germany required tremendous effort in reversing the trend of the war.
King Richard II. Under the direction of Jürgen Fehling a performance of the play had its opening night on 5 May 1939 at the Staathsteater in Berlin. In the title role Gustaf Gründgens was seen in a performance where the director had muted the political overtones of the play but stressed the dialectic of the character King Richard II which offered just that psychological distension and split identity that Gründgens loved to explore:
Fehling's King Richard II was received extremely well due to both its artistic and ideological performance. Goebbels had indeed forbidden art criticism and replaced it with Kunstbetrachtung, a supportive kind of reviewing performances or works of art.
Theatre productions were by no means of one mind during the Nazi regime, that one might think, but directed by the current director's own ideas. Berlin had a special status as the Capital of Theatre and could have competing interpretations of King Richard II; one was individualized another had universalised the political constellation, revealing the ambiguity of the historical process.
Goebbels welcomed home the exiled actor Rudolf Forster (1884-1968) by giving him the title role in King Richard II at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1940. Forster had been in the U.S. but he did not enjoy the American culture. He returned to Austria and Germany, westward counted - the last leg by train with the Trans-Siberian railway, from the Pacific Ocean of coast of Asia to Berlin. Forster would better in his native language – in 1936 Goebbels had announced a dictatorial verdict saying “that Shakespeare needed the authoritative of the Schlegel/Tieck work Shakespeare’s Dramatische Werke that had made him a German classic” (Habicht 113) – manage King Richard II:s crisis of identification towards nullity, as a king, as a relative, as a husband, as a person; a combined mixture of acting that was difficult to portray in a language he did not own:
Shakespeare's Sonnets. Hans Friedrich Karl Günther (1891 – 1968), a German race researcher and eugenicist and considered being of major influence on National Socialist racialist thought, said that Shakespeare had showed an instinctive grasp of the idea that a society can be improved by allowing people to become parents only if they are likely to produce healthy and intelligent children. He had discovered this while reading Shakespeare's first group of sonnets:
A collateral appeal to Shakespeare's “familiar refrain about the universal brotherhood of men" (Strobl, The Germanic Isle 88) did not exist in German literature which made Shakespeare's writings according to Günther a tribute to the matter and was considered a pre-Nazi idea of a race science.
Epilogue
A century before the Nazis staged the scene of Germany the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810-1876) had sung:
He was not the first german to use a Shakespearean character to exclaim worries and doubt of a nation which was not yet a nation, which seemed doomed to inaction by all sorts of scruples and considerations, a nation of brains, which acted nervously, unmanned by anxiety and not daring to act. Hamlet as a reflex of Germany!
It was probably by this reason Adolf Hitler unnoticed could poison and dupe the German people and step onto the scene as a King Claudius tyrannising the masses to blind obedience. It would take over 10 years to the true Hamlet, the united Europe, gathering strength and an indescribable human suffering out of the hesitation and confusion and with Shakespeare's eternal Prince defeat the tyrant.
“To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not for an age, but for all time” (Shakespeare. Shakespeare's First Folio 42-43).
Bosman, Anston. “Shakespeare and globalization”. The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. De, Grazia M, and Stanley Wells. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 285-301 Print.
De, Grazia M, and Stanley Wells. The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print.
Habicht, Werner. “Shakespeare and Theatre Politics in the Third Reich.” The Play Out of Context: Transferring Plays from Culture to Culture. Scolnicov, Hanna, and Peter Holland. Cambridge [England: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 110-121 Print.
Hitler, Adolf, and Ralph Manheim. Mein Kampf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971. Internet resource.
Honan, Park. Shakespeare: A Life. Oxford [u.a.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999. Print.
Hortmann, Wilhelm. Shakespeare on the German Stage: Volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print.
Leif Eliasson [Leif Eliasson], Discussion forum / Seminar 1, Hannah Frisell. “Re: The weight of a dead poet on their shoulders....”. 1EN121, Shakespeare and His Time, VT13. 1EN121, Shakespeare and His Time, VT13. Linnéuniversitet [http://moodle.lnu.se/], 21 Jan. 2013. Web. 29 May 2013.
London, John. Theatre Under the Nazis. Manchester [etc.: Manchester University Press, 2000. Print.
Makaryk, Irene R, and Marissa McHugh. Shakespeare and the Second World War: Memory, Culture, Identity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Print.
Meres, Francis, L N, and L N. Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury Being the Second Part of Wits Common Wealth. by Francis Meres Maister of Artes of Both Vniuersities. At London: Printed by P. Short, for Cuthbert Burbie, and are to be solde at his shop at the Royall Exchange, 1598. Internet resource.
Palmier, Jean-Michel. Weimar in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America. London: Verso, 2006. Print.
Per Siverfors [Per Siverfors], “Welcome to Shakespeare and his time!” General course information. 1EN121, Shakespeare and His Time, Spring 2013. 1EN121, Shakespeare and his time, VT13. Linnéuniversitet [http://moodle.lnu.se/], 21 Jan. 2013. Web. 3 June 2013.
Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare's First Folio. Project Gutenberg, 2000. Internet resource.
– – – , and Katherine Duncan-Jones. Shakespeare's Sonnets. London: Methuen Drama, 2010. Print.
– – – , and Charles R. Forker. King Richard II. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2002. Print.
– – – , and Horace H. Furness. A New Variorum Edition: 4. New York: Dover Publications, 1963. Print.
– – – , and Peter Holland. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Print.
– – – , August W. Schlegel, and Ludwig Tieck. Shakespeare's Dramatische Werke. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1825. Print.
– – – , and Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. Hamlet. London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2005.
Strobl, Gerwin. The Germanic Isle: Nazi Perceptions of Britain. Cambridge [England: Cambridge
University Press, 2000. Print.
– – –. The Swastika and the Stage: German Theatre and Society, 1933-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Print.
Szabó, István, Klaus M. Brandauer, Ildikó Bánsági, Krystyna Janda, Rolf Hoppe, György Cserhalmi, Zdenko Tamássy, and Klaus Mann. Mephisto. Troy, MI: Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2001.
Great art can be used in any society, quite irrespective of its proper domicile or intentions - if it ever had – that is Shakespeare's authorship an example of. Even Francis Meres (1565-1647) used Shakespeare's works of art in his Palladis Tamia (1598) for purposes that Shakespeare himself likely did not intend to use them to. But schooled in classical rhetoric and literature as he was, Shakespeare did probably not oppose the matter; maybe he just received it as good advertising – Francis Meres claiming England and in the manner its Bard handled the English language as a world heritage, in comparison with the ancient classical literature of Greece and Rome.
“Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia celebrates Shakespeare - in a way - as a renewer of the English language; it almost seems as if Meres is out in a nationalistic rave and using Shakespeare as a figurehead, as to assert the English against the rest of Europe. It is as if Meres was inspired by Shakespeare's King Henry V's famous St. Crispin's Day Prayers before the Battle of Agincourt against the French Court, "We few, We happy few, We band of brothers"” (Leif Eliasson).
That kind of Shakespearean expressions, as, "brotherhood of men", were something that thrilled young Nazi racial theorists in the 1920's and made them started arguing that Shakespeare was of German and Scandinavian origin (probably Shakespeare would not in substance have disagreed). Peculiar, one might think bearing in mind the enmity and the World War II the Nazis would soon be fighting against Britain, and of the tremendous restrictions and prohibitions the Nazis imposed on art and literature. On the 10 May 1933 Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), the Nazi propaganda minister, organised the first public burning of all non-German literature.
In a convention of theatre directors a few months after Hitler had come to power Goebbels confirmed that the German future of stage was to be “'heroic, steely-romantic, unsentimentally direct' and 'national with grand pathos'” (Habicht).
The Nazi seizure of the power was extremely brutal and violent even to the life of theatre in Germany; private playhouses under Jewish ownership were closed down or confiscated; communist or Jewish actors were forced to flee Germany; those representatives of dramatic art by the Nazis considered uncomfortable who remained within the country were in danger of falling into the hands of irregular units of Nazis engineering bestial murders: the communist actor Hans Otto (1900-1933) who, according to some data, was thrown out of a window and clubbed to death. The persecution for ideological and racial reasons was kept up during the whole of the Nazi period.
As the Third Reich just had begun its transformation of the world and not yet was managing a domestic orthodox Nazi theatre canon of its own Goebbels decreed the classics during an interim period – many of the classics were banned of course, and many became fuel in the countless book burning that was going on. Allowing Shakespeare was also means to politically respond to the culturally educated middle class, who frequented the playhouses and willingly viewed Shakespeare's plays. It was also due to Goebbel's political need of the stage for Nazi rhetorical propaganda, to educate the 'sluggish middle class' in how men and women should grow up to real Germans. And the party members Goebbels' had appointed as temporary theatre directors at the seizure of power had miserably failed with mediocre productions which playgoers ignored.
The Nazi's propaganda machine undertook Shakespeare's writings and ensured to reinterpret the individual expressions in the form of a collective expression of the Nazi conception of the Volk (culture, folklore and customs). Goebbels made sure to instil courage in the German theatre, claiming that Shakespeare embodied German ideas about leadership and patriotism. Of course, there were polemical warfare within the Nazi government, and within the dictatorship as well, as the press and universities, whether Shakespeare was compatible with the ideology of the national and racial community, as the binding force to which the individual person was to be rigorously subordinated.
In the beginning of World War II, when all foreign writers who belonged to the enemy side were banned, the Nazis made one outstanding exception of Shakespeare. Strobl states that “the initial ban on Shakespeare as enemy dramatist after the outbreak of the war // was lifted on the Führers personal orders” (The Swastika and the Stage 153).He would by now be regarded as a German author.
Shakespeare had, of course, a long tradition in Germany before the emergence of the Nazi regime. In the 19th century discussions had gained momentum about Shakespeare's unparalleled influence on the growth of German literature. “So forceful was this appropriation of Shakespeare for nationalistic purposes that German writers, scholars and theatre managers [during the German Romanticism] claimed the Bard as a compatriot //” (Bosman 286). The Nazi press did not withheld that he was an Englishman, but, above all, he was German thanks to his Scandinavian origin; his plays bear evidence of that, just look at the Nordic noble expressions of the Kings or the mythological Nordic features of the tragedies or the fairies and other beings buzzing around in his works.There were even Nazi-schooled researchers that pointed out Shakespeare's women as archetypes and as role models for the German women and the idea of the Volk, because they chose “efficient lovers and valuable husbands” (Habicht 112).
Of course it happened that moderate academic expertise gently objected by pointing out Hamlet's melancholy expression which they meant not at all was the one of a hero. Scholars of such official opinions could soon look for another work or were forced to flee the country; the Nazi machinery discharged those who did not follow the opportune policy of the universities: the staged ideology of the Volk for the good of the people directed by Goebbels.
From the Nazi takeover of the German stage until the curtain goes down on all government Nazi theatre operations in 1944 nearly all of Shakespeare's 37 plays were produced and performed. That stresses that Hitler's regime had managed to transcribe Shakespeare to be of the German timber the Nazi ideology needed. But theatre directors argued after the war that by putting up Shakespeare's plays they could be excused from not staging the mediocre contemporary Nazi pieces of totally inferior quality as, after all, had begun to take shape due to Goebbels' autocratic treaty.
By the echo of Ben Johnson's phrase “To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not for an age, but for all time” (Shakespeare, Shakespeare's First Folio 42-43) one might also argue that Shakespeare infused courage among both actors and playgoers during the war and the playhouses became a free zone in the Nazi tyranny; theatre people could outwardly claim that they followed Nazi decrees, but each one, individually, could breathe and survive both the intellectual and emotional poverty thanks to Shakespeare.
When the war against England was intensified by the Blitz on London the productions of Shakespeare's plays were however influenced by warmongering against Britain because the author, after all, was born in England and the propaganda machinery had to mark the Nazi German favourable in contrast to the degenerated English regarding the interpretations of the plays. When Churchill refused to agree a separate peace with Nazi Germany in April 1941 Hitler stopped all productions and gatherings for at least half a year of Shakespeare's plays, since continued performance could be taken as a concession versus England and having a negative psychological effect on German war morale. The Nazis lost however the battle of England. Then it became tougher for stage directors; the historical plays disappeared from the repertoire because they carried a great deal of succumbing Kings.
A selection of productions, anecdotes and escapades of Shakespeare's plays during the Nazi German stage 1933-1944
A Midsummer Night's Dream [AMND]. The play was staged in 1936 by the Jüdischer Kulturbund, an institution that was created by unemployed Jews and allowed by the Nazis (provided that no non-Jews were engaged) and supervised by the Gestapo. The organisation was probably legal as a cover to hide the rest of the persecution of Jews. The group staged six of Shakespeare's productions between the years 1933-1941.
1937 Heinrich George (1893-1946) directed AMND for Naturtheater Friedrichshagen open-airperformance in the outskirts of Berlin. It became the delight for thousands of Berliners for several years. George focused the play on Oberon with antlers on his head, whom he played himself, and turned the attention away from the courtly lovers; no more than pretty marionettes in his eyes. A plausible political adaption:
“But first I [Oberon/Führer] will release the Fairy queen [Titania/the German people].
Be as thou wast wont to be [a German of the Third Reich],
See as thou wast wont to see [the future of the Third Reich as the Führer sees it]. //
Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen. //
“Sound, music. Come, my queen [Titania/the German people],
take hands with me [Oberon/Führer],
And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.
[courtly lovers/politicians of the parliament of the German Reich]
Now thou and I are new in amity,
And will tomorrow midnight solemnly
Dance in Duke Theseus’ house triumphantly,
[The German President Hindenburg's Parliament],
And bless it to all fair prosperity.
There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be
Wedded with Theseus, all in jollity.”
[president Hindenburg's appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of the German Reich in January 1933] (Shakespeare, A Midsummer 4.1.69-71, 74, 84-91)
Other AMND productions failed during the the Nazi period because directors did not decide upon the nature of the force ruling in Athen woods, maybe in conflict with themselves due to the oppression.
An anti-aircraft battery in Berlin used their off-duty periods 1940 for rehearsals of AMND, which they staged with official permission.The art of Modernism that had characterized the theatre productions in the Weimar Republic (The German Reich, 1919-1933) became, with the Nazi takeover, banned because it was considered degenerate art, and not at all in line with Goebbels' intentions with the delicate inner balances of Shakespeare's dramaturgy and of an art for the Volk, i.e. the German people as a racial and national community.
1940 Heinz Hilpert directed AMND for Deutsches Theater in Berlin. Hilpert was like the other theatre directors of the time appointed by Goebbels, but the Propaganda Minister was not satisfied with Hilpert's liberal interpretations and was noted on the secret hit list in order to be liquidated after the final Nazi victory.
In January 1943, the Reichsmarschall of the Third Reich, Hermann Goering celebrated his 50th anniversary – with a specially selected circuit guests of 'rude mechanicals' at the Preussisches Staatstheater in Berlin – by setting up a scene from AMND. On stage there were the cream of the Third Reich's acting profession who portrayed The Duke of Athens, Theseus, and his Court.
AMND lost however its prominent position as the most-played comedy during the war because directors had to abandon Mendelssohn's (1809-1847) beloved Overture and incidental music A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826) which previously traditionally had been used in conjunction with the play. The composer was of Jewish origin. But generally speaking Shakespeare’s comedies were staged throughout the Nazi period; theatre directors preferred not to take any risks.
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark [Hamlet]. The Nazi machine also made sure to recast Hamlet into the kind of leadership and loyalty to the country the propaganda needed in order to strengthen the morality of the German people.
The modern art interpretation of Hamlet as the German theatre director Leopold Jessner (1878-1945) had put up at the Preußisches Staatstheater in Berlin 1926 created a major scandal and offended many German hearts. Later, during the Nazi era the production was used as the typical example of 'what was rotten in the state of the Weimar Republic' and a genuine example of degenerate art. The actor who played King Claudius had been wearing the Kaiser Wilhelm II's famous robe, he also gave form to the Emperor's disability, his withered left arm.
Hamlet, according to the director Lothar Müthel with the actor Gustaf Gründgens (1899-1963) in the title roll, had its premiere on 20 January 1936 at the Preußisches Staatstheater. They performed it 130 times. Gründgens projected a new conception of the role, of a more energetic, dressed all in black, active and heroic Hamlet; ready to act and to play the fool; the director had cut a number of scenes and lines of passiveness to emphasise a more Aryan hero. Maybe this was the Nazi tribute to Hamlet. “The audience is enthusiastic. A really great success. What a genius Shakespeare is!” Goebbels noted in his diary (London, 245). Despite the success at the premiere two pro Nazi journalists were critical– as a couple Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern – complaining Gustaf Gründgens' performance of Hamlet was not of the right heroic expression, they insinuated that Hamlet can not be acted as Oscar Wilde's character Dorian Gray. Gründgens, who was gay (as Wilde), saw it not only as a threat to his career but also to his life and fled immediately to Switzerland. Hermann Goering phoned, begging him to return home; Gründgens did not have to be worried, the journalists were imprisoned, which Goering personally had ordered. Back in Berlin Gründgens asked Goering, unlike Hamlet, about the releasing of 'Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern', which Goering granted. Goering also made sure that Gründgens was awarded the title of Prussian State Councillor, which normally meant political immunity, but now to be under the personal patronage of Goering. A new Hamlet was born with Gründgens conception, one that had not been seen before; no longer the delicate Renaissance prince struggling under the weight of a barbaric fate. In fact, Nazi scholars had been busy clearing Hamlet of the animosity of being weak and of withering hesitation. Newspaper called it a Hamlet-renaissance. Nowadays reviewers have said that the political and physical survival, of both Hamlet and Gründgens, depended on play-acting and pretence; Gründgens played Hamlet as a man who had to act as he himself had to act to save himself, every day, every hour to rescue those he loved. Gründgens was disguising his political views before his Nazi superiors. There are also comments on Gründgen's role saying it was a means for him to come to terms with his own family relationships. He strongly disliked his father and deeply loved his mother, who recently had passed away. Gustaf Gründgens is perhaps most famous for being the role model to Klaus Mann's novel Mephisto – Novel of a Career (1936). The novel adapts the Mephistopheles/Dr Faustus theme by having the main character abandon his conscience and continue to act and ingratiate himself with the Nazi Party to keep and improve his job and social position. Gründgens did even act Mephisto in Goethe's Faustus I & II in several productions, both on stage and in movies, during all his lifetime. Mephisto became also the title of a 1981 film adaptation of Mann's novel, in hungarian, directed by István Szabó, starring Klaus Maria Brandauer as Gustaf Gründgens' alter ego Hendrik Höfgen.
The outbreak of the war in September 1939, postponed the premiere of Hamlet two months at Münchner Kammerspiele in Munich.
During the years 1937-1939 Hamlet was the most performed play at the Nazi German scene.
Another celebrated, Nazi-friendly, German actor, Werner Krauss (1884-1959), was a living example of the duality of politics, theatre and everyday life that prevailed in Nazi Germany. Krauss had a friend of Jewish origin who was in imminent danger of being arrested by the Gestapo when Krauss secretly escorted him by night train into the safety in Prague. The next day Krauss took the train back to Berlin and the Deutsches Theater to act Hamlet the same evening. Perhaps he had been influenced by his character's soliloquies, i.e.:
“To be, or not to be – that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles”
(Shakespeare, Hamlet 3.1.55-58)
As the war went worse for the Nazis the productions of Hamlet decreased: it became increasingly difficult to disguise a soft hesitating hero when the Nazi Germany required tremendous effort in reversing the trend of the war.
King Richard II. Under the direction of Jürgen Fehling a performance of the play had its opening night on 5 May 1939 at the Staathsteater in Berlin. In the title role Gustaf Gründgens was seen in a performance where the director had muted the political overtones of the play but stressed the dialectic of the character King Richard II which offered just that psychological distension and split identity that Gründgens loved to explore:
“Nor no man’s lord! I have no name, no title –
No, not that name was given me at the font –
But ’tis usurped. Alack the heavy day,
That I have worn so many winters out
And know not now what name to call myself.
O, that I were a mockery king of snow,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water-drops!”
(Shakespeare, King Richard II 4.1.255-262)
Fehling's King Richard II was received extremely well due to both its artistic and ideological performance. Goebbels had indeed forbidden art criticism and replaced it with Kunstbetrachtung, a supportive kind of reviewing performances or works of art.
Theatre productions were by no means of one mind during the Nazi regime, that one might think, but directed by the current director's own ideas. Berlin had a special status as the Capital of Theatre and could have competing interpretations of King Richard II; one was individualized another had universalised the political constellation, revealing the ambiguity of the historical process.
Goebbels welcomed home the exiled actor Rudolf Forster (1884-1968) by giving him the title role in King Richard II at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1940. Forster had been in the U.S. but he did not enjoy the American culture. He returned to Austria and Germany, westward counted - the last leg by train with the Trans-Siberian railway, from the Pacific Ocean of coast of Asia to Berlin. Forster would better in his native language – in 1936 Goebbels had announced a dictatorial verdict saying “that Shakespeare needed the authoritative of the Schlegel/Tieck work Shakespeare’s Dramatische Werke that had made him a German classic” (Habicht 113) – manage King Richard II:s crisis of identification towards nullity, as a king, as a relative, as a husband, as a person; a combined mixture of acting that was difficult to portray in a language he did not own:
“The mounting Bolingbroke [cousin] ascends my throne,
//
Doubly divorced! Bad men, you violate
A twofold marriage, ‘twixt my crown and me
And then betwixt me and my married wife.
//
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented. Sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am. Then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I kinged again, and by and by
Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased
With being nothing. //”
(Shakespeare, King Richard II 5.1.55, 71-73; 5.5.31-41)
Shakespeare's Sonnets. Hans Friedrich Karl Günther (1891 – 1968), a German race researcher and eugenicist and considered being of major influence on National Socialist racialist thought, said that Shakespeare had showed an instinctive grasp of the idea that a society can be improved by allowing people to become parents only if they are likely to produce healthy and intelligent children. He had discovered this while reading Shakespeare's first group of sonnets:
“From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory”
(Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets 1:1-4).
A collateral appeal to Shakespeare's “familiar refrain about the universal brotherhood of men" (Strobl, The Germanic Isle 88) did not exist in German literature which made Shakespeare's writings according to Günther a tribute to the matter and was considered a pre-Nazi idea of a race science.
Epilogue
A century before the Nazis staged the scene of Germany the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810-1876) had sung:
“Yes, Germany is Hamlet! Lo!
Upon her ramparts every night
There stalks in silence, grim and slow,
Her buried Freedom's steel-clad sprite
Beck'ning the warders watching there,
And to the shrinking doubter saying:
"They've dropt fell poison in mine ear,
Draw thou the sword! I no more delaying!”
(Shakespeare, A New Variorum 376)
He was not the first german to use a Shakespearean character to exclaim worries and doubt of a nation which was not yet a nation, which seemed doomed to inaction by all sorts of scruples and considerations, a nation of brains, which acted nervously, unmanned by anxiety and not daring to act. Hamlet as a reflex of Germany!
It was probably by this reason Adolf Hitler unnoticed could poison and dupe the German people and step onto the scene as a King Claudius tyrannising the masses to blind obedience. It would take over 10 years to the true Hamlet, the united Europe, gathering strength and an indescribable human suffering out of the hesitation and confusion and with Shakespeare's eternal Prince defeat the tyrant.
“To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not for an age, but for all time” (Shakespeare. Shakespeare's First Folio 42-43).
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