Gerwin Strobl Staging the Nazi Assault on Reason: Hanns Johst’s Schlageter and the ‘Theatre of Inner Experience’ Hanns Johst’s play Schlageter is generally regarded as the most successful piece of Nazi theatre. Following its first performance in the early months of the Third Reich, it dominated German theatrical life throughout 1933 and 1934. This has traditionally been regarded as evidence of the essential conformity of the Third Reich’s stage; yet since no other play achieved a similar prominence in the period, Gerwin Strobl finds that line of argument unconvincing, arguing that the success of Schlageter was due to its clever manipulation of its audience’s emotions. The play was perfectly suited to the mood of many German theatregoers in 1933, betraying in its plot and characterization considerable psychological insight and a ruthless determination to exploit that insight for Nazi purposes. As such, Schlageter was the prime example of the Third Reich’s ‘theatre of inner experience’, the ultimate aim of whose practitioners was to get German audiences to abandon reason and accept the irrational vision of history underlying the Nazis’ ideological project. Gerwin Strobl is Lecturer in Modern German History at Cardiff University, specializing in popular perceptions and propaganda. He is the author of Germanic Isle: Nazi Perceptions of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2000), has published on Shakespeare in the Third Reich in History Today (May 1997) and the Journal of Contemporary History (July 1999), and is currently writing a study of Nazi theatre. ON 20 April 1933, Germany’s new leader- play itself an effective piece of stagecraft. The ship assembled for an evening in the theatre. chief theatre censor in the Third Reich, the It was the first time the country had celeb- Reichsdramaturg Rainer Schlösser, pronounced rated Hitler’s birthday as a national holiday. it a fitting response to those who ‘for so long’ The day was to end with a theatrical treat for had ‘made fun . of our cultural ambitions’.3 the Führer: the premiere of Hanns Johst’s At a personal level, it confirmed Johst’s drama Schlageter. Johst had dedicated the position as the bard of Nazism and advanced play to Hitler. It had then been broadcast by the fortunes of many in the cast.4 the newly nazified German radio in the run- Lothar Müthel, playing the title role, was up to the March 1933 elections.1 Now it was forgiven his earlier closeness to ‘the Jew’, to be staged for the first time. Max Reinhardt. Less than two weeks after The production was clearly as much a the first night of Schlageter, he was accepted political as a cultural event, and the chosen into the Nazi Party, and was subsequently venue reflected this; for the Prussian State allowed to direct widely. After the annexa- Theatre in Berlin had been the Kaiser’s court tion of Austria, he took over the reins at the theatre until the revolution of November Burgtheater in Vienna, perhaps the most 1918. Then Leopold Jessner had made it the august theatrical establishment in Central showcase of the republic’s new theatre style. Europe. Veit Harlan, playing Schlageter’s And just as Jessner had used his inaugural friend, was to achieve greatness in Nazi production there to celebrate the collapse of cinema as one of Goebbels’s most trusted Imperial Germany, so now the Nazis were lieutenants. Meanwhile, the young actress celebrating the fall of the Weimar republic.2 Emmy Sonnemann had caught the eye of the Schlageter was, in its own terms, a signal man who hosted the production: the Prime success. The production was polished, the Minister of Prussia.5 In due course, Emmy ntq 21:4 (november 2005) © cambridge university press doi: 10.1017/s0266464x05000187 307 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 12 Apr 2012 IP address: 131.251.133.28 Sonnemann would become Mrs Hermann with a re-enactment of Schlageter’s shooting Göring. by firing squad. The actor playing Schlageter Johst himself was admitted into the stood downstage with his back to the audi- Prussian Academy by ministerial decree a ence. Facing him was a platoon of French fortnight after the premiere of Schlageter, and soldiers who trained their rifles on him – and was immediately elected its president.6 He thus also at the audience. The stage was was appointed Prussian State Councillor, darkened. Then a strong beam of light shone was the first recipient of the National from backstage towards Schlageter and the Socialist Prize for Arts and Sciences (the audience. ‘Nazi Nobel Prize’), and was subsequently A French soldier approached Schlageter also awarded the German National Prize and and hit him with the butt of his gun to force the Goethe Medal. Within the SS, into which him to kneel. This had the effect of allowing Johst was admitted in November 1935, he the spectators a clear view of the rifles rose to the eventual rank of Gruppenführer, pointing their way. Schlageter then cried out, the SS equivalent of a general, and he also ‘Germany – awake! Turn into a flame, into became a close confidant and personal friend fire! Burn – beyond imagining!’12 And, as if of Himmler. in response to that cry, the French execution By 1935 Johst had reached the apex of the squad fired off their guns. A volley of shots Nazi cultural bureaucracy when Goebbels rang out in the direction of Schlageter and, of appointed him president of the Reich Cham- course, the audience. All light was extin- ber of Literature.7 The author of Schlageter guished and the curtain fell to a hushed had achieved the rare feat of being equally silence. It was perhaps the most effective showered with honours by Göring, Goebbels, moment in all of Nazi theatre. Himmler, and Rosenberg. Given the notori- That Schlageter was as much an exercise in ous rivalry between these men and the fac- propaganda as in theatre has always been tions of the party which they represented, obvious. Leopold Jessner’s right-hand man, such unanimity was certainly striking.8 Eckart von Naso, famously described it as Schlageter itself went on to become the ‘drumbeat turned drama’.13 The reviews at most widely performed new play in the the time reflected this too. They described Reich. Most German theatres produced it in the play as ‘a national event’, beyond the the 1933–1934 season, and it was carried into measure of traditional criticism.14 It is worth remote corners of Germany by itinerant Nazi pausing, however, to consider how insidi- players – members of the NS-Kampfbühnen, ously Johst had manipulated his audiences. the party’s so-called ‘combat troupes’. The The French invasion of the Ruhr in 1923 – play was likewise performed by theatre over the issue of reparations – had caused a enthusiasts on open-air stages during the profound national trauma. Germany’s indus- summer months.9 In all, productions of trial heartland had been seized without a Schlageter were mounted in more than a shot being fired in its defence. Passive resis- thousand venues in the 1933–1934 season. tance in the region had quickly crumbled The play also entered the school curriculum, under the sheer weight of the French military and German radio broadcast it no fewer than presence, and the rest of Germany had been fifteen times in 1933.10 If any one drama can forced to watch impotently while foreign be said to have marked the beginning of the soldiers effectively took the inhabitants of Third Reich, it was Schlageter. the Ruhr hostage. The Ruhr crisis was not just a military and diplomatic affair: it was a profound national Response to a National Humiliation humiliation. The responses to that humilia- Johst’s play related the life of the Freikorps tion were partly shaped by traditional leader Albert Leo Schlageter, who had organ- gender roles. The First World War – still very ized the resistance in the Ruhr against the present in people’s minds a mere five years French a decade earlier.11 The play ended after the armistice – had reinforced these 308 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 12 Apr 2012 IP address: 131.251.133.28 gender roles. In Germany and elsewhere, males had been cast as the nation’s shield and the defenders of her women and child- ren – a view also popularized by German theatre, with its wartime diet of patriotic plays, shows and musical entertainments.15 That view of heroic masculinity was now directly challenged by the French invasion. For many German men there was a feeling of having personally failed the Ruhr. It is not too fanciful to suggest that they felt as a father would who had been forced to watch an intruder break into his house and rape his child. Johst was too adept a writer – and too shrewd a propagandist – to make all this overt. Lesser Nazi (or nationalist) dramatists were writing at that time graphic plays about the collective trauma of the post-war years. Scenes of foreign soldiery raping their way through German lands recurred in several of these.16 The intention of their authors was incitement, their vision an eventual war of revenge. Johst shared their hopes of ven- geance but his own interest lay not in the foreign arena: he was concerned with the domestic response to the post-war crisis. There had been in 1923 a theatrical echo to events in the Ruhr. Many German theatres had responded to the news of French forces crossing the Rhine with rapidly staged productions of Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell. It was Hanns Johst. an obvious repertoire choice. Tell was the classic German drama about national resis- event; and the audience entered into the tance (and eventual liberation), and was spirit of the occasion.