Race as category in Nazi German theatre

This chapter examines the use of theatre in Nazi Germany, when conceptions of race were a key factor in a cultural agenda that aimed at “cleansing” theatre and making it “German” again. While by the mid-1930s only “Aryan” works and performers were allowed on stage and could become members of the Reich Culture Chamber, Jewish theatre makers were in particular banned from mainstream stages, as Jews could only visit their own Kulturbund theatres. By examining productions of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, as well as Richard Euringer’s German Passion (1933), and Eberhard Wolfgang Möller’s Rothschild Is the Victor at Waterloo (1934)—an example of the more traditional plays centred on anti-Semitic message—but by also focusing on Jewish Kulturbund theatres in the Berlin context especially, I will provide an overview of how race impacted on theatre in these crucial years of German history