Hamlet in Nazi Germany

Today I had some free time so I went to the library and picked up a book that I mentioned earlier, The Nazi Appropriation of Shakespeare, by Rodney Symington, published in 2005.

I sat down and started reading it, but soon found myself flipping to the section that actually talked about the plays and how they were treated and dealt with, and to my surprise the very first play discussed in this book was Hamlet, specifically the Gründgens performance of 1936, that I also mentioned earlier.

Gustaf Gründgens as Hamlet 1936

What I found interesting was the description of the performance that Gründgens gave as Hamlet.  They cut lines and scenes that indicated Hamlet's reluctance to act.  The Shakespeare Jahrbuch, a publication of the German Shakespeare Society wrote in 1936 that Hamlet was not portrayed as "a weakling or nervous artistic personage, but as a brilliant young man whose world is overturned by incredible spiritual burdens" (qtd. in Symington).  A critic of the time, Richard Biedrzynski described Gründgen's Hamlet as, “more active, more single minded, more dangerous, more alert, more ready to strike” (qtd. in Symington).

This is an interesting interpretation of the character, and would certainly be more in line with what Freiligrath would want, and it seems the people of Germany approved as well, as it had a very successful run.  Gründgens, himself, was well respected and like by the leaders of the Nazi party, and was appointed by Hermann Göring to be the head of the State Theatre in Berlin.  

But not everybody interpreted Gründgens performance in the same way.  Another critic of the time, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, wrote about Hamlet being an intellectual, a book-reader and a theatre-goer.  He saw in the play's setting a Denmark that had become a police state with Polonius spying on everyone, from his son, to Hamlet, to the Queen. Reich-Ranicki saw in this production of Hamlet a mirror of what was happening in Germany during the time, it was the "tragedy of the intellectual in the midst of a dreadful society and criminal state" (qtd. in Symington).   And just as the play begs for someone to stand up and act, to do something to take down the tyrannical Claudius, he hoped that someone in Germany would stand up to tyranny and act against the criminal leaders of the Nazi party.

Another interesting production that I read about was of Richard III in 1937 by director Jürgen Fehling.  He seemed to have made no effort to hide the fact that he saw Hitler, or the Nazi regime all together, as Richard. He drew allusions to modern Germany throughout his production, using modern furnishings and costumes.  After the two murderers killed Clarence, they removed their cloaks to reveal they were wearing brown shirts reminiscent of the SA uniforms, and Richard, who affected a club-foot which was seen as an imitation of Joseph Goebbels, was flanked by 8 soldiers wearing silver and black SS uniforms.  

It seems Ian McKellen wasn't the only one drawing parallels.

The critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki wrote of this production, “He [Fehling] in fact staged the history of the cynical and tyrannical criminal in such a way that it could be applied to Hitler and the contemporary conditions in Germany" (qtd. in Symington).  I really wish I could have seen that performance, that must have been something to see.  The Nazis must have thought so, too, since it was closed soon after it opened.  

I will definitely be reading the rest of this book, and I found another that I have requested via InterLibrary Loan from the University of Utah, The Berlin State Theater Under The Nazi Regime.  This is a very interesting topic that I would like to pursue a little further, not only how Germany viewed Shakespeare, but how the Nazis reacted to his plays.  It's been very interesting so far!