Hailing a Racial Kinship
The fifth chapter, ‘Hailing a Racial Kinship: Performances of Greek Tragedies during the Third Reich’, interprets the Olympic Games in Berlin (1936) and Lothar Müthel’s production of the Oresteia as part of it as the attempt to present Nazi Germany as the genuine heir of ancient Greece. It also discusses the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon that, during the war until the closing-down of all theatres in September 1944, 16 productions of Antigone were mounted with a total of 150 performances. Taking Karl Heinz Stroux’s 1940 production at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus Berlin as an example, the author discusses whether performances of Greek tragedies in times of war were meant and able to divert the Bildungsbürger from the ongoing atrocities and to reconcile them with the Nazis, or whether they provided a forum for resistance.