'Images of Schiller in National Socialist Germany', in Schiller: National Poet – Poet of Nations. A Birmingham Symposium, ed. Nicholas Martin. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, 61 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 275–99. by Nick Martin | Papers by Nick

Nicholas Martin Images of Schiller in National Socialist Germany* The essay analyses attitudes to Schiller in Germany between 1933 and 1945 in order to establish to what extent his character and work, however interpreted, provided a rallyingpoint for endorsers of the National Socialist regime as well as for some of its opponents. The nature of these attitudes is investigated, together with the related question of Schiller’s political and ideological malleability. Analysis of engagements with Schiller in this period reveals that there was no single, monolithic National Socialist “Schillerbild”. While Nazi treatments of Schiller were manipulative in the extreme and drew heavily on existing myths surrounding the poet, they were anything but consistent or uniform. Postwar commentators have tended to regard the Nazi regime’s treatment of Germany’s cultural past in general, and of Schiller in particular, as little more than a dark aberration, a perversion of humane ideals which were cynically channelled into the service of barbarism. It is difficult to argue with the essence of this judgment. However, it tends to assume that Nazis held a monolithic “Schillerbild”. By examining specific instances of engagement with Schiller during the Third Reich, this essay will argue that, while National Socialist treatments of Schiller were manipulative in the extreme, they were anything but consistent or uniform. The aim is to present a picture of attitudes to Schiller in Germany between 1933 and 1945 and to challenge the notion that there was a single, undifferentiated National Socialist “Schillerbild”. A related concern is to establish the extent to which Schiller’s character and work, however interpreted, provided a rallying-point for endorsers of the regime as well as for some of its opponents.1 It is important to recognise that for Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who held a doctorate in German literature from Heidelberg, as well as for many professors of German during the Nazi period, Schiller was not the most * Schiller’s texts are quoted from Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Ed. by Julius Petersen, Gerhard Fricke et al. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf. 1943ff. Quotations from Schiller’s verse plays are identified by line number, others by NA with volume and page numbers. 1 A useful study of approaches to Schiller in Nazi Germany is Georg Ruppelt: Schiller im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland. Der Versuch einer Gleichschaltung. Stuttgart: Metzler 1979. For the raw material of my analysis I have drawn heavily on the documentation contained in Ruppelt’s survey and on pointers contained in a review of his findings. Lesley Sharpe: National Socialism and Schiller. In: German Life and Letters 36 (1982–83). Pp. 156–165. 276 “mobilisable” of figures.2 He was not central to either the cultural policy of the Third Reich or to the research and teaching conducted in German universities at this time. In the words of a recent commentator: “Die Schiller-Forschung stand nicht im Zentrum der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft in den Jahren der Vergewaltigungen des Geistes durch die politische Macht […]. Der Dramatiker Schiller wurde weit hinter Kleist, der Lyriker Schiller weit hinter Hölderlin eingeordnet; und Goethe leuchtete weit voran”.3 Engagements with Schiller nevertheless played an important ancillary role in attempts by National Socialists to align German culture with their political ends. Echoing the first line of Brecht’s exile poem “An die Nachgeborenen”, some postwar views of Schiller interpretation during the Third Reich have been expressed under banners such as “Klassiker in finsteren Zeiten”.4 A difficulty with such banners is that they run the risk of obscuring the variety of engagements with Schiller in Germany between 1933 and 1945, both inside and outside the official cultural organs of the National Socialist state. These engagements ranged from, at one extreme, Goebbels’ extraordinary “Festrede” on Schiller’s 175th birthday in 1934 to the enlistment of Schiller’s moral support by the “Weiße Rose” resistance group at the other.5 Between these extremes lay interpretations of Schiller by Germanists broadly sympathetic to the National Socialist regime, disputes within Nazi cultural officialdom over the ideological suitability of certain Schiller plays, and implicit criticism of the regime on the part of a few Schiller scholars. Goebbels was nominally a student of Friedrich Gundolf ’s at Heidelberg, although in practice Max von Waldberg was his supervisor. Goebbels retained a great admiration for these professors, both of whom were Jewish. He wrote his dissertation on the Romantic dramatist Wilhelm Schütz (1776–1847). Paul Joseph Goebbels: Wilhelm von Schütz als Dramatiker. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Dramas der Romantischen Schule. Diss. Heidelberg 1922. 3 Schiller – Zeitgenosse aller Epochen. Dokumente zur Wirkungsgeschichte Schillers in Deutschland. Ed. by Norbert Oellers. 2 vols. Frankfurt/M.: Athenäum 1970. Munich: Beck 1976. Vol. 2. P. xlix. 4 “Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!” Bertolt Brecht: “An die Nachgeborenen”. In: Gedichte. Ed. by Elisabeth Hauptmann. Vol. 4. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 1961. P. 143. See Klassiker in finsteren Zeiten 1933–1945. Ed. by Bernhard Zeller. 2 vols. Marbach/N.: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 1983 (Marbacher Kataloge 38). Beschädigtes Erbe. Beiträge zur Klassikerrezeption in finsterer Zeit. Ed. by Horst Claussen and Norbert Oellers. Bonn: Bouvier 1984. 5 In their first pamphlet in May 1942, the Munich students reproduced the section of Schiller’s 1789 Jena lecture Die Gesetzgebung des Lykurgus und Solon, in which he criticises political systems that elevate the state above the individual: “[…] Der Staat selbst ist niemals Zweck, er ist nur wichtig als eine Bedingung unter welcher der Zweck der Menschheit erfüllt werden kann […]” (NA 17. 423). Qtd. in the first of the six “Weiße Rose” pamphlets, dated 31.5.1942. In: Die Weiße Rose und ihre Flugblätter. Ed. by Hinrich Siefken. Manchester: Manchester University Press 1994. Pp. 22–23. 2 277 I. Whether to celebrate his birth or mark his death, “Schillerjahre” have usually been celebrated at fifty-year intervals, but soon after the Nazis came to power Goebbels recognised the potential of the 175th anniversary of Schiller’s birth, which was to fall in 1934, as a means not only of promoting the notion of “Volksgemeinschaft” but also of providing the new regime with some muchneeded cultural and historical legitimacy. If National Socialism had no (respectable) tradition to draw upon, it would have to invent one.6 Celebrations of Schiller’s 175th birthday in 1934 were extended and elaborate. As an exercise in mobilising or exploiting the poet for political and self-congratulatory ends, they would appear at first sight to have much in common with the festivities held in 1859 to celebrate the centenary of Schiller’s birth. Siegbert Prawer has characterised the quasi-religious significance of Schiller in those earlier celebrations as follows: “As a unifying force, Schiller seemed particularly potent because he was also, in the eyes of the celebrants of 1859, a figure representative of the German ‘Bürgertum’. The middle-class intellectuals were in fact paying tribute to themselves. Schiller and the characters of his plays and ballads were glorified as possessing all the virtues regarded as peculiarly German”.7 Prawer goes on to list the virtues which Schiller’s character and works were held to represent: patriotism, decency, fidelity, manly courage, willing subordination to established authority, industry and application.8 These are, of course, the stereotypical virtues of the hard-working, non-political German “Bürger” of 1859. In 1934 Goebbels and others were able to present Schiller and his work in an almost identical light, as the embodiment of those virtues celebrated in 1859, while simultaneously applying another layer of paint to the traditional “Schillerbild”, by suggesting that Schiller was a forerunner of the radical National Socialist revolution. A major difference between the celebrations of 1859 and those of 1934 lay in their organisation. Although they often expressed national aspirations, the countless festivities held in 1859 tended to be organised on a local level. The Schiller celebrations of 1934, by contrast, were to a large extent centrally co-ordinated by either the “Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda” or the National Socialist Party (NSDAP), or both. However pompous and self-regarding 6 With similar aims in mind, there were state-sponsored celebrations on the occasion of Kleist’s 125th “Todestag” in November 1936. See Mechthild Kirsch: Das Kleist Jubiläum 1936: Die Bochumer Festwoche. In: Deutsche Klassiker im Nationalsozialismus. Schiller – Kleist – Hölderlin. Ed. by Claudia Albert. Stuttgart – Weimar: Metzler 1994. Pp. 86–99. 7 Siegbert Prawer: The Schiller Centenary of 1859. In: German Life and Letters N.S. 3 (1949–50). Pp. 212–220, here p. 215. 8 Ibid. P. 216. 278 they may appear to us, the Schiller celebrations of 1859 were, on the whole, the expression of a genuine local and individual need for national unity and selfaffirmation. The Schiller festivities of 1934, by contrast, were an expression of the state’s need to bolster itself rather than a grass-roots phenomenon. Consequently, they were to a large extent imposed from above. The celebrations were carefully stage-managed rather than spontaneously staged. The state’s involvement in 1934 was unprecedented; it had been involved to a much lesser extent in the Schiller anniversaries of 1905 and 1909 or the often overlooked celebrations of 1884 (Schiller’s 125th birthday) and 1930 (the 125th “Todestag”). Questions of organisation aside, a precedent for the ideologically motivated National Socialist “Schillerjahr” existed in the markedly political character of the Schiller celebrations of 1855 and, above all, 1859: “1859 war gezeigt worden, daß sich Schiller zur politischen Inanspruchnahme sehr gut eignet”.9 In many quarters these celebrations created or confirmed Schiller’s status as Germany’s “Nationaldichter”, and he became the focus of often incompatible visions of national unity. In his seminal study Schiller und die deutsche Nachwelt of 1909, Albert Ludwig characterised the two “Schillerjahre” of the 1850s as follows: So in dreifacher Verklärung, als Dichter des Ideals, des Volkes und des Vaterlandes, erschien Schiller also dem Geschlechte, das 1855 und 1859 die großen Weihefeste beging, und ihr zweites stellt sich noch immer als die großartigste Huldigung dar, die je dem Gedächtnis eines Dichters dargebracht wurde. […] Alles Wünschen und Hoffen für die nationale Zukunft schwang damals im Tone der Feier mit […], man bekannte sich nach den Jahren der Enttäuschung, des Zweifels und der Verstimmung nun, da wieder ein frischerer Luftzug in der Politik zu wehen begann, zu den alten Idealen, man feierte sie in Schiller, Schiller in ihnen.10 As in other areas of ideology and policy, National Socialists sought to turn back the clock in their celebrations of Schiller’s 175th birthday in 1934, by recapturing the national(ist) spirit of 1859, while at the same time imparting what they believed to be a revolutionary, forward-looking “spin” to the occasion. This desire was not confined to propagandists. Hermann Schneider, for example, who was to edit the “Schiller-Nationalausgabe” after the war, commented in a monograph of 1934: Mit dem vollendeten, himmelblau bläßlichen Schiller haben uns fünf Vierteljahrhunderte lang Festredner, Schulmeister und Familienbücher gelangweilt. Schiller muß wieder interessant werden, seine Problematik muß sich dem heutigen Oellers (n. 3). Vol. 2. P. xxxiv. Albert Ludwig: Schiller und die deutsche Nachwelt. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung 1909. P. 399. See also Oellers (n. 3). Vol 1. Pp. 51–53, 407–413. Vol 2. Pp. xxxiv–xli, 124–126. Rainer Noltenius: Dichterfeiern in Deutschland. Rezeptionsgeschichte als Sozialgeschichte am Beispiel der Schiller- und FreiligrathFeiern. Munich: Fink 1984. Pp. 71–112. 10 9 279 Geschlecht erschließen und es verwandt anmuten. So, nicht durch leere Verhimmelung, findet man den Weg zu ihm. […] Der deutschen dramatischen Kunst ist Schiller ein Erzieher zu hohem Stil, seinem Volk insgesamt ein Führer zu Deutschtum, Heldentum, Menschentum.11 The 1934 anniversary was celebrated all over Germany in forms that would have been familiar to witnesses of those “Schillerfeiern” in the mid-nineteenth century. In other words, there were readings, concerts, lectures, wreath-laying ceremonies and gala performances of his dramas. The political content of the celebrations had changed since 1859, of course, but the emphasis was once again primarily political and ideological rather than aesthetic. The focus of public celebration in 1934 was once more on what Schiller could do for the nation, on his perceived qualities as an inspirational man, rather than on the merits of his poetic and dramatic work. State and Party officials organised thoroughly traditional celebrations in the major German cities. Berlin, for example, staged the whole of Wallenstein in a single day. For a week Frankfurt renamed itself the “Stadt des Schillerfreundes Goethe”, during which the President of the “Reichstheaterkammer”, Otto Laubinger, praised Schiller as a revolutionary in the National Socialist sense. The authorities in Munich, who were already proud to call the city “die Hauptstadt der Bewegung”, staged a special performance of Wilhelm Tell to celebrate “die zwei hohen Feiern”, namely, the eleventh anniversary of the attempted putsch on 9 November and Schiller’s 175th birthday on 10 November. The “Reichspost” issued commemorative Schiller stamps, there was a special national lottery draw (“Schiller Jubiläums-Lotterie”), and the university in Jena was renamed the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität.12 On 10 November 1934, Schiller’s 175th birthday, a two-hour “Schillerfeier” was held in the Liederhalle in Stuttgart. It was an evening of music, poetry readings and speeches, which also included a performance of the Rütli scene from Wilhelm Tell. Leading lights of Nazi stage and screen took part, including Gustaf Gründgens and Emmy Sonnemann.13 The programme of this celebration, which was broadcast live on all German radio stations at 8.15 p.m. that Saturday evening, was as follows: 1. Das Lied an die Freude, im Volkston 2. Ouvertüre zu Iphigenie in Aulis, von Gluck – Wagner Hermann Schneider: Schiller. Werk und Erbe. Stuttgart – Berlin: Cotta 1934. P. 84. See Ruppelt (n. 1). Pp. 33–34. 13 Largely as a result of his thinly disguised portrait in Klaus Mann’s novel Mephisto. Roman einer Karriere of 1936, Gründgens is widely regarded as emblematic of artists (and others) who sold their souls to the Nazis in exchange for career advancement. For further details of Gründgens’ career in Nazi Germany, see Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945? Frankfurt/M.: Fischer 2003. P. 206. In April 1935 Emmy Sonnemann became Hermann Göring’s second wife. 12 11 280 3. Vorspruch (Heynicke) 4. Dichter der Nation (Von Walter von der Vogelweide bis Schiller) 5. Der Pilgrim, von Schubert 6. An die Hoffnung, Chorsatz von Reichardt (1752–1814) 7. Die Worte des Wahns 8. Die Worte des Glaubens, Chorsatz von Reichardt 9. Die Teilung der Erde 10. Jupiter-Sinfonie, 4. Satz, von Mozart 11. Huldigung, von Hans Heinrich Ehrler 12. Morgenlied, vertont für Männerchor, von Becker 13. Die Macht des Gesanges 14. An den Frühling, Männerchor von Schubert 15. Ewige Worte (Aus dem Werke Schillers) 16. Reiterlied aus Wallensteins Lager, Männerchor mit Feldmusik, von Zahn 17. Aus der Pastorale (Sinfonie Nr. 6), von Beethoven 18. Widmung zu Wilhelm Tell 19. Wilhelm Tell: Rütli-Szene 20. Ausklang [Ans Vaterland, Horst-Wessel-Lied, Deutschlandlied]. Mitwirkende: Gustaf Gründgens, Paul Hartmann, Friedrich Kayßler, Eugen Klöpfer, Hermine Körner, Lothar Müthel, Emmy Sonnemann, Julius Patzak, Margarete Teschemacher.14 With the arguable exception of Heynicke’s “Vorspruch”, Ehrler’s “Huldigung” and the closing anthems, the programme of this “Schillerfeier” was thoroughly traditional in form and content. However conventional many of these celebrations may appear, the new political and ideological emphases can scarcely be overlooked, indeed they were not meant to be overlooked. They were perhaps best illustrated in the elaborate “Huldigung an Schiller”, organised by the “Reichsjugendführer”, Baldur von Schirach, in June 1934. It involved 15,000 “Hitlerjungen” from all corners of the Reich running in relays to Marbach am Neckar. According to the Völkischer Beobachter, the youths came to Schiller’s birthplace to pay homage to one of the “Paten des 3. Reiches”.15 They converged on Marbach in five columns, from Flensburg, East Prussia, Silesia, the Rhineland and Upper Bavaria, arriving on 21 June, the summer solstice. As early as February 1933 the Nazis had incorporated the summer solstice (“Sonnwendfeier”) into their revolutionary calendar of heroes, holy days and pagan festivals. Each column’s relay baton contained a separate greeting, which was then read out at the Schiller statue opposite the Schiller-Nationalmuseum in Marbach. Although it was by no NS-Funk (1934). No. 44. 4.11.1934. Qtd. in Ruppelt (n. 1). P. 33. Documents and photographs relating to this event are reproduced in Zeller (n. 4). Vol. 1. Pp. 164–172. 15 14 281 means new, the invocation in the East Prussian column’s greeting of Schiller’s exemplary, heroic suffering expresses an important component of National Socialist attitudes to the poet: Wir bekennen uns zu Schiller, weil er viel verlangt, und weil ihm ein halber Mensch nicht genügt. Wir verehren Schiller als Vorbild für jeden einzelnen; denn er hat sich verzehrt im Dienst an seinen Aufgaben. Die siegende Kraft seines Glaubens an das Hohe, Edle in uns ist dauernder Richtpunkt in unserem Werden. In all unserem Tun und Denken wollen wir das Kleine und Niedrige überwinden unter dem heldischen Leitwort, das er uns gab: ‘Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein, / Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein’.16 The symbolic centrepiece of the “Marbacher Sonnwendfeier” was the lighting of a summer solstice fire with a flame which had been carried in relays by other Hitler Youths from the Schlageter memorial in Düsseldorf. Albert Leo Schlageter was an early “Märtyrer der Bewegung”, who had been executed by the French authorities in 1923 for attempting to sabotage their occupation of the Ruhr. The life and death of Schlageter had since been romanticised by Hanns Johst in an eponymous play.17 By bringing a “Schlageter flame” to Marbach, the Nazis were attempting to run together myths of their own so-called “Kampfzeit” with a mythologised view of Schiller’s own struggles. The “Marbacher Sonnwendfeier” of 1934 was a remarkable visual and symbolic expression of the kind of relationship the Nazis were seeking to establish with Schiller and other great figures of German culture. In Schiller’s presence, as it were, at his birthplace in Marbach, the attempt was made to fuse the Nazis’ own “Creation myth” (of heroic struggle against the odds) with the myth, widespread since 1805, of Schiller as a superhuman, larger-than-death figure who had fought heroically against circumstance and ill-health to produce immortal works. In exchange for pilgrimage and homage, the Nazis sought the blessing of a cultural saint for their own disreputable ends. A further motive was the need to give the appearance at least that National Socialism belonged to the mainstream of German social and cultural tradition, in which veneration for Schiller still had an important place. While the “Schillerhuldigung” in Marbach contained many elements borrowed from earlier Schiller celebrations, its witches’ brew of religiosity and shameless ideological manipulation marked a new low in the already chequered history of “Schillerverehrung”. The quotation at the end of the greeting is the closing couplet of Wallensteins Lager (lines 1106–7). See Bernhard Zeller: Die Deutschen und ihre Klassiker 1933–1945. In: Claussen and Oellers (n. 4). P. 21. 17 Hanns Johst: Schlageter. Munich: Langen & Müller 1933. The play is dedicated to “Adolf Hitler in liebender Verehrung und unwandelbarer Treue”. In 1933 Johst became the head of the “Reichsschrifttumskammer”, the organisation to which writers had to belong for their work to be published in Nazi Germany. 16 282 The midsummer manipulation in Marbach did not, however, mark the official climax of the National Socialist “Schillerjahr”. This occurred in November 1934 and took place in Weimar. Goebbels designated the week leading up to Schiller’s 175th birthday “Reichsschillerwoche”, and it was filled with traditional celebrations and ceremonies of the kind already described. The main event was a “Staatsakt” in the Nationaltheater on 10 November, attended by Hitler and other high-ranking State and Party officials. The highlight of the evening was a speech by Goebbels, whose main purpose was to claim ownership of Schiller for the National Socialist state and its ideology. Goebbels’ ownership claim is largely unargued; it is asserted, in at least four ways. The speech opens with the bald assertion that, had he been alive today, Schiller would undoubtedly have been the great poetic forerunner of the National Socialist revolution: “Hätte Schiller in dieser Zeit gelebt, er wäre zweifellos der große dichterische Vorkämpfer unserer Revolution geworden”.18 Goebbels’ second method of asserting ownership is to establish an affinity between his interpretation of Schiller’s character and the essence of National Socialism. Rather than defining “character”, Goebbels repeats ill-defined yet suggestive terms such as “Genie”, “Seele”, “Charakter” and “Pathos” – these four terms are employed a total of fifteen times during this ten-minute speech – in order to suggest a common bond between the ethos of National Socialist Germany and Schiller’s spirit. Thirdly, and in line with the kind of tactic already adopted at the “Marbacher Sonnwendfeier”, Goebbels’ address deliberately echoes some of the platitudinous rhetoric which had been a feature of “Schillerfeiern” for decades and adapts it to Germany’s situation in 1934. Goebbels’ description of Schiller’s death is entirely consonant with established idolising traditions, and it is followed immediately by an implied parallel between Schiller and Hitler: “Als am 9. Mai 1805 seine starke Seele den schwachen, siechen, von Krankheit zermürbten Leib verließ, sank damit das größte dramatische Genie dahin, das in deutscher Sprache jemals gedichtet hat. Wie sein Leben, so war sein Werk gestaltet: einsam in der Größe, heroisch in der Auffassung, stark im Glauben und verwurzelt und fest im Idealismus” (G 156). Schiller’s moral courage and powers of physical endurance are matched, Goebbels asserts, only by National Socialists and hence only they have a legitimate claim to his legacy: “In Demut neigen wir uns vor seinem menschlichen und künstlerischen Vermächtnis, das uns gehört, weil wir allein die Kraft besitzen, es mit fortzeugendem Geiste zu erfüllen” (G 154). Goebbels immediately reinforces this claim in a fourteen-word sentence which, with ingenious sleight-of-tongue, manages to combine allusions to Goethe, 18 Rede des Herrn Reichsministers Dr. Joseph Goebbels zur Schiller-Gedächtnisfeier in Weimar am Sonnabend, dem 10. November 1934. In: Ruppelt (n. 1). Pp. 154–156, here p. 154. Subsequent references to this speech will be identified by G and the page number. 283 Schiller, the Bible, and Nazi racial ideology: “Er war einer der Unseren, Blut von unserem Blut und Fleisch von unserem Fleische” (G 154).19 Finally, Goebbels attempts to establish a parallel between the way Schiller had allegedly responded to his era and the National Socialist response to the political aftermath of the First World War. In Goebbels’ view, both Schiller and the Nazis had responded by resisting the tyranny of empty ideas: “Sein Werk ist Zeugnis dafür, daß der Dichter zeitnahe sein kann, ohne in der Zeit unterzugehen […]. Seine große tragische Dramatik ist auch heute noch der flammende Protest eines wahren Künstlers gegen die phrasenhafte Beredsamkeit eines Heeres von Nichtskönnern” (G 154). In similar vein, although he appears oblivious to the irony of his remarks, Goebbels says of Schiller’s early dramas: “Gegen die Tyrannen führte dieser fast noch jünglinghaft anmutende Geisteskämpfer seine in die Glut dichterischer Besessenheit getauchte Feder […]. Fiesco, Kabale und Liebe und Don Carlos waren die Flammenzeichen seines Weges” (G 155–156). Goebbels’ speech is clearly not an impartial assessment of Schiller’s life and work, it is instead the attempt to integrate an existing Schiller myth into a Nazi vision of national character and community. The image of a heroic, suffering Schiller presented here is by no means new. Goebbels’innovation is to take this image and bend it in the direction of National Socialism’s understanding of its own character and virtues. The one thousand or so words of Goebbels’ imaginative text are a model of methods adopted in the alignment (“Gleichschaltung”) of German culture with National Socialist precepts. Schiller’s birth 175 years earlier is, however, only the pretext of Goebbels’ address. More important to an understanding of the speech’s content is its immediate political context. At the beginning of his speech Goebbels suggests that Weimar has been chosen to host the “Staatsakt” for the conventional reason that the town was the setting for Schiller’s “edler Freundschaftsbund mit Goethe” (G 154). As the “Festrede” progresses, however, it becomes clear that there was a far more powerful and immediate reason for choosing Weimar’s Nationaltheater as the venue for this “Schiller-Gedächtnisfeier”, a reason which had more to do with events in 1918–19 than in 1794. The Nazis had come to gloat over the demise of the Weimar Republic, in the very theatre where that republic’s National Assembly had first met in 1919 and where its constitution had been ratified. The “Reichsschillerwoche” was intended to combine a celebration of Schiller’s birth with a symbolic laying to rest of the Weimar Republic. The calendar had come to Goebbels’ assistance; Schiller’s 175th birthday on 19 Goebbels is alluding to the refrain “Denn er war unser!” in Goethe’s lament for Schiller. Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Epilog zu Schillers “Glocke” [1805/10/15]. In: Goethes Werke. Ed. by Erich Trunz. 14 vols. Munich: Beck 12th edn 1981. Vol. 1. Pp. 256–259. A second allusion is to Adam’s reaction to the Lord’s creation of Eve: “Das ist doch Bein von meinem Bein und Fleisch von meinem Fleisch”. Genesis 2.23. 284 10 November 1934 coincided with the sixteenth anniversary of the “crimes” of 9–11 November 1918, which, the Nazis believed, had spawned a shameful, illegitimate form of government which they had now extinguished. National Socialism defined itself to a large extent by reference to its enemies, and the Weimar Republic occupied a privileged position in Nazi demonology. To the republic’s catalogue of alleged crimes and failings, Goebbels now adds the failure properly to honour or appreciate Schiller, which was in turn, he claims, symptomatic of republican democracy’s unsuitability to represent the German people: “Das Jahrzehnt, das hinter uns liegt, besaß kein Organ mehr, mit dem es die dynamische Kraft dieses schöpferischen Menschen erspüren konnte. Kann es Wunder nehmen, daß in einer Zeit, in der das Wort zur Phrase des Parlaments erniedrigt wurde, [Schillers] edle, zuchtvoll gebändigte Sprache als Phrase abgetan wurde?!” (G 155). Employing his practised mixture of eloquence and vulgarity, Goebbels lambasts the artistic and critical establishment, which had allegedly spurned Schiller in the 1920s, as “ein Heer von Nichtskönnern” (G 154), “das Heer der Schwätzer” (G 155), and announces triumphantly: “Was vergangene Jahre an ihm [Schiller] sündigten, das werden wir gutzumachen haben” (G 156). The conclusion of Goebbels’ address goes far beyond attempts to establish a literal or metaphorical consanguinity between Schiller and the National Socialist movement or to enlist his support against ideological enemies. With characteristic free-floating hyperbole, Hitler’s propaganda minister asserts that not only is Schiller being in some sense reborn in Nazi Germany, but Germany also owes its own rebirth in large measure to Schiller: Die sittliche Größe und Reinheit dieses Lebens und Werkes ist vorbildlich auch für unsere Zeit. Die Dynamik seiner Ideen zieht aufs neue in einer Epoche, die gleich wie die seine von schweren Erschütterungen durchbebt wird, wie in einem Magnetstrom die Menschen an sich. Wenn nicht alle Zeichen trügen, dann erleben wir in unserer Zeit eine neue Wiedergeburt dieses dichterischen Genies. (G 156) Like many others before and since, Goebbels chose as the peroration of his speech the fourth stanza of Goethe’s “Epilog zu Schillers ‘Glocke’ ”.20 Goebbels hijacks the cry “Denn er war unser!” in order to suggest that Schiller, too, is a “Volksgenosse”. However, the stanza’s final couplet would appear to rebound on Dr. Goebbels. In his mouth it acquires a delicious, unintended irony: “ ‘Und hinter ihm in wesenlosem Scheine / Lag, was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine’ ” (G 156). II. It is hard to know what Hitler made of this “Schiller-Gedächtnisfeier”, as he sat in the “Ehrenloge” in full evening dress. The Völkischer Beobachter sycophantically 20 Goethe (n. 19). Lines 25–32. 285 characterised his trip to Weimar as follows: “der deutsche Genius des 20. Jahrhunderts beugt [sich] vor dem Genius des 18. Jahrhunderts”.21 Yet photographs taken that evening show Hitler looking bored and listless.22 With the possible exception of what he was obliged to digest at school, there is little evidence that Hitler ever engaged actively with Schiller’s work. As a sixteen-yearold schoolboy in Linz, he took part in the 1905 Schiller festivities and during his time as a semi-vagrant in Vienna before the First World War he took a dim view of Schiller, regarding his dramas as the opium of the bourgeoisie, particularly the assimilated Jewish bourgeoisie.23 What knowledge Hitler possessed of literature and philosophy was resolutely second-hand. As Brigitte Hamann has commented in her account of Hitler’s years in Vienna from 1907 to 1913: “Dem jungen H[itler] bleibt die Literatur als Kunst fremd. Daß er, wie [sein Jugendfreund] Kubizek bewundernd schreibt, Goethe, Schiller, Dante, Lessing und Stifter gelesen habe, ist höchst zweifelhaft und auch, daß Schopenhauer und Nietzsche in Wien ‘stets um ihn’ gewesen seien”.24 Hitler’s isolated later remarks on Schiller tend to reinforce the impression that the sketchiness of his knowledge was matched only by the strength of his opinions. Part of Goebbels’ diary entry for 1 February 1938 reads as follows: Mittags wieder beim Führer. […] Spricht sehr gut über Shaw aus. Wie hoch seine ‘Hl. Johanna’ [Saint Joan] über Schillers ‘Jungfrau’ steht. Schiller und Goethe lebten in einer kleinen Residenz und reagierten ihre großen Ideen in Pathos ab. Es wurde keine Geschichte gemacht. […] Shaw dagegen ist eine große Begabung. […] Er hat die wahren Triebkräfte dieser Zeit aufgedeckt. Schiller hatte keine blasse Ahnung davon. Der Führer ist ein Genie.25 There is also a curious outburst during one of Hitler’s monologues at his headquarters in Rastenburg (the so-called “Wolfsschanze”) in 1942, when he suddenly attacks Schiller for dramatising the wrong historical events. Rather than a cowardly Swiss sniper, Hitler exclaims, Schiller should have chosen as his subject-matter the history of the medieval German emperors: Eines ist jedenfalls sicher: Wenn wir überhaupt einen Weltanspruch erheben wollen, müssen wir uns auf deutsche Kaisergeschichte berufen. […] Die Kaisergeschichte Völkischer Beobachter. 13.11.1934. See Ruppelt (n. 1). P. 157. 23 See Brigitte Hamann: Hitlers Wien. Lehrjahre eines Diktators. Munich – Zurich: Piper 1996. P. 470. 24 Ibid. P. 106. Kubizek is the author of a sentimental account of Hitler’s youth. August Kubizek: Adolf Hitler, mein Jugendfreund. Graz – Göttingen: Stocker 1953. See also Ian Kershaw: Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1999. P. 41. Joachim Fest: Hitler. Eine Biographie. Frankfurt/M. – Berlin – Vienna: Propyläen 1973. P. 289. 25 Joseph Goebbels: Tagebücher 1924–1945. Ed. by Ralf Georg Reuth. Vol. 3. Munich: Piper 1992. P. 1195. 22 21 286 ist das gewaltigste Epos, das – neben dem alten Rom – die Welt je gesehen hat […], die Leute haben ein Format gehabt! […] Wir haben nur ein Unglück: daß wir bisher den Dramatiker nicht gefunden haben, der in diese deutsche Kaisergeschichte hineingeht. Ausgerechnet Schiller mußte diesen Schweizer Heckenschützen verherrlichen. Die Engländer hatten ihren Shakespeare, dabei waren das aber doch nur Wüteriche oder Nullen!26 Tell’s words on refusing to consort with the “Eidgenossen” had been chosen by Hitler in 1927 as the title of one of the chapters of Mein Kampf: “Der Starke ist am mächtigsten allein” (line 437).27 Yet by 1942 he had brought about one of the more remarkable U-turns in Nazi cultural policy by ordering a complete ban on performances of Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell and the removal of the text from the school curriculum throughout the Greater German Reich and territories under German occupation. Wilhelm Tell had been a staple of the German theatrical repertoire long before 1933, of course, and in the early years of Nazi rule the drama became, if anything, still more popular with theatre directors and audiences. In the eight theatrical seasons between 1933 and 1941 Kabale und Liebe was the most performed Schiller drama overall, but in three of these seasons Wilhelm Tell was the most frequently performed Schiller play in Germany. Maria Stuart was the next most popular. A long way behind these came Wallenstein, Don Carlos and Die Räuber.28 Schiller’s treatment of tyranny in Don Carlos caused some concern among those responsible for directing, in the broadest sense, National Socialist theatre. On many, though by no means all occasions, Posa’s words to the King, “Geben Sie / Gedankenfreiheit –” (lines 3861–2), were greeted with enthusiastic applause, lasting for up to two minutes. However, no attempt was made to suppress the play, although the press was forbidden to report these bursts of applause. Cautious theatre directors chose not to stage Don Carlos. The Schiller plays performed least often in this period were Die Jungfrau von Orleans and Die Braut von Messina, and while it was not expressly forbidden to do so, only the most courageous theatre directors dared to stage productions of Fiesco.29 While these bare statistics reveal nothing about the productions themselves or how they were received, they nevertheless shed some light on which Schiller plays were deemed politically correct in a centralised system of censorship and control, directed by the “Reichsdramaturg”. Wilhelm Tell remained popular throughout the pre-war years to the extent that the patriotic soundbites from the beginning of Act II were among the most 26 Adolf Hitler: Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944. Ed. by Werner Jochmann. Bindlach: Gondrom 1988. Pp. 264–265 (4.2.1942). 27 This line, without the emphasis, forms the title of chapter eight of the second volume. Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf. Vol. 2. Munich: Franz Eher Nachf. 1927. P. 568. 28 See Ruppelt (n. 1). Pp. 107–111. 29 Ibid. Pp. 113–115, 109. 287 commonly used “geflügelte Worte” in speeches and essays as well as in anthologies for school pupils. The uplifting phrases included Attinghausen’s “An’s Vaterland, an’s theure, schließ dich an” (line 922), Stauffacher’s “Unser ist durch tausendjährigen Besitz / Der Boden – …” (lines 1270–1), and the first couplet of the Rütli oath: “Wir wollen seyn ein einzig Volk von Brüdern, / In keiner Noth uns trennen und Gefahr” (lines 1448–9).30 Nevertheless, some misgivings were being voiced about the ideological suitability of Wilhelm Tell. The first was that Tell himself was an individualist and therefore did not conform to the National Socialist ideal of Führer and “Volksgemeinschaft”: Gerade an Schillers ‘Tell’ wird der völkische Gehalt des Tellstoffes besonders deutlich. Sein Idealismus ebensowenig wie seine individualistische Umgestaltung der Hauptpersonen konnte die Gegebenheit des Stoffes, den völkischen Organismus, ganz zur Strecke bringen. Aber die Einheit der Handlung wird freilich gründlich gestört, weil die drei Bestandteile zu wesensverschieden sind, um in Schillers Schmelztiegel in einen Guß übergeführt zu werden.31 A second objection was that, despite its German author and “volkstümlich” feel, the play was quite simply not German. Finally, it was suggested that, as a “Separationsdrama” depicting Switzerland’s struggle for independence from the First Reich, Wilhelm Tell was at odds with the values of unity, loyalty and German territorial integrity being promoted in the Third: “Das einzige Stück [Die Jungfrau von Orleans], das den Kampf fürs Vaterland schildert, spielt in Frankreich, das andere Befreiungsstück [Wilhelm Tell] leitet den Verlust eines wertvollen Gebietes für das deutsche Reich ein und ist für den deutschen Gedanken unfruchtbar”.32 Goebbels was anxious to stamp out this kind of dissent. At a press conference in October 1936, a journalist noted down the Propaganda Minister’s impatient reaction when asked for his view of Wilhelm Tell: “Es habe keinen Sinn, der großen deutschen Vergangenheit den Vorwurf zu machen, daß sie nicht nationalsozialistisch sei. […] Das beste Beispiel dafür sei das Programm der Thomas-Westerich-Bühne in Hellerau bei Dresden, die Schillers ‘Tell’ ablehne, weil er bestenfalls schweizerisch und nicht nationalsozialistisch sei”.33 See Ruppelt (n. 1). Pp. 40–41. Further evidence of Schiller’s political malleability is that the line “Wir wollen sein ein einzig Volk von Brüdern” was the motto of the “Schiller-Ehrung der deutschen Jugend” held at the Nationaltheater in Weimar in 1955. Schiller in unserer Zeit. Beiträge zum Schillerjahr 1955. Ed. by Schiller-Komitee 1955. Weimar: Volksverlag 1955. P. 61. 31 Kurt Gerlach-Bernau: Drama und Nation. Ein Beitrag zur Wegbereitung des nationalsozialistischen Dramas. Breslau: Hirt 1933. Pp. 80–81. See also Max Vanselow: “Wilhelm Tell” heute. In: Zeitschrift für Deutschkunde 48 (1934). Pp. 531–540, esp. pp. 536–537. 32 Schneider (n. 11). P. 84. See also Ruppelt (n. 1). P. 41. 33 Qtd. in Georg Ruppelt: Die “Ausschaltung” des Wilhelm Tell. Dokumente zum Verbot des Schauspiels in Deutschland 1941. In: Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft 20 (1976). Pp. 402–419, here p. 405. 30 288 The popularity of Wilhelm Tell before the war and its endorsement by a figure as senior as Goebbels make the sudden ban imposed in 1941 appear all the more surprising. On 3rd June of that year, the head of the Reich Chancellery received the following memorandum from Martin Bormann, who was Hitler’s private secretary in all but name: “Der Führer wünscht, daß Schillers Schauspiel Wilhelm Tell nicht mehr aufgeführt wird und in der Schule nicht mehr behandelt wird. Ich bitte Sie, hiervon vertraulich Herrn Reichsminister Rust und Herrn Reichsminister Dr. Goebbels zu verständigen”.34 Bormann also kept a private note of what Hitler had said to him about Schiller’s play: “Die Entscheidung des Führers hat zwei Gründe; einmal die unverschämte Hetze, die seit langen Jahren fast alle schweizer [sic] Zeitungen gegen uns betreiben; wir haben wirklich keinen Grund die Schweizer Fremdenpropaganda zu unterstützen. Zweitens hat Wilhelm Tell bekanntlich nie gelebt; er ist im Grund auch kein Held, sondern ein hinterlistiger Heckenschütze”.35 His shortcomings as a literary critic notwithstanding, Hitler believed he had genuine reason to fear the anti-tyrannical animus of Schiller’s play. He must have woken up to, or had his attention drawn to, the parallel an audience might draw between the tyrant Geßler and himself. Hitler was already worried, if not paranoid, about his personal safety. Some attempts on his life had already been made and others would of course follow. That comment at his headquarters – “Ausgerechnet Schiller mußte diesen Schweizer Heckenschützen verherrlichen” – indicates that he was very aware of the Geßler parallel and of threats to his own life.36 The numerous recent attempts by a Swiss, Maurice Bavaud, to assassinate him may well have played a part in Hitler’s decision to ban Wilhelm Tell. Bavaud had been executed on 18 May 1941.37 Broader political considerations may also have played a role. By this stage of the war Switzerland had become an irritant to Hitler, not merely on account of attacks on Nazi Germany in the Swiss press. Swiss neutrality was a thorn in his side and, in the belief that performances of Wilhelm Tell were a Trojan horse containing Swiss propagandists, he decided to deny Swiss national feeling an outlet on the German stage; and like some of those critical voices in the 1930s, Hitler was now persuaded (or had been persuaded) that Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell was neither truly German nor sufficiently National Socialist. The character of Hitler’s decision, its odd timing (less than three weeks before the invasion of Memorandum from Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery, to Hans Heinrich Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery. 3.6.1941. In: Die Rückseite des Hakenkreuzes. Absonderliches aus den Akten des Dritten Reiches. Ed. by Beatrice Heiber and Helmut Heiber. Munich: dtv 1993. P. 230. 35 Ibid. Pp. 230–231. 36 Hitler (n. 26). P. 265. 37 See Rolf Hochhuth: “Tell 38”. Er wollte Hitler töten. In: Die Zeit. 17.12.1976. 34 289 the Soviet Union) and the way in which it was eventually implemented – only after prolonged bureaucratic wrangling among Hitler’s subordinates – underline the nature and extent of Nazi misrule.38 III. The majority of the many academic articles, monographs and lecture courses on Schiller in National Socialist Germany present a generally sorry picture of naïvety, opportunism, self-censorship or genuine support for the regime. There is space here to cite only a few examples. In 1934 Julius Petersen, professor of German literature at the University of Berlin, who six years later would found the “Schiller-Nationalausgabe”, wrote that the Third Reich was the fulfilment of a state prophesied by, among others, Schiller. Specifically, Petersen argued that the Third Reich was consonant with the ideal state of “Elisium” posited by Schiller in his essay Über naïve und sentimentalische Dichtung of 1795: “Das neue Reich ist gepflanzt. Der ersehnte und geweissagte Führer ist erschienen. Seine Worte sagen, daß das Dritte Reich erst ein werdendes ist, kein Traum der Sehnsucht mehr, aber auch noch keine vollendete Tat, sondern eine Aufgabe, die dem sich erneuernden deutschen Menschen gestellt ist”.39 The words “Aufgabe” and “Menschen” are also deliberate, if here very faint echoes of Schiller’s claim in his Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen that aesthetic education is “eine Aufgabe für mehr als Ein Jahrhundert” (7. Brief: NA 20. 329). Specific claims of this nature are not typical of academic discussion of Schiller during the Third Reich. At its worst, its discourse is characterised by sweeping claims for apocalyptic affinities between Schiller’s character and that of National Socialist Germany. Herbert Cysarz, for example, writing in the 1934 “Schillerjahr”, adopts this apocalyptic tone, which is a characteristic of National Socialist rhetoric more generally: Wenn eine Zeit die andere begräbt, dann gibt es nicht nur ein großes Versinken, sondern auch viele Neugeburt längstvergangener Dinge. […] Wohl keine Gedächtnisfeier der jüngsten Jahrzehnte war glühender auch in das Heute und The dispute between the Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust, and Philipp Bouhler, the head of the “Reichsstelle für das Schul- und Unterrichtsschrifttum”, which was part of a larger power struggle between the two men, is documented in Ruppelt (n. 33). Pp. 407–417. 39 Julius Petersen: Die Sehnsucht nach dem Dritten Reich in deutscher Sage und Dichtung. Stuttgart: Metzler 1934. P. 61. Petersen’s references to Schiller’s “Drittes Reich” are on pp. 5–6 and 33–36. In an article of the same year, Petersen wrote of Schiller: “‘Er ist unser!’ Er ist unser im Willen unseres Führers, in der Gesinnung unserer Jugend, im Weg unserer Zukunft”. Julius Petersen: Held und Volk in Schillers Drama. In: Zeitschrift für deutsche Bildung 10 (1934). Pp. 577–591, here p. 591. 38 290 Morgen gekehrt als das Schiller-Fest dieser Tage. Schiller […] ist unser weltgeschichtlichster, in vielem Sinn unser stärkster politischer Dichter.40 In common with the view expressed in Goebbels’ “Festrede”, Cysarz appears to believe that Schiller’s character and works possess a cleansing, epochmaking quality which is of pressing relevance to the present revolution in Germany: “[W]enn […] einer der neueren Dichter uns […] auf diesem Weltmeer zu leiten vermag, dann ist es Friedrich Schiller. Keiner wie er umfaßt den ganzen Schöpfungsgang unserer deutschen Geschichte […]. In seinem Zeichem wie keinem andern kann die erschütterte Sendung der deutschen Dichtkunst erneuert werden”.41 Cysarz was at this time a professor of German literature in Prague. In 1938 he was called to a chair at Munich. He was dismissed in December 1945 on account of his activities during the Nazi period.42 Also writing on the occasion of Schiller’s 175th birthday, Walther Linden is perhaps more careful than Cysarz, pointing out in the first half of his discussion that “Schillers Ideenglaube, seine auf die intelligible Freiheit des Menschen gegründete Ideenreligion” has nothing to say to a contemporary world built on “das Konkret-Existentielle”.43 With the exception of Die Räuber and Kabale und Liebe, Linden briefly discusses each of Schiller’s dramas and concludes that all of them, even Wallenstein with its German setting and Wilhelm Tell with its theme of popular uprising, are ultimately dramas of individuals. Through these individuals Schiller exemplifies universal human struggles rather than “völkisch” themes: “Schillers geschichtlich-politische Dramen sind von vornherein nicht völkisch, sondern allgemeinmenschlich eingestellt”.44 Schiller’s character tells a different story, according to Linden: Diese unbedingte, durch seine empirischen Gesichtspunkte zu hemmende Willensentschlossenheit, diese Willenshärte gegen sich selbst, gegen die eigene empirische, dem Sittlich-Göttlichen widerstrebende Natur – das ist Schillers eigenstes Kennzeichen, das ist sein nordisches Bluterbe. […] Für Schiller ist die Welt ein Kampfplatz für Willensentschlüsse und sieghaft-tragische Untergänge.45 40 Herbert Cysarz: Vom Dichter- und Meistertum Friedrich Schillers. In: Dichtung und Volkstum 35 (1934). Pp. 409–422, here p. 409. The journal was the recently renamed Euphorion. 41 Ibid. P. 422. 42 See Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950. Ed. by Christoph König. 3 vols. Berlin – New York: de Gruyter 2003. Vol. 1. P. 357. The activities and possible motivations of four Germanists in the Nazi period, including Cysarz, are assessed in Jens Malte Fischer: “Zwischen uns und Weimar liegt Buchenwald”. Germanisten im Dritten Reich. In: Merkur 41 (1987). No. 1. Pp. 12–25. 43 Walther Linden: Schiller und die deutsche Gegenwart. Zum 175. Geburtstag am 10. November 1934. In: Zeitschrift für Deutschkunde 48 (1934). Pp. 513–531, here p. 521. 44 Ibid. P. 522. 45 Ibid. P. 528. 291 Schiller’s heroes are viewed as expressions of their creator’s forceful and unshakeable will. By the end of Linden’s discussion any philological or historical scruple which may have been in evidence at the outset has vanished. All that remains are “Leerformeln der deutschen Überzeugung”:46 Er hat dem politischen Drama der Deutschen Willensmenschen gegeben, das aber heißt echte und kraftvolle Führernaturen, […] Helden nicht der Phrase, sondern der lebendigen und darum unauslöschlichen Tat. […] Das ist Schillers politische Tat, die zur Umwandlung des deutschen Volkscharakters seit dem Beginne des 19. Jahrhunderts unendlich viel beigetragen hat. […] Als Gründer der nordischen Tragödie auf deutschem Boden, als Gründer des politischen Dramas der Deutschen, als politischer Lehrer, der zur Willenshärte und Todesentschlossenheit als den die Weltgeschichte leitenden und bezwingenden Kräften ruft, bleibt Schiller […] ein unvergänglicher Künder nordisch-germanischer Gesinnung.47 Linden, who died in 1943, was a “freier wissenschaftlicher Schriftsteller”. In 1934 he was a member of the NSDAP, the SA, the “Reichskulturkammer”, the “Reichsschrifttumskammer” and the “Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur”. One of his main research interests was “Literatur des 20. Jh.s, insbes. der völkischen und der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung”.48 Perhaps the most notorious National Socialist publication on Schiller is Hans Fabricius’s Schiller als Kampfgenosse Hitlers. It appeared even before the Nazis came to power, and its author was not an academic.49 Nevertheless, the methods employed in this text differ only in degree, not kind, from the worst sort of academic writing on Schiller discussed above. The alarming title of Fabricius’s study is an accurate reflection of its content, which is the attempt to claim Schiller as both a Nazi avant la lettre and an enduring source of strength and inspiration for the National Socialist movement. The table of contents indicates Fabricius’s interpretative emphases: Geleitwort: Schiller und die Volksverderber; Sozialismus und Führertum (Die Räuber); Volksstaat und Führerehrgeiz (Fiesco); Volk und Gesellschaft (Luise Millerin); Staatsgewalt und Bürgerfreiheit (Don Carlos); Soldatentum und Politik Karl Otto Conrady: Deutsche Literaturwissenschaft und Drittes Reich. In: Eberhard Lämmert et al. Germanistik – eine deutsche Wissenschaft. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 1967 (edition suhrkamp 204). Pp. 71–109, here p. 105. 47 Linden (n. 43). Pp. 529–531. 48 König (n. 42). Vol. 2. P. 1098. 49 Hans Fabricius: Schiller als Kampfgenosse Hitlers. Nationalsozialismus in Schillers Dramen. Bayreuth: N.S. Kultur-Verlag 1932. It was later reprinted as a “Kriegsausgabe”, with the title Schiller unser Kampfgenosse. Ein Nationalsozialist erlebt Schillers Dramen. Berlin: Verlag Deutsche Kultur-Wacht 1940. Fabricius was a leading National Socialist member of the Reichstag. In 1933 he was appointed a “Reichs- und Gauamtsleiter der NSDAP” and “Ministerialdirigent” in the Ministry of the Interior. Degeners Wer ist’s? Ed. by Herrmann Degener. Berlin: Degener 10th edn 1935. P. 383. 46 292 (Wallenstein); Terrorismus und Recht (Maria Stuart); Glaubenskraft und Volkserlösung (Jungfrau von Orleans); Sklaventum und Herrentragik (Braut von Messina); Volksnot und Freiheitswille (Wilhelm Tell); Volk und Herrscher (Demetrius); Schlußwort: Schiller und die Nationalsozialisten.50 The concluding chapter reaffirms the three headings which Fabricius has read back into Schiller’s texts in the course of his discussion: “Er war ein Kämpfer […] Er war ein Deutscher […] Schiller als Nationalsozialist! Mit Stolz dürfen wir ihn als solchen grüßen”.51 Fabricius’s final image is of Schiller at the head of marching columns of SA men. Crude and absurd though it is, this image neatly illustrates that drive to enlist and mobilise Schiller for a martial ideology of national and racial “purity”, which was at the root of National Socialist appropriations of the poet: Der Nationalsozialismus schöpft aus den gleichen, ewigen Kraftquellen deutscher Art, aus denen auch Schiller schöpfte. […] Unaufhaltsam marschieren unsere Kampfkolonnen. […] An der Spitze aber, dem leuchtenden Hakenkreuzbanner voran schreiten Seite an Seite mit den lebenden Führern die großen Geister, deren Leiber die Erde deckt. Aufrecht und stolz ragt unter ihnen die Lichtgestalt Friedrich Schillers hervor: den Kämpfern zum Vorbild, den Zaudernden zum Sporn, allen Jämmerlingen zum Ärgernis, den Volksverderbern aber, die ihn tot glaubten, zum Entsetzen.52 As Conrady has pointed out, it would be quite wrong to suggest that “ein tumber Nationalismus” infected the work of every academic and literary critic writing in Germany during the Third Reich.53 Nevertheless, when examining the nature of academic approaches to Schiller in this period, it is necessary to underline the distinction between mere academic writing and scholarship. As just illustrated, the worst academic writing about Schiller in Germany between 1933 and 1945 used the apparatus and appearance of scholarship to perform conjuring tricks with literary and intellectual history. It was characterised in large measure by an elastic interpretation of sources, in order to arrive at predetermined conclusions. A combination of perceived political necessity, opportunism, misplaced loyalty and genuine conviction created the conditions for the profusion of such writing – not only on Schiller – during the Nazi period.54 There were, however, some significant exceptions to the generally craven line adopted by Germanists in their approaches to Schiller. Genuine scholarship, in Fabricius (n. 49). P. 3. Ibid. Pp. 119–121. 52 Ibid. Pp. 120–121. 53 Conrady (n. 46). P. 89. 54 For a detailed discussion of the often acrimonious disputes among certain Germanists over how best to interpret Schiller in the National Socialist context, see Claudia Albert: Schiller als Kampfgenosse? In: Albert (n. 6). Pp. 48–67. 51 50 293 other words the careful, impartial (re)investigation of primary sources, or of previous uses of those sources, was not extinguished entirely under Nazi rule. Studies which cautiously resisted the pressure to conform included Reinhard Buchwald’s two-volume Schiller biography of 1937, which refuses to draw parallels between Schiller and the present.55 In a lecture of the following year, Buchwald implicitly rejected the instrumentalising tendencies underlying the bulk of contemporary approaches to Schiller, by defining the task of Schiller scholarship as follows: “die Aufgabe [ist], ein neues Gesamtbild Schillers zu zeichnen, rein um seiner selbst willen”.56 Gerhard Storz’s first Schiller monograph, published in 1938, also resists drawing comparisons between Schiller’s plays and contemporary patterns of thought; he concentrates instead on the form and internal coherence of the ten completed dramas. Storz states his approach cautiously but clearly at the end of his introduction: “Aus allzu eingefahrenen Geleisen einerseits, von geltungssüchtigen und oft lächerlichen Abwegen andererseits möchte dieses Buch alle Vermittler Schillers zurückrufen zu frischer, unmittelbarer Berührung mit dem Werk”.57 In a letter after the war, Storz recalled the defiant mood in which the book had been written: “Geschrieben habe ich das Schillerbuch in Biberach 1933/34 u. gerade damals war ich, wie ich aus meinem Tagebuch voriges Jahr sah, zum Paktieren weniger geneigt als jemals später”.58 Benno von Wiese’s Schiller monograph of 1938 pursues a similar path away from Schiller’s contemporary political relevance towards an interpretation of his texts on their own terms and in their own time.59 Wiese’s career during the Nazi period has been the subject of much speculation and accusation. It is true that he was a member of various Nazi organisations, including the NSDAP (1933), the “NS-Lehrerbund” (1934), the “NS-Dozentenbund” (1936) and Rosenberg’s “Schrifttumskommission”.60 Wiese’s claim in his autobiography that during the Nazi period he came increasingly to be regarded as “politisch Reinhard Buchwald: Schiller. 2 vols. Leipzig: Insel 1937. Buchwald held a series of relatively junior posts at the University of Heidelberg from 1932 to 1944. He was never a member of the NSDAP. König (n. 42). Vol. 1. P. 287. 56 Reinhard Buchwald: Wandlungen unseres Schillerbildes. Ein Vortrag. Leipzig: Liebisch 1938. P. 14. 57 Gerhard Storz: Das Drama Friedrich Schillers. Frankfurt/M.: Societäts-Verlag 1938. P. 22. Like Buchwald, Storz was neither a professor nor a member of the NSDAP. König (n. 42). Vol. 3. P. 1823. 58 Unpublished letter to Dolf Sternberger of 20.9.1946, in which Storz also describes the difficulties he encountered when trying to find a publisher for the book. DLA 74.10856/20. Qtd. by kind permission of the Deutsches Literaturarchiv. I am grateful to Bill Dodd for drawing my attention to this letter. 59 Benno von Wiese: Die Dramen Schillers. Politik und Tragödie. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut AG 1938. 60 See König (n. 42). Vol. 3. P. 2026. 55 294 unzuverlässig” is itself less than reliable.61 While Wiese was regarded by many during the 1960s and 1970s as the embodiment of a self-satisfied Federal Republic which preferred to forget its Nazi past, the consensus today is that, like the majority of his academic colleagues during the Nazi period, Wiese was a “Mitläufer” rather than a committed National Socialist.62 It is nevertheless somewhat surprising that Wiese’s first Schiller monograph seems not only untainted but also quietly rebellious. Like Storz and Buchwald, he chooses to adopt an approach that remains close to Schiller’s texts and their historical context, rather than seeking to draw parallels between the texts and the contemporary political situation. In National Socialist Germany, however, this apparently neutral, “werkimmanent” approach was itself highly political. Wiese’s conclusion is both philologically impeccable and politically charged: “Es war das Ziel dieser Darstellung, vorzeitige Schemata, verengende Begriffe, theoretische Gerüste, weltanschauliche Ismen einzureißen und die Schillersche Dichtung, in der unmittelbaren Betrachtung des Werkes selber, als eine solche einmalige, deutsche Tragödie zu ergreifen”.63 IV. The most significant engagement with Schiller, tainted or otherwise, during the Nazi period was the founding of the “Schiller-Nationalausgabe”. The idea of producing a complete, historical-critical edition of Schiller’s works and letters was conceived by Julius Petersen in 1937. Its “national” conception was very much in line with the ruling ideology. Petersen declared that it was “[ein] dringendstes Gebot der Stunde, gerade im Neuen Reich den National-Dichter Schiller als Künder deutscher Selbstbesinnung auf den Platz zu stellen, der ihm gebührt”.64 The project was born at the first meeting of the edition’s “Verwaltungsausschuß” on 29 February 1940. By the end of 1940 Petersen had secured editors for all thirty-two volumes originally envisaged. Petersen himself was to edit the poetry volumes but he died in August 1941. Gerhard Fricke succeeded him as editor-in-chief, and Friedrich Beißner, who was already This claim is made largely on the strength of a letter of admonishment Wiese received in May 1939 from the leading Nazi Germanist, Franz Koch. Benno von Wiese: Ich erzähle mein Leben. Erinnerungen. Frankfurt/M.: Insel 1982. Pp. 152–153. 62 See Gerhard Lauer: Benno von Wiese. In: Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Germanistik in Porträts. Ed. by Christoph König et al. Berlin – New York: de Gruyter 2000. Pp. 224–227. 63 Wiese (n. 59). P. 172. 64 Julius Petersen: Plan zu einer Nationalausgabe von Schillers Werken [1937]. Qtd. in Henrik Ghanaat: Unser Schiller. Wie die Deutschen seit über fünfzig Jahren ihren Nationaldichter edieren. In: Die Zeit. 7.11.1997. 61 295 co-editing the “Große Stuttgarter Ausgabe” of Hölderlin’s works, became the poetry editor.65 The genesis of the “Nationalausgabe” was necessarily difficult. It was a state-sponsored project – the Völkischer Beobachter article announcing it bore the headline “Vom Reich betreut”66 – and at least one of the editors was a supporter of the regime. As already noted, Petersen had written articles which were, at best, naïve. Of Gerhard Fricke’s support for the National Socialist regime there can be little doubt. In 1941, for example, he agreed to represent “Germanistik” in the “Kriegseinsatz der Geisteswissenschaften”, co-ordinated by the Ministry of Education. Fricke’s contribution to this project involved co-editing a multi-volume work that was intended to define the German language and its literature in the National Socialist context.67 Fricke was not barred from university teaching at the end of the war. However, for “personal reasons” he resigned the editorship of the “Schiller-Nationalausgabe” in June 1946 and was succeeded by Hermann Schneider.68 Friedrich Beißner, the editor of the only “Nationalausgabe” volume to appear before the end of the war, had joined the NSDAP in 1937 and was a member of other, university-related Nazi organisations. However, in 1949 a commission investigating the political activities of academic staff at Tübingen during the Third Reich found that Beißner was no Nazi: “Die formelle Belastung ist geringfügig”.69 The early years of work on the “Nationalausgabe” were an example of “Wissenschaft und Willkür im Kampfe”, of an unequal struggle between “Macht” and “Geist”. With hindsight it is probably a blessing that only one volume of the edition was published before the end of the war. That volume (Volume 1) was Schiller’s Gedichte in der Reihenfolge ihres Erscheinens 1776–1799, which contains only Schiller’s texts, with no editorial commentary.70 Reading the volume today it is hard to imagine the highly political context of its publication in 1943. Beißner had been keen to provide a commentary. See Norbert Oellers: Zur Geschichte der Schiller-Nationalausgabe. In: Friedrich Schiller. Zur Modernität eines Klassikers. Ed. by Michael Hofmann. Frankfurt/M. – Leipzig: Insel 1996. Pp. 349–367, here p. 352. 66 Völkischer Beobachter. 11.1.1942. 67 Von Deutscher Art in Sprache und Dichtung. Ed. by Gerhard Fricke, Franz Koch and Klemens Lugowski. 5 vols. Stuttgart – Berlin: Kohlhammer 1941. For further discussion of this project, see Gabriele Stilla: 1941. Der “Kriegseinsatz der Geisteswissenschaften”. In: Albert (n. 6). Pp. 37–47. 68 See Oellers (n. 65). P. 354. From 1950 to 1957 Fricke taught at the University of Istanbul, before being appointed to chairs at Mannheim (1957–61) and Cologne (1961–66). König (n. 42). Vol. 1. P. 525. 69 Qtd. in König (n. 42). Vol. 1. P. 125. 70 In fact, it includes Schiller’s poems from 1776 to 1798. The last six poems in the volume (NA 1. 407–434) are from the Musenalmanach für das Jahr 1799, which had appeared in 1798. 65 296 Fricke dissuaded him, however, largely because Beißner proposed to argue that Schiller’s self-assessment as a lyric poet was correct, namely, that the lyric was for him more of “ein Exilium” than “eine eroberte Provinz”. Fricke reasoned that such a commentary would do a disservice not only to Schiller but also to the nascent “Nationalausgabe”.71 The first printing of this volume did, however, contain an accompanying preface (“Geleitwort”) by the “Reichsminister für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung”, Bernhard Rust, which was based on a draft provided by Fricke. This “Geleitwort”, dated “Berlin, Dezember 1942”, was bound into the volume immediately after the title page.72 Rust was the minister responsible for implementing the ban on Wilhelm Tell two years earlier. In a review of this first volume in Dichtung und Volkstum, Hermann Pongs, a professor at Göttingen and a committed National Socialist, praised both the volume itself and Rust’s introduction: Die gleichzeitig mit der Hölderlinausgabe erscheinende Nationalausgabe der Schillerschen Werke stellt eine ähnliche Großleistung deutschen Geistes im Kriege dar. […] Das Geleitwort von Reichsminister Rust hebt die unvergleichliche Größe Schillers gerade für unsere Zeit in klassisch-knappen Prägungen heraus: ‘Schillers Dasein ist immer selbstvergessener Einsatz und Kampf für den höchsten Auftrag gewesen, und Leben hieß für ihn: Sterben können für eine Idee!’73 Rust committed suicide on 8 May 1945. Later that year, Pongs became one of the relatively few Germanists to be dismissed on account of his Nazi past. In 1950 he was “de-Nazified” and his pension, though not his position, was restored.74 The “Schiller-Nationalausgabe” was sponsored by the National Socialist state, but its potential as a philological contribution to a better understanding of Schiller’s artistic achievement was not uppermost in the minds of its original political patrons. They appeared more interested in using the “Nationalausgabe” as a vehicle for disseminating the German language and German culture throughout occupied Europe, in the form of reliable and accessible versions of Schiller’s works. At the beginning of 1941 the “Reichskultusminister” decreed that the more easily legible Antiqua typeface be used in the “Nationalausgabe” See Norbert Oellers: Fünfzig Jahre Schiller-Nationalausgabe – und kein Ende? Marbach/N.: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 1991. P. 19. Schiller’s self-assessment is in a letter to Körner of 25.2.1789. NA 25. 211. 72 I am grateful to Norbert Oellers for this information. The “Geleitwort” did not appear in postwar reprints of the volume and it has been removed from some surviving copies of the first print-run. This is the case, for example, with the 1943 copy of volume 1 on the open shelves at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach. 73 Hermann Pongs: Kleine Anzeige: Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Erster Band. Gedichte in der Reihenfolge ihres Entstehens [sic] 1776–1799, Herausgegeben von Julius Petersen† und Friedrich Beißner. Verlag Herm. Böhlaus Nachfolger, Weimar 1943. In: Dichtung und Volkstum 43 (1943). P. 253. 74 See König (n. 42). Vol. 2. P. 1421. 71 297 instead of the traditional “Fraktur”, “um ‘allen Völkern das Studium der deutschen Sprache und das Lesen deutscher Literatur’ zu ermöglichen”.75 Hitler’s Minister of Culture appeared to regard the “Schiller-Nationalausgabe” primarily as a language-learning aid. The success of this edition, which is due to be completed in 2007, has been achieved in spite of its difficult National Socialist origins and of other equally difficult political factors after 1945. V . From this discussion of approaches to Schiller during the Third Reich some provisional conclusions have emerged concerning Nazi cultural policy and the conduct of Germanists in Germany between 1933 and 1945. Firmer conclusions can be drawn concerning the approaches themselves. The first is the striking continuity between the forms of public Schiller celebration in Nazi Germany and earlier forms of “Schillerverehrung”. Similarly, the rhetoric employed to honour the poet, not only by Goebbels but also by many academics, owed much to the language associated with certain Schiller myths established in the nineteenth century. This was the rhetoric of “Kampf ”, “Charakter”, “Opfer” and “Tod”, terms which lent themselves readily to Nazi invocations of Schiller precisely because they were already an important part of National Socialist idiom. The language of nineteenth-century “Schillerverehrung”, which had often been used to express a longing for national unity, could thus easily be borrowed and adapted to fit the Nazi desire for national and racial “purity”. A second conclusion concerns the variety of often incompatible images of Schiller that existed in Germany between 1933 and 1945. While the majority of academic writing on Schiller makes for depressing and uncomfortable reading, the work of Buchwald, Storz and, on at least one occasion, Wiese demonstrates that the tacitly prescribed political interpretation of Schiller could be circumvented and resisted. It has also emerged that, even within the machinery of Nazi cultural control, there was little agreement as to how a figure like Schiller should be handled. The varying fortunes of Wilhelm Tell under National Socialism are but the starkest illustration of this confusion. Returning to the metaphors of light and darkness with which the discussion began, it is evident that every image of Schiller in Germany between 1933 and 1945 lived in the shadow of Nazism. While some, such as those peddled by a Goebbels, a Cysarz or a Fabricius, were irredeemably opaque, the majority inhabited a grey area, a penumbra created by the ideological climate, perceived political pressure, misplaced conviction, opportunism, naïvety and, in exceptional cases, resistance. The history of engagements with Schiller in National Socialist Germany is a valuable source of information regarding the ends of 75 Oellers (n. 65). P. 356. 298 Nazi ideology, the often confused and contradictory means employed in attempting to promote these, and the compromises made by those making the attempts. However, the sum of images of Schiller in National Socialist Germany contributes little to an understanding of the poet himself or of his work. The truth is that Schiller’s life and work were of little interest to most Nazi interpreters. The established myth of Schiller as a suffering, death-defying figure was more attractive, because it lent itself more readily to the National Socialist world-view. The morbid, quasi-religious strand of “Schillerverehrung” had begun on Schiller’s death bed on 9 May 1805, when locks of his hair were removed as “relics”, while his corpse was still warm.76 Ten days later the autopsy report unwittingly furnished the basis for legends of Schiller’s heroic survival: “Bey diesen Umständen muß man sich wundern, wie der arme Mann so lange hat leben können” (NA 41/II A, no. 535). In the course of the nineteenth century Schiller’s death came to be viewed in some quarters as more significant than his life. The heroic struggle of the terminally ill poet against material circumstance, which also appeared to reflect the antithesis in his theoretical writings between “Freiheit” and physical “Notwendigkeit”, became an important component of the nineteenth-century image of Schiller as “Dichter der Nation”. Schiller’s struggle against the odds assumed mythical proportions and came to be viewed as an inspirational model for the nation’s struggle for unity. Alt describes this process rather mildly, and also appears to perpetuate the legend, when he states: “Die Art und Weise, in der der arbeitswütige Schiller seine schwere Krankheit zu beherrschen suchte, bot später Stoff für diverse Mythen und Legenden. […] Schiller hat große Teile seines heute als klassisch bezeichneten Werkes dem Tod abgerungen […]”.77 Similarly, Safranski asserts in his recent biography that Schiller’s prolonged survival against the physical odds was a triumph of the will: “Idealismus ist, wenn man mit der Kraft der Begeisterung länger lebt, als es der Körper erlaubt. Es ist der Triumph eines erleuchteten, eines hellen Willens”.78 In far cruder guise this form of veneration, this “Ver(un)klärung des Schillerbildes”, reached its grim apotheosis under National Socialism. Schiller was exploited not only in order to lend a spurious respectability to National Socialism but also, more sinisterly, to help strengthen its cult of struggle, sacrifice and death. With differing emphases, propagandists and many Germanists See Frank Druffner and Martin Schalhorn: Götterpläne & Mäusegeschäfte. Schiller 1759–1805. Marbach/N.: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 2005 (Marbacher Kataloge 58). Pp. 243–245, 259. 77 Peter-André Alt: Friedrich Schiller. Munich: Beck 2004 (Beck’sche Reihe 2357). Pp. 18–19. 78 Rüdiger Safranski: Friedrich Schiller oder Die Erfindung des Deutschen Idealismus. Munich – Vienna: Hanser 2004. P. 11. 76 299 in the Nazi period claimed exclusive ownership of Schiller as their national comrade and contemporary. “Er war einer der Unseren”, claimed Goebbels in that speech of 1934 (G 154). The more obvious objections to this cynical appropriation notwithstanding, Schiller’s own understanding of what it means for a poet or thinker to be a contemporary places Nazi claims on him in their proper perspective: Wir wollen, dem Leibe nach, Bürger unserer Zeit seyn und bleiben, weil es nicht anders seyn kann; sonst aber und dem Geiste nach ist es das Vorrecht und die Pflicht des Philosophen wie des Dichters, zu keinem Volk und zu keiner Zeit zu gehören, sondern im eigentlichen Sinne des Worts der Zeitgenoße aller Zeiten zu seyn. (NA 27. 129)79 79 Letter to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. 25.1.1795.