The German Shakespeare

Oumeima Mouelhi

doi:10.46545/aijhass.v2i1.147

Abstract

Over The past four hundred years, Shakespeare has played a significant role within a European framework, particularly, where a series of political events and ideologies were being shaped. The birth of the nation during the late 18th and 19th centuries, the first and second world wars, the process of European unification during the 1990s, are a case in point. This part challenges the idea of an all-encompassing universal Shakespeare by demonstrating that Shakespeare and his plays transmitted across different histories, languages, and traditions meant something significantly different in these geographical contexts. Rejecting the existence of a universally absolute and singular Shakespearean meaning, I attempt to demonstrate that Shakespeare is always what he is imagined to be in a cultural and historical context. The various local and national appropriations and the universality of the cultural icon, “Shakespeare”, clash in the daily practice of interpreting, performing, and teaching his plays. This paper discusses Shakespeare’s appropriation and performance in East Germany. It focuses on the theatrical production and its cultural context in this country.

Highlights

In Berlin, the presence of Shakespeare’s plays was dominant during the first years of the Nazi period, but he was a popular author during the war as well
In Germany, Shakespeare has been identified with national aspirations, the creation of national literary canon, and the mythology of a German national literature. He shares the fate of the German nation, from that Hamlet-like condition before German unification to the dismemberment after 1945 of the Reich created in 1871. Germans in both parts of the once divided nation had all along been using the same text for their theatrical performances and their reading of Shakespeare
The great “classic translation by August Wilhelm Schlegel, itself a living proof to many on this side of the channel including Coleridge, Hazlitt, and Lamb” attest to the fact that, “Shakespeare legitimately achieved the status of a timeless German classic” (Habicht, 1995, P. 3)

Summary

Introduction

In Berlin, the presence of Shakespeare’s plays was dominant during the first years of the Nazi period, but he was a popular author during the war as well. Muller’s conclusion that, “we have not yet come into our own as long as Shakespeare writes our play” hints at German dilemma in theatre and politics (Ibid).

Results

Conclusion