Nazi Shakespeare: Fun For All Ages

Guten tag!

I hope this lovely late October day is treating you well.  Let's talk about Nazis.  Every good blog has to come around to the subject eventually, right?  Something to do with Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies I guess.

So let's talk about that awkward time when Hitler designed a production of a Shakespeare play.

Yeah. THAT happened.

But let me first say that one of the cornerstones of my deep-seeded love of Shakespeare is that he is universal.  He has been translated into every major language and has interpretations across the spectrum - anything from Mozart wanting to write an opera based on The Tempest, to a plethora of Bollywood movies, to Japanese director, Yukio Ninagawa's stunning rendition of Titus Andronicus below:

Manaka Hitomi as Lavinia, with string in lieu blood.

I just really wanted to share that.

Anyway, the point is that I love Shakespeare's malleability.  And while I'd love to think that the Bard would cringe at the thought of Nazi propaganda, we cannot pretend that Jews, or other minorities, weren't scorned in his day.

But let's talk about all of it anyway!

In one of Hitler’s sketchbooks from 1926, there is a design for the staging of Julius Caesar. It

Nuremburg Rally

portrays the Forum with the same sort of “severe deco” neoclassical architecture which would later characterize the Nazi rallies at Nuremberg.  The really interesting part for me is that Shakespeare, and even Elizabethan England, were considered exceptions to those in the Nazi party who wanted to ban all foreign influences - in fact, he was a major German icon.  They just spun the plays to their liking - which is what all the people do all the time with all the things.

Julius Caesar's Forum

 And sidebar: the Merchant of Venice was not received all that well; even though Shylock (the villain) is a Jew, the play was considered too ambiguous for Nazi taste.  So Hmm Hmm!

As for this Julius Caesar sketch, it's not much of a secret that Adolf Hitler admired the Romans.  After all, he wanted Germany to become the Third Reich, and he considered Rome the first.  I'm sure the grandiosity of it all called to him.  It has called to me on my trips to Rome too.  So yeah, Hitler saw greatness in putting on a performance of Julius Caesar. I get it.

Oh Gawd, Khaki you've gone and compared yourself to Hitler in your blog!  What are you doing that for?!

Remember, boys and girls: Adolf wasn't a monster, he was a person...  And isn't that scarier?


For more on this super interesting subject, check out The Nazi Appropriation of Shakespeare: Cultural Politics in the Third Reich by Rodney Symington.