Rehearsal as Resistance? Political Theater in Weimar Germany in the Face of Nazism

Co-sponsored by The Center for German and European Studies

Theater is necessarily cooperative, not only its production process involves many, we can also think of the stage – audience relation as one of cooperation. With the avant garde theater of the early 20th century and the seeming disappearance of the ‘4th wall’, this aspect took center stage. Moreover, theatre’s cooperative nature became the anchor point for a critique of capitalism and was charged with the anticipation of a new society. What are the limits of such an endeavor? How come that this anticipation often exhausted itself in a praise of production instead of envisioning the liberation from it? And how come that this critique remained unaware of its often racist undertones? Matthias Rothe (University of Minnesota) will talk about his new book “Tropes of Collectivity” (Tropen des Kollektiven, Theater der Zeit 2024).

Matthias Rothe is Associate Professor in German Studies and Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. He studied in Rostock and Hamburg and has published on new German Literature, Epic Theater, Marxism, and Foucault. Recently “Economic Psychos. Volker Brauns Das ungezwungene Leben Kasts nach Bret Easton Ellis” (Volker Braun after Bret Easton Ellis) (Text und Kritik 55 2023), “‘Round Heads and Pointed Heads and the End of Avantgarde” (Brecht Yearbook 48/2023), and the monograph Tropen des Kollektiven (Tropes of Collectivity) with Theater der Zeit in 2024.