Rough, rough draft.

I still need a conclusion, and I need some SERIOUS editing, but here's a rough draft of my paper.

Shylock and the Shoah: The Merchant of Venice on the Nazi and Post-War Stage

Almost since they were first performed, Shakespeare's plays have been appropriated and adapted by cultures across the globe, each time, changing them to meet their own beliefs and values. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in Nazi-era and Postwar Germany. Though Shakespeare had been popular in Germany for centuries, the Nazis really made him their own; they adapted many of his plays, including The Merchant of Venice, to meet the needs of the propaganda machine. After the war, German productions of Merchant have, in general, been used to apologize for and explore the implications of the Holocaust--a specter that even very recent productions have not been able to escape. Through an understanding of this process of appropriation and adaptation, we can see how Shakespeare acts as a mirror for the cultures that perform him: how they project their own beliefs, values, and struggles onto the eternal Bard.

The Merchant of Venice has been popular in Germany almost as since it was written. Shortly after Merchant was performed in England, traveling groups of English actors brought it to the Continent, adding scenes from the play (most notably the courtroom scene with Shylock and Portia) to their repertoires, as evidenced by the very similar scenes in the 1607 play Der Jud von Venedig (Brennecke 105). In the mid-to-late 1700s, the Germans as prominent as Goethe, Schiller, and Lenz “discovered” Shakespeare, and, within a remarkably short amount of time, the Schlegel-Teck translations of Shakespeare had been integrated into the German canon (Korte 267; Korte 268). Throughout the nineteenth century, Shakespeare was “one of the most often performed” playwrights” in Germany, and his plays continued to be popular in the first part of the twentieth (Shylock in Germany 1).

The Germans took to him so readily for several reasons, primary among them the fact that they viewed him as a “fraternal spirit,” who was more than a “natural, original genius,” but also someone who understood and sympathized with their national character (Korte 268). 

The Nazis took the appropriation of Shakespeare to a new, somewhat disturbing extreme. To them, Shakespeare was a “Nordic” poet, who could only be truly appreciated by the Nazis (“Shylock and Othello” 166). The Nazis believed themselves closer to the spirit of Elizabethan England than even the English themselves. he people of Shakespeare's England had been "Heroic, soldierly, young and upwardly striving, hungering for deeds and adventures," and, most importantly, ruled by an authoritarian queen (Shylock in Germany 140). Thus, the England of old was more similar to warlike, autocratic Nazi Germany than it was to "the democratic and plutocratic British Empire" (Shylock and Germany 140).

Further, Shakespeare was said to be in line with Nazi ideals. In part reacting to the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic's wild experimentation with Shakespeare, the Nazis "conscious[ly] turn[ed] away" from the "unhealthy" conditions of previous years (Shylock in Germany 139). This alleged return to fundamentals allowed the Nazis to work many of their ideals into Shakespeare's plays. For example, "Shakespeare's figures are . . . clearly Nordic people," exhibiting Nordic views and beliefs. Critics that examined his plays according to "Racial Science" showed that the characters also conformed to established racial types (Shylock in Germany 139; ibid. 138 ). By demonstrating that Nazi views had been held for hundreds of years, and by an important cultural figure, the Nazis were able to legitimize their beliefs, and strengthen them in the eyes of the people.

At the same time he was being appropriated by the Nazis, Shakespeare was also being adapted for use as part of the propaganda machine. Shakespeare productions were very popular during the Nazi period, and several were explicitly adapted and changed for propaganda use. One of the most notable of these adaptations was The Merchant of Venice--not because it DID X, Y, OR Z,  but because of its links to the most enduring memory of the Nazis: their violent, destructive anti-Semitism. Merchant was, indeed, adapted as a propaganda tool, and, though it was staged surprisingly infrequently, it is still an important play to examine. 

Despite its value as a piece of propaganda, The Merchant of Venice was rather problematic for the Nazis to stage. Unlike Barabbas in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, Shylock the Jew is not a two-dimensional stereotype: he is a Jew that has "dimensions, senses, affections, passions," with many speeches that humanize him (3.1.60). Furthermore, his daughter, Jessica, herself a Jew, weds the Christian Lorenzo. This mixing of races was frowned upon, and later made illegal. Both these difficulties translated into a surprising reluctance to stage the play--Merchant dropped from its position as the fourth most-performed Shakespeare play in 1933, to twenty-first out of twenty-two in 1941 (Symington 246).

But this was not to say that the play was not performed at all: the play continued to be performed, but in a greatly adapted form. in 1939, following the suggestions of director Rainer Schlösser, the Nazi-appointed Reich Dramaturg released an "officially authorized" version of the play (Shylock in Germany 145). These official changes were generally small, but had an enormous effect on the play. Lines that were "favorable to Shylock or that showed him in a positive light" were "delet[ed] or amend[ed]," including, most importantly, Shylock's "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" speech from 3.1 (Symington, 248). Further, Jessica was made Shylock's foster daughter, rather than his biological one; when possible, this was done with the addition of a simple "not" (e.g. "though I am a daughter to his blood" from 2.3 became "for I am not a daughter to his blood," emphasis added) (Shylock in Germany 145). These changes also removed all references to Jessica's love for Shylock, leaving him nearly friendless on the stage. In another change, Shylock was not apparently forced to convert at the end of the play: for the Nazis, Shylock's Jewishness was a biological fact, and could not be changed by mere baptism.

Even with these changes, directors still had some flexibility in the way they could stage the play. In general, Nazi-era productions of The Merchant of Venice portrayed Shylock in one of two ways: either as a gross comic stereotype, or as the epitome of the evil, conniving Jew. Both these portrayals persisted throughout the entire Nazi regime. Both types of portrayals contributed to the propaganda value of the play, and examining both helps us understand how the play

An excellent example of the  comic portrayal of Shylock comes from the 1942-1943 production at the Rose Theater in Berlin, which staged the play as a commedia dell'arte. Shylock, played by Georg Koch, was praised by critics for  his "powerful linguistic and mimic effects," almost certainly a euphemism for his "exaggerated and distorted [Jewish] characteristics" (Symington 249). As part of his portrayal, Koch followed the then-well-established tradition of sharpening his knife on the sole of his shoe (derived from a line from act 4 the play: "Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew, / thou mak'st thy knife keen"); the absurdity of this action was undoubtedly played for laughs (4.1.123-124). It is worth noting that, due to concerns with the humanizing content of the play, this production was the first to be staged in Berlin during the Nazi years; in an effort to make the play "suitable" for a Berlin audience, this production used a government-approved edit of the play, and also planted actors in the crowd to shout threats and insults at Shylock whenever he appeared on stage, thus ensuring that all potential "philosemitic"[DG5]  messages of the play were effectively destroyed (Symington 248).

The other major way Shylock could be staged was as a viciously anti-Semitic stereotype. In the most notable of these productions, a 1943 production in Vienna, the role of Shylock was played by Werner Krauss, who had played nearly every Jewish role in the notoriously anti-Semitic film Jud Süss (Bonnell 172). Kraus apparently drew on every negative stereotype of Eastern European Jews that he could, and, with his portrayal of "the affected way of shuffling along, the hopping and stamping about in a rage, the clawing hand gestures, the raucous or mumbling voice" he effectively portrayed "the pathological picture of the East European racial type in all his external and internal human dirtiness" (Bonnell 172; Symington 250). Note the use of the term "racial type" as opposed to "racial stereotype"; this Shylock, especially, was used to further reinforce the Nazi ideas of race, and to further subjugate Jews as the "untermensch" ("Shylock and Othello Under the Nazis" 170).

Though less aggressively adapted than under the Nazis, modern productions of Merchant have one thing in common with earlier years: they are still defined by the Shoah (Hebrew: "Destruction," i.e. the Holocaust). In the years since the war, Shylock has served to complicate, apologize for, and remind the audience of the German connection to the Holocaust.

Postwar productions of Merchant have, in general, been controversial, politicized events. To many, Antonio's hatred and harsh treatment of Shylock is an uncomfortable reminder of the Holocaust ("Post-war Germany" 66). For many years, theaters expressed a reluctance to stage the play at all: in 1960, a theater director in Mannheim decided to cancel the play, claiming he didn't want to "pour oil into the flames of a re-emerging anti-Semitism, and, in 1980, director Heinz Hilpert said he would only stage the play when "40 Jews sit in the stalls and laugh about it" ("Post-war Germany" 66). In recent years, these negative feelings towards Merchant have become less intense, to the point where there are "two or three German productions a year," but have not disappeared entirely: critic Wilhelm Hortmann, in 2003, reminisced of the time when "a Jewish director could produce The Merchant as a colorful fairy tale," in reference to Max Reinhardt's 1924 production ("Post-war Germany" 66).

Postwar productions have handled Shylock in several different ways. Otto Schenck's 1969 television adaptation is notable because it, in large part, encapsulates many aspects of the postwar Shylock. Most of the play is staged as a light commedia dell'arte, almost a "sentimental Heimatfilm," a popular post-war genre, defined by an idealized rural setting with a simple dualistic morality, used as a form of escapism from harsh realities ("Remember Me" 295). Shylock, however, is portrayed by Fritz Korner, a 76-year-old Jewish actor who had fled Germany in 1938 ("Post-war Germany" 68). Korner appeared on stage wearing a traditional prayer shawl an yarmulke, and played a "serious, tense, and 'operatic'" Shylock, contrasting with the "shallow comedy" of the rest of the production ("Post-war Germany" 68). The film was criticized for this difference in tone, but Sabine Schülting suggests that this clash was intentional; Shylock, described as a "killjoy," serves as a harsh reminder of a time that the German people would rather forget, constantly intruding into times and places where he's not wanted ("Post-war Germany" 68).

The ending of the film further strengthens this idea of Shylock a a representative of the Holocaust. in the courtoom scene, when Shylock is forced into converting, he "raises his eyes to heaven in mute despair," pulls his prayer shawl over his face in a gesture of prayer, and asks to leave ("Remember Me" 295). Permission is granted, and he walks away, down a long, empty corridor. This forced exile into an empty void is a stark reminder of the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Germans, and their continued absence in Germany--both as a population, and in the memories of the German people.

These aspects of Korter's Shylock--his reminder of a past the Germans would rather forget, and his representation of the Jewish people as a whole--largely characterize postwar productions. For many years after the war, the German people were uncomfortable with their past, and their history with the Jews. Thus, many shylocks across the decades have been adapted and appropriated to act as examinations of, and apologies for, the German role in the Holocaust. Productions of Merchant from the end of the war through at least the sixties contained "a predominance of noble Shylocks . . . half-brothers of  . . . [the wise and sympathetic] Nathan der Wiese, near-innocent victims, more sinned against than sinning" ("Post-war" 68). These productions feel almost like they are apologizing for the Holocaust, attempting to show Jews in a positive light to make up for the rampant propaganda against them only a few years before.

In a similar manner, Peter Zadek’s 1988 production, set in modern Venice, sought to erase the boundaries between Jew and Christian. Shylock, like Antonio and the other characters, was a businessman: “he wore the same dark suit, read the same newspaper, and had the same briefcase and mobile phone” (“Post-war” 69). Portia further erases the distinction with her line “Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?”—she has to ask, because there is literally no difference between the two. In this production, Shylock’s defeat was the defeat of a “businessman,” and, at the end of the scene, Shylock leaves the stage with his head held high. Zadek’s production portrays Shylock as a noble character: though he is a Jew, he is nor burdened by his people’s suffering, but continues on in spite of it. According to one critic, this haunts the Christians, for they know that, though he (and the Jews) might leave, “he will always  come back” (“Post War” 69).