ROSSOL Performing the Nation

Performing the Nation: Sports, Spectacles, andAesthetics in Germany, 1926–1936

Nadine Rossol

NATIONAL Socialist propaganda has created an aesthetic legacy that is dif-ficult to shake off. Filmic images of well-trained athletes preparing for theBerlin Olympics or mass scenes from Nazi Party rallies have become fa-

miliar features in history documentaries.While many of us lack personal memoriesof the Third Reich, we think we know what Nazism looked like.1 In addition,Walter Benjamin’s concept stressing the use of aesthetics in politics has becomecommonplace in interpretations of Nazi representation.2 “Gesamtkunstwerk ofpolitical aesthetics” or “formative aesthetics” are terms used to analyze festivitiesand spectacles in the Third Reich, suggesting that the Nazis developed a specificstyle with a focus on aesthetics, symbols, and festive set-up.3 This allegedly dis-tinctive Nazi style is emphasized even more by contrasting it favorably with cel-ebrations of the Weimar Republic.4 Once again, the German republicanexperience is placed in “the antechamber of the Third Reich.”5

The division of theWeimar years into spectacular, often urban, culture and di-sastrous politics has long impeded scholars from seriously concentrating on an areain which the fusion of culture and politics was practiced—republican state

I have expanded the arguments of this article in my study Performing the Nation in Interwar Germany:Sport, Spectacle, and Political Symbolism 1926–36 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). I want tothank Moritz Föllmer, Anthony McElligott, Matthew Potter, and the anonymous reader forCentral European History for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank the Irish ResearchCouncil for the Humanities and Social Sciences in Dublin.

1HaraldWelzer, “Die Bilder derMacht und die Ohnmacht der Bilder, ” inDas Gedächtnis der Bilder.Ästhetik und Nationalsozialismus, ed. Harald Welzer (Berlin: diskord, 1995), 168–169.

2Walter Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (Frankfurt:Surhkamp, 1963).

3Hans Ulrich Thamer, “Faszination und Manipulation. Die Nürnberger Reichsparteitage derNSDAP,” in Das Fest, ed. Uwe Schultz (Munich: Beck, 1988), 354; Ulrich Herrmann and UlrichNassen, eds., Formative Ästhetik im Nationalsozialismus (Weinheim: Beltz, 1994).

4Hagen Schulze,Otto Braun oder Preußens demokratische Sendung. Eine Biographie (Frankfurt amMain:Propyläen, 1977), 754; Lothar Kettenacker, “Sozialpsychologische Aspekte der Führerherrschaft,” inNationalsozialistische Diktatur 1933–1945, ed. Karl-Dietrich Bracher et al. (Bonn: Bundeszentrale fürpolitische Bildung, 1986), 114; Gerhard Paul, Aufstand der Bilder. Die NS-Propaganda vor 1933(Bonn: Dietz, 1992), 54; Hagen Schulze, Weimar 1917–1933 (Berlin: Siedler, 1994), 123.

5Anthony McElligott, “Introduction,” in Weimar Germany, ed. Anthony McElligott (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2009), 1–25 (here 4–6).

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representation. In the light of current research new approaches question the conceptof a “doomed” republic and turn away from presenting Weimar democracy as anaccumulation of mistakes, shortcomings, and failures.6 Furthermore, scholars haveshown that even contemporaries attached multilayered meanings to the term“crisis,” sometimes linking it to positive future opportunities and options.7

Challenging the notion that the Nazis invented the use of aesthetics for thestaging of their mass events, I argue instead that the time span from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s can be considered as a whole in regard to the develop-ment of political aesthetics and festive culture. While the importance of rituals,symbols, and festivities as means of constructing and expressing identity hasbeen examined in detail for Imperial Germany and, in parts, for the ThirdReich, the Weimar years remain largely ignored in this area.8 Festivities and po-litical symbols in the 1920s and 1930s have been presented as exemplifyingopposing milieus in a fragmented German society with a focus on the politicalextremes.9 It is equally important, however, to examine the festive culture ofthe Weimar state and of groups, parties, and organizations that supported repub-lican democracy. After all, Weimar Germany was much more than a republicsandwiched between political extremes, and it certainly was not “a republicwithout republicans.”10

6See Nadine Rossol, “Visualising the Republic—Unifying the Nation: TheReichskunstwart and theCreation of Republican Representaion and Identity in Weimar Germany” (Ph.D. diss., University ofLimerick, 2006); Manuela Achilles, “Re-Forming the Reich: Symbolics of the Republican Nation inWeimar Germany” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2005); Bernd Buchner, Um nationale undrepublikanische Identität. Die Sozialdemokratie und der Kampf um die politischen Symbole in der WeimarerRepublik (Bonn: Dietz, 2001).

7See Moritz Föllmer, Rüdiger Graf, and Per Leo, “Einleitung. Die Kultur der Krise in derWeimarer Republik,” in Die “Krise” der Weimarer Republik. Zur Kritik eines Deutungsmusters, ed.Moritz Föllmer and Rüdiger Graf (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2005), 9–41; Rüdiger Graf, DieZukunft der Weimarer Republik. Krisen und Zukunftsaneignungen in Deutschland 1918–1933 (Munich:Oldenbourg, 2008).

8For festivities in nineteenth-century Germany, see, for example, Manfred Hettling and Paul Nolte,eds., Bürgerliche Feste. Symbolische Formen politischen Handelns im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993); Gottfried Korff, “Volkskultur und Arbeiterkultur. Überlegungenam Beispiel der sozialistischen Maifesttradition,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 1 (1979): 83–102; GerhardSchneider, Politische Feste in Hannover 1866–1918, Teil 1. Politische Feste der Arbeiter (Hannover: Hahn,1995); Dieter Düding et al., eds., Offentliche Festkultur. Politische Feste in Deutschland von der Aufklärungbis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1988). See also Michael Maurer, “Feste und Feiern als hi-storische Forschungsgegenstand,” Historische Zeitschrift 253 (1991): 101–130.

9Detlef Lehnert and Klaus Mergerle, eds., Politische Identität und nationale Gedenktage. Zur politischenIdentität in der Weimarer Republik (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989); Peter Fritzsche,Rehearsals forFascism: Populism and Political Mobilization inWeimar Germany (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1990);Gerhard Paul, “Krieg der Symbole. Formen und Inhalte des symbolpublizistischen Bürgerkrieges1932,” in Berlin 1932. Das letzte Jahr der Weimarer Republik, ed. Diethart Kerbs and Henrick Stahr(Berlin: Ed. Hentrich, 1992), 27–55; Richard Albrecht, Symbolkrieg in Deutschland 1932. EineHistorisch-Biografische Skizze (Siegen: Muk, 1986).

10For the importance of republican symbols and republican representation on the local level and bylocal citizens, see Nadine Rossol, “Flaggenkrieg am Badestrand. Lokale Möglichkeiten repräsentativerMitgestaltung in derWeimarer Republik,”Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 7, no. 8 (2008): 617–637.

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A stress on rhythm, moving bodies, wholeness, and national communitycharacterized the Weimar Republic and strongly influenced festivities, parades,sporting events, and spectacles organized by the republican state. By the mid-1930s the public had been well accustomed to the use of aesthetics in massevents staged by political organizations and the state alike. Grounding what isoften termed “Nazi aesthetics” in the time of the republic changes commonlyassumed ideas on state representation inWeimar andNazi Germany. The republicwas more keen on and successful with the staging of political spectacles than isgenerally assumed. But for this very reason, it paved the way for the ThirdReich’s successes in the same realm.

Spaces, Bodies, and Discipline: Occupying Public Space

Public spaces have always been important political arenas. They can be filled withbodies serving as carriers of political demands and convictions. At the beginningof the twentieth century, the Social Democrats used peaceful street demon-strations to manifest their claims of greater political participation in ImperialGermany. Therefore, discipline and order were essential to show that one wasto be a reliable agent in the state.11 Peaceful Social Democratic demonstrationsconsciously used the impact that masses of bodies made on spectators. Bodylanguage became an important tool as well as the spatial dimension of theevent, the style of walking, the clothing of the demonstrators, and the soundsof their steps.12 Frequently, demonstrations marched from assembly points inworking-class neighborhoods to wealthier quarters of the city or to sites ofnational importance. This was to imprint political connotations symbolically onthese areas.13 At the turn of the century, the visible occupation of urban spacein Imperial Berlin was not solely the privilege of the monarchy. Yet, theSocial Democrats hardly ever managed to stage their demonstrations at thecenter of monarchical power around the city palace, the main street Unter denLinden, the Lustgarten, and the Brandenburg Gate due to the heavy policing ofthis area.14

In the Weimar Republic, the constitution guaranteed the right of assemblyoutdoors without previous permission as long as people assembled peacefullyand unarmed. Police authorities could prevent assemblies and demonstrations if

11Bernd J. Warneken, Als die Deutschen demonstrieren lernten. Das Kulturmuster “friedlicheStraßendemonstration” im preußischen Wahlrechtskampf 1908–1910 (Tübingen: Ludwig-Uhland-Inst.für Empir. Kulturwissenschaft, 1986), 86–88.

12For an analysis of the body language in working-class demonstrations, see Bernd J. Warneken,“Massentritt. Zur Körpersprache von Demonstranten im Kaiserreich,” in Transformation derArbeiterkultur, ed. Peter Assion (Marburg: Jonas, 1986), 64–79.

13Ibid., 66.14See Thomas Lindenberger, Straßenpolitik. Zur Sozialgeschichte der öffentlichen Ordnung in Berlin

1900–1914 (Bonn: Dietz, 1995).

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they endangered public safety, if violent clashes with others could be expected, orif the traffic was to be seriously interrupted. Theoretically, demonstrations andassemblies forbidden for these reasons should only have been suspended tempo-rarily. In reality, restrictive measures regarding demonstrations and assemblies,especially of the extreme left, remained in practice for months, sometimesyears. The early and the last years of the republic, periods characterized by politicaland economic crises, saw the most suspensions of demonstrations in WeimarGermany.15 A study of the middle period of the 1920s during which demon-strations and outdoors assemblies were allowed, however, will illustrate howthe republican state made conscious efforts to participate in these public demon-strations of power.Spatial aspects—for example the route of a parade—and the bodily presence

within the urban environment played an important part in the Weimar years,too. Parades, marches, and assemblies held by political parties, war veteransocieties, paramilitary organizations, and various other groups characterizedpublic life in 1920s Germany.16 They were manifestations of power and strength-ened the feeling of unity within a group while creating a strong and coherentimpression to the outside. Republicans who claimed that the inclusiveness oftheir parades distinguished them from similar events in the Kaiserreich denied aclear-cut division into participants on the one hand and spectators on theother.17 Festive representative forms, aimed at staging a “national body,”were fre-quently promoted as a rhythmical experience for participants and viewers alike.Most demonstrations, however, only created a feeling of rhythm for those activelyinvolved in marching down the street.18

Demonstrations and parades were not left to the political extremes in WeimarGermany. The growing strength of the republican war veteran organizationReichsbanner schwarz-rot-gold, founded in 1924 to defend the republic and tomobilize its supporters, provided the organizers of republican festivities withthousands of men orderly walking down the streets and carrying black-red-gold flags.19 This was an asset the republican state was keen to utilize and, conse-quently, included the Reichsbanner in state festivities. The most important ofthese were the Constitution Day celebrations staged in honor of the signing of

15Marie Luise Ehls, Protest und Propaganda. Demonstrationen in Berlin zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997), 27–40, 436.

16For a detailed examination of demonstration of different political groups inWeimar Germany, seeibid.

17Visually captured in the title page of this issue of the Reichsbanner journal: “Einst und Jetzt. EinVolkfest 1913 in Berlin, Verfassungsfeier der Republikaner 1925 in Berlin,” Illustrierte ReichsbannerZeitung (IRZ), no. 34, Aug. 22, 1925.

18Inge Baxmann, Mythos Gemeinschaft. Körper- und Tanzkulturen in der Moderne (Munich: Fink,2000), 219.

19See Karl Rohe, Das Reichsbanner schwarz-rot-gold. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Struktur derpolitischen Kampfverbände zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1966).


the Weimar Constitution on August 11, 1919. Although the day was not turnedinto a public holiday—a majority in the German parliament never voted for it—itwas celebrated annually by the national government from 1921 onward. Over theyears, festive routines and traditions developed, and Constitution Day festivitiesgrew in size and scale.20

A regular highlight of Constitution Day celebrations in the capital was a torch-lit march passing the city palace and the Lustgarten, along the street Unter denLinden, to the Brandenburg Gate and the parliament buildings. In so doing,the republican parade took the most public route through Berlin. It passedsymbols of republican power and marched through the center of formerImperial authority where previously only military parades and monarchical festiv-ities had been allowed to take place. In August 1927 the first big Constitution Dayparade was staged in Berlin and included 12,000 participants, half of themReichsbanner members. The other 6,000 participants were a mixed group con-sisting of members of the unions, the German Association of Civil Servants, theJewish War Veteran Organization, and Berlin choirs to name the numericallylargest organizations.21 In the following years, the parade increased continuously.A year later, the number of participants had almost tripled to 30,000. Whilethe Reichsbanner once again mobilized the largest single group with 10,000members, the police listed sixteen other organizations. Unions and theAssociation of Civil Servants participated again alongside Berlin’s fire brigadewith 700 participants and the SocialistWorking Class Youth with 2,500 people.22

Before the event, a meeting between representatives of municipal offices, gov-ernmental ministries, and the police demonstrated how seriously the issue of arepublican parade as a means of state representation was taken. Suggestions onhaving four separate marches, some deliberately leading through the working-class areas of Berlin to reach the people there, and then uniting them into onebig parade in front of theReichstag building were debated. The impression, every-one agreed, would be overwhelming.23 Eventually, the plans were reversed: onebig paradewas held that at the end broke up into three to four smaller ones march-ing through different quarters of the capital.24

Following the principles of republican planners, who wanted to organizeparades with an inclusive character, mirroring the inclusiveness of the newdemocracy, liberal newspapers enthusiastically described Constitution Dayparades as visual representations of the whole nation. In August 1928, theBerliner Tageblattwrote, “with torches andmusic they walk in the same rhythmical

20See Fritz Schellack, Nationalfeiertage in Deutschland 1871–1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1990);Rossol, “Visualising the Republic,” 131–161; Achilles, “Re-Forming the Reich,” 233–304.

21Landesarchiv Berlin (hereafter LAB), A Pr Rep. 30, C Tit. 90, 7530, 317.22LAB, A Pr Br Rep. 030 C Tit. 90, 7531, 34.23Ibid., 6–10.24Ibid., 13.

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step, young couples, children, lads with their girlfriends, men and women from allclasses of society and from all professions . . . Who has watched this, has not onlyseen an organized parade, but the celebration of the whole nation and the con-fession of this nation to the republic.”25 The Reichsbanner pointed out that itwas the German people who were marching with the republican organizationat its core.26 In so doing, the organization reacted to antirepublican reproachesthat claimed that the general public did not care about the young democracyand that republican parades only mobilized Reichsbanner members.27 Filmsand photographs of these festivities, however, contradict this interpretation.Streets were packed with spectators, and children sometimes tried to accompanythe parades by running alongside them. On the other hand, the interpretation ofan inclusive event, resembling the republican nation consisting of equals, was notquite accurate, either. Films also depict a division between men marching, manyof them in Reichsbanner uniforms, and spectators observing from thesidewalks.28

Critical voices lamented that Constitution Day parades imitated a militaristicstyle. On the tenth anniversary of the republic in 1929, the left-wing journalistCarl von Ossietzky cautioned that the Weimar state was fooling itself when itlightheartedly equated big republican parades with deep-rooted democraticbeliefs. He criticized, “What could have been a celebration of all freedom-loving citizens has turned into a parade day for republicans . . . its lack of originalstyle recalls the day of the Reich foundation, only this time in the summer.”29

The political right formulated similar criticism. Friedrich Everling from theGerman Nationalist People’s Party stated that the Reichsbanner “had borrowedits uniforms from Hitler, its colors from democracy, possessed degenerated gen-erals as leaders, and exercised a discipline resembling a new kind of militarism.”30

In August 1932 the nationalist war-veteran organization Stahlhelm stated that eventhe “antimilitaristic” left paid tribute to the spirit of order and discipline bycopying the appearance of the Stahlhelm. According to its journal, theseactions were in vain because Stahlhelm marches characterized by discipline,

25Cited in Friederike Schubert, “Zehn Jahre Weimar. Eine Republik blickt zurück,” in Griff nachder Deutungsmacht. Zur Geschichte der Geschichtspolitik in Deutschland, ed. Heinrich A. Winkler(Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004), 134.

26“Nachklänge zum Verfassungstag,”Das Reichsbanner 28 (Aug. 26, 1928).27Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 423, stenographische Berichte June 13, 1928-Feb. 4, 1929, 7,

session, July 10, 1928, 129–130.28Archiv der sozialen Demokratie (hereafter AdsD) Bonn, Reichsbannerfilms no. 381 Der

Reichsbanner Gautag zu Dortmund 1925; no. 382 Reichsbanner Tag in Magdeburg Mai 1929;no. 15454 Die Zehnjahrfeier der Deutschen Reichsverfassung.

29Carl von Ossietzky, “Zum Geburtstag der Verfassung,” Die Weltbühne 32 (Aug. 6, 1929):189–190.

30Friedrich Everling, Die Flaggenfrage (Berlin: H. Paetel, 1927), 44.


order, and obedience reflected the principles of the nationalist war-veteran orga-nization.31 Despite the criticism, the Stahlhelm revealed a little uneasiness whenrecognizing that the political opponent was up to par.

With hindsight, Friedrich Stampfer, editor of the Social Democratic newspaperVorwärts, wrote about the importance of the Reichsbanner to visualize the repub-lic, “The times in which the monarchists could call the new state a republicwithout republicans were over. Now the republicans were present; visible intheir uniforms, they marched and played their drums and pipes . . . New repub-lican conviction and old German preference for uniforms and militaristic stylewere combined to its own representative form.”32 Discipline and militaristicappearance became important for the republican movement to match the com-petition on the far right and left from the late 1920s onward. Clear disciplinaryguidelines for the participants of parades, however, had been commonplacesince Imperial times. Polite and disciplined behavior was expected ofReichsbanner men anyway, but in particular when they were part of a parade.Smoking, for example, was tolerated on other occasions but not when the menmarched through the city because “it destroys the overall impression.”33

Nevertheless, it was obvious for most commentators in Weimar Germany thatthe Reichsbanner’s “militaristic appeal” was far behind other organizations. Alack of “goose-stepping” characterized Reichsbanner parades and instead therewas cheering and singing. Carl Misch rightly reminded his readers inSeptember 1928 that the Communists did not criticize the Reichsbanner for itsappearance, but for its support of Weimar democracy.34

Public space did not remain uncontested in Weimar Germany. To turn thefleeting moment of an annually staged event into a longer-lasting impression, po-litical organizations and parties linked urban space to their respective political nar-ratives. For republicans the cities of Weimar, as site of the national assembly, andFrankfurt am Main, commemorating German democracy in 1848/49, could beeasily integrated into a republican founding narrative.35 When cities could not beexplicitly linked to a republican cause, the Reichsbanner applied a tactic also usedby other political organizations; it created a special importance. In 1926 theConstitution Day celebration of the Reichsbanner took place in Nuremberg.The city, situated in antirepublican Bavaria, was celebrated as the first Bavarian

31Bundesarchiv (hereafter BArch) Berlin, R1501/125976, Stahlhelm Pressedienst, “Der Sinn desStahlhelmaufmarsches,” Aug. 29, 1932, 229–231.

32Friedrich Stampfer, Die 14 Jahre der ersten deutschen Republik (Karlsbad: Graphia, 1936), 365.33Sächsisches Staatsarchiv, Staatsarchiv Leipzig, 20031, PP-St.30, Programmheft: Republikanischer

Tag am 3.–4. Juli 1926 in Leipzig, 69.34Carl Misch, “Mit der Windjacke,” Die Weltbühne 39 (Sept. 25, 1928): 477–479.35“Bundesverfassungsfeier 1928 in Frankfurt,” Das Reichsbanner 20 (July 1, 1928); “Verfassungstag-

Volkstag,” IRZ, no. 33, Aug. 18, 1928; Der Heimatdienst IX, no. 3 (Feb. 1929).

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city to host a big republican event. With celebrations in Nuremberg, so themessage went, the republican organization had successfully conquered enemyground.36 In reality, the impressive festivities there had less to do with havingwon over opponents than by gaining the support of Nuremberg’s mayorHermann Luppe.37 The Reichsbanner depended on this municipal support forthe staging of its festivities. Consequently, the political conviction of mayorsand other members of the local elite was an important factor.38 Despite theReichsbanner success, the case of Nuremberg illustrates that the interpretationof urban space never remained unchallenged. Two years after theReichsbanner’s celebrations, the Nazis held their party rally there. In the ThirdReich Nuremberg turned into “the city of the Nazi Party rallies.”The population of theWest German city of Koblenz, situated where theMosel

River flows into the Rhine, experienced the interpretative scope of urban space attwo mass gatherings in 1930 and 1931. In early October 1930, after the foreigntroops that had been stationed in Koblenz and the Rhineland since the end ofWorld War I withdrew during the summer, the Stahlhelm held its annualmeeting in the city. Marches, parades, and oaths of loyalty to the Germannation characterized the day.39 The Stahlhelm left no doubt concerning itsnationalist message and stressed that Germany’s former soldiers had gathered inKoblenz to defend the area.40 According to the right-wing organization, theFrench could not be trusted. A nationalist newspaper described the appeal ofthe day: “The area that used to be full of foreign soldiers was now filled withthe thunder of disciplined steps of former German soldiers and healthyyouth.”41 The title page of the Stahlhelm’s journal, announcing the event,showed a soldier with a torch under the caption “Germany, we are on guard,”and next to it was a quotation from Nikolaus Becker’s 1840s piece on theRhine: “They shall not have the free German Rhine until its waves bury thelast man’s remains.”42

A year later, in August 1931, the Reichsbanner staged its Constitution Day cel-ebration in Koblenz and presented a more peaceful message. The organization’sjournal wrote, “When German men meet at the liberated Rhine to swear an oathof loyalty to the republic, we want to look westward. We are not seeking revengebut brotherhood, and we reach out for the hands of the French people.”43

Republican newspapers stressed the different kind of political demonstration

36“Die Gewalt der Idee. Nürnberg,” Das Reichsbanner 17 (Sept. 1, 1926).37For Constitution Day celebrations in Nuremberg, see Stadtarchiv Nürnberg, C7 I, 104.38See Achim Bonte, Werbung für Weimar? Öffentlichkeitsarbeit von Großstadtverwaltungen in der

Weimarer Republik (Mannheim: Palatium, 1997).39BArch Berlin, R1501/125976, 116.40“Reichsfrontsoldatentag,” Der Stahlhelm (Oct. 5, 1930).41“Der Stahlhelm am Rhein,” Berliner Börsen Zeitung, Sept. 29, 1930.42“Deutschland, wir wachen,” Der Stahlhelm (Oct. 5, 1930).43“Republikaner am Rhein,” Das Reichsbanner 30 (July 25, 1931).


Koblenz had experienced this time.44 Both organizations connected their eventsto the “liberation” of the Rhineland. But the Stahlhelm used the city on theRhine for anti-French propaganda, while the Reichsbanner presented Koblenzas a symbol of European peace and future Franco-German friendship.Furthermore, they also presented very different interpretations of World WarI’s legacy. The Stahlhelm clearly stressed that there was still the need to defendGerman soil, while the Reichsbanner suggested that soldiers, whether on theFrench or the German side, aimed for peace and friendship.

Sports and Spectacles in Weimar Germany

Officials organizing Constitution Day celebrations realized quickly that theinclusion of sporting activities enhanced the day’s appeal. One of the most prom-inent advocates of republican state representation and, indeed, the personresponsible for giving cultural and artistic shape to Weimar democracy was theReichskunstwart Edwin Redslob. His small office was created by the republicanstate in 1920 and linked to the Reich Ministry of the Interior. TheReichskunstwart was involved in the creation of new state symbols, the erectionof monuments, and the staging of celebrations.45 Redslob recommended in April1923 that in order to turn state celebrations into popular festivities, “The youthshould celebrate Constitution Day with dances, singing, and sports competitionsbecause this will help to root the commemoration of the republican constitutionin their minds.” He suggested that celebrations should take place in all stadiumsand sports fields of the country.46

Indeed, many Berlin schools located in the same district joined together tostage sports competitions on Constitution Day. In August 1929, the policereported a sports festival of the schools in Berlin’s working-class districtPrenzlauer Berg with more than 10,000 participants. The schools there alreadytraditionally celebrated Constitution Day celebrations at the common sportsground. Starting with 5,000 participants in 1926, the number had doubled inthree years.47 Sometimes, however, this strategy backfired. For republican festiv-ities in August 1928, the Prussian state government had suggested that sportingactivities as part of the celebrations could commemorate the 150th anniversary

44“Verfassungsfeier des Reichsbanner. Der Tag am Deutschen Eck,” Vorwärts, Aug. 10, 1931, 370;“Die Reichsbannerkundgebung am Rhein,” Frankfurter Zeitung, Aug. 11, 1931.

45Rossol, “Visualising the Republic”; ChristianWelzbacher, Edwin Redslob. Biographie eines unver-besserlichen Idealisten (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 2009); Winfried Speitkamp, “Erziehung zur Nation.Reichskunstwart, Kulturpolitik und Identitätsstiftung im Staat von Weimar,” in NationalesBewusstsein und kollektive Identität, vol. 2, ed. Helmut Berding (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,1994), 541–580; Annegret Heffen, Der Reichskunstwart. Geschichte einer Kulturbehörde 1919–1933(Essen: Die blaue Eule, 1986).

46BArch Berlin, R1501/116871, 9–12.47Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv Potsdam (hereafter BLHA), Rep. 34, 994, 18. For 1929,

see LAB, A Pr Br Rep. 030, C Tit. 90, 7531, 367.

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of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn.48 Jahn was admired as the founding father of Germangymnastics and stood for the combination of German nationalism, sports, andyouth in the nineteenth century. Antirepublican schoolteachers seized the oppor-tunity and turned the gymnast Jahn into the sole focus of the day while neglectingto mention theWeimar Constitution. Newspapers brought these incidents to theattention of the school authorities.49

Sporting activities also strongly influenced the political aesthetics of the timewith a focus on masses, order, and bodies. In the summer of 1925 theWorkers’ Olympics were staged in Frankfurt. This international event was pro-moted as serving the reconciliation among the peoples in contrast to “the bour-geois Olympics” that allegedly “pit nations against each other.”50 Frankfurt’smunicipal authorities supported the sports festival, and working-class publicationsgratefully praised Frankfurt’s generosity, reminding its readers of the city’s role asthe “cradle of democracy” in 1848.51

While the Workers’ Olympics included the traditional components of anysports festival, there were also obvious differences from other sporting events.For example, the performance of the festive mass play “Struggle for the Earth,”written by Alfred Auerbach, a well-established member of Frankfurt’s theaterhouse, illustrates how attempts were made to offer more than sporting activities.The play was staged in Frankfurt’s stadium before 50,000 people, with mass choirsand acting groups of Frankfurt’s two theaters as well as Socialist youth organi-zations making up the cast.52 A contemporary publication described that “Thisis the first short version of a modern play that, performed outdoors, speaks tothe masses. Mass choirs bring to life the struggle of the masses.”53

The play’s content was reminiscent of left-wing narratives. Unlike the stagingof spectacles in the late 1920s, which concentrated greatly on visual impressions,the focus of “Struggle for the Earth” was on its political message. Different roleswere allocated to several choir groups, including “the Choir of the Powerful” and“the Choir of the Diplomats.” Two groups fought for dominance and power onearth: the powerful political and financial elites against the working-class masses.The powerful had miscalculated, however, and war broke out between the

48BLHA, Rep. 994, 287.49“Immer wieder Jahn . . . die Verfassungsfeiern der Schulen,” Berliner Tageblatt 381, Aug. 14, 1928;

“Turnvater Jahn als Kulisse,” Berliner Tageblatt, 380, Aug. 13, 1928. See also Thomas Koinzer, “DieRepublikfeiern. Weimarer Republik, Verfassungstag und staatsbürgerliche Erziehung an denhöheren Schulen Preußens in der zweiten Hälfte der 1920er Jahre,” Bildung und Erziehung 58(2005): 89–93.

50“Der Gedanke unseres Olympia,” Olympiade 3 (September 1924).51Hans Fenz, Das erste Arbeiter Olympia in Frankfurt am Main 1925 (Graz: Kammer für Arbeiter und

Angestellte Steiermarks, 1926), 20.52Fritz J. Geisthövel, Die Arbeiter-Olympiade 1925. Ein Kapitel aus der Geschichte der

Arbeitersportbewegung (Examensarbeit Pädagogische Hochschule Rheinland, Cologne, 1978),119–122.

53Festbuch. Arbeiter-Olympiade 1925 (Frankfurt: Union-Dr. und Verlags-Anst., 1925), 58.


nations. After the war had destroyed everything, the youth was presented as newhope for the future. The play concluded with a call for unity among all those whowanted to help to shape the future. The play was concluded by Schiller’s “Ode toJoy” with the audience joining in.54 Thus, the mass play at the Workers’Olympics finished exactly with the same musical piece that was to be used atthe festive play in the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the Third Reich.55

In addition to the play, the opening ceremony also made the political frame-work of the 1925 event clear. Accompanied by the music of the socialistanthem “The International,” athletes from several countries entered thestadium, which was filled with 45,000 spectators. The athletes carried red flagswith the name of their countries.56 After the athletes had assembled, officialspeeches were delivered by representatives of international working-class sportsorganizations, which stressed the principles of the Workers’ Olympics, namelypeace, solidarity, and workers’ community.57 Mass gymnastic exercises werealso part of the opening ceremony. The performance was characterized by uni-formity of dress, good posture, and synchronized movement.58 A commemora-tive book described the gymnastic mass exercises in Frankfurt: “8,000 gymnastsin twelve columns marched into the stadium like powerful battalions of the pro-letariat behind a sea of red flags . . . well-trained harmonic bodies, only dressedwith short black trousers, stood stiff like stone pillars or waved in the rhythm ofthe music. It was an unforgettable sight of health, life, and strength.”59 Tocreate such an impression, the gymnasts had to follow meticulously a blueprintthat indicated where to stand, when to start, and how to position themselveson the stadium ground.60

Gymnastic exercises illustrate a feature characteristic of mass events staged bythe working class in general. Orderly masses came to represent the disciplinedworker’s body. The stress on clean clothing was part of this interpretation,which was designed to counteract bourgeois fears of dirt and filth.61 A yearafter the Workers’ Olympics, the nationalist Kampfspiele were staged inCologne. In addition to sports competitions, the event also included mass exer-cises described similarly to the ones performed in Frankfurt: “2,000 gymnasts

54Ibid., 74–76. For the lyrics of the play, see AdsD, Bonn, A. Auerbach, Kampf um die Erde(Frankfurt: n.p., 1925).

55Henning Eichberg et al., eds., Massenspiele, NS Thingspiele, Arbeiterweihe und olympischesZeremoniell (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1977), 146, 150.

56Geisthövel, Die Arbeiter-Olympiade 1925, 67.57Fenz, Das erste Arbeiter Olympia, 24–25.58Geisthövel, Die Arbeiter-Olympiade 1925, 108.59Fenz, Das erste Arbeiter Olympia, 78.60Erinnerungsschrift. Erste Internationale Arbeiter Olympiade 24.–26. Juli 1925 (Frankfurt: Union-Dr.

und Verlags-Anst., 1925), 98–103.61Gerhard Hauk, “Rührt Euch, Links um, Stillgestanden. Die Frei- und Ordnungsübungen der

Arbeiterturner,” in Illustrierte Geschichte des Arbeitersports, ed. Hans Joachim Teichler and GerhardHauk (Bonn: Dietz, 1987), 131–139.

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entered in twelve rows . . . the impression was incredible: a sea of men perfectlyperforming their exercises to the music.”62 Clearly, the aesthetic appeal of orderlymasses could be linked to several political factions.Critical voices within the workers’ sports movement requested that more

attention be placed on spontaneity and rhythm rather than on the perfection ofpreviously practiced exercises. Simultaneously performed mass exercisesresembled drill and impeded personal liberation, so the criticism went.63 Fromthe mid-1920s onward, youth organizations of left-wing sports associationsintensified their demands to replace traditional mass exercises with movementsthat shifted the focus from precision to rhythmic self-expression.64 It took theworkers’ sports organizations until 1929, however, to put some of these ideasinto practice.Contemporary discourses in the Weimar years used the words community,

masses, and rhythm for numerous fields. Gymnastic exercises as well as synchro-nized steps at parades have been described as rhythmical experiences. But manydancers and choreographers connected rhythm to continuous flowing move-ments. Parades and sports exercises, on the other hand, represented cadencedue to their more static nature.65 They were interpreted as dominating publicspace without inviting the involvement of others. Movement groups and masschoirs were believed to achieve a feeling of involvement because rhythm, asunderstood in dance theory, suggests a less rigid distinction between participantsand spectators.66 In contrast to the critical eye on sports, many theater directorsand choreographers were interested in the spatial dimensions of the stadium.They believed that their stages and playhouses had become too small.67

These concepts heavily influenced republican state representation. It was nocoincidence that the mass spectacles commissioned by the Weimar state and per-formed at Constitution Day festivities in 1929 and 1930 were characterized bymovement groups and mass choirs. The aesthetic appeal of trained bodies per-forming gymnastic exercises was replaced with a focus on choir and movementgroups of schoolchildren and amateurs performing flowing movements. Whilenowadays mass plays are often associated with the political aesthetics of totalitarian

62Josef Schmitz, “Die deutsche Turnerschaft bei den deutschen Kampfspielen,” in II. deutscheKampfspiele Köln am Rhein, ed. Fritz Frommel (Stuttgart, 1926), 35.

63Geisthövel, Die Arbeiter-Olympiade 1925, 110–111.64Jörg Wetterich, Bewegungskultur und Körpererziehung in der sozialistischen Jugendarbeit 1893–1933

(Münster: Lit, 1993), 295–296.65Yvonne Hardt, Politische Körper. Ausdruckstanz, Choreographien des Protests und die Arbeiterkultur in

der Weimarer Republik (Münster: Lit, 2004), 39–43.66MatthiasWarstat,Theatrale Gemeinschaften. Zur Festkultur der Arbeiterbewegung 1918–33 (Tübingen:

Francke, 2005), 288–291.67Ibid., 307–361; Erika Fischer-Lichte, “Einleitung: Die Entdeckung des Zuschauers.

Paradigmenwechsel auf dem Theater des 20. Jahrhunderts,” in Die Entdeckung des Zuschauers.Paradigmenwechsel auf dem Theater des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Erika Fischer-Lichte (Tübingen: Francke,1997), 15–23.


regimes, dancers, choreographers, theater directors, and organizers of state rep-resentation attributed numerous political messages to the sense of communityexpressed in these plays.

To honor the tenth anniversary of the constitution in August 1929, parades,sports, and spectacles were brought together. For the first time, a sports stadiumwas used as the location for part of the official Constitution Day program commis-sioned by the republican state. The official ceremony, which took place in theparliament, was complemented by afternoon activities. The festivities in thestadium consisted of a mass movement play including large movement groupsand mass choirs organized by Edwin Redslob. The play’s director, Josef vonFielitz, had experience directing mass spectacles.68 Involving the youth in theplay was essential and deliberately emphasized.69 The Vossische Zeitung enthusias-tically reported that 11,000 schoolchildren participated in the mass play, althoughat the beginning only 7,000 had been envisaged. The enormous number of appli-cations had led the organizers to increase the number of participants.70 Redslobcooperated with the school authorities of the area Berlin-Brandenburg to com-municate with schools and coordinate rehearsals.71 The Reichskunstwart pointedout that a sense of community could be formed through the play and that it wasimportant for the German people to achieve a joyful self-representation.72

When the play was performed in the afternoon on Sunday, August 11, 1929,approximately 50,000 people came to see it in Berlin’s Grunewald stadium. Itschoir groups consisted of 7,500 schoolchildren and the movement groups of3,500. Altogether, 12,000 people participated.73 The play commenced withapproximately 500 workmen entering the stadium. They attempted to connectten golden poles to each other to represent the country’s unity and shouted si-multaneously, “Brother at the other side, listen. We are the people. We create apiece of work, the living Reich.” The men failed and called upon the Germanyouth for help. The youth entered colorfully dressed and proceeded toconnect the poles successfully, thus bringing the youth and the workers together.More young people entered, some dressed in black, some in red, and some ingold. They were placed so as to represent the black-red-gold flag on thestadium ground. Redslob described the impression this moment should achievein his notes: “The carriers of the republican colors form a living flag, whichtakes possession of the stadium in swinging movements. The singers accompanythese movements by waving their hands.” A children’s choir sang “Freiheit, die ichmeine,” while the “living flag” moved through the stadium. Sports groups

68Baxmann, Mythos Gemeinschaft, 220.69BArch Berlin, R32/426, 94.70“Berlin am 11. August,” Vossische Zeitung 311, July 4, 1929.71BLHA, Rep. 34, 995, 133 and 156–157.72BArch Berlin, R32/430, 30.73BArch Berlin, R601/634, 221.

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entered, and the choir groups sang the popular song “Wann wir schreiten Seit’ anSeit’.” Afterward the workmen reminded the youth of the importance of theday, and the youth swore an oath to the fatherland. In the end, the republicanflag was raised and the national anthem played. Several planes carrying republicanbanners flew over the stadium.74

Two crucial symbols expressing the authority of the republic—its flag and thenational anthem—were placed at the end of the Constitution Day celebration inthe Berlin stadium. In so doing, theWeimar Republic combined festive aestheticswith a political message suggesting that mass spectacles were a clear expression ofdemocracy. In fact, the young people in the play who helped to create unityunder the banner of the republic represented a positive symbol for the future.75

The Vossische Zeitung wrote, “and now the whole youth represents the flag, astorm of colors organized first to represent flags of the German states, and thena new group in black-red-gold presents the banner. Sports, games, and danceschange to festive oath and confession.”76

Indeed, the symbolic meaning of the play is significant. Youth and workmen,the future and the foundation of the republic, were the main participants, andunity between them was the achieved goal. The singing of the popular song“Wann wir schreiten Seit’ an Seit’” was a clear reference to the working class.Furthermore, the explicit display of the republican colors, made up by youngpeople, suggested that the republic consisted of individuals who togetherformed the state. This play was among the first in Germany in which the statesymbol was represented using people, a device the Nazis later incorporatedinto their own ceremonies by having the swastika represented in this way.77 Aphotograph in the Reichsbanner journal Illustrierte Reichsbanner Zeitung in 1926showed an American stadium in which 6,000 children formed the U.S. flag.78

Clearly, the festive culture Edwin Redslob and Josef von Fielitz wanted to useto represent the republic had an international dimension.79 In 1933 the spectacleThe Romance of a People performed before 120,000 spectators in Chicago featured

74BArch Berlin, R32/430, 81–83.75More critically Pamela E. Swett argues that the play offered a counterproductive foundingmyth in

which, after ten years of republican democracy, the national community could only be achieved withthe help of the youth. See Pamela E. Swett, “Celebrating the Republic without Republicans: TheReichsverfassungstag in Berlin 1929–32,” in Festive Culture in Germany and Europe from the Sixteenthto the Twentieth Century, ed. Karin Friedrich (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 281–302(here 288–289).

76“Das Fest der Millionen,” Vossische Zeitung, Aug. 12, 1929. The newspaperDas 12 Uhr Blatt pub-lished an impressive photograph of the moment that the children formed the republican flag. See“Verfassungsfeier im Grunewald Stadion,” Das 12 Uhr Blatt 187, Aug. 12, 1929.

77See a photograph of policemen standing in the form of a swastika in Der deutschen Polizeibeamte 7(April 1, 1934).

78“Nationalfeiertag,” IRZ, no. 33, Aug. 14, 1926.79Baxmann, Mythos Gemeinschaft, 202, 206–207.


the presentation of the U.S. flag with silk banners.80 The stated aim of creating acommunity that included both participants and spectators was, as theater historianErika Fischer-Lichte states, “the promesse de Bonheur” of all mass spectacles in theinterwar years.81

In Weimar Germany many were impressed by the play staged for the repub-lic.82 The Reich Ministry of the Interior congratulated Edwin Redslob for“the new way of celebrating in the stadium.”83 Inspired by this success, state offi-cials envisaged a mass play linked to every annual Constitution Day celebrationfrom 1929 onward. In practice, the republic staged two plays, both under thedirection of the Reichskunstwart: one to commemorate its tenth anniversaryand one to celebrate the withdrawal of troops from the Rhineland in August1930. Advanced plans for a mass spectacle in 1931, focusing on the nine-teenth-century Prussian reformer Freiherr vom Stein, were jeopardized by finan-cial cuts.84

The influences of theater, sports, and dance upon the 1929 play are obviousand can be located within a modern festive culture partly inspired by conceptsof left-wing mass performances. Many dance choreographers in the 1920s,including the extraordinary Rudolf von Laban, experimented with massamateur choirs calling for unity of dance, sound, and word.85 Redslob knewand admired Rudolf von Laban and both men even had plans to work together.86

The Reichskunstwart believed in a new festive culture that should reflect a demo-cratic community. For a radio lecture shortly before Constitution Day in August1929, Edwin Redslob formulated some of his principles regarding republicanstate representation. He pointed out that “One demands that the state beexpressed in visual terms. But one does not demand this out of the feeling ofthe spectator who wants to be entertained but out of the feeling of the citizenwho wants to be an active part of the state.”87 The Reichskunstwart was con-vinced that the German population consisted of emancipated citizens whowanted to be involved in their state and its festive representation.

Redslob stressed the importance of community and togetherness; both factors,he believed, characterized the new state. Pompous parades that divided people

80Erika Fischer-Lichte, “Massenspektakel der Zwischenkriegszeit als Krisensymptome undKrisenbewältigung,” in Krisis! Krisenszenarien, Diagnosen, Diskursstrategien, ed. Henning Grunwaldand Manfred Pfister (Munich: Fink, 2007), 114–141 (here 136).

81Ibid., 141.82BArch Berlin, R32/427, 22–23.83BArch Berlin, R32/426, 98.84Rossol, Performing the Nation in Interwar Germany, 90–101.85Hardt, Politische Körper, 209 and 245–246.86Edwin Redslob, Von Weimar nach Europa. Erlebtes und Durchdachtes (Berlin: Haude und Spener,

1972), 162–163; Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Deutsches Kunstarchiv (hereafterGNM, DKA), Nachlass Edwin Redslob, I C 12 H.

87BArch Berlin, R32/426, E. Redslob, “Die Verfassungsfeier als Ausdruck deutscher Festkultur,”79–80.

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into participants and spectators belonged to the time of the Kaiserreich. TheReichskunstwart stated, “the Constitution Day is a popular celebration thataims to overcome the sharp division between participants and audience. It hasdeveloped a form that represents the people’s state. It is a commitment of all tothe republican state.”88 In another essay, the Reichskunstwart wrote that theformer Imperial tradition of pompous self-representation had been replaced bya serious confession to state and people with the main aim of visualizing thepeople’s community: “Dedicated people come together, display the banner,find a rhythm, and find a symbolic form.”89 The Reichskunstwart believedthat this was the essence of a new festive culture that had developed in theyoung republic.Republican newspapers praised the 1929 Constitution Day celebration in

Berlin as a true expression of popular festivity. Stressing the involvement of theyouth as essential for the festive style of the republic, the journal DeutscheRepublik wrote, “The Imperial State borrowed from the colorfulness of the mili-tary for its celebrations; the republican state asks, and this question honors thestate, the young people to bring the brightness of their festivities to state celebra-tions.”90 In fact, the Constitution Day festivities had been steered in an impressiveand spectacular direction. Elements of left-wing festive culture were taken up andincorporated into a republican spectacle commissioned by the Weimar state. Atthe same time the spectacle remained inclusive. Unlike its Communist andSocialist predecessors, the mass play of August 1929 did not call for revolutionarychange or represent enemies of the republic but stressed community and whole-ness within an unambiguous republican setting.

Thingspiele and the Berlin Olympics in the Third Reich

Aesthetic forms used in the republic were continued, expanded, and perfected inthe Nazi period. Institutionalized through the newly created Ministry ofPropaganda, the resources and personnel the Nazi state allocated to festive rep-resentation far surpassed those of the republic. This did not mean “better” festiv-ities per se, but provided a different organizational framework for matters ofpublic representation and propaganda. Unlike the pluralistic Weimar democracy,the Nazi state did not allow for alternative or opposing views challenging its inter-pretative authority of the nation’s symbolic landscape. The best-known massevents staged by the Nazis were the party rallies in Nuremberg. In contrast tothe commonmodern perception, the Nazi Party rallies did not create aestheticallyoriginal features. Instead they combined and expanded, often on an unprece-dented scale, well-known elements characteristic of political assemblies. Parades

88Ibid., 96.89BArch Berlin, R32/169,“Feier als Ausdruck der Selbstachtung des Volkes,” 114–115.90“Das Volk feiert seine Verfassung,” Deutsche Republik 46 (Aug. 17, 1929): 1434.


and—increasingly so—popular entertainment determined the days inNuremberg, as the organizers quickly realized that entertaining activities sustainedpeople’s interest.91 Nazi Party rallies provided a National Socialist interpretationof urban space as well as a demonstration of strength, community, and subordina-tion. Essentially, the rallies remained characterized by the premodern meetingbetween the leader and his followers. The emphasis on Hitler walking throughNuremberg for people to see him as well as the time-consuming and exhaustingparades were part of this concept.92

Unlike National Socialist Party rallies, Nazi attempts to create their own masstheater, the Thingspiel, have long been considered a spectacular failure. In fact, theThingspiel idea was rapidly abandoned after only a few years in the mid-1930s.The notion of involving large groups of people in mass spectacles performed out-doors in arenas especially designed for these events fascinated organizers of festiv-ities in the early years of the Third Reich. While its links with ancient andGermanic performing traditions were stressed, the Thingspiel made use ofmany concepts characteristic of the period’s public performance culture,namely the involvement of the masses, the choreography of bodies, as well asthe community of participants and spectators. Preferred venues were open-airstages embedded into scenic landscape. Focusing exclusively on the ThirdReich, the Thingspiel movement was a rather short-lived experiment.93 Butwhen interpreted as linked to debates on reformed performance spaces, masschoreographies, and the unity of different art forms, the Thingspiel comes to rep-resent the concluding phase of concepts discussed much longer than merely from1933 to 1936.94 This is not to suggest that the Thingspiel movement was notextraordinary in particular with regard to the architectural design of its theaterarenas.

From 1933 to 1935/36 the Thingspiel movement was strongly supported—financially and ideologically—by the propaganda ministry and institutionalizedin the Reichsbund der deutschen Freilicht- und Volksschauspiele. As Otto Laubiger,the head of the Reichsbund, formulated in July 1933, “Our German playwrightsneed to be aware that we want new plays that express the rhythm of our time; the

91For a detailed examination of Nazi Party Rallies, see Markus Urban, Die Konsensfabrik. Funktionund Wahrnehmung der NS Reichsparteitage 1933–41 (Göttingen: V & R Unipress, 2007); Rossol,Performing the Nation in Interwar Germany, 102–108.

92Urban, Die Konsensfabrik, 28–29, 419.93Henning Eichberg and Robert A. Jones, “The Nazi Thingspiel,”NewGerman Critique 11 (Spring

1977): 133–150 (here 137). The most detailed work is Rainer Stommer, Die inszenierteVolksgemeinschaft. Die Thing-Bewegung im Dritten Reich (Marburg: Jonas, 1985). For a short overview,see William Niven, “The birth of Nazi drama?,” in Theatre under the Nazis, ed. John London(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 54–95.

94Jörg Bochow, “Berliner Theater im Dritten Reich. Repräsentative Ästhetik oder/und ‘Bewahrerkultureller Werte’? Linien und Brüche der Moderne im Berliner Theater der dreißiger Jahre,” inBerliner Theater im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Erika Fischer-Lichte et al. (Berlin: Fannei und Walz, 1998),147–169 (here 152).

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choral play—expressing the longing of our people—will blossom at our newpeople’s stages.”95 The Thingspiel tried linking alleged Germanic traditions toNational Socialist festive practices. One of the main concerns was the creationof appropriate plays. This proved to be more difficult than anticipated as onlyvery few plays were considered truly to express the ideas of the movement. Incontrast to intense debates about the staging and performing of the Thingspiel,discussions on its architectural challenges remained limited. It was envisagedthat within a few years the Thingspiel should have 400 places of performance,creating one stage in every area. In fact, only a small fraction of this numberwas actually built. While the selection of the first sixty-six Thingspiel arenas in1934 reflected the attempt of an even spread throughout Germany, the locationswere also chosen for their alleged historical importance and spectacular scenery.96

Fading popularity and a lack of good-quality plays spelled an end to theThingspiel and to similar spectacles. In May 1936 Propaganda Minister JosephGoebbels restricted the use of mass choirs to Nazi Party rallies.97 At the end of1935, the propaganda ministry had already advised the press not to use theterm Thing anymore.98 Traditional plays—heroic tragedies as much as lightcomedies—performed conservatively on picture-frame stages were broughtback to the German theater.99

The Loreley Thingspiel stage in the small town of St. Goarshausen, close toKoblenz, exemplified a number of key aspects of the Nazi mass theater move-ment. Despite the scenic beauty of the place—on top of the Loreley rock spec-tacularly overlooking the Rhine—the open-air stage was only completedin 1939. By that time, the Thingspiel idea had long been abandoned.Instead of symbolizing the climax of a new National Socialist theater, theLoreley Thingspiel arena came to represent a different strand characteristic ofNazi propaganda from the mid-1930s onward: a stress on entertainment andtourism.At the end of April 1934, a festive celebration was held tomark the laying of the

foundation stone for the open-air arena on the Loreley rock.100 Financial, organi-zational, and technical difficulties delayed its completion until five years later.

95Meinhold Lurz, ed., Die Heidelberger Thingstätte. Die Thingbewegung im Dritten Reich: Kunst alsMittel politischer Propaganda (Heidelberg: Schutzgemeinschaft Heiligenberg e.V., 1975), 21.

96Stommer, Die inszenierte Volksgemeinschaft, 165–16, 12–13, 170–171.97Bochow, “Berliner Theater im Dritten Reich,” 152–153.98Stommer, Die inszenierte Volksgemeinschaft, 122–125.99See Boguslaw Drewniack,Das Theater im NS Staat (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1983); and Eichberg at al.,

eds., Massenspiele, 158.100St. Goarshausen, Archiv, Abt. 6.09, no. 1.01, Bronich (Chronik); Paul-Georg Custodis, “‘Die

Wellen verschlingen am Ende Schiffer und Kahn.’ Die Loreley in der NS-Zeit,” in Die Loreley. EinFels im Rhein. Ein deutscher Traum, ed. Marion Kramp and Matthias Schmandt (Mainz: Philipp vonZabern, 2004), 140.


The space for the open-air arena was created by blasting through 17,600 squaremeters of the Loreley rock.101 In June 1939 the Loreley Thingspiel arena wasinaugurated with a festive performance of Friedrich Schiller’s “Wilhelm Tell.”Thus the newly created open-air stage relied on a German classic. The playwas staged by the artistic director of Frankfurt’s municipal theater HansMeissner, whose cast consisted of not only actors from his theater house butalso citizens of St. Goarshausen for mass scenes. This was praised as emotionallyconnecting the new stage to the people living in the area. Consequently, thepress described the rehearsals of the play as inclusive and joyful festivals.102

Asked about the staging of his play, Hans Meissner pointed out that he hadmade one fundamental change. At the end of the play, the actors reentered thestage with the character of Wilhelm Tell in the middle and again swore thefamous Rütli oath. In Schiller’s original version, these words were only spokenin Tell’s absence. At the Loreley, a choir repeated them and, according to thenewspapers, the audience rose and joined the oath.103

Not everything went smoothly at the Tell performances on the Loreley rockduring summer 1939. There was criticism of the play and its staging. Althoughthe General Anzeiger praised the location of the Thingspiel stage, the newspapernoted slightly disapprovingly that the Loreley “festive arena” had opened with“a drama of the traditional theater.” But eventually, the paper continued, apoet would find “new words for this new festive culture.”104 Furthermore, criti-cal voices found that the play’s staging had not solved the difficult task of integrat-ing the natural environment. The fact that the actors referred to specific Swisslandmarks in the play’s original setting made it difficult for the audience toconnect the environment they saw with the play.105 The eagerly anticipatedcombination of spectacular landscape and Nazi mass theater, so excitedly dis-cussed in 1933 and 1934, had long lost its drive. The summer of 1939 saw fiveperformances of Schiller’s “Wilhelm Tell,” and the Nazi organization Strengththrough Joy offered inexpensive bus journeys to the area.106 The Volksblatt

101Custodis, “‘Die Wellen verschlingen am Ende Schiffer und Kahn,’” 145.102St. Goarshausen, Archiv, Abt. 6.09, no. 1.05, “Festspiel auf der Feierstätte Lorelei.

Generalintendant Meissner probt,” Volksblatt, June 5, 1939; “Wilhelm Tell über dem Rhein. DieProben auf der Loreley,” General Anzeiger, June 6, 1939.

103St. Goarshausen, Archiv, Abt. 6.09, no. 1.06,“Bericht über die erste Freilichtaufführung desWilhelm Tell auf der Feierstätte der Loreley,” Bilderbuch der Woche, July 1, 1939, 2; “Tell auf derFeierstätte,” Frankfurter Zeitung, June 27, 1939.

104St. Goarhausen, Archiv, Abt. 6.09, no. 1.05, “Heiligenberg-Loreley. Vom Sinn der Feierstätte,”General Anzeiger, June 14, 1939.

105St. Goarshausen, Archiv, Abt. 6.09, no. 1.06, “Tell auf der Loreley,” Neueste Zeitung, June 27,1939.

106St. Goarshausen, Archiv, Abt. 6.09, no. 1.06,“Gewitterstimmung über Wilhelm Tell,” GeneralAnzeiger, July 11, 1939; Abt. 6.09, no. 1.05, “Loreley ist von allen Richtungen zu erreichen,”Volksblatt, June 18, 1939.

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wrote that 25,000 spectators had seen the Tell performances.107 Approximately5,000 spectators per performance in an arena that could accommodate 10,000people was certainly not what had been hoped for.One of the last nationally staged events in which festive spectacles still played an

extraordinary role were the Olympic Games in 1936. Unquestionably, the gameswere an important success for the Nazi system to present an allegedly peaceful faceof the Third Reich to the world. Its representational forms, however, were stillvery similar to sports festivities held in the 1920s.108 Representatives alreadyinvolved with state representation or mass spectacles in theWeimar years includedthe sports functionary Carl Diem, the president of the German OlympicCommittee Theodor Lewald, the modern dance choreographer MaryWigman, and the composer Carl Orff. They were not young, ambitiousNational Socialists but well-established bourgeois representatives in the fields ofsports, administration, dance, and music. Edwin Redslob’s former assistant Dr.Kurt Biebrach organized the art exhibition that accompanied the games.109 Acloser look at the festive play at the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympicsshows significant similarities to spectacles staged in the 1920s, in particular theones organized by Edwin Redslob on behalf of the Weimar state.Carl Diem wrote the play for the opening ceremony entitled Olympic Youth,

and Dr. Hans Niedecken-Gebhard directed it. Niedecken-Gebhard was not anunknown director. He had also already worked in the 1920s, and, like so manyat the time, was fascinated by the staging of mass spectacles with amateurs.110

Diem was a high-ranking functionary of Germany’s bourgeois sporting eliteand an internationally recognized advocate of the Olympic sports movement.111

His festive play for the Olympic Games was divided into four scenes. The firsttwo showed games and dances of the youth, including a representation of theOlympic flag on the sports ground using children. Within the second scene thewell-knownmodern dancer Gret Palucca performed a solo with dancing girls sur-rounding her. Approximately 5,700 children between eleven and eighteen yearsold took part in these two scenes. In the third scene several thousand boyscarried the flags of the participating nations into the stadium, marching in festiveprocession around the tracks. A narrator stressed the games as a peaceful celebrationin which the youth of all nations were to compete for the honor of their countries.

107St. Goarshausen, Archiv, Abt. 6.09, no. 1.06, “25000 besuchten die Loreley-Festspiele,”Volksblatt, Aug. 4, 1939.

108Christiane Eisenberg, English Sports und deutsche Bürger. Eine Gesellschaftsgeschichte 1800–1939(Paderborn: Schöningh, 1999), 409–413.

109BArch Berlin, R8077/46/169, 437, Organisation der Kunstausstellung bei den OlympischenSpielen 1936.

110Baxmann, Mythos Gemeinschaft, 218, 240.111See Ralf Schäfer, “Ein Sportfunktionär als Figur der Zeitgeschichte. Carl Diem als Organisator

der XI Olympischen Spiele von Berlin,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 49 (2001): 313–332.


In the fourth and last scene the youths were called upon to sacrifice their lives if thefatherland was in danger. A sword dance represented by the dancers HaraldKreutzberg and Werner Stammer and a group of sixty male dancers followed.After the two opponents in the sword dance died, Mary Wigman and herdancing group of eighty female dancers performed a dance of women mourningthe dead. The ceremony ended on a more hopeful note with the piece “Odeto Joy” and with all participants of the play present on the stadiumground.112 In total, more than 10,000 children participated, most of them fromBerlin schools.

Performed in the evening, the play required the use of light, a medium theNazis perfected as part of their festivities. The much-quoted “dome of light,”creating the impression of a roof of light above the stadium, ended the play.While often characterized by later commentators as a typical feature of manip-ulative Nazi propaganda, this spectacular use of light was described as strength-ening the community of participants and spectators and was understood as anembodiment of the Olympic idea.113 Indeed, the creation of a communitythrough the application of light was not a Nazi invention. Theater directors,including Max Reinhardt, had used it to create a sense of community in theirplays.114

Outlining the main ideas of his play, Carl Diem stated, “The spectacle has toenable the audience to participate in it; the youth is surrounded by a festive com-munity that frames and carries the play.” Diem stressed the play’s friendly andpeaceful meaning in which the scene of women mourning the dead was followedby the all-embracing “Ode to Joy,” asking for peace and understanding among allnations.115 In fact, youth and national sacrifices were universally usable themes.The notion that the young, in particular, had to defend the country waswidely accepted among most participating nations. By 1936 the most recentmemories Germans had of national sacrifices were the war dead of World WarI. Commemorating the country’s dead in public ceremonies and rituals was com-monplace and heavily practiced inWeimar and Nazi Germany.116 But despite theplay’s roots in a Weimar tradition, the clearly gendered divisions in which scenesshowing female and male groups alternated meant a shift from mass spectaclesstaged in the 1920s. The dance historian Yvonne Hardt draws attention to thefact that movement choirs as part of Nazi spectacles became more structured

112Olympische Jugend. Festspiel zur Aufführung im Olympia Stadion am 1.8.1936 (Berlin:Reichssportverlag, 1936).

113Eisenberg, English Sports und deutsche Bürger, 427.114See Kathleen James-Chakraborty, “The Drama of Illumination: Visions of Community from

Wilhelmine to Nazi Germany,” in Art, Culture, Media under the Third Reich, ed. Richard A. Etlin(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 181–201.

115Carl Diem, “Entstehung und Inhalt,” in Olympische Jugend. Festspiel zur Aufführung im OlympiaStadion am 1.8.1936, 28, 30.

116Eisenberg, English Sports und deutsche Bürger, 427.

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and were often divided into male and female groups, an aspect that had not beencharacteristic earlier.117

The play’s director Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard described the importance ofcorrectly using the space in the stadium. He stated that the tempo and coordi-nation of the participants were essential for the creation of images, which theaudience should perceive as a whole.118 Niedecken-Gebhard stressed thatthe stadium as a venue for festive plays required very careful staging. After all,the audience would judge any play on the general impression it made.Coordinating the dances of the girls in the first and second scene, the moderndance teachers Dorothee Günther and Maja Lex stated that they wanted tocreate “an organic and fluid movement circle” and by no means an impressionof militaristic drill.119 Discussions on the connotations of movements, aspointed out here by Günther and Lex, had dominated discourses on moderndance and theater for more than a decade before 1936. The staging of the playat the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in 1936 showed many elementsalso applied in republican representation. After Edwin Redslob had seen the per-formance, he congratulated his friend Carl Diem on the well-staged and impres-sive ceremony. Diem replied that obviously many ideas for the spectacle werebased on the celebrations the former Reichskunstwart had choreographed inthe Weimar years. According to Diem, in particular the idea of a “living flag”had been inspired by Redslob’s staging of the 1929 spectacle in the Berlinstadium.120

Conclusion

The appeal of order and the promise of community characterized Germany in the1920s and 1930s in numerous ways. Parades, mass spectacles, and gymnastic exer-cises fascinated many because large numbers of people were moving in an orderlyand synchronized manner. The sociologist Siegfried Kracauer critically acknowl-edged the aesthetic pleasure the audience gained from watching ornamental massmovements in his 1927 essay “The Mass Ornament.” Using the Tiller Girls (a1920s show-dancing group) as an example, Kracauer pointed out that the girlsmattered only in their small contribution to the bigger picture.121 But this

117Yvonne Hardt, “Ausdruckstanz und Bewegungschor im Nationalsozialismus. Zur politischenDimension des Körperlichen und Räumlichen im modernen Tanz,” in Körper imNationalsozialismus. Bilder und Praxen, ed. Paula Diehl (Munich: Fink, 2006), 173–189, here 185.

118Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard, “Die Gesamtgestaltung des Festspiels,” in Olympische Jugend.Festspiel zur Aufführung im Olympia Stadion am 1.8.1936, 31.

119D. Günther, “Die Reigen der kleinen und großen Mädchen,” inOlympische Jugend. Festspiel zurAufführung im Olympia Stadion am 1.8.1936, 39.

120Carl and Liselott Diem Archiv Köln, film 5128/00377, 6.121Siegfried Kracauer, “Das Ornament der Masse,” in Siegfried Kracauer, Der verbotene Blick

(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 173.


appeal seemed to fade away in the mid-1930s, and the experimental search fornew forms of representation was coming to an end. Innovative staging conceptswere brought to a halt and replaced by the picture-frame stage, the reliance onclassical plays, and the ever increasing stress on entertainment. In June 1936,Propaganda Minister Goebbels informed regional leaders who had responsibilityfor propaganda activities that he wished the number of Nazi festivities to bedecreased and better coordinated for fear that the population would becomeindifferent to the really important events.122

The Nazis realized that many had grown weary of constant political mobili-zation. Consequently, entertaining activities became a main focus of NationalSocialist festive culture even before the outbreak of World War II.123 This isnot to suggest that this strategy did not prove to be effective in linking the popu-lation to the Nazi state. Indeed, the National Socialists showed that the inclusive,spectacular, and representative forms tried out as part of visualizing the republiccould be easily extended and reinterpreted to reflect the structure of their ownpolitical system. Despite continuities in festive representation, differencesexisted, too. The financial and organizational resources that the Nazi statemade available for the staging of festivities were far greater than the resourcesdeployed by the republic. Although the National Socialists did not invent theuse of light for rallies and spectacles, they perfected it. Mass choirs and movementgroups became more structured and organized along gender lines, while therhetoric on movement choirs changed from integration and participation inWeimar Germany to subordination and duty in the Third Reich.

In particular, the National Socialists shifted the focus from innovative represen-tative efforts to traditional forms of political choreography, best exemplified bythe Nazi Party rallies with their seemingly endless parades and assemblies.Rather than inventing mass spectacles, the Nazi movement brought themunder the state’s control and eventually abandoned them.124 A great deal of over-lapping concepts, themes, styles, and ideas regarding forms of representationexisted between the Weimar and Nazi state, but many of them did not outlivethe mid-1930s. After the end of WorldWar II, representative forms broadly cate-gorized as “mass choreography of bodies” survived in limited form as ceremonialfeatures at international sporting events.

UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX

122LAB, A Pr Br Rep. 042, 237, Goebbels to all Reich ministers and Gau leaders, July 7, 1936.123In particular Nazi Party Rallies illustrate this development toward more entertainment. See

Siegfried Zelnhefer, Die Reichsparteitage der NSDAP in Nürnberg (Nuremberg: Museen der StadtNürnberg, 2002), 194, 258.

124Eichenberg et al., Massenspiel, 158.

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