Thing game

The Thingspiele of the Third Reich were supposed to establish a folk theater . They wanted to involve the audience formally and emotionally in the dramatic events. Thingspiele had a brief heyday from around 1930 to 1935. Up to 400 thing places were planned, around 60 were built as part of the thing movement in the 20th century. The term Thingspiel goes back to the Cologne theater scholar Carl Niessen .

prehistory

The global economic crisis after the stock market crash in 1929 also put the professional group of actors and other theater people in distress. Wilhelm Carl Gerst, co-founder and head of the Catholic Bühnenvolksbund , was looking at that time for a new media format in which professionals and laypeople could jointly create dramatic events in public. With this he hoped not only to open up a new way of life for the unemployed stage artists , but also to influence public opinion with suitable works. Following the example of Schiller's “ Stage as a moral institution ”, the dramatic events that were jointly designed and experienced should engage all participants (on stage, behind and in front of it) emotionally, morally and politically, strengthen their attitudes or even change their minds.

A thingspiel should be a festival and rally in one. Models and precursors were the communist workers' mass festivals, as they had been organized for union celebrations since the early 1920s. The name " Thing " was adopted by the youth movement ; some youth groups ( Boy Scouts , Quickborn, and others) had given meetings this name.

In 1931 Gerst organized the "Reich Committee for German Folk Drama" and won many playwrights to collaborate. The next step was on December 22nd, 1932 the establishment of the "Reichsbund for the Promotion of Open Air Games eV". The association was entered in the register of associations seven days before the seizure of power .

Beginning

After the seizure of power, the actor Otto Laubinger , a staunch National Socialist , conveyed that the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda recognized the young association. Thus the Reichsbund was on the one hand placed under the protection of the RMVP, but on the other hand exposed to its influence.

The poet circle of Reichsbund had intended to include on the original planning authors of diverse origin and orientation. In a list from July 1933 the following names are mentioned:

Fred Angermayer Otto Anthes Max Barthel Peter Bauer Guido Brandt Dietzenschmidt Kasimir Edschmid Herbert Eulenberg Karl von Felner Oscar Maurus Fontana

Hans Franck Wolfgang Goetz Franz Graetzer Paul Gurk Rudolf Henz Kurt Heynicke Ödön from Horváth Heinrich Koehler Peter Martin Lampel Max Mell

Walter from Molo Fred Neumeyer Alfons Paquet Hans José Rehfisch Wilhelm Schmidtbonn Bruno Schönlank Wilhelm von Scholz Friedrich Schreyvogel Fritz Schweuert Ernst Leopold Stahl

Heinz Steguweit Robert Adolf Stemmle Ernst Toller Franz Johannes Weinrich Leo Weismantel Berthold Withalm Carl Zuckmayer

For the official notification of the Reichsbund in November 1933, the list was extended to more than fifty names. On the one hand, authors disliked by the regime were excluded; on the other hand, Gerst had endangered authors appointed to the circle of poets to protect them, without the Propaganda Ministry having been able to examine them beforehand (indicative of the confusing disputes in the early days of the Nazi regime).

The generous planning of many thing sites became part of the National Socialist reorganization of German cultural life, helped to reduce the masses of unemployment and thus contributed indirectly to the initial success of the Hitler cabinet. As an employee of Laubinger, Gerst won many city administrations to provide land for thing sites and to plan the expansion. Gerst, originally himself an architect by profession, recommended unemployed, mostly young architects to the cities as local designers, and gave them such profitable commissions.

success

Between 1933 and 1939, 200 to 400 thing places were planned or started. In 1934, at least 60 open-air theaters were completed.

Hundreds of actors, sometimes even thousands, were involved in the thing games organized at that time. In October 1933, for example, a Thing was performed in Berlin-Grunewald , to which no fewer than 17,000 SA men were commanded as extras. 60,000 spectators were present. The audience had to take an active part in these crowd scenes. This sometimes removed the traditional boundary between podium and audience (admittedly, avant-gardists had introduced this theatrical element earlier). Such plays could not be performed in traditional theaters.

The theme of the Thingspiele was always German history, especially the history from 1918 until the Nazis came to power in 1933. It showed how “the people” (presented like the choir in the ancient Greek theater) “acted” politically. Only a few players had individual roles, including the choir leaders.

The best known and most played thing game was the Frankenburger dice game by Eberhard Wolfgang Möller from 1936, it was performed at the 1936 Summer Olympics . Other thing game authors were Richard Euringer , Kurt Heynicke and Karl Springenschmid .

Decline

In accordance with his fundamentally left-Catholic sentiment, Gerst had like-minded authors initially included in the Reich Committee and later in the Reichsbund and tried to keep these forces in the organization in the hope that their political attitudes would have an effect on their drafts for dramas. The works of art actually created did not meet this expectation.

Gerst had put the planning of thing sites all over the empire in motion. Not all projects could be carried out. Unexpected difficulties in the terrain or the nature of the soil could significantly delay the expansion or even endanger it as a whole. From 1936 onwards, sites planned as Thingplatz were only expanded if the city tourist offices advocated it.

In addition, with the suppression of the Röhm putsch, the political development of the NSDAP and thus of the Reich had entered a new phase. The socialist component weakened, the nationalist component increased. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels saw much better possibilities of influencing the masses in film and radio than in the ideologically ostentatiously overloaded thing games. Goebbels also recognized that events tended to harm the “movement” if they were seen through as a cult.

Otto Laubinger died in October 1935, Gerst was dismissed and real National Socialists took their place. The language regulation was adopted that terms like Thing were not allowed to be used in connection with party political events or state enterprises. As far as Thingstätten were successful, they had to be called open-air theaters from then on.

"Also, the National Socialist worldview can no longer be associated with terms such as cult, cultic etc."

Goebbels had gained clarity that the population perceived the events of the party in the introduced media formats as a political reality: speeches and rallies , the Nazi party rally , the Reichsbauerntag , the annual roll call in front of the Feldherrnhalle , the collections for the winter relief organization , as early as 1933 and later the book burnings and many other things. The people should not recognize these events as cultic acts precisely because they were just that.

From then on, without the support of the party, Thingspiele only led a shadowy existence with the Hitler Youth and in more sectarian splinter groups within the NSDAP such as the Artamans .

literature

• Wolfgang Beutin u. a .: German literary history from its beginnings to the present , Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar, 2001: p. 439
• Sascha Braun: In search of the national community. The National Socialist Thingspiel (pdf), seminar paper, Bochum 2004
• Henning Eichberg et al .: Mass games. Nazi thing game, worker consecration game and Olympic ceremony. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1977
• Emanuel Gebauer: Fritz Schaller. The architect and his contribution to sacred buildings in the 20th century . (= City tracks - monuments in Cologne; vol. 28). Bachem, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-7616-1355-5 (including dissertation, University of Mainz 1994 under the title: The Thing and the Church Building. Fritz Schaller and the Modern Age 1933–1974 ), contains chapters on the construction of the Thingstätten at the beginning of National Socialism
• Uwe K. Ketelsen: Völkische Nationbildung: Das Thingspiel (pdf) (113 kB)
• Meinhold Lurz: The Heidelberg Thingstätte. The thing movement in the Third Reich. Art as a means of political propaganda . (= Publications on Heidelberg's old town; 10) Schutzgemeinschaft e. V. Heiligenberg, Heidelberg 1975
• Johannes M. Reichl: Das Thingspiel , Frankfurt am Main 1988
• Rainer Stommer. The staged national community: The ´Thing movement´ in the Third Reich. Marburg: Jonas, 1985. ISBN 3-922561-31-4 .
• Evelyn Annuß: "Elementary school of the theater: National Socialist mass games", Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2018. ISBN 978-3-7705-6373-9 .
• Katharina Bosse et al .: “Thingstätten - On the importance of the past for the present”, Kerber Verlag, 2020. ISBN 978-3-7356-0693-8

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bosse, Katharina, Gelderblom, Bernhard, Strobl, Gerwin, Wielgosik, Beata, Wunsch, Stefan: Thingstätten On the importance of the past for the present. 1st edition. Kerber, Bielefeld 2020, ISBN 978-3-7356-0693-8 , pp. 256 ( OCLC 1144136241 [accessed June 18, 2020]).
2. ^ Henning Eichberg : mass games: NS-Thingspiele, workers consecration game and Olympic ceremonial. Stuttgart 1977, p. 214
3. ↑ Stommer, p. 24.
4. ↑ Stommer, pp. 34, 259, 265, 278.