17 - Operetta During the Nazi Regime

Summary

National Socialism is said to have ended the success story of operetta art: the death of the genre may be situated between 1933 and 1945, caused by Nazi purges. This chapter takes a closer look at operetta during the Nazi regime, dealing with three different approaches. First, I sketch the consequences for operetta of the Nazi ideology of denial (Verweigerungsideologie). Operetta stood against every Nazi theory of ‘German art’ for two main reasons: its dazzling aesthetics and artists, mostly defamed for being Jewish. Second, the chapter focusses on the aim to conceive an original type of German operetta. The examples of Heinrich Strecker’s chauvinistic Ännchen of Tharau (1933) and Hermann Hermecke’s and Arno Vetterling’s propaganda operetta The Dorothee (1936) reveal that attempts to reinvent the genre were dominated less by instructions from potentates than by artists who wanted to support the regime. Third, the chapter examines theatre practice, exemplified by Munich’s Gärtnerplatz Theatre between 1938–44. Even in these years, theatres had to deal with an audience that still demanded the roaring, non-German genre tradition. Operetta offers a glimpse into quotidian culture under the dictatorship, where the ‘death’ of the genre was not as widespread as stated.