Masked Messaging: German theatre in Maribor under the Nazis as reflected in the Marburger Zeitung

Abstract

In this essay, Matjaž Birk discusses the German-language theatre in Marburg/Maribor during the Second World War during which both city and region became part of the German Reich. The occupying forces opened the theatre in 1941 among a discourse of strengthening the German character of Maribor. Birk looks at the history of the German-speaking minority and its relation to growing Slovenian nationalism visa - vis the theatre as a site of cultural and national identity. He uses the Marburger Zeitung newspaper as a specific reference point to analyse the discourses around the German theatre as the mediatisation of a financially well-endowed provincial stage which included reviews of performances and metanarratives on German drama, theatre and literature. It emphasised the “transcultural” character and importance of German drama and theatre for the development of European theatre and culture by manoeuvring between prominent references (Kindermann, Schlösser, Laube, Grillparzer, Goethe, etc.) and banned ones (American, Russian, Slovenian drama in German). The article shows how different strategies, inscribed into a codified theatrical discourse, masked the key aim of authorities, i.e. the (re)establishing of the identification with German culture, while at the same time revealing the perfidiousness of a regime which, while implementing a specific cultural practice, brutally pursued the Slovenian resistance and persecuted the local population.

This article was written in the context of the group of programmes “Intercultural Literary Studies (P6-0265)” sponsored by the Slovenian research agency ARRS.