Chapter 19 - German Reception

Summary

Towards the end of the nineteenth century in Germany, Ibsen had become a household name for promoting sociocultural change. Different avant-garde movements such as the Freie Bühne and the prominent theatre maker Max Reinhardt placed Ibsen’s plays at the centre of theatrical innovation. The twentieth century saw Ibsen represented in newly imagined theatre spaces, early silent cinema and later the Regietheater of Peter Stein and Peter Zadek. This German tradition continues until the present day when Thomas Ostermeier’s touring productions have become key reference points for theatre makers and scholars alike. But what often appears as a continuous success story reveals itself as a complex performance history of setbacks, struggles and reactionary reappropriations, such as by the film industry of the Third Reich. This account of Ibsen’s German reception draws out the nuanced and often contradictory dynamics that made Ibsen one of the most important dramatists of German theatre.