Description
Interesting Civilian ID for a professional choir singer for work on stage.
Interestingly, he worked in Berlin and in the Deutsche Nationaltheater Weimar in 1943 and 1944.
With the support of the conservative state government, the National Socialists had been holding regular party meetings in Weimar since 1924. In 1926, the first Reich Party Congress of the NSDAP was held in the theater after the ban was lifted. The General Manager Ernst Hardt left the theater in 1924 after there had been violent and defamatory protests against his performances from ethnic-nationalists. His successor Franz Ulbrich initially tried to continue playing contemporary authors such as Ernst Toller, Carl Sternheim and others, despite threats of censorship and calls for »cleansing« of the Weimar theater schedule. However, he increasingly made compromises with the National Socialists, who were involved in the state government from 1930 and demanded a “Jew-free theatre”. From 1933, Ernst Nobbe, a member of the NSDAP, took over the directorship, followed in 1936 by Hans Severus Ziegler, who, among other things, had co-initiated the decree »Against Negro culture for German nationality«.
During the Nazi regime, a classical repertoire was mainly played, with Schiller’s drama in particular being placed in a National Socialist perspective. Hitler wanted to develop the Weimar Theater into one of the leading theaters in the German Reich and supported the DNT annually with private funds.
History – National Theater Weimar
The conversion of the auditorium and the renovation of the stage technology in 1939/40 devoured a sum of over 800,000 Reichsmarks, which Hitler personally campaigned for. The fact that such a sum came together during the war years illustrates the special importance of the DNT at that time. The theater also played for the entertainment of the SS members in the casino of the Buchenwald concentration camp. While Franz Lehár’s “The Land of Smiles” was being performed at the DNT, Fritz Löhner-Beda, the Jewish librettist of this operetta, was imprisoned just a few kilometers away in Buchenwald. His name was concealed in the program booklet.
In autumn 1944 all theaters in Germany were closed. The DNT was leased to Siemens & Halske as a production facility. An American bombing raid on February 9, 1945 reduced the theater to rubble and ash except for the façade and the foyer.
