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Kurt Hirschfeld and the Visionary Internationalism of the Schauspielhaus Zürich

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2019

Wendy Arons
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Outside Switzerland, the Schauspielhaus Zürich (Zürich Playhouse) is best known among theatre historians for the role it played in supporting and advancing the career of German playwright Bertolt Brecht during and just after World War II. We learn, from our studies of Brecht, that while he was living in exile in Finland and the United States his plays Mother Courage and Her Children, The Good Person of Szechwan, and Galileo all received their first productions in Zürich, and that when he returned to Europe from exile the city was also his initial destination. Brecht was not the only exiled playwright to find a producing home at the Schauspielhaus; the theatre has additionally long been recognized, particularly among German and Swiss theatre historians, for the important role it played in producing the work of many other exiled German and Austrian playwrights during World War II. Some American theatre historians have also made note of the quality of the work produced at the Schauspielhaus: for example, Oscar Brockett mentions the Zürich theatre in passing as “one of the best in Europe during the Nazi regime because so many refugees settled in Switzerland.” But what remains underrecognized among historians outside Switzerland is the pivotal role that both the Schauspielhaus and its dramaturg (and later artistic director) Kurt Hirschfeld played in keeping an international repertoire on life support in Europe when most of the Continent was under Nazi occupation (Fig. 1). A look at the list of wartime and postwar productions at the Schauspielhaus reveals a veritable who's who of the modern Western dramatic canon: productions of works by playwrights like Karel Čapek, Thornton Wilder, Jean Giraudoux, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Claudel, Federico García Lorca, T. S. Eliot, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Luigi Pirandello, and many, many—in fact, many dozens—of others.

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Articles
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Theatre Survey , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 385 - 413
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Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2019 

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Footnotes

I wish to thank here Bernard Blum, Kurt Hirschfeld's nephew, both for bringing my attention to this remarkable theatre maker's story and also for having been the driving force behind digitizing Hirschfeld's archival papers and making them publicly available through the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI). This article is an expansion of a paper delivered at the 2015 “Weltbühne Zürich” conference, which took place at the Schauspielhaus Zürich and was sponsored and organized by Bernie Blum and the LBI's Frank Mecklenburg, Daniel Wildmann, and Raphael Gross. A version of this article in German will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming Weltbühne Zürich: Kurt Hirschfeld und das deutschsprachige Theater im Schweizer Exil, ed. Hans Hoenes (Mohr Siebeck). Thanks are also due to Hirschfeld's daughter, Ruth Hirschfeld, who generously made a cache of her father's correspondence available to the LBI team to digitize, including newly discovered letters to and from both Thornton Wilder and Bertolt Brecht.

References

Endnotes

1. Brecht's biographer Stephen Parker characterizes the Schauspielhaus as “the last major European theatre that was prepared to perform a Brecht play”; Parker, Stephen, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 428CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dramaturg Kurt Hirschfeld was a friend, ally, and staunch supporter of Brecht, and also worked with Brecht on the world premiere of Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti (coauthored with Hella Wuolijoki) in Zürich in 1948; correspondence between Hirschfeld and Brecht can be found in the digital archives of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, NY.

2. Brockett, Oscar G., History of the Theatre, 3d ed. (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1977), 553Google Scholar.

3. Although it is somewhat outside my topic, it should be added here that the Schauspielhaus's internationalism also took place against the backdrop of a concerted effort among Swiss playwrights to see Swiss theatres prioritize Swiss drama. Swiss plays of the time period, however, tended to be provincial, mediocre, patriotic, and forgettable; see, for example, Naef, Louis, “Theater der deutschen Schweiz,” in Wächter, Hans-Christof, Theater im Exil: Sozialgeschichte des deutschen Exiltheaters 1933–1945 (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1973), 241–63Google Scholar, at 246–7; and Naef, Louis, “Harmlosigkeit als Zeitkrankheit,” in Das verschonte Haus: Das Zürcher Schauspielhaus im Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Bachmann, Dieter and Schneider, Rolf (Zürich: Ammann Verlag, 1987), 141–61Google Scholar.

4. All translations from German of quotations in the present article are my own.

5. Gustav Huonker, “Emigranten—Wege, Schicksale, Wirkungen,” in Das verschonte Haus, ed. Bachmann and Schneider, 107–39, at 108.

6. Several versions of the story of Hartung and Hirschfeld's departure from Darmstadt circulate in histories of the Zürich Schauspielhaus; the most closely researched version, and the one I follow here, appears in Heer, Hannes et al. , Verstummte Stimmen: Die Vertreibung der “Juden” und “politisch Untragbaren” aus den hessischen Theatern 1933 bis 1945 (Berlin: Metropol, 2011), 92–5Google Scholar, 228–30. For a capsule biography of Hirschfeld, see Badenhausen, Rolf, “Hirschfeld, Kurt, Dramaturg, Regisseur, Theaterleiter,” in Neue Deutsche Biographie, ed. Stolberg-Wernigerode, Otto zu (Berlin: Hess-Hüttig, 1972), 9: 225–6Google Scholar, http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00016326/image_239, accessed 21 December 2018.

7. Joseph, Artur, Theater unter vier Augen: Gespräche mit Prominenten (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1969), 121Google Scholar.

8. Kurt Hirschfeld, “Anspruch und Funktion des zeitgenössischen Theaters” [lecture], n.d. (ca. 1953), 2; Kurt Hirschfeld Collection, AR 7066 / MF 608 [hereafter KHC], Box 4, Folder 4/20, Leo Baeck Institute [hereafter LBI]; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel09#page/n927/mode/1up, accessed 23 May 2019. See also Mittenzwei, Werner, Das Zürcher Schauspielhaus 1933–1945 (Berlin [GDR]: Henschelverlag, 1979), 33–5Google Scholar; and Riess, Curt, Das Schauspielhaus Zürich: Sein oder Nichtsein eines ungewöhnlichen Theaters (Munich and Vienna: Langen Müller, 1988), 111Google Scholar.

9. Hirschfeld claims to have said to Rieser at their very first meeting: “I take it that you have hired me so that I can pull together a few good people for you”; Riess, 58.

10. Most historians concur that Rieser not only took advantage of the desperation of exiled theatre artists by vastly underpaying them, but also subjected them to grueling working conditions—see, for example, Jean-Rudolf von Salis, “Die Saga vom Zürcher Schauspielhaus,” in Das verschonte Haus, 5–13, at 6; Huonker, 112; Mittenzwei, 39, 69–70; Riess, 105–11. Kröger and Exinger, however, dispute Rieser's reputation for stinginess, claiming he paid some of the best wages in Switzerland; see Kröger, Ute and Exinger, Peter, “In welchen Zeiten leben wir!” Das Schauspielhaus Zürich 1938–1998 (Zürich: Limmat Verlag, 1998), 25Google Scholar.

11. Mittenzwei, 34. See also Huonker, 109; Riess, 58; and Heer et al., 229.

12. Riess, 58; Kröger and Exinger, 26; Joseph, 121.

13. Mittenzwei, 37, who takes the quote from Ernst Ginsberg, Abschied: Erinnerungen, Theateraufsätze, Gedichte (Zürich, 1965), 130.

14. The story of Langhoff's (1901–66) emigration to Switzerland reads like a gripping political thriller; indulge me for elaborating it in this endnote. The day after the Reichstag fire, the Nazis arrested and imprisoned Langhoff—a handsome and charismatic actor-director who was one of Germany's most popular leading men. The German and Swiss theatre communities clamored in the press for his release; at the same time, Rieser and Hirschfeld went to extraordinary lengths to try to secure his freedom. Hirschfeld risked travel to Berlin in an attempt to use connections there to try to free Langhoff from incarceration, and Rieser—who, once he had made up his mind to do something, was tenacious in its pursuit—wrote an ingratiating letter to State Commissioner Hans Hinkel in July 1933 requesting Langhoff be released so that he could join the Zürich company for its 1933–4 season. Neither of those efforts bore fruit, and Langhoff languished in a concentration camp for over a year. When he was finally set free as part of the “Easter Amnesty” of 1934, he was denied a passport; Hirschfeld went to Basel and arranged for two friends—the writer C. F. Vaucher and the architect Paul Artaria—to smuggle him illegally over the border. Hirschfeld later told historian Curt Riess that he spent an anxious evening at the cinema with Langhoff's wife waiting for the men to cross the border; meanwhile, Vaucher, Artaria, and Langhoff got drunk on schnapps at a pub just over the German side of the border, both to fortify themselves and to provide themselves with a cover story for their late-night crossing. Riess claims that they slipped past the border guards in heavy rain just in the nick of time—the evening was 30 June 1934, the “Night of the Long Knives,” and “the borders were hermetically sealed an hour after” the three men made it through. After his long incarceration, however, Langhoff was no longer the dashing leading man Rieser thought he had hired: the Nazis had knocked out all of his teeth. Nonetheless, after Rieser paid for a new set of dentures, Langhoff went on to have a thriving career as an actor at the Schauspielhaus and later as a director in East Berlin; his son, Thomas Langhoff (1938–2012), was also one of Germany's leading theatre directors, and his grandchildren Tobias and Lukas continue the family tradition of work in the theatre (Riess, 88–93; see also Mittenzwei, 45–8; Huonker, 111–12; and “Die Theater-Familie Langhoff,” Die Welt, 20 February 2012, www.welt.de/print/die_welt/kultur/article13876985/Die-Theater-Familie-Langhoff.html, accessed 23 May 2019). For additional stories of Hirschfeld's role in spiriting threatened artists out of Nazi Germany, see Riess, 58–94; Huonker, 109; and Heer et al., 229.

15. Hirschfeld, Kurt, “Dramaturgische Bilanz,” in Giehse, Theresa et al. , Theater: Meinungen und Erfahrungen (Affoltern am Albis: Aehren Verlag, 1945), 11–16Google Scholar, at 13. KHC, Box 7, Folder 10/12, LBI; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel13#page/n1021/mode/1up, accessed 23 May 2019.

16. Ibid.

17. Louis Naef, “Vom Variété zum Schauspielhaus,” in Das verschonte Haus, 17–34, at 29.

18. Several historians echo Mittenzwei's report that Rieser “primarily judged actors over whether they could wear a tailcoat” (48); see also, for example, Huonker, 113; Naef, “Vom Variété zum Schauspielhaus,” 23; and Riess, 54.

19. Kurt Hirschfeld, “Probleme der modernen Dramaturgie” [speech], n.d. (ca. 1950), 21; KHC, Box 4, Folder 4/18, LBI; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel09#page/n882/mode/1up, accessed 21 December 2018. Excerpts from this speech were published by Hirschfeld as “Dramaturgische Notizen,” in Für die Bücherfreunde (Zürich: Verlag Oprecht, 1945), 28–39 (quote on 38).

20. Hirschfeld, “Probleme der modernen Dramaturgie,” 22; “Dramaturgische Notizen,” 39.

21. Hans Mayer described Hirschfeld as “multifaceted, at home with all styles and dramatic forms”; Hans Mayer, “Eine Stimme aus dem Zuschauerraum,” in Theater: Meinungen und Erfahrungen, 54–8, at 54; KHC, Box 7, Folder 10/12, LBI; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel13#page/n1047/mode/1up, accessed 23 May 2019. See also Kröger and Exinger, 78.

22. Mittenzwei, 69. Scene designer Teo Otto also later lauded Hirschfeld's strategic finesse in Theater—Wahrheit und Wirklichkeit: Freundesgabe zum sechzigsten Geburtstag von Kurt Hirschfeld am 10. März 1962 (Zürich: Verlag Oprecht, 1962), 166–7. Huonker provides evidence, however, that before 1933 the Schauspielhaus produced plenty of works from the classical and more “serious” repertoire, particularly Shaw, Shakespeare, and Schiller; nonetheless, Rieser's focus on his commercial bottom line led him to favor plays that would yield a return on investment, and he did not program explicitly political plays before Hirschfeld and the other emigrants joined the company (113).

23. For more on these two productions, see Mittenzwei, 73–88; Naef, “Vom Variété zum Schauspielhaus,” 28–9; and Riess, 59–62 and 81–5.

24. Huonker, 115; Kröger and Exinger also note that even though Hirschfeld had been fired from his post, he still maintained a tight and friendly working relationship with his former colleagues (32).

25. The negotiations over the establishment of the new business model for the theatre were not without friction: right-wing Swiss nationalists allied with the Nazi Party launched a vigorous campaign to purge the theatre of foreigners and Jews and put it in the hands of Swiss nationalists. Although they were ultimately unsuccessful, Wälterlin's appointment as artistic director was, in the end, mandated by the Swiss immigration authorities, who felt that a “job that was so important to Swiss interests should be entrusted to a Swiss citizen”; Kröger and Exinger, 39. Kröger and Exinger speculate that Oprecht and the other city leaders negotiating to save the Schauspielhaus may have conceded to the imposition of Wälterlin as artistic director in exchange for allowing them to give the position of dramaturg to Hirschfeld (32–9).

26. Joseph, 120.

27. See note 20 above.

28. See, for example, Naef, “Vom Variété zum Schauspielhaus,” 26–7; Huonker, 114–15; Ursula Amrein, “Das Zürcher Schauspielhaus und die Geistige Landesverteidigung,” Schweizer Monatshefte: Zeitschrift für Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur 75.4 (1995): 34–40, at 34–5.

29. During this period there were firm limits to the political positions that could be taken by any civic institution—indeed, any Swiss citizen—without overstepping the boundaries of official Swiss neutrality. Swiss writer Jean Rudolf von Salis observed in 1945 that “no one has the right to contradict the political course established by the state through imprudent actions or even words”; quoted in Naef, “Theater der deutschen Schweiz,” 257. Rieser's decision to step away from the Schauspielhaus may have been motivated in part by his perception that he had already pushed the boundaries too far and put himself in personal danger; see Naef, “Vom Variété zum Schauspielhaus,” 26–7.

30. For this complicated story, see Naef, “Theater der deutschen Schweiz,” 252–4.

31. Amrein, 36.

32. This, too, was complicated; see Naef, “Theater der deutschen Schweiz,” 257–9.

33. “Einleitung,” Schauspielhaus Zürich 1938/39 (season brochure), 2–3; KHC, Box 6, Folder 8/1, LBI; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel12#page/n136/mode/1up, accessed 21 December 2018.

34. For the quotation, see note 20 above.

35. Hirschfeld, “Anspruch und Funktion des zeitgenössischen Theaters,” 2. It must be added that—as Hirschfeld also notes in this same lecture—the classical plays programmed into the Schauspielhaus repertoire frequently served a similar purpose: salient design, staging, and casting choices breathed new political relevance and an anti-Fascist message into classics like Schiller's William Tell, Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen and Faust, Lessing's Nathan the Wise, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, and many others; see Amrein, 39; Kröger and Exinger, 47–51; Mittenzwei, 69, 104–18; and Riess, 155–7.

36. Hirschfeld, “Anspruch und Funktion des zeitgenössischen Theaters,” 5–6.

37. On Switzerland's isolation, see Naef, “Theater der deutschen Schweiz,” 247; and Riess, 194.

38. Strobl, Gerwin, “Making Sense of Theatre in the Third Reich,” History Compass 8.5 (2010): 377–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 382.

39. Heinrich, Anselm, Theatre in Europe under German Occupation (New York & London: Routledge, 2017), 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. Ibid., 239.

41. Rosenberg, Merrill, “Vichy's Theatrical Venture,” Theatre Survey 11.2 (1970): 124–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 129. See also Witt, Mary Ann Frese, “Fascist Ideology and Theatre under the Occupation: The Case of Anouilh,” Journal of European Studies 23.1 (1993): 49–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. Cavallo, Pietro, “Theatre Politics of the Mussolini Regime and Their Influence on Fascist Drama,” in Theatre and War 1933–1945: Performance in Extremis, ed. Balfour, Michael (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 21–31Google Scholar.

43. Even the “internationally oriented” Theatre Guild of New York compares poorly to the Schauspielhaus in terms of numbers of international plays: to take just one year for comparison, in the 1939–40 season the Theatre Guild presented five plays in total, all by American playwrights; in the same season, the Schauspielhaus's thirty-play repertoire included five international plays, three of which were German-language premieres, and one of which was by an American writer (Robert Sherwood); see Norman Nadel, A Pictorial History of the Theatre Guild (New York: Crown Publishers, 1969), 282.

44. Kurt Hirschfeld, “Perspektiven des deutschen Theaters” [speech], n.d. (ca. 1945–6), 4; KHC, Box 4, Folder 4/15, LBI; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel09#page/n758/mode/1up, accessed 21 December 2018.

45. Mittenzwei, 135.

46. Ibid., 136.

47. Hirschfeld, “Probleme der modernen Dramaturgie,” 15.

48. Hirschfeld, “Perspektiven des deutschen Theaters,” 7–8.

49. Regarding the 1957 production, see Curt Riess, “Der falsche Giraudoux: Die zweite Generation zehrt voll den Ehren der Väter,” Die Zeit, 30 May 1957, www.zeit.de/1957/22/der-falsche-giraudoux, accessed 21 December 2018.

50. Hirschfeld, “Probleme der modernen Dramaturgie,” 8.

51. Ibid., 10.

52. Günther Schoop, Das Zürcher Schauspielhaus im zweiten Weltkrieg (Zürich: Verlag Oprecht, 1957), 136.

53. As John O'Connor, Claudel's first English translator, puts it: “The whole world, especially the sea, is the stage, and the constellations roof [Claudel's] theatre. Movies, talkies, Pirandello inversions, angelic influences, actor–author–producer interventions, high tension relieved by low comedy, all these devices are enlisted … the work is vastness embodied”; O'Connor, John, “Claudel and His Satin Slipper,” New Blackfriars 12.139 (1931): 603–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 603–4.

54. Hirschfeld, “Probleme der modernen Dramaturgie,” 11.

55. Christèle Barbier, “Le Soulier de satin au théâtre et au cinéma,” in Société Paul Claudel, “L'Année du Soulier de satin: En mémoire de la mise en scène d'Antoine Vitez, cour d'honneur d'Avignon, 1987” www.paul-claudel.net/actualite/lannee-du-soulier-de-satin#theatre, accessed 3 January 2015.

56. The first German production of Murder in the Cathedral was in Basel in 1939, translated by Werner Wolff and directed by Wilfried Scheitlin; see Blubacher, Thomas, Befreiung von der Wirklichkeit?: Das Schauspiel am Stadttheater Basel 1933–1945 (Basel: Editions Theaterkultur Verlag, 1995), 7, 207Google Scholar. Yet the Schauspielhaus Zürich advertised its June 1947 production as a German-language premiere, likely because it was the first production of a new translation by Rudolf Alexander Schröder; see advertisements in Die Tat, 12/138, 21 May 1947, 8 and Die Tat, 13/139, 22 May 1948, 13. Four months after the Zürich production, Der Spiegel (mistakenly) claimed for productions of the same translation in Köln and Göttingen the honor of the German premiere; “Vierfache Versuchung,” Der Spiegel, 43/1947, 25 October 1947, 16; www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-41123371.html, accessed 21 June 2018.

57. Kurt Hirschfeld, “Probleme der neueren Dramaturgie” [speech], n.d. (alternative draft), 19; KHC, Box 4, Folder 4/19, LBI, www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel09#page/n905/mode/1up, accessed 23 May 2019.

58. Niven, Penelope, Thornton Wilder: A Life (New York: Harper Collins, 2012), 442Google Scholar; Schoop, 129.

59. Huonker, 117.

60. See the correspondence between Hirschfeld and Hans Sahl, 30 January–6 March 1950; KHC, Box 1, Folder 1/1, LBI; correspondence appears in reverse chronological order beginning at www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel01#page/n626/mode/1up, accessed 23 May 2019.

61. Letter from Hirschfeld to Hans Sahl, 7 February 1950; KHC, Box 1, Folder 1/1, LBI; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel01#page/n630/mode/1up, accessed 23 May 2019. On the relationship between Scheitlin and Wälterlin, see “History of Gays in Switzerland: Oskar Wälterlin,” https://schwulengeschichte.ch/epochen/3-die-schweiz-wird-zur-insel/schauspielhaus-zuerich/neue-schauspiel-ag/oskar-waelterlin/, accessed 25 April 2019.

62. Niven, 440.

63. [Author unknown], “Zu Thornton Wilder's Werk Wir sind noch einmal davongekommen (The Skin of Our Teeth),” n.d., 1; KHC, Box 5, Folder 6/9, LBI; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel10#page/n1103/mode/1up, accessed 21 December 2018. This essay appears to have been written in conjunction with the first Swiss production of The Skin of Our Teeth in 1944, and may have been authored by Hirschfeld; alternatively, this may be the text for the speech Wälterlin gave to the Zürcher Theaterverein on 6 March 1944 described by Schoop, 128; but the quotes from that speech included in Schoop's history do not appear in this document.

64. “Zu Thornton Wilder's Werk,” 1.

65. See Schoop, 129, and 209 n. 377. The cited article is Oskar Wälterlin, “Die letzte Probe,” Du 10 (1942): 65–6, at 66.

66. Niven, 478.

67. Kurt Hirschfeld and Gert Westphal, radio script, “25 Jahre Schauspielhaus,” 1963; KHC, Box 4, Folder 4/17, LBI; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel09#page/n854/mode/1up, accessed 21 December 2018. The indirect path Wilder's play took to the Schauspielhaus was not unusual; as Riess notes, “Switzerland was almost completely cut off from the outside world” during the war; Riess, Das Schauspielhaus Zürich, 194.

68. “Zu Thornton Wilder's Werk,” 5.

69. Ibid., 2.

70. See, for example, Peter Demetz, Postwar German Literature: A Critical Introduction (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), 104.

71. “Zu Thornton Wilder's Werk,” 16–17.

72. Hirschfeld, “Perspektiven des deutschen Theaters,” 10.

73. Ibid., 8.

74. The German-language premiere of The Glass Menagerie was at the Basel Stadttheater, 17 October 1946. In his 2012 article “When Broadway Came to Sweden: The European Premiere of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Dirk Gindt notes that all of Tennessee Williams's major plays had their European premiere in Sweden—which, like Zürich, having been spared the physical devastation of other major cities, had a theatrical infrastructure in place and a hunger for new work. Theatre Survey 53.1 (2012): 59–83, at 60.

75. The German-language premiere of Miller's play occurred in Vienna in early March 1950, in a version translated by Ferdinand Bruckner; see “Kunst und Kultur: Der Tod des Handlungsreisenden,” Arbeiter-Zeitung (Vienna), 4 March 1950, 5, www.arbeiter-zeitung.at/cgi-bin/archiv/flash.pl?seite=19500304_A05;html=1, accessed 21 June 2018. The Zürich production opened about two weeks later. In the 1950s Zürich also saw the first German-language productions of several of Eugene O'Neill's major plays, including The Iceman Cometh and A Moon for the Misbegotten—both of which were directed by Hirschfeld himself—and Desire under the Elms.

76. Kurt Hirschfeld, fragment of untitled speech, n.d.; Kurt Hirschfeld Collection, AR 7066/ MF 608, Box 4, Folder 4/15, Leo Baeck Institute; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel09#page/n753/mode/1up, accessed 22 May 2019.

77. Letter from Hirschfeld to Hans Sahl, 23 December 1949; KHC, Box 1, Folder 1/1, LBI; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel01#page/n634/mode/1up, accessed 23 May 2019.

78. Letter from Hirschfeld to Hans Sahl, 13 March 1959; KHC, Box 2, Folder 1/14, LBI; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel05#page/n287/mode/1up, accessed 21 December 2018.

79. Hirschfeld, “Probleme der modernen Dramaturgie,” 16–17.

80. As noted by Innes, Christopher, “Theatre after Two World Wars,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre, ed. Brown, John Russell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 380–444Google Scholar, at 420: “Of all Europe, only Switzerland, secure in its neutrality and still prospering, continued the line of development that had flourished in the 1930s.”

81. Rischbieter, Henning, “Dramaturgie Heute: Zur Geschichte der Dramaturgie,” Dramaturg: Nachrichten der Dramaturgischen Gesellschaft 2 (1996): 3–10Google Scholar, at 7. Kröger and Exinger echo this sentiment: “This much-lauded repertoire was the model for German and Austrian stages after the end of the war” (78); they also note that members of the Zürich ensemble provided crucial material support to German and Austrian theatrical colleagues in the immediate postwar era, sending—in addition to food, coffee, and cigarettes—scripts “typed in the middle of the night with myriad strike-throughs” (88). See also Mittenzwei, 192; Schläpfer, Beat, Theater in Switzerland, trans. Walliser-Schwarzbart, Eileen (Zürich: Pro-Helvetia, 1994), 59Google Scholar; and Rolf Schneider, “Das Zürcher Schauspielhaus und das Theater in der Bundesrepublik,” in Das verschonte Haus, 45–54, at 51.

82. Innes, 423.

83. Letter from Hirschfeld to Hans Sahl, 9 January 1951; KHC, Box 1, Folder 1/1, LBI; www.archive.org/stream/kurtkirschfeld_01_reel01#page/n611/mode/1up>, accessed 23 May 2019.

84. See Mittenzwei, 192; Demetz, 124, 150; Poser, Therese, “Friedrich Dürrenmatt,” in Zur Interpretation des modernen Dramas: Brecht, Dürrenmatt, Frisch, ed. Geißler, Rolf (Frankfurt a. M.: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg, 1960), 69–96Google Scholar, at 71; and Wilhelm Ziskoven, “Max Frisch,” in ibid., 99–144, at 104–6.

85. Demetz, 105.

86. Mittenzwei, 133.

87. I am grateful to the anonymous Theatre Survey reviewer who called my attention to this irony.

88. Mayer, 56.

89. Demetz, 104.