# The Merchant of Venice in Nazi Germany **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 8, 2015, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548 "2015-05-08T12:31:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/1 "2015-05-08T12:31:59Z")
By which I mean the Shakespeare play, not an actual tradesman from Venezia. Suppose you’re running a theater in Nazi Germany. If you put on a faithful adaptation of _The Merchant of Venice_ and the Gestapo turned up, would they be saying _“Ah, showing the shifty Jews for what they’ve always been, gut gemacht!”_ or _“Hmm, so Jews will ‘revenge’ and can atone by becoming Christian? Kommen sie mit mir…”_ I’ve JFGI and the references I can find so far indicate that the Nazis appropriated the character of Shylock and exaggerated his villainy, quelle surprise, but if you performed the play 100% faithfully would you be in the shit? ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/2 "2015-05-08T14:01:20Z")
I found a reference to a production of the Merchant of Venice in 1943 in Vienna directed by [Lothar Müthel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothar_M%C3%BCthel) which was described as an “antisemitic caricature”. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/3 "2015-05-08T14:30:26Z")
On that note, I’m curious if _The Merchant of Venice_ was ever performed in a Communist country, and if so, what they made of it. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/4 "2015-05-08T14:45:57Z")
Off on a tangent, I’m reminded of the film _To Be Or Not To Be_ (first made in 1942 starring Jack Benny and later remade by Mel Brooks) about a theatre company in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. The film features an actor who delivers Shylock’s soliloquy directly to Hitler (sort of) at one point. It’s a relatively mild farce by itself but when you consider that it was released in 1942 when Nazis were actively killing Jews in Warsaw it’s startlingly bold. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/5 "2015-05-08T14:52:00Z")
Shakespeare is better in the original German. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/6 "2015-05-08T15:26:26Z")
It’s sometimes hard to imagine the fear that people lived under during the height of the Third Reich. People would be grabbed off the street for relatively minor infractions and never seen again. I think that artists were watched carefully to ensure they weren’t saying or doing anything against the propaganda that was being disseminated. Given the risk of upsetting someone who had the power to destroy both you and your family I would think artists were very careful not to offend the authorities. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/7 "2015-05-08T15:39:11Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > … > I’ve JFGI and the references I can find so far indicate that the Nazis appropriated the character of Shylock and exaggerated his villainy, quelle surprise, but if you performed the play 100% faithfully would you be in the shit? “JFGI” 😕 ---
**Author:** ![yellowjacketcoder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/4bbf92/32.png) [@yellowjacketcoder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellowjacketcoder)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/8 "2015-05-08T15:41:56Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > “JFGI” 😕 “Just Fucking Googled It” - i.e., the OP already searched for an answer to the question ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/9 "2015-05-08T18:28:46Z")
Or perhaps, in mixed company, “Just Finished Googling It”. ---
**Author:** ![yellowjacketcoder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/4bbf92/32.png) [@yellowjacketcoder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellowjacketcoder)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/10 "2015-05-08T18:57:40Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Or perhaps, in mixed company, “Just Finished Googling It”. Oh, I agree that’s more appropriate. It’s just that when I see an acronym like that it’s usually pejorative implied (“why are you asking when you could have googled?”) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/11 "2015-05-08T22:54:42Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > On that note, I’m curious if _The Merchant of Venice_ was ever performed in a Communist country, and if so, what they made of it. I know it was performed in the Jewish Theater in Kharkov in 1925, and there was a 1980 Chinese production that was controversial because two characters kissed on stage, which some people thought was morally offensive. In fact, according to Murray Levith’s "Shakespeare in China: > [@](#): > > At least four Shakespeare plays were staged in 1980. Perhaps the most important of these was ‘The Merchant of Venice’, the first Merchant in almost twenty years and the first Shakespeare to be performed by the influential Beijing Chinese Youth Art Theater. According to Li Ruru, this production marked ‘a revival of literature and art in China after the Cultural Revolution.’ Directed by Zhang Qihong, with Cao Yu acting as artistic advisor, Merchant was performed in various cities more than two hundred times between 1980-82, shown often on television, and revived for the 1986 Chinese Shakespeare Festival. It also won several awards from the Ministry of Culture. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2015, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/12 "2015-05-09T04:01:57Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Or perhaps, in mixed company, “Just Finished Googling It”. “I’m hip to my kids modern text lingo - LOL, Laugh Out Loud; WTF - Why The Face?” -Phil Dunphy, _Modern Family_ ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2015, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/13 "2015-05-09T15:17:05Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Shakespeare is better in the original German. Actually some German translations of the 18th/19th century e.g. Schiller’s translation of _Macbeth_ are classics in their own right. The _Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_, founded in 1864, is older than any Anglosphere Shakespeare societies AFAIK. Shakespeare can reasonably be regarded as one of the most notable German playwrights. WRT _The Merchant Of Venice_, the German language sites referring to productions in 1933-1945 [1](http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-41123043.html) [2](https://books.google.de/books?id=3zbCOqE3HhoC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&&source=bl&ots=e9EHfND8ne&sig=D4D5sBzZXSTH99Pnto5lSNJqXts&hl=de&sa=X&ei=6uxNVZ7AFYWzsQGzmYGwBg&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q&f=false), [3](http://www.aachener-zeitung.de/news/kultur/der-jude-scheitert-als-schwacher-mensch-1.90493) , even with, in 1937, a special performance on the occasion of the propaganda exhibition _Der ewige Jude_. [4](https://books.google.de/books?id=fLREbWHC8m4C&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&source=bl&ots=FtTEvhJar9&sig=A-WVv6ih3961QBLOS2J-BHBmYR0&hl=de&sa=X&ei=q-tNVYGKOISVsAHymIGoCQ&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false) cites contemporary theatre criticism, in the _Völkischer Beobachter_ among others, approving of anti-semitic performance of he Shylock character. In my opinion the OP is too charitable to Shakespeare and his times in assuming a ‘faithful adaption’ of _The Merchant of Venice_ is necessarily non-antisemitic. If anything it’s hard work to have Shylock not be an anti-semitic caricature. His famous soliloquy can easily be cast as the self-serving pleading of a villain. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2015, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/14 "2015-05-10T10:01:57Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > It’s sometimes hard to imagine the fear that people lived under during the height of the Third Reich. People would be grabbed off the street for relatively minor infractions and never seen again. I think that artists were watched carefully to ensure they weren’t saying or doing anything against the propaganda that was being disseminated. Given the risk of upsetting someone who had the power to destroy both you and your family I would think artists were very careful not to offend the authorities. Not wishing in any way to depict the Third Reich as a humane and tolerant polity; but in general reading, I have come across suggestions that the situation there in this respect, was less extreme than suggested above – that being maybe a more accurate description of the Soviet Union at Stalin’s peak times of paranoia. Can’t give cites, I’m afraid – maybe something I recall from Solzhenitsyn, but he can be something less than fully balanced, a propos the Soviet area in his country. I get the picture that repression in Hitler’s Germany was at any rate, more consistent and, within its context, rational: certain groups and ideas were strongly targeted, but people unaffected thereby – including artists – were usually left alone if they did nothing in word or deed, downright outrageous to the authorities. One would reckon, admittedly, that any work of art showing Jews / Jewry in a positive light; would likely have, thus, been found outrageous. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2015, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/15 "2015-05-10T10:18:05Z")
> [@Mops](#): > > Actually some German translations of the 18th/19th century e.g. Schiller’s translation of _Macbeth_ are classics in their own right. The _Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_, founded in 1864, is older than any Anglosphere Shakespeare societies AFAIK. Shakespeare can reasonably be regarded as one of the most notable German playwrights. > > WRT _The Merchant Of Venice_, the German language sites referring to productions in 1933-1945 [1](http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-41123043.html) [2](https://books.google.de/books?id=3zbCOqE3HhoC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&&source=bl&ots=e9EHfND8ne&sig=D4D5sBzZXSTH99Pnto5lSNJqXts&hl=de&sa=X&ei=6uxNVZ7AFYWzsQGzmYGwBg&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q&f=false), [3](http://www.aachener-zeitung.de/news/kultur/der-jude-scheitert-als-schwacher-mensch-1.90493) , even with, in 1937, a special performance on the occasion of the propaganda exhibition _Der ewige Jude_. [4](https://books.google.de/books?id=fLREbWHC8m4C&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&source=bl&ots=FtTEvhJar9&sig=A-WVv6ih3961QBLOS2J-BHBmYR0&hl=de&sa=X&ei=q-tNVYGKOISVsAHymIGoCQ&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false) cites contemporary theatre criticism, in the _Völkischer Beobachter_ among others, approving of anti-semitic performance of he Shylock character. > > In my opinion the OP is too charitable to Shakespeare and his times in assuming a ‘faithful adaption’ of _The Merchant of Venice_ is necessarily non-antisemitic. If anything it’s hard work to have Shylock not be an anti-semitic caricature. His famous soliloquy can easily be cast as the self-serving pleading of a villain. As I understand it Germany has a reasonable claim as being the country that first fully appreciated Shakespeare. Certainly Shakespeare’s jump in reputation occured in Germany at around the same time, if not earlier, than in Britain. Is MOV anti-semitic? To our modern eyes almost certainly, yes. However, it is problematic enough to allow for other readings. The fact that it needs to be variously cut(and interpreted) by anti-semites, pro-semites, liberals, conservatives, reactionaries and communists suggests it is not black & white. Just as Henry V is cut to read either as an anti-war play or a pro-war play. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2015, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/16 "2015-05-11T18:51:41Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > Not wishing in any way to depict the Third Reich as a humane and tolerant polity; but in general reading, I have come across suggestions that the situation there in this respect, was less extreme than suggested above – that being maybe a more accurate description of the Soviet Union at Stalin’s peak times of paranoia. Can’t give cites, I’m afraid – maybe something I recall from Solzhenitsyn, but he can be something less than fully balanced, a propos the Soviet area in his country. > > I get the picture that repression in Hitler’s Germany was at any rate, more consistent and, within its context, rational: certain groups and ideas were strongly targeted, but people unaffected thereby – including artists – were usually left alone if they did nothing in word or deed, downright outrageous to the authorities. One would reckon, admittedly, that any work of art showing Jews / Jewry in a positive light; would likely have, thus, been found outrageous. This fits what I’ve been reading. The scenario in the OP wouldn’t generally lead to arrests per se. But if the authorities had a grudge with the director, producer, or players (say, for public criticism or the Reich), then the Gestapo might decide to use the depiction of Shylock as a pretense to bring the offending person in for interrogation. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2015, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/17 "2015-05-12T11:09:19Z")
I thank you all for your replies, particularly the ones on specific performances of the play at the time. > [@Mops](#): > > In my opinion the OP is too charitable to Shakespeare and his times in assuming a ‘faithful adaption’ of _The Merchant of Venice_ is necessarily non-antisemitic. If anything it’s hard work to have Shylock not be an anti-semitic caricature. His famous soliloquy can easily be cast as the self-serving pleading of a villain. Good point, although not all antisemitism is necessarily of the same stripe, hence wondering if the antisemitism of Shakespeare’s day meshed with Hitler’s own particularly deranged and vitriolic brand of it. I imagine being publicly ‘off-message’ on Jews would be met with a discreet visit from the Geheime Staatspolizei. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2015, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/18 "2015-05-12T12:04:30Z")
As I understand it, the anti semitism in the 16th century would have been more akin to the casual racism in Britain in the 60s and 70s. They were villains because they were different and because many people owed them money, not because they were considered an inferior race. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2015, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-merchant-of-venice-in-nazi-germany/719548/19 "2015-05-12T12:26:50Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > the antisemitism of Shakespeare’s day Antisemitism in Shakespeare’s day was purely theoretical: Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 and weren’t allowed back until 1657. It’s quite possible he never met one, and any antisemitism was pretty attenuated.