Revisiting Kammerspiele

This autumn, the Münchner Kammerspiele is celebrating its centenary of being located in the Schauspielhaus on Maximilian Straße – but, from a historical point of view, what or who is there to celebrate? This conference examines the Kammerspiele’s record during the first half of the 20th century and discusses it within the context of a German-speaking (theatre) history that is marked by both ambivalence and violence. Founded as a privately funded theatre by families of Jewish entrepreneurs, the Kammerspiele exemplified a German-Jewish theatre culture that flourished around 1900 and helped shape the advanced theatrical experiments of the Weimar era. Under National Socialism, this culture was eradicated; its protagonists were persecuted and murdered; and its infrastructure was appropriated by the Nazi regime. In the post-1945 era, the former interconnections of German-Jewish culture could only be conceived, in Hannah Arendt’s words, as a ‘negative symbiosis’. Continuities in both personnel and ideology, antisemitism and the evasion of guilt, continued to inform the theatre scene of the early postwar period. Now, professionals in the fields of theatre and music, Jewish history and antisemitism research are joining forces with theatre practitioners to discuss their perspectives on this (theatre) history. These perspectives will extend beyond the specific case of the Kammerspiele to encompass the broader cultural and intellectual landscape of the 20th century up to the present day: How do we remember and what questions are we asking in 2026?