Symington, Rodney

Dr. Rodney Symington is Professor in the Department of Germanic and Russian Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada. For twelve years, he edited Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, and his scholarly publications have included studies of Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann and Heimito von Doderer. He has also edited volumes of essays by Barker Fairley, Hermann Boeschenstein, and Hans Eichner.

Nazi Appropriation of Shakespeare: Cultural Politics in the Third Reich

2005 0-7734-6014-4
For the Nazis, Shakespeare was a major cultural icon, whose works belonged to German culture more than to English and were therefore to be exploited for political-propagandistic purposes like those of any other German “classical” writer. Following an overview of the importance of Shakespeare in German culture, this book’s three major sections investigate the controversy over the appropriate translation Shakespeare’s plays to be read and performed, the effect of the new political-cultural climate on Shakespeare-scholarship, and the attempts of the Nazis to “co-ordinate” Shakespeare’s works on the stage for propagandistic ends. This is the first complete study, entirely in English, to present the total picture of Shakespeare’s fortunes in Germany between 1933 and 1945 in the context of Nazi cultural policy.