In early 1966, Walter Felsenstein, founder and general director of East Berlin’s Komische Oper and at the time considered one of the world’s most exacting and imaginative opera directors, began scouting several Broadway musicals for a production. On the table were Brigadoon, The King and I, Can Can, and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, known in German as Wie man was wird im Leben ohne sich anzustrengen—a diverse and daring selection given the peculiar status of the musical in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). At the time, musicals were rarely seen on stage, with productions of Kiss Me Kate and My Fair Lady being the exceptions.1 The genre saw a recreation on the silver screen. Starting in 1958, the Ministry of Culture supported the production of socialist musicals by the Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft or DEFA, East Germany’s only film company, in an attempt to compete with Western popular culture.2 However, these musicals differed in focus and scope from their Broadway counterparts as they celebrated factory life and farm collectives and emphasized women’s emancipation. Still, escapism and fun remained central to these film musicals.
For East German performers, directors, and audiences, the Broadway musical was unfamiliar territory. Although Felsenstein had a high regard for the genre, producing a musical would be a new experience for him as well. Regardless, after some research, Felsenstein concluded that Fiddler on the Roof was the most substantial and qualitatively most worthy of serious consideration:
The music avoids the loud obtrusiveness of show business. It is both joyous and tragic, deeply felt, folksy, and, above all, highly picturesque. The whole work shows traits of folk theater. Yiddish folklore elements have been skillfully put into a modern form that is theatrically functional … . Haensel’s opinion of the work as unsuitable for [audiences] outside America clearly is biased, and one must consider that a certain anti-Semitic attitude may be influencing his view.3
It is not surprising that he was interested in a work that deals with the persecution and migration of Jews: His marriage to the artist Ellen Neumann—they had wed in 1928—had made him deeply aware of the persecution of Jews (she survived the Holocaust, their marriage ended in divorce in 1946). His reaction to the opinion of Dieter Haensel, chorus director at the Komische Oper, is thus understandable.
In February 1970, Felsenstein elaborated in an interview with the East German radio station Deutschland-Sender that what had drawn him to Fiddler was the deeply humanist nature of its story and its portrayal of the ongoing hardships faced by Jews. In another interview, this time with Look magazine, he reiterated his concern about the present-day treatment of Jews, without providing specific examples.4 In this interview, he restated that it would not be possible to produce a mere copy of the original Broadway production, without giving a reason. Felsenstein, known for directing works that critiqued or had relevance for society, must have been aware of the rise of anti-Semitism in the GDR and the dwindling of Jewish communities.5
The Komische Oper production of Fiedler auf dem Dach premiered on 23 January 1971 after a long gestation and many delays. It was notable not least for its departure from the Broadway version. While early performances on both sides of the Iron Curtain either recreated or closely followed the original, Felsenstein’s production took a different course. It transformed a Broadway musical into musical theater that emphasized Jewishness and toned down Americanness through changes to both script and score, drawing more heavily on Sholem Aleichem’s story, the original source. This was not only due to Felsenstein’s search for a new form of musical theater but was also driven by the distinct political circumstances of the time, especially Cold War dynamics, whose defining moments the production accompanied and corresponded to. The process of bringing the musical to the East German stage required delicate balancing acts during a critical period of the GDR’s domestic and foreign policy. The director had to deal not only with censorship at home and the GDR’s relations with the Soviet Union and the Arab states but also with the government’s relationships with West Germany, Israel, and the United States. The trajectory of the production ultimately reveals the paradoxes of working under a stressed regime in the larger context of GDR history.
Recent productions show that the subject matter Fiddler addresses remains timely, be it the dramatic rise of anti-Semitism in recent times or the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, both of which give Fiddler a renewed relevance; this relevance can be felt regardless of whether such productions predate the war, such as Komische Oper’s acclaimed 2017 production by Barrie Kosky, which had its North American premiere in Chicago in September 2022, or were conceived after, such as Cusch Jung’s 2023 production for Oper Leipzig, which references the invasion of Ukraine at the end of the show. Indeed, Fiddler remains a timeless allegory of resilience and survival under oppressive conditions.
Negotiating Fiedler
Once Felsenstein settled on Fiddler as his next project, he set out to familiarize himself with the work. Due to his limited proficiency in English, he sought assistance from Friedelind Wagner, whom he had known since 1956.6 Wagner had sent her brother Wieland to Felsenstein premieres to expose him to a theatrical approach that differed significantly from Wieland’s abstract-stylized productions. She also facilitated exchanges between the Komische Oper and Bayreuth and promoted Felsenstein’s work internationally. After moving to the US in 1941, Friedelind Wagner became involved with radio broadcasts of anti-Nazi propaganda and eventually obtained American citizenship. She maintained solid contacts in New York even after returning to Europe in 1953. Despite her slightly fractured relationship with Felsenstein since 1964, and perhaps attracted by the musical and its subject matter, she immediately sent him a piano reduction and the book.
In April 1966, Martin Vogler, dramaturg and chairman of the union representing the Komische Oper, contacted Susan Heyman at the William Morris Agency in New York, who represented the rights holder, Jerome Robbins, to inquire about performance and translation rights for East Germany.7 Friedelind Wagner also became involved with the negotiations, initially communicating directly with the Morris Agency, and just in time as it turned out. On 5 April, the Morris Agency informed Vogler and Wagner that Werner Schmid of Musical AG Zürich, West Germany’s most powerful production company at the time, had expressed interest in bringing Fiddler to West German stages and in acquiring rights for both West and East Germany.8 Schmid’s company followed the American model and relied heavily on private donors. During the Fiddler negotiations, the business faced a financial crisis that may have influenced his approach. Little is known about him and his political position, but he certainly was not neutral and worked on behalf of West Germany, despite operating out of Switzerland.9
Later that April, the leadership of the Komische Oper intervened and the rights for East Germany were excluded from negotiations with Werner Schmid, allowing the theater to negotiate directly with the Morris Agency.10 A month later, Felsenstein contacted Jerome Robbins to acquire the rights and to invite him to be involved in the production—a wise move since Robbins, as rights holder, had reserved the privilege to direct Fiddler or send an assistant.11 Shortly after, Felsenstein announced his plans to stage Fiddler in the 1966–67 season.12 However, negotiations soon became complicated. To advance discussions, Friedelind Wagner contacted Schmid, who claimed that a Fiddler production at the Komische Oper would jeopardize his plans for West Berlin and demanded a one-year embargo.13 The premiere of his production was scheduled for 12 September 1967, at the Theater des Westens in West Berlin. Schmid continued to pursue performing rights for all German-speaking countries, excluding the GDR, over the next months, insisting on the embargo.14
Schmid’s desire to include East Germany in his negotiations suggests that he planned to control or even prevent a production in the other Germany, and the William Morris Agency had occasionally included East German rights in agreements for German-language productions. The negotiations that followed aimed to “protect” the planned production in West Berlin, suggesting the usual Cold War competition. Yet, the twists and turns in the negotiations provide a more nuanced picture of the complicated endeavor to get Fiddler on Komische Oper’s stage.
In early January 1967, plans emerged for a staging of Fiddler in Hamburg, with the premiere set for the same year; along with it came a proposed embargo of nine months for the East German production.15 Through the involvement of Grete Freund Basch, who represented European Arts Roboz International Productions and who was deputized by Felsenstein to negotiate on Komische Oper’s behalf, discussions proceeded in mid-January. The race for Fiddler production rights in the divided city potentially came to a close when in April 1967 the Theater des Westens dropped a staging of the musical due to unsurmountable production costs.16 But Hamburg was still on the table.
With a possible production in sight, Felsenstein convinced Robbins to direct the production, although it had become clear as early as February 1967 that Felsenstein envisioned a different staging and unique choreography, a plan that he subsequently confirmed.17 (Depending on who he was addressing, assignments could change considerably, revealing Felsenstein’s tactical if not political acumen.18) Initially, Robbins agreed to rework Fiddler, but he backed out a few months later,19 and affirming his decision a year later, he explained that he preferred to focus on new work.20 His pro-Israel leanings and politics likely played a role as well. By the 1960s, he had converted from a Communist to a liberal anti-Communist stance and eventually had left the party in 1947. When Israel achieved statehood, his allegiance shifted toward Zionism. Israel was the first country after the US to stage Fiddler, premiering it on 7 June 1965 at the Alhambra Theater in Tel Aviv, with the original Broadway staging and choreography.
With the contractual matters seemingly on track, Felsenstein turned to planning the production of Fiddler. In June 1967, he visited New York for the Twelfth Annual Congress of the International Theater Institute, a trip that was not without incident. Despite holding an Austrian passport, Felsenstein required special dispensation from the State Department to visit the United States (a previous visa denial by the US State Department supposedly had prevented a guest directorship in 1964 at the Metropolitan Opera).21 During this visit, he saw the original Broadway show and met with Jerome Robbins at his home.22
Felsenstein would remain in touch with Robbins.23 He shared his critique of the Hamburg production, now titled Anatevka, which premiered on 1 February 1968 at Operettenhaus (followed by runs in Düsseldorf and West Berlin a few years later) and which Robbins’s assistant Tom Abbott had staged, with the choreographer. Felsenstein’s criticism extended to the text: “We have to do our own translation, because the West-German translation is very poor and does not reflect the real sense of Fiddler.”24 In a memorandum dated 6 February 1968 and signed by Martin Vogler, his criticism was more pronounced. The West German production is depicted as a political event in support of the Six Day War, which the GDR had vehemently condemned:
Announced with huge propaganda effort as “the theater event of the year 1968,” it became clear that Fiddler aligned with a certain cultural-political direction … it supported the Israeli aggression of 6 June 1967. In the wake of the manipulated surge in West German-Israeli relations … [it was] suddenly easy to accommodate Fiddler in Hamburg. The fact that in addition to tabloid celebrities, the Israeli ambassador in Bonn and the commander of the German armed forces in Hamburg were among the most celebrated guests of honor at the premiere underscores the role assigned to Fiddler on the Roof.25
Criticism extended beyond politics vis-à-vis Israel, with claims that neither Jews nor Russians were depicted in nuanced or differentiated ways (an inaccurate claim, as Martin Vogler’s discussion of the costumes reveals) and departures from the original, such as in the lyrics of “To Life,” which were deemed grotesque.26 The memorandum also indicates that, according to the agreement, Fiddler could only be staged in East Germany nine months after the Hamburg premiere, with the earliest possible date being 1 November 1968. It seems that some contractual matters had still not been resolved.
In fact, several issues delayed the finalization of the licensing contract. From July 1968 on, Felsenstein had been involved in ongoing disputes with the Ministry of Culture about financial matters.27 Felsenstein was prepared to stage Fiddler,28 but negotiations were hampered by the demand of GDR officials for valuta (the agreed-upon value of a currency) to pay royalties. Discussions continued until 1969, with Camillo Harth, the head of the Büro für Urheberrechte (the GDR Copyright Agency), taking over.29 In light of a possible May premiere, conceptual production talks began in January, mapping out many of the details, but with an awareness that any possibility for political misunderstandings had to be avoided.30 In the end, not even a premiere in June would materialize, and yet, Felsenstein would ask the artistic director of the Bolshoi Theater, Mikhail Ivanovich Chulaki, that month to release Valery Levental from his obligations to design sets for the Komische Oper production.31 In April 1969, the Neue Zeit announced the premiere for the end of the 1969–70 season.32 By May, a premiere date in April 1970 circulated.33 However, at the end of May, Johannes Felsenstein had to inform Jerome Robbins that negotiations between the GDR Copyright Agency and the Morris Agency had failed.34 The East German government had refused to provide the proposed advance of $7,500.35 Exacerbating the situation, Werner Schmid reportedly had offered $5,000 and 10 percent royalty for the East German rights.36 At that point, Robbins intervened and agreed to a reduced advance and 8 percent royalty, out of respect for Felsenstein.37 The main issue, however, was the contract itself, and it took until October for a new one to be written.38
Felsenstein still maintained the end-of-season premiere date for what he provocatively called an “American musical” in December 1969.39 However, the production had not been given permission to go ahead due to several concerns, which included perceived anti-Russian tendencies in the libretto, the portrayal of the United States as a destination of hope for Jews, and the potential for the audience to empathize and identify with the Jewish characters. And then there was the contract, which, for the first time, was negotiated directly rather than through a sub-distributor in Western Europe.40 That December, Felsenstein became aware of cultural–political reservations about the libretto. Willi Schrader, head of the Theater Department of the Ministry of Culture, had received the translation in late 1969, and reservations were now voiced by Arno Hochmuth, director of the Culture Department of GDR’s Central Committee; Horst Oswald, Berlin’s City Councilor for Culture; Horst Seeger, head dramaturg at the Komische Oper, and Schrader himself. By the end of the year, Felsenstein submitted a new translation, which the Magistrate, the Culture Department, and the Theater Department reviewed and finally approved, allowing rehearsals to begin in January. (The committee’s request to replace Kyiv with “Gabuotsch” and to avoid the word pogrom appears to have been ignored.41) However, the Ministry of Culture and the Secretary of State in the Central Committee’s Culture Department did not approve the contract.42 Horst Seeger and theater director Gerhard Karl, both from the Komische Oper, and Georg Münzer of the Copyright Agency saw legal obstacles. As the head of dramaturgy, Seeger played an important role at the theater, but his position on Fiddler remains unclear.
Schrader informed Felsenstein that the license was unacceptable as originally worded, as it included clauses that discriminated against the GDR and created legal uncertainties, and that the Copyright Agency would proceed with a new draft that included several changes. (The idea to stage Fiddler without a contract while fulfilling financial demands circulated but was quickly abandoned.)43 The area covered by the license was changed from East Germany to German Democratic Republic, in response to the Hallstein Doctrine and in recognition of the state; New York as the place of jurisdiction was excluded, marketing obligations loosened and reduced; and German was added as a contractual language.44 All of these changes were deemed a “cultural political necessity.”
On 27 January, just three days after Porgy and Bess premiered at the house under the direction of Götz Friedrich, effortlessly and without scandal, Felsenstein made a hurried and, according to his own account, widely supported trip to New York, with his son Johannes as translator in tow, a trip that attests to his deep commitment to the project.45 He feared that the new draft of the license would not be acceptable to the American agency, but still hoped that the show could open later in 1970. Felsenstein had not produced any new works on the Komische Oper stage since the premiere of Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges on 22 December 1968, partly due to his health. He felt under pressure to stage a new work, which made the premiere of the musical an urgent issue.46 As Howard Taubman saw it at the time, both sides of the Atlantic needed convincing: “Felsenstein’s persuasive powers were needed not only here but also in East Berlin where an American work of this kind, with its theme of Russian oppression of a Jewish community, has not been allowed by the authorities.”47
On 2 February 1970, the final contract was issued, which Felsenstein brought with him from New York and which, according to him, would not have been finalized if he had not made the trip.48 The contract granted performing rights solely to the Komische Oper, no other GDR theater. The premiere date of 22 December was confirmed a few days later, a date immediately shared with Szymon Symcha Szurmiej of the Jewish Theater in Warsaw, who would serve as “folklore advisor,” and with Jenő Lefkovits, the Hungarian-Jewish actor, director, and playwright of Budapest. It was publicized a few months later.49 By April, casting was completed,50 and by June the production had received its official title, Der Geiger auf dem Dach, later changed to Der Fiedler auf dem Dach, to emphasize the musical’s folksy character and to provide a translation closer to the English original.51
The delays in bringing Fiddler to the East Berlin stage, a period that lasted more than four years, can be attributed to various issues. First and foremost among them was slow and difficult communication; additionally, German-speaking territories were not considered to be either linguistic or political entities. Martin Vogler’s slow pace in driving negotiations forward was later criticized by Felsenstein.52 Despite such external delays, the involvement of influential personalities on behalf of the endeavor—which is a testimony to Felsenstein’s international network and standing—finally helped reach a workable contract. Although Friedelind Wagner’s initial engagement was helpful, it was not at all decisive in resolving the issues, particularly with regard to the embargo. However, Jerome Robbins played a crucial role in finding a resolution. It is worth noting that neither the Morris Agency nor Schmid had contacted Robbins directly, but instead went through his lawyer. In addition to procedural and legal hurdles, obstacles were also driven by Cold War dynamics. Aside from the musical’s content, the situation was complicated by Werner Schmid’s inquiry with William Morris about a production at the West Berlin Theater des Westens and by the fact that East Germany was not recognized by the United States and West Germany at the time. And yet, improving relations between the three nations enabled a positive conclusion to the negotiations.
Censoring Fiedler
The final stage of producing Fiedler auf dem Dach coincided with shifts in Cold War politics. In March 1970, leaders from East and West Germany met for the first time, and the two halves of Berlin began to seek greater proximity. In August, the Soviet Union and West Germany signed the Moscow Treaty, pledging non-aggression in their relations and in matters concerning European and international security. But East German relations with the Soviet Union began to deteriorate in the face of international and inter-German relations. This was further complicated by Walter Ulbricht’s refusal to support any of the liberal reforms demanded by Moscow, which ultimately lost him the support of the Soviet Union. However, the two nations still shared similar views on Israel politics.53
These political developments coincided with the start of rehearsals, which were further strained by Felsenstein’s hospitalization in October.54 The rehearsals were attended and observed by one of the many unofficial collaborators working for the Ministry for State Security (the Stasi). However, “IM Kastner,” i.e. Martin Vogler, who had been serving as dramaturg under Felsenstein since 1956, did not report anything inflammatory. Although Fiedler’s path now seemed clear, the scheduled December premiere had to be postponed again, though this time the delay was not due to Felsenstein, who was known for his perfectionism and often postponed premieres after months-long rehearsals that did not meet his standards.55
The first indication that something was amiss came in mid-November when Felsenstein requested “most urgently” and “as soon as possible” a conversation with Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) Ambassador Pyotr Abrasimov, who wielded significant influence over GDR policy.56 As during the Realism debates at the 1954 theater conference in Berlin when he had come under scrutiny due to his formulation of a “realistic music theater,” Felsenstein again declared that “the Soviet Union would be able to clear up confusion about his music theater and Socialist Realism.”57 The explicit reason why he turned to Abrasimov in 1970 was not stated. However, several weeks after the original December premiere date, the underlying issue became clear. The East German government was concerned about the translation of the libretto prepared by Felsenstein’s son Johannes, which portrayed Russia in what was considered a problematic way. The program book, which included elaborate and informative articles closely linked with the production, also became a point of contention. Deputy Minister of Culture Werner Rackwitz, a trained musicologist supportive of a wide variety of artistic endeavors in line with the GDR’s ideals—promotion of humanism, friendship between nations, solidarity, and world peace—and Yiddish song and nineteenth-century European synagogue music, demanded drastic changes.58
Stephan Stompor, a member of the dramaturgy staff of the Komische Oper since 1967, had presented two options for the program book in July 1970: either to soften or disregard “die Problematik” by including humorous anecdotes, jokes, legends, and texts on Jewish life and authors, or, preferably, addressing “the issue” in its historical and social context with documentation, thereby facilitating a deeper understanding. Stompor did not specify what “the issue” actually was; earlier he had referred to the subject matter of the musical, the pogroms, and the hardship Jews suffered in Russia, i.e. ultimately what has been termed the “Jewish question” since the eighteenth century. Stompor saw Fiddler less as a prototypical American musical than as a work related to the world of Maxim Gorki (who explicitly addressed the “Jewish question”) and Alexander N. Ostrowski. For Stompor the program book had to focus on the work’s social and political commentary that for him were in line with its “Shakespearian aspiration.”59 In September, a draft of the program book was reviewed by Horst Seeger, who suggested changes to the conception, recommending that it concentrate more on the musical than on the context.60 Two months later, Seeger proposed adding information on the genre of the musical, an addition appreciated by Stompor.61 In his response, Stompor indicated that Felsenstein believed that the final text in the program book, “Die russische Bevölkerung und die Pogrome,” particularly the last paragraph, could be interpreted as an indictment of the present. It was replaced with a more generic text on Russia and the Jews.62 The last paragraph of the original article states:
Russian Jewry has gradually learned to eliminate the horrors of the pogroms from its troubled imagination. The legal aftermath, a process ongoing since 1908, does not provide them even a temporary respite. Thus, the suffering of Russian Jews has only been deferred: instead of an immediate catastrophe they now face slow ruin. More than any other population struggling for the most basic human rights, the Russian Jewish masses see no way that should lead there, and more apathetic than ever, they retreat into their individual lives. But has there ever been an individual life for the Russian Jew in which rough hands have not suddenly intervened?63
With these modifications, the program book was prepared for printing. The final version consisted of three parts: the first pertained to the literary basis and the musical itself, with texts that provide insight into the milieu of the work; the second supported and explained the Fabel through Tevye texts by Sholem Aleichem, as well as texts on Jewish wedding rituals and revolutionary youth groups; the third detailed the social–historical background, with quotations from documentary sources. (See fig. 1)
Cover of the program book, edited by Stephan Stompor on behalf of the Dramaturgische Abteilung der Komischen Oper. Illustration by Dietrich Kaufmann.
In early January, Felsenstein shared the proofs of the program book with Minister of Culture Klaus Gysi, explaining in the accompanying note why no essay on the actual production was included: the team did not want to alert the “American publisher” of the director’s newly arranged Fiddler—an overstatement as it were.64 On 6 and 7 January, two weeks before the rescheduled premiere, Felsenstein met with Gysi and Stephan Stompor, and Werner Rackwitz to discuss matters related to the program book. Rackwitz requested that all references to the performance in New York be omitted and all texts pointing to “specific Jewish problems and historical-social peculiarities, as well as an all too accentuated criticism of the Russian pre-1917 past be cut, while our critical stance toward earlier Jewish lifestyles needs to be emphasized.”65 An excerpt from the 1909 book Der Witz des Juden by Edmund Edel, the first German-language treatise on Jewish humor, was censored, as was an excerpt from the 1913 memoirs of Pauline Wengeroff referring to wedding customs (the first of its kind written by a Jewish woman). “Strange facts,” such as the groom and bride meeting first only at the wedding, might, so Rackwitz, trigger anti-Semitic sentiments. No reasons were given for cutting Kurt Aram’s 1914 text on Jews in Czarist Russia and an article by Stompor written specifically for the program. The request for these deletions ultimately reveals discomfort with Jewishness and its differences and with addressing anti-Semitism.
The German translation of Mordechai Gebirtig’s mournful poem “Gehat hob ikh a heym,” written in May 1941 when the author and his family were displaced from their hometown Lagiewniki near Krakow to the nearby Ghetto of Podgorze, was deleted to avoid any unwanted parallels between the pogroms in Russia and the Holocaust, both of which were absent from GDR discourses. Excerpts from Lenin’s speeches on the “Jewish question” had to be shortened by a third, and Tolstoy’s 1881 letter on the pogroms was allowed to remain.66 Other texts were to be further edited. Rather inexplicably, Rackwitz also demanded that the list of sources at the end of the program be removed.
The 1970 program book was replaced with a new one that included a brief description by Stompor of Yiddish literature’s trajectory from the East to Broadway. The text contextualized Sholem Aleichem’s short stories as the foundation for the musical and excerpts from the stories were reprinted, as was a passage from Aleichem’s novel Stempenyu.67 While there is no evidence that the authors of Fiddler on the Roof were familiar with that novel, Felsenstein’s team clearly saw a connection and tied it to the drama. The booklet included Lenin’s statement that “the democratic socialist peasants and workers” despised “bloody Tsarism” for using the “prejudices of the uneducated” to incite persecution and closed with an excerpt from Alexander Granach’s 1945 autobiography detailing his time in Horodenka, Western Ukraine, and a passage from Tolstoy’s 1881 letter. It was the first time since Felsenstein founded the opera house that a program book was censored, as Felsenstein emphasized in a letter to Rackwitz that accompanied the revised libretto. Willi Schrader, Horst Oswald, and officers of the Culture Department of the Central Committee had already received the booklet at the end of the previous season.68
The libretto was also a source of controversy, but here concerns were different. The original English-language book mentions “America” seven times and the city of Chicago once. It also mentions Jerusalem. The translation by Johannes Felsenstein retained these locations, although Jerusalem is now referred to as the Promised Land (“Gelobtes Land”) rather than “Holy Land,” though this is crossed out in one preserved copy.69 (Jerusalem, like Berlin, is a divided city and thus keeping the name may have been intentional.) Like the English original, the translation did not seek to answer the question, “Wo kann ich nur mit meiner Frau, ihren Eltern und drei Kindern hingehen?” (Where can I go with my wife, her parents, and three children?). Felsenstein’s notes on the main rehearsal with orchestra confirm that this version of the translation remained largely unchanged until 20 January, including phrases such as “Was macht Dein Schwager in Amerika” (What does your brother-in-law do in America?) and “wir werden in Warschau bleiben” (We will stay in Warsaw). However, Hanns Nocker, the actor who took on the role of Lazar Wolf, was instructed to mention only Chicago and leave out the subsequent “Amerika.”70 This was an attempt to minimize references to the US without completely removing them from the text. The translation preserved several Hebrew and Yiddish words from the original version, such as “le chaim” and “mazel tov,” as well as some words in Russian; they seemingly were never a point of contention.
After that rehearsal and three days before the new premiere date, Felsenstein met with Ambassador Abrasimov, who recommended that place names and the finale be changed.71 As a result, all eleven mentions of Kyiv were substituted with Yegupetz, the fictional name given to the Ukrainian capital by Sholem Aleichem (German sources use different and sometimes confusing spellings, such as “Jeguts,” “Yegots,” “Jegubz,” “Jegubtsch,” and the earlier mentioned “Gabuotsch”).72 It is important to note that in Fiddler, Kyiv is not directly linked to Jewish culture but rather references the birthplace, site of education, destination, and the location of the arrest of Perchik, a progressive Communist student revolutionary who falls in love with Tevye’s daughter Hodel. Yet historically, Kyiv is associated with the pogroms of 1881, 1905, and 1919, which left a dark stain on pre-Soviet Russia. During the Soviet era, Kyiv was also the site of the Nazis’ mass murder at Babyn Yar, a ravine where tens of thousands of Jews were massacred, making it the site of the biggest single mass execution of the Holocaust. In 1946, after the trial and execution of German officers who had committed these atrocities, the Soviet Union prohibited any public discussion of what happened to Kyiv’s Jews. For example, Dmitry Klebanov’s Symphony No. 1 “Pamyati muchenikov Bab’yego Yara” (Memoriam to the Martyrs of Babyn Yar, 1945) was not allowed to premiere, and in the years following the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union censored all documentation of the Holocaust, including any attempt to memorialize Babyn Yar. Even after the collapse of the USSR, twenty-five more years passed before a comprehensive memorial effort began. Commemorative works composed after Klebanov’s early attempt, by Revekka (Rivka) Boyarskaya, Mendel Bash, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Moisey Vaynberg, were performed, though not without obstacles.73
While some passages mentioning “Amerika” or alluding to Israel were removed, a few remained, such as Sphrintze’s “Wo werden wir in Amerika wohnen?” (Where will we live in America?) and Yente’s “Nächstes Jahr in Jerusalem” (Next year in Jerusalem) and “Gelobtes Land” (Promised Land). References to Chicago also remained. That is, references to the United States and Israel were reduced, not eliminated. However, Tevye’s intended destination is not explicitly stated: The phrase “We are going to New York, America” is overridden by the word shalom (peace) in Tevye’s line, which could suggest Jerusalem as the final destination, as it was in Aleichem’s short story.74 The village names Anatevka and Rajanka, where “all the Jews were evicted, forced to leave their homes,” were left intact as they are fictional places, though the latter evokes Rozhanka (Ražanka), the village Jerome Robbins’s forefathers came from and a shtetl whose Jewish population was severely decimated during the Holocaust. Reacting to Abrasimov’s requests, there were also distinct changes at the end of Act 2: the beginning of scene 7, which focused on matchmaking, was omitted, and the end of scenes 7 and 8 were rearranged, with the “Anatevka” number moved to scene 8.
As already requested in December 1969, the word pogrom (used twice in the English original and initially transferred verbatim) was now cut (it had been first replaced with “Unruhen” or unrests), but it was still staged, albeit without more disturbing elements, perhaps to satisfy a bourgeois need for security in line with early GDR’s notions of Socialist Realism. In addition to presenting Russia negatively, the term pogrom and the violence associated with it conflicted with the GDR’s self-image of a peace-loving country and its efforts to distance itself from Germany’s Nazi past, including the November pogroms known as Kristallnacht. An anti-fascist stance became increasingly important to the legitimization of the ruling party in the GDR. It allowed officials to distance themselves from the “backward-looking and fascist” Federal Republic and deny any connection between the GDR and the “Third Reich.”75 However, as the vandalism of Jewish cemeteries in the 1970s shows, anti-Semitism was pervasive despite the GDR’s strict penalties for anti-Semitic acts. For example, painting a swastika on a wall carried a five-year prison sentence. Holocaust education was lacking altogether.
Most of the changes to the libretto were implemented at the last minute, as can be gathered from a note written the day before the premiere in which Arno Hochmuth expresses his concerns to Erich Honecker, then the Second Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party. Clearly, Fiedler had become a concern even for high-ranking politicians.76 In his letter, Hochmuth provided a general description of the plot, which is followed by an outline of specific political issues and their potential consequences: The portrayal of the expulsion of Jews may elicit “historically inadmissible reactions” from the audience. As the opponents of the Jews were anonymous, there was a risk of drawing incorrect conclusions. The Jewish families decided to emigrate to different countries, including the United States; this could lead to politically incorrect ideas about the role of the US and its significance for the Jewish people, and so on. Martin Vogler again criticized the depiction of the Russian Revolution (which plays no role in Fiddler). Hochmuth reported that Felsenstein dismissed this criticism, allegedly responding, “I would also like to take this opportunity to inform you that I will not tolerate any intended interference with the production on the part of the representatives of the authorities who will attend the dress rehearsal.”77 However, in subsequent rehearsals, the director considered Vogler’s comments. And yet, Hochmuth underlined that ever since Felsenstein had made his intent to produce the musical known, in 1968, he had not been receptive to concerns or objections, quite possibly because of the deep involvement of the Felsenstein family in the project.
However, this lack of receptivity can be traced back first to December 1969 and then to 28 December 1970, when Werner Rackwitz had a conversation with Felsenstein about the concerns of the Ministry of Culture, that is, possible incorrect political associations and anti-Soviet agitation. According to reports, Felsenstein was dismissive and viewed his production as unambiguous. The question was posed whether the musical should be performed at all or if Felsenstein should step down. Subsequently, a purportedly similar conversation took place with Klaus Gysi, the Minister of Culture. However, removing Felsenstein from his position would have been a political faux pas. Just three months prior, on 7 October, the Day of the Republic, he had received the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic for his film of Verdi’s Otello. This prestigious prize not only came with a high monetary award (in this case, 100,000 East marks), but also public recognition. His removal from the Komische Oper would have been inexplicable to the public.
Meanwhile, due to Felsenstein’s prominent status, Walter Ulbricht, the First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party and primary decision maker in East Germany, became involved in the Fiedler affair on 1 January. According to Hochmuth, Ulbricht proposed in a conversation with Gysi that a rupture with Felsenstein should be avoided and a politically correct production could be ensured by controlling rehearsals and the program book, and by coordinating with the press, all without overt administrative interference or forcing a cancellation. Gysi was advised to consult with Abrasimov, and the two met on 18 January.78 Hochmuth then confidently asserted that after a 20 January meeting between Abrasimov and Felsenstein “any specific reference to the emigrants’ destination, whether it be the United States or Palestine, was now mute.”79 The exodus of the Jews to either place did not fit into the worldview of the GDR’s anticapitalist, anti-Israel/pro-Arab government.80 This explains the quest to deemphasize all aspects of Jewishness and Americanness in the musical, in the program book, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in the libretto.
While Abrasimov’s attention was concentrated on the libretto, the Central Committee, through the Ministry of Culture, treated the program book as the main concern, as Hochmuth’s explanations show. Hochmuth avoided discussing Jewishness, an issue first raised by Rackwitz, and instead focused on “class positions,” a term often used in the GDR’s official narratives and aligned with the “Communist” ideology of the totalitarian state. He then ordered an information session for the Blockpresse (all central socialist newspapers) on 21 January, to offer information on the context and issues of Fiedler: “The production is to be placed in the historically concrete class background of the story ‘Tevye the Milkman.’”81 The focus and emphasis on Sholem Aleichem, apparent in the printed program booklet, is all the more oblique, as the Ukrainian-born writer had immigrated to the United States after witnessing the pogroms that swept through southern Russia in 1905, including Kyiv.
The seemingly endless discussions of program book and libretto reveal much of the GDR’s repressive cultural policies put in place after the Eleventh Plenum of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party from 16 to 18 December 1965, which ended a relatively liberal period and instigated a “cultural crackdown.”82 They also highlight the GDR’s utter dependency on the Soviet Union, which ultimately proved to be culturally more open. What contributed to the political anxieties and triggered the postponement of the December premiere may have been connected with or reinforced by the Dymshits–Kuznetsov aircraft hijacking, also known as Operation Wedding. In June 1970, a group of mostly Jewish refuseniks had attempted to seize an empty civilian aircraft in Leningrad to escape the Soviet Union for the West, with the ultimate destination Israel. Even though the attempt was unsuccessful, it was a notable event in the course of the Cold War because it drew international attention to human rights violations in the Soviet Union and resulted in the temporary loosening of emigration restrictions. The Dymshits–Kuznetsov affair showed the Soviet Union to be inhospitable to Jews. The trial of the refuseniks took place from 15 to 24 December, thus coinciding with the original date of the Fiedler premiere.
Over two decades later, Lin Jaldati and Eberhard Rebling offered a different explanation for the censorship, suggesting that some Arab countries—among the first to recognize the GDR’s statehood just two years after the Six Day War—had requested the performance be canceled. The quarrel was resolved only due to the personal intervention of Walter Ulbricht.83 Rebling was a musicologist and pianist; his wife, Dutch-born Jaldati, had come to Berlin as a Displaced Person and continued her career there as a Yiddish singer. Both were Communists and became cultural diplomats on behalf of the GDR, giving concerts of Yiddish songs abroad. During the Fiedler affair, their ambassadorial work was put on hold: The Six Day War of 1967 had triggered strong responses from the Politburo, with officials drafting an “Erklärung jüdischer Bürger der DDR” (Declaration of Jewish citizens of the GDR) that broadly condemned the “imperialist aggression of Israel.” Jaldati and other prominent Jews refused to sign the declaration.84
According to an unsigned Newsweek article, Ulbricht invited several Arab diplomats on a hunting trip on the outskirts of East Berlin to avoid any confrontation on the day of the premiere.85 Indeed, in early January Diaa al-Din Dawoud, head of the Arab Socialist Union of the United Arab Republic, and various dignitaries and newly instated diplomats representing the United Arab Republic in Berlin, visited the East German capital. However, they returned home several weeks before the actual Fiedler premiere on 23 January, where, according to Hochmuth, additional security measures had been installed per agreement with the East German Secret Police. The nature of these measures remains unknown.86 (Christoph Felsenstein claims that secret police officers also attended the dress rehearsal.87) According to the archivist of the Komische Oper at the time, Fiedler was caught between the trial of the Russian Jews and friendly relations with the Arab states, and as a result, “hostile demonstrations” were expected.88
“Delayed” by about four years, Fiedler became, after Kiss Me Kate and My Fair Lady the third production of a Broadway musical to be staged in the GDR and the first on a Jewish subject to be brought to such an important mainstream venue.89 Given the circumstances, a production that highly anticipated and that many years in the making could not be canceled. The premiere affirmed the GDR’s need to maintain its composure as it sought recognition in the West amid significant foreign policy developments.90 For the censors, the musical was a balancing act. They had to navigate the preservation of the GDR’s anti-fascist stance, maintain its alliance with the Arab states and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and continue a stable relationship with the Soviet Union.
Even after the premiere, Fiedler remained a matter of debate and political concern. On 2 February 1971, Walter Felsenstein belatedly wrote to Werner Rackwitz expressing his outrage that Horst Seeger had been called in to participate in a training seminar during Fiedler rehearsals (the intense work on Fiedler was given as reason that Felsenstein complained only after the premiere): “This state of affairs is intolerable, and you can no more answer for it to the Komische Oper than I can.”91 Felsenstein received a vague response at the end of February. Discomfort with the production continued, as a synopsis in German received by the Ministry of Culture in 1972/73 reveals: It ended with “when the curtain comes down, they begin their long journey to America”—“America” is crossed out.92 However, it would have been difficult to cancel the show given its success. Performances were sold out two years in advance.93
Thirty-five years later, Werner Rackwitz recalled the Fiedler affair, claiming that the premiere only took place due to Felsenstein’s prominence and without much public attention. He believed that the circumstances only made it more attractive for audiences and that accommodations and negotiations were common while working under political constraints. A similar “push-pull and give-and-take” relationship, as Mark Clark called it, between the artist and the Central Committee/Ministry of Culture took place with Bertolt Brecht and Paul Dessau.94 Some of their productions were similar balancing acts. Censorship and self-censorship characterized theater work in the GDR, but there were also freedoms that artists located within such restrictions.95 More significantly, Rackwitz claimed that “Unter den Linden”—presumably referring to the Soviet Embassy located on the boulevard next door to the Komische Oper—had sought to veto the production based on its depictions of a pogrom.96 Such a veto would have weighed on Abrasimov, who was overtly engaged in East German domestic politics and a key player in Cold War diplomacy.
Fiedler coincided with pivotal political and diplomatic events. In 1970, negotiations began between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union to address various Berlin-related issues. In January 1971, ten direct telephone lines, which had been cut in 1952, were reconnected between West and East Berlin. At the time of the Fiedler premiere, ambassadors of the four victorious World War II powers were still working out details of the Four Power Agreement in Berlin. On 3 September that year, an agreement was signed to regularize various practical matters related to the city’s relations with foreign countries and to facilitate arrangements benefiting its inhabitants. Abrasimov signed on behalf of the Soviet Union.
Walter Felsenstein experienced new career heights in the aftermath of the Fiedler affair. In May 1971, he embarked on a two-week trip to the United States to conduct seminars and opera workshops and introduce screenings of two of his opera films, of Beethoven’s Fidelio and Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann, in New York and Boston, where the Opera Consortiuum awarded him an Orpheus Triumphant plaque. Upon his return to East Berlin, he received the Johannes R. Becher-Medaille in Gold, a civil decoration named in homage to the poet and politician and awarded by the Cultural Association of the GDR for services to the development of socialist culture. The award ceremony was attended by almost all involved in the affair, among them Abrasimov, who in his congratulatory note highlighted in particular Felsenstein’s friendship with the Soviet Union.97
The affair around the Fiedler production is particularly surprising because, in principle, its story—so pertinent for Felsenstein’s production—was aligned with GDR ideology. As the cultural historian Alisa Solomon notes in her study on the reception of Sholem Aleichem: “Communists, ex-Communists, socialists, and fellow travelers made their own claim on the folkshrayber as the Cold War began.”98 They did not object that (American) ideals such as “individual rights, progress, and freedom of association were presented as also Jewish.” Sholem Aleichem’s work was known and appreciated in the GDR since at least the 1950s.99
By allowing a production of the American musical—with the blessing of the Soviet Union and under censorship—the Central Committee walked a fine line, maintaining an idiosyncratic balance (just like the iconic Fiddler himself) between divergent and shifting (foreign) politics. The Fiedler affair inadvertently both reflected and foreshadowed political changes, including the GDR’s complex and strained relationship with the Soviet Union during the final months of Ulbricht’s rule. It also marked the beginning of the country’s opening toward the United States and of a renewed interest in Jews and Jewish culture, albeit limited to Yiddish song and nineteenth-century European synagogue music.
Producing Fiedler
Felsenstein’s directorial approaches have been extensively analyzed with regard to the influences of Expressionism, Realism, and Socialist Realism.100 GDR officials imposed the “Realism” label in the course of the formalism debate that was steered by Soviet cultural policy.101 Felsenstein himself never claimed the term for his work and only reluctantly accepted its association with (Socialist) Realism.102 He reinterpreted realism in his own way, defining it as the reality of theater performance, with credible singing performers, and as music theater that is believable and relevant to present times.103 This is evident in Fiedler, as a letter from Felsenstein to Rudolf Asmus written after the dress rehearsal and a day before the premiere indicates. In it, he encourages the baritone to make some moments more “real.” Felsenstein addressed Asmus directly as Tevye, conflating the singer and the fictional character: “The moment when the idea comes to you to tell a dream must be more surprising and much more sensational for yourself.”104 During the main rehearsal with the orchestra, so Felsenstein, Asmus had been more interesting and exuberant when what he imagined became “apparent reality.” (See fig. 2.)
Rudolf Asmus as Tevye and Walter Felsenstein during rehearsals, photographed by Arwid Lagenpusch, 1971. Walter-Felsenstein-Archiv, Nr. 1708, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Reproduced with permission.
The letter emphasizes that Felsenstein’s theater focused on interpreting the role through the singer, and it underlines his general approach, in which the stage director remains the central guiding force throughout a production’s run.105 After the one-hundredth performance of Fiedler, for instance, he sent a note to the cast, reprimanding them: the texts were not clearly understandable; “the prologue, for example, is meant to be cheerful and aggressive, because we are all suffering and we feel the need to show our will to live, to demonstrate our self-confidence, despite poverty and hardship.” It was crucially important to speak directly to the audience in a personal message, not address an unknown crowd. He wanted spontaneity, such as in the sudden quarrel over the horse and mule, to evoke surprise in the audience. Instead, at this point in the run, the singers were too self-absorbed he thought.106 His attention to detail and blurring of the real and theatrical is also evident in the use of live chickens on stage. One time, geese had to replace them, and the lines were changed to reflect what was seen on stage.107
Felsenstein did not fit the cliché of a classic “Realist” or Socialist Realist, the latter a rather opaque concept that has been more clearly sketched out in music than for stagings and performances.108 Still, many of the principles formulated by Ernst Hermann Meyer for Socialist Realism in the GDR in the 1950s apply to productions of existing works. Although vague, Meyer postulated a Socialist Realism that incorporated personal experience, supported socialist ideals and society, reflected reality, relied on folklore, and promoted optimism, among other aspects.109 In theater, understandings of the concept varied widely and no true consensus existed.110
Felsenstein’s production of Fiedler followed his personal aesthetic, which was compatible with some tenets of Socialist Realism (a coincidental balancing act as it were), but the absence of a truly positive hero, reinforced by the production, also freed the musical from the concept.111 The folksiness of the plot, added folk songs, a rejection of modernism in the production, and the adjusted ending allowed for a compromise of sorts. Socialist Realism did not approve of open endings, preferring happy ones, such as a victory or similar.112 Felsenstein’s theater never left the audience unsettled or unsure; promoting harmony, it pushed for the good and the beautiful. Fiddler’s original ending is neither happy nor does it offer certainty. Felsenstein preserved it but added a twist, aside from a minor rearrangement required by the censors. A children’s rhyme sung in the final scene by Bielke and Shprintze added a touch of joy to the otherwise somber atmosphere. It also added a new perspective to the final solo by the Fiedler, which now became an afterthought rather than a melancholic and unsettled ending. While not changing the actual ending, the children, as custodians of the future, and their excitement about relocation added a glimmer of hope and a moment of contrasting energy.
Realism can also be found in Felsenstein’s adherence to the plot.113 Felsenstein’s theater was certainly not “realist” in the sense of reflecting reality. He believed that theater should promote community-building, should be easy to understand and to experience—all of which aligned with the GDR’s cultural policies. Performing foreign-language works at the Komische Oper in German translation was also based on these convictions. Though Felsenstein, according to Kehrmann, received decisive artistic impulses from Expressionist theater and as such, his theater never intended to be realistic—he at times borrowed related stylistic means such as exaggerated gestures and movements—both Fiedler and other productions lack fantastic, abstract, or stylized stage sets. Ultimately, Felsenstein did not fit neatly into narrow categories, which, inadvertently, reflected the GDR’s increasingly liberal approach to Socialist Realism.
Felsenstein’s work emphasized the Fabel (fable)—the supratemporal substance of the theatrical event and internalized plot with its allegorical and didactic applications or inner agenda of unchanged value that motivates the full plot. Felsenstein perceived a fable in every good work and it drove his “arrangement” and interpretation.114 With almost despotic thoroughness, he would subject a work to develop the fable through text, music, and staging to achieve his ideal of strict causality. Unlike Bertolt Brecht, Felsenstein relied on the fable solely for its own sake, realizing the fable meant bringing out the humanist idea of the work and translating it into a non-political message for the audience.115
Given the primacy of the fable for his directorial work, how did Felsenstein understand the fable of Fiddler?116 Though no written record exists, contextual information does offer insights. To be sure, Fiddler itself offers much subtext for directorial interpretation, with themes such as the struggles between the old and the new world, parent and child, tradition and modernity, stasis and change, religious devotion and secularity, and communal or collective obligation versus individual desire. Fiddler looks both forward and backward, and its themes of love, family, generational conflict, and renewal due to shifts in gender, class, race, and power relationships in societies are universal and timeless.
Fiedler was the first major production of the Broadway musical that did not recreate the Jerome Robbins staging or the Boris Aronson sets. For the Komische Oper production, Valery Levental (1938–2015), a Russian-Jewish artist, created the set. He had made a name for himself as the chief designer at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater and as a set designer who worked internationally at major theaters and across the Iron Curtain. Felsenstein was well acquainted with his work, having collaborated with him on the 1968 production of Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges. Levental’s design for the Fiedler production was rustic, with the sets looking wood-carved and evoking a fairy tale. Folksy, simple, and appropriate, it avoided extravagance. The functional house opened up when the action required, and a foreshortened representation of the village of Anatevka completed the set. The center could transform into Tevye’s house, the inn, the tailor shop, and the village street—a necessity in a production with sixteen set changes. And when in the last act the gendarme delivered the eviction order, the set broke apart, symbolizing the end of a whole world. Through the rubble, a large paneled wooden wall became visible—for the Jewish inhabitants leaving the village of Anatevka that board signaled that their world was nailed shut. (See fig. 3.) Unlike the Broadway set, Levental’s set did not adopt the color palette of Marc Chagall’s famous paintings, nor did it reflect the painter’s sentimental outlook.
The set of Fiedler auf dem Dach, photographed by Abraham Pisarek, 1971. Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin SM 2018-00698,6195,2. Reproduced with permission.
Similarly, the costumes designed by Marina Sokolova (1939–1992), Levental’s wife, conveyed a rustic Jewish-Russian village look, but not monolithically so. The character Lazar Wolf wore sidelocks indicative of Jewish Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe at that time, while Tevye wore a tallit katan, a prayer shawl. Szymon Symcha Szurmiej (1923–2014), director of the Jewish Theater of Warsaw, advised on the Jewish aspects of the production. He also assisted Tom Schilling with the choreography of the dance scenes.117 Though simple, the choreography had its thrilling moments, as in the bottle dance when the soloist balanced a real bottle on the top of his head. Ensemble dance numbers were dynamic, and the end of the wedding scene had a polka-like feeling. As for movement and gesture, Felsenstein had characters freeze at specific moments, such as when Tevye debated the pros and cons of a problem. Compared to the Broadway production, Felsenstein’s rendition was both imaginative yet sober, in line with his quest to depict a transparent world.118 He believed that everything must be shown concretely as human beings are not abstract.119
Felsenstein replaced most orchestral entr’acte music with Yiddish songs for added lyricism. Although sung in German, the pieces were essentially samples of Yiddish folklore characterized by storytelling and humor. This strengthened Fiedler’s connection to Eastern European Jewish culture and added, maybe inadvertently, to the Jewish references in the program book. Felsenstein also added movement to the singing Fiedler, who accompanied himself and played interludes, acting out the songs like a troubadour or storyteller.
The songs were selected from the only available collection of Yiddish songs in the GDR: Lin Jaldati and Eberhard Rebling’s 1966 anthology, Es brennt Brüderle, es brennt: Jiddische Lieder, titled after Mordechai Gebirtig’s 1938 resistance song, “S’brent briderlekh” (It burns, little brother). Like the Fiedler production, this edition was long in the making, though for different reasons. Jaldati and Rebling had been working on a Yiddish songbook for some time, but their publisher, Rütten & Loening, hesitated to go forward with the publication, citing concerns about insufficient sales.120 Es brennt was finally published in 1966, with German translations by Heinz Kahlau; a second edition followed in 1969. Rebling’s preface provided a history of the development of Yiddish folk song from the Middle Ages through the postwar era, citing some song texts and melodies from the edition as examples. For Felsenstein, the edition surely was a goldmine as the preface provided him with detailed information to select songs that related to plot and dramaturgy.
Felsenstein chose six songs from the anthology. The first, inserted at the end of scene 2 in Act 1 before the Sabbath sequence, is an old Hasidic song: “A chazn oyf shabes” (A cantor came on the Sabbath). Introduced with a few improvisatory lines on the viola, played by the singing Fiedler (in the original cast, performed by Klaus Schwärsky, with Joachim Hentschel as understudy), who also provided short interludes between the verses.121 The song tells the story of a young hazzan who has applied for a cantorial position in a small town. He is interviewed by three craftsmen, a tailor, a blacksmith, and a coachman, who alternately praise the power of the young man’s singing using terms of their trade: The tailor compares the cantor’s voice to the beauty of a needle piercing rich cloth and the ironing of an expensive garment. The blacksmith compares its power to the squeezing of the bellows and the sound of the hammer. For the coachman, the cantor’s singing brings him as much joy as driving a team of horses or hearing the crack of a whip. The story illustrates the unwavering faith and admiration of the Hasidim for their rebbe. The song’s melody is both profound and simple; when sung by an untrained voice in the production, its folksy character was underlined.
The second song follows the Sabbath prayer in scene 3, “Di alte kasha” (The eternal question); it is a hybrid of a Yiddish song and a nigun, a melody frequently performed without text (only some use psalm texts in Hebrew) but using vocables phonemically consistent with Hebrew, Russian, and Yiddish. (They are not nonsense syllables but aim to transcend words and soar above semantics to create a deeper connection with the divine—wordless signifies limitless). The song is a philosophical meditation on existence that conserves the riddle in the intonation of the answer, “tradi ridi ram” (similar to the syllables rendered in Tevye’s “If I Were a Rich Man”). A song of few words but with much subtle irony in the nigun-like syllables that point to the theurgical. In Sholem Aleichem’s short stories of 1939, Tevye hums the song as he leaves town.122 A brief instrumental passage follows the song, featuring motives from Tevye’s “If I Were a Rich Man”—a moment of establishing broader musical connections.
Another example of thoughtful semantic placement is the song “Ot azoy neyt a shnayder” (This is how a tailor sews), performed after scene 6 when Motel, the tailor, asks for Tzeitel’s hand and before the “Miracle of Miracles” number. Felsenstein chose to use the second, more elaborate version from the anthology, possibly because it is longer and gives the role of the Fiedler more weight. According to Rebling, “Ot azoy neyt a shnayder” is an example of the stark changes Yiddish song underwent in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The song received a new text and form, and underwent melodic alteration that expressed newfound optimism, with the song becoming a symbol of survival.
Felsenstein extended the Dream sequence by inserting “Der balagole un sajn ferdl” (The old coachman and his horse) after scene 7. Rebling emphasizes the humor of this song, a dialogue between a horse and its driver that supposedly had not been published before. Rebling and Lin Jaldati learned it from a Polish Jew they had met in the Netherlands in 1939. The song’s surreal content extends the scene in which Fruma Sarah, the ghost of the late wife of Lazar Wolf, is in dialogue with Tevye.
Felsenstein added two more songs in Act 2. At the end of scene 1, after the love duet between Tevye and Golde, the Fiedler performs the song “Dos alte por folk” (The old couple), a thematically self-explanatory piece. Written by Mordechai Gebirtig as a duet between husband and wife, the song here continued the preceding dialogue. The sixth song was inserted at the end of scene 6, when Tevye learns that his daughter Chava had left home with Fyedka to get married by a priest, and he declares her dead. “Dos pastekhl” (The shepherd) is a fitting piece to express loss. Its mournful melody, conveying intense disappointment and despondency and rendered in a Jewish mode, tells the story of a shepherd who has lost his only sheep and now seeks to find it. Although the story of the song is conveyed mainly through the voice of a narrator, the song references the dialog between the shepherd and God. Perhaps unbeknownst to Felsenstein and others, the image of God losing his sheep deeply resonated with the fate of the Jews during the Holocaust.
Like many Yiddish songs, much of the selection contains theatrical elements and story-like plots, thus fitting neatly into Felsenstein’s quest for synthetic form. Although solo numbers, the songs never appeared isolated but were integrated into the action, a hallmark of Felsenstein’s treatment of solos in general.123 The songs expand the Fiedler’s role beyond being merely an “instrumental” and symbolic role, pointing to the musician’s Orphic power over the community, a power described in Sholem Aleichem’s story Stempenyu. Felsenstein believed in, and sought to bring out, the intellectual and emotional qualities expressed through singing (quite comparable to Wagner).124 Indeed, the portrayal of human qualities through song was an important way to engage the audience and to show the autonomous side of a character.125 The Fiedler’s non-operatic singing not only added another layer of folksiness but also conveyed a sense of “staged authenticity.”126 Based on a similar rationale, the characters Bielke and Shprintze were given some lines not included in the original libretto: a short excerpt from the well-known children’s rhyme “Ri Ra Rutschika,” which includes the sentence “Wir fahren nach Amerika und wer fährt mit” (We go to America and who comes along)—a daring choice for a production that had to deal with censorship. Their joyful singing is interrupted by Golde, who tells them, “Stop that! Behave yourself! We’re not there yet” (instead of the original, “in America yet!”)
Altering the original text and inserting new material was not without precedent. Inspired by Max Reinhardt, Felsenstein had done so frequently, as in his production of Hoffmanns Erzählungen. In fact, nearly every opera he directed included musical or dramaturgical changes, suggesting that his approach was driven more by the action than by the score. Felsenstein understood Werktreue (being true to the work) as an idea that, through work and style criticism, distilled and brought to life the fable of a particular work and so conveyed its timeless message to audiences.127 Like with his other productions, Felsenstein embraced Fiedler as a cultural, literary, theatrical, and musical entity. He created a production in which the integration of plot, music, and stagecraft was more important than any of its parts, that is, a synthetic formal whole.128 According to German musicologist Gerd Rienäcker, with Fiedler Felsenstein hoped to overcome dialectically traditional theatrical forms once and for all and replace them with a new, universal genre.129
When Felsenstein chose Fiddler in 1966, he believed that in the musical, “Yiddish folklore elements have been skillfully put into a modern form that is theatrically functional”—a nod to the fable. His interest in the Jewish culture of Eastern Europe is evident in his hiring of Szymon Szurmiej as advisor on Jewish rituals,130 and in the materials that his team compiled in preparation for the production. Among them are texts on the social–political background of the plot, on pogroms in Kyiv, Russia and the Jews, Ahasver (The wandering Jew), the social position of Jews, anti-Semitism, the beginnings of the Russian worker movement, Jews in the Soviet Union after the October Revolution, and on a resolution on Jewish emancipation. The materials also include writings by Lenin on the “Jewish question,” a Jew’s perspective on his Russian Heimat, and Tolstoy’s letter of 1881.131 The texts, which amount to approximately one hundred pages, are primarily from the early twentieth century, and also include excerpts from Kurt Aram’s critical study on Russia and its anti-Semitism as well as Heinrich Graf Coudenhove-Kalergi’s “Das Wesen des Antisemitismus” (1901/1932 reprint), one of the earliest scholarly works on the subject that traced its racial and religious motives. The selections show how important a historical perspective rooted in the time and place of Fiddler’s story was for Felsenstein. He wanted to embed the action firmly in the realities of 1905.
Careful attention was also paid to the material on Jewish folklore.132 Some texts, compiled to inform the selection of the program book, contained excerpts with markups, including a comparison of three descriptions of Jewish weddings—“Jüdische Hochzeit” (1918), “Hochzeit machen” (1935), and “Eine jüdische Hochzeit in Südrussland” (1922)—as well as Lenin’s speeches about Jews, Jewish jokes, and similar content.133 There were also graphic representations and photos of Jewish life in Russia.134 These materials confirm Robert Braunmüller’s assertion that Felsenstein based his work on meticulous research and on anthropological principles.135 Felsenstein himself alluded to this in a statement about the production a few months after its premiere: “It makes a good play … . very Jewish in atmosphere, and it shows great poetic truth.”136 Felsenstein’s understanding of Jewishness was multifaceted and derived from various sources: as ethnicity and religion in the context of early twentieth-century Russia through his preparations for the production; as an assimilated culture, through his first wife, a German Jew of the upper bourgeoisie; as race, through the experience of the Nazi era which affected the family deeply. He never shared whether he was aware of the realities of Jewish life in East Germany. After the 1952–53 purges aimed at consolidating the power of the Socialist Unity Party, the GDR saw a severe decline in its Jewish population. Jews were a nearly invisible minority and at the brink of becoming history—a sore point for a self-declared antifascist nation.
Felsenstein’s production emphasized the Jewish aspect of the original Fiddler, presenting it in a somewhat essentialized way to appeal to GDR audiences and portraying Jewish experience and hardships on stage. It introduced the audience to topics that define Judaism, from the Torah and prayer—the Rabbi, played by Eberhard Valentin, was portrayed with dignity rather than as a comic figure—Jewish rituals and significant events in Jewish life, the Jewish family and home, oppression and persecution, to migration. Through Fiedler, GDR audiences could discover facets of Eastern European Jewish life in a fictional setting. While Braunmüller described Felsenstein’s productions as apolitical theater, which only indirectly took on a political function and became an emblem of the GDR’s cultural policy, Fiedler was overtly political from the beginning.137
The significance of Jewishness in the production was noted early on by Horst Seeger. In January 1970, he noted that Felsenstein prioritized the depiction of Jewish ritual over any attempt to shift the piece toward socialist theater, which he believed could have been accomplished by a focus on the figure of Perchik, elevating him to equal stature as Tevye. For Seeger, the casting of Perchik was of utmost importance and he made several suggestions, which Felsenstein disregarded, giving the role to his son Christoph.138 Over a decade later, Leonard Lehrman (1949–1999), an American composer and critic who coached and conducted at the Theater des Westens in the 1980s and was involved in the production of Anatevka, found that Felsenstein’s portrayal of Perchik sympathetic, “as a visionary whose revolutionary work is described by his beloved Hodel as ‘the finest thing a person can do.’”139 (He thought that West Berlin’s Perchik was modeled after Rudi Dutschke, the sociologist and political activist of the German student movement, and his peers, figures most West Berliners regarded as impetuous and violent.140)
Ultimately, Felsenstein’s production balanced the folkloristic conception of the Broadway original with a social-historical approach. Felsenstein eliminated some of the typical aspects of a Broadway production, offering a more modest version that avoided the clichés associated with the musical, and yet it remained recognizably Fiddler. This difference was noted by New York Times critic John Rockwell:
But the feeling of the piece is very different from New York: sadder, more introverted, more serious. Partly this is due to the Komsiche [sic] Oper’s wonderful Tevye, Rudolf Asmus. But mostly it is due to Mr Felsenstein's overall conception, which almost manages to elevate the piece into something beyond kitsch. Changes for political reasons are also relatively slight in “Fiddler”: the savagery of the Cossacks is perhaps tempered a bit, and references to expectant departures for America are kept to a minimum.141
Although the modifications were “relatively slight,” they were significant enough to alter the sensibility of the original Fiddler, making “it more epic and pathetic.”142 Felsenstein dodged commenting on the changes, stating: “I couldn’t copy the New York model, and did not try. Robbins is a choreographer, but he goes less to the play itself than I do. The book, you know, is much better than the music. I have absolutely new scenery, but I haven’t changed much in the play, except to put more accent on the dialogue.”143 Sholem Aleichem, whose short stories had provided the basis, was accepted if not well received in the Eastern Bloc. Felsenstein inserted him back into the play, partly by censorial necessity and partly by choice.
The dialectics of the Fiedler production—corresponding to the opposing forces of directorial freedom and political conformity—unfold in both the censorial and non-censorial changes and in the staging. Felsenstein managed to balance his artistic vision with the GDR’s cultural–political goals, complying with and resisting the Central Committee’s repressive cultural politics.
Fiedler in Review
Initially, all main socialist newspapers were “encouraged” to report on Fiedler auf dem Dach in a matter-of-fact and “normal” way, without exaggerating and distancing themselves from the production.144 Just before the premiere, Wolfgang Hasse, editor-in-chief of the system-conform paper Neue Zeit, introduced the production in a short and descriptive write-up that focused on the story’s Soviet roots. In a curious turn, he tied the plot to Robert Siewert of the Ministry of Construction who had fought in the German resistance against the Nazis.145 Following the premiere, only Sonntag published a review, and ultimately press coverage was severely curtailed.146 Eastern-bloc criticism was controlled during a twenty-four-hour “news blockade” to ensure conformity with the Soviets’ “anti-Zionist” track.147
Prominent figures from the political and music scenes attended the premiere, including Brewster H. Morris, assistant chief at the US Embassy in West Berlin since 1967; Friedelind Wagner, Paul Dessau, and director Ruth Berghaus. Felsenstein had invited the creators of the Broadway production, but only a few would attend later performances.148 Meanwhile, Felsenstein would report to Robbins that the “opening was a thrilling success and all of us remembered your artistic suggestions.”149 Colleagues and friends in attendance wholeheartedly embraced the production, and some sent congratulations though they did not (or could not) attend: they included notes from East German operatic bass-baritone Theo Adam, West German costume designer Sylta Busse, Austrian director Kurt Meisel, Harold Prince, Jerome Robbins, and others involved with theater on Broadway.150 Costume designer Wilfried Werz thought the production “incredible.”151 Gertrud Wagner-Régeny, widow of the composer, also sent a congratulatory message.152 The painter Beatriz Zweig, who had experienced persecution herself, wrote that “the problem of displaced people is a worldwide one, but the stirring of a pogrom has of course hit me deepest in the heart.”153 Heinz Schenk, writing on behalf of the Jewish community’s board, emphasized the significance of the production in light of the unfamiliarity of GDR citizens with Judaism, the period of “fascism” between 1933 and 1945, and anti-Semitism in general.154 Other members of the Jewish community attended the premiere “full of expectations.”155 The community first had heard some of the musical numbers in 1969 when Cantor Estrongo Nachama from West Berlin sang excerpts during the annual Hanukkah celebration at the Café Moskau on Stalin Avenue.156
Reviews began to appear in West Germany several days after the premiere, the first by music critic Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Felsenstein’s interest in the musical surprised him. Though he perceived the “dramaturgical thread” as not tight enough and the plot as a mosaic, he considered Fiedler as another triumph, though maybe not quite at Felsenstein’s usual level.157 In his review for the Telegraf, theater critic Wolfgang Lehmann listed the differences from the Broadway production, noting specifically the absence of the “gruesome reality of the pogroms.”158 While these early reviews were primarily descriptive and production-focused, subsequent criticism took a political turn.
The review in East Germany’s Neue Zeit was intended as a tribute to Russia, understandably so given the concerns of censors and the unstable relationship with the Soviet Union at the time.159 In turn, Heinz Josef Herbort, a prominent music critic in the German Federal Republic who wrote for Die Zeit, included several political jabs at the GDR and USSR in his review, noting the quarrels that had preceded the premiere and accusations of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. He wrote, “Walter Felsenstein skipped quickly over folklore and cheerfulness and naiveté and let the monstrosities shine through with effect. His ‘Fiedler auf dem Dach’ is less a hefty, certainly not a snappy musical, but rather a cryptic drama.”160 The use of occasional commentary did not always lead to comfortable results, and the Yiddish folk song interpolations, sung by Schwärsky, were “ironically enigmatic,” a comment that suggests the author’s struggle with Jewish difference.
Later reviews from both sides of the Iron Curtain oscillated between politicized and production-focused criticism: Writing for the East Berlin BZA, Klaus Klingbeil, a music and theater critic, emphasized the historical concreteness of the plot in both Johannes Felsenstein’s translation and the directorial approach.161 On 31 January, Dieter Kranz, a prominent East German music and theater critic, discussed the production in a broadcast aired by the Berliner Rundfunk, critiquing the acting, and here specifically Rudolf Asmus’s performance of “If I Were a Rich Man,” which with its rather stereotypical and capitalist undertones, surprisingly had never been a point of contention. Kranz perceived it as a “rapid sigh that evolved into a grand social utopia.”162
In his article for the East German Theater der Zeit, Wolfgang Lange was the first to identify and highlight the fable. A musicologist and long-time critic of opera, operetta, and dance, he wrote that Felsenstein had created Fiedler as a representation of Jewish families in general, with authenticity and without sentimentality, displaying human depth and warmth without resorting to clichés.163 West German theater critic Jürgen Beckelmann had a different interpretation; he saw in it a depiction of the agony caused by the Czarist regime and the changing lifestyle of Jews.164 Felsenstein’s decision to deemphasize Tevye gave a greater balance to the other roles, and he highlighted the daughters as strong characters, which is noteworthy considering the GDR’s efforts toward women’s emancipation, however relative the endeavor.165 He emphasized the new translation of the text and noted the sharp contrasts between the groups in Anatevka that Felsenstein had worked out.166
Although the Jewish aspects of Fiedler were not a primary focus in most reviews, censorship limited distribution of the articles nonetheless. As Floria V. Lasky, an American theater lawyer who represented some of the biggest names in entertainment, reported to Jerome Robbins: “The play is a triumphant success but … Felsenstein was forbidden to send copies of the reviews. Why, do you suppose? Is it possible that the reviews were too good for a play sympathetic to the Jews—or what?”167 However, censorship may have been motivated by the GDR’s uneasy relationship with their Arab allies.
When Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt revisited Fiedler for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, he delved into the political geography: Yente’s desire to go to Jerusalem; the 1905 pogroms in Russia as the starting point to the atrocities between 1941 and 1944, conflating Czarism, Sovietism, and Nazism. Presumably referring to the treatment of Jews behind the Iron Curtain, especially the refuseniks, he saw a continuance in current events, and not only on “Arab soil.”168 But he also called Felsenstein a “magic realist.” His conclusion was ultimately an artistic and not a political smack: “Still, you leave the Komische Oper with the feeling that schmaltz has found asylum in a sophisticated theater.”169 A clearer turn toward the political can be found in the review by Heinz Elsberg, an indefatigable fighter for human rights and for the victims of the Nazi regime (he himself had been one of them). Though he saw the Fiedler production as a radical transformation of the original Broadway production, he found the ending—the exodus to what he interpreted as Jerusalem—politically risky and a clear parallel to the contemporaneous situation of Jews in the Soviet Union.170 The artistic achievement included a moment of sensationalism.
After the second performance on 26 January, the production was put on hold for ten weeks. Rudolf Asmus had fallen ill which led to a break until April. For once, this was not a cover for interference from the Central Committee. In fact, as early as November, correpetitor Rudolf Israel had been asked to stand in for Asmus during rehearsals.171 As was often the case, Felsenstein relied on one actor-singer and did not hire an understudy, all for the sake of quality control. Reviews began to emerge on the other side of the Atlantic. An unsigned piece in the US edition of Newsweek found East Berlin an unlikely location for this musical due to Walter Ulbricht’s anti-Israel and pro-Arab stance, and the conclusion that could be drawn about the situation in Russia.172 Without naming a source, the review reported on concerns by GDR officials that Fiedler could incite pro-Arab demonstrations and Ulbricht’s alleged invitation of Arab diplomats on a hunting trip on the night of the premiere. The review also pointed out aspects that had to be changed, including the toned-down expulsion of Jews from Russia and the substitution of “America.” James H. Sutcliffe’s review for The Christian Science Monitor, titled “The Fiddler Plays while the Communists Rage,” was even more provocative.173 Conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, the acclaimed critic noted that the Soviet and GDR’s anti-Israel stance stood in sharp contrast to the empathy shown to persecuted Jews on stage. Only George Marek, writing for the Saturday Review, distanced the production from politics, noting that there were “no overt communist propaganda touches, though the spoken text underscored the fact that the action took place in Czarist Russia.”174
Few voices in East Germany dared to deliver political messages. One of the few who did was Henryk Keisch, a Jewish exile whose career represented all that the East German regime valued. In his review, “Der Fiedler im Ghetto,” he focused on Fiedler’s political context rather than the musical or the production.175 However, the most ideologically aligned reviews came from the Jewish community: Heinz Schenk deemed “the performance an experience of high value and highest meaning” that helped people understand Judaism and fascism; it depicted highlights of Hasidic life.176 In the subsequent issue of the community newsletter, such reviews were reprinted, as was a letter from Felsenstein to Schenk, which alludes to the censorship that impacted the production.177 Given the newsletter’s ambivalent status—locally insignificant but still important enough for foreign politics—it may have made it easier to publish a letter such as this than anything more critical.178
Reviews continued to appear for years after the premiere, as Fiedler played on for seventeen years.179 A review in Beirut’s Leftist daily, al-Muharrer, by Ismail Shammout, director of Arts and National Culture for the Palestine Liberation Organization at the time, is particularly noteworthy. He had attended the performance on 12 December 1973. In his open letter to “Comrade Felsenstein,” Shammout described the production as a socialist piece and emphasized the importance of its political message and the GDR’s stance toward the Palestinian problem. He believed that the show and its reception supported the right of Jews to live in Jerusalem, and he questioned whether Palestinians should request the discontinuation of this production. Fiedler portrayed a double tragedy: that of the Jews and that of the Palestinians caused by the Jews. He criticized the expulsion of Jews from Russia in 1905 and praised the Soviet Union for allowing Jews to leave. He proposed a sequel to Fiedler with a focus on the Palestinians.180 Four months later, Willi Schrader contacted Felsenstein to inquire about his response to the open letter (the delay may have been caused by the need for a German translation).181 Schrader viewed the letter as a political rather than an artistic issue: a critique of the legitimatization of Zionism. Felsenstein had been advised by GDR Minister of Culture Hans-Joachim Hoffmann not to respond, as any reply by that point would be too late. Felsenstein himself viewed the review as an “interference in affairs that only concern the GDR.”182
Shortly thereafter praise came from an unexpected source. Soviet officer Sergej Tulpanov, who had known Felsenstein since at least 1948, had seen Fiedler with a delegation and found the production not only “interesting and impressive,” but a “political accomplishment.” He praised the artistic quality and the direction, but also the piece itself, which he compared to Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, which had revived theater in 1945.183 (In December 1983, Fiddler would finally premiere in Moscow, as he had hoped). A few months later, Lyudmila Viktorova Polyakova, a musicologist, reviewed Fiedler and other productions in Sovetskaya muzyka, the oldest Russian peer-reviewed academic music journal.184 Focusing on aesthetics, she detected “Broadway origins” and yet claimed that the songs and dances had “distinct national coloring.” Overall, the production was “lyrical” and “with gentle humor.” Around the same time, Soviet dramatist Viktor Rosow also praised Fiedler in an interview.185
One common challenge for all reviews, regardless of time and origin—the show would continue to be reviewed for the next fifteen years—was how to deal with questions of Jewishness and anti-Semitism. After Felsenschein’s death in October 1975, newspapers wrote about its continuation on the stage of Komische Oper,186 announcing also anniversary performances and cast changes.187 In the fall of 1973, the production went on tour to Budapest, and in 1980, it was performed in Ludwigshafen in West Germany.188 It was also imitated in many West German stagings.189
In May 1988, Fiedler saw its 500th performance, making it the longest-running show at the Komische Oper. The timing, though coincidental, is noteworthy: 1988 was the fiftieth anniversary of Kristallnacht. During the 1980s, the November commemoration of Kristallnacht had become a regular event on the annual calendar, transitioning from a peripheral to a central role in political and public representation. For both halves of Berlin, the commemoration was conveniently positioned after the 750th-anniversary celebration of the city itself and just before the fortieth anniversary of the two states. If the two Germanys mirrored each other in their efforts to make the 1988 commemoration an outstanding political and social event,190 they significantly differed in their inclusion of music and culture—and nowhere was this more obvious than in divided Berlin. The GDR had aestheticized commemorations to a far greater extent, a culturalization of the atrocities that has hardly been reflected as problematic.191 In contrast, Susan Neiman has argued that “East Germany did a better job of working off the Nazi past than West Germany,”192 when in fact the approach to Vergangenheitsbewältigung (literally, coming to terms with the past, a political and moral term) was simply different in the two nations. This was not readily apparent in 1988.193 With a third of all commemorative events taking place in East Berlin, the city asserted its status as the capital.194 Political scientist Harald Schmid explains the difference between the 1988 commemorations with the GDR’s interests in foreign politics, inner political imperatives of action, and the competition between the two Germanys.195
Where is Fiedler in this? None of the reports on the musical mentioned the connection between Kristallnacht and the persecution of the Jews it brought to the stage, neither in 1988 nor during previous anniversaries of Kristallnacht. The coverage of Fiedler that year focused on the artistic standards and the attention to detail in the show,196 and the new generation of performers who took over, now under the direction of Johannes Felsenstein, as for example Wolfgang Dehler in the role of Tevye, who recited rather than sang “If I Were a Rich Man.”197
Changes in Fiedler’s reception came the following year, after the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November and the opening of East Germany toward the West. “If I Were a Rich Man” now had a different subtext for East Germans, as Gerd Prokot discussed in his article “We Only Live Once,” taking the song as point of departure:
As long as wealth (or what one considers to be wealth) only flickered into the living room as a commercial, it remained an unrealizable dream for the vast majority of GDR citizens. Except for that clique of leaders in the golden cage, who were regular customers of West German delicatessen, jewelry, and fashion houses. After the GDR opened the borders to a consumer paradise for all, everyone could smell, taste, feel, and catch a glimpse of the wealth on display.198
After the reunification of Germany, Fiddler gained popularity in East German theaters due to pan-German licensing regulations. Ten theaters, including the Volkstheater Rostock, Magdeburg’s Kuppeltheater, and Oper Leipzig, planned to produce it.199 All diverted to the original Broadway production, although the Magdeburg production reduced the role of the Fiddler “so that the atmospherically resonant imagery of Marc Chagall is conveyed primarily through the figure of the angel of death as the central motif on Günter Altmann's stage.”200 Felsenstein’s elevation of the role of the Fiddler evidently had left a lasting impression. In contrast to the folksy, Broadway-inspired production in Magdeburg, the goal of the Leipzig production was to create a new music drama that responded to “the flight and expulsion of millions that, not too far from the ‘Promised Land,’ is still a shocking reality.”201
Felsenstein’s Fiedler remained in the repertoire of the Komische Oper for seventeen years, the most popular production in the history of the East Berlin opera house. Why did audiences flock to see it? The most plausible explanation is the sense of displacement experienced by the population, and their desire to hold on to traditions within a conformist environment. After a run of 506 performances, the production finally closed on 17 June 1988, a significant date in history, though it is not known whether it was chosen consciously. That day marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of the 1953 uprising against the government of East Germany and the Socialist Unity Party. Over one million people in about 700 localities across the country participated in the protests against declining living standards and unpopular Sovietization policies. The wave of strikes and demonstrations threatened to overthrow the East German government. The East Berlin uprising was violently suppressed by Soviet tanks and the police force, while demonstrations continued in other towns and villages for several more days before dying down. This momentous anniversary marked the immanent end of an era, not only for Fiedler but also for the German Democratic Republic.
Notes
Tina Frühauf is the Director of the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City and Executive Director of its largest project, the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale. Among her recent books and editions are Transcending Dystopia: Music, Mobility, and the Jewish Community in Germany, 1945–1989 (Oxford University Press, 2021), a finalist for the 2022 Jordan Schnitzer Book Awards; and the Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies (Oxford University Press, 2023). Her essay “The Dialectics of Nationalism: Jaromír Weinberger’s Schwanda the Bagpiper and Anti-Semitism in Interwar Europe” (2023) won the 55th Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for an article in the concert music field. An active scholar and writer, Frühauf’s current research focuses on the historiography of music scholarship and migration, examining the mass dislocation of peoples in the twentieth century and the conditions of globalization, genocide, exile, and minority experience as well as musicology and coloniality. Frühauf teaches as Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University in New York and serves on the doctoral faculty of the CUNY Graduate Center.
Footnotes
See Wolfgang Jansen, “Operette oder Musical? Zum populären Musiktheater der DDR in den Jahren 1949 bis 1964,” Lied und populäre Kultur/Song and Popular Culture 60–61 (2015): 394−95.
See Andrea Rinke, “Film Musicals in the GDR,” in Film’s Musical Moments, ed. Ian Conrich and Estella Tincknell (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 183−94.
“Die Musik vermeidet die laute Aufdringlichkeit des Show-Geschäftes. Sie ist heiter und tragisch, tief empfunden, volkstümlich und vor allem sehr szenisch. Das ganze Werk weist Züge des Volkstheaters auf. In ihm sind Elemente der jiddischen Folklore sehr glücklich in eine moderne Form gefasst und theatralisch nutzbar gemacht worden … . Offenbar ist also Dr Haensels Meinung, das Werk sei für außerhalb Amerikas ungeeignet, vorgefaßt, und man muß auf den Gedanken kommen, es könnte eine gewisse antisemitische Einstellung dabei eine Rolle spielen.” See Walter Felsenstein, Aktennotiz “Vorläufiges Ergebnis der Musical-Suche,” 24 March 1966, Felsenstein 2101, Walter-Felsenstein-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
“… weil die Not der Juden ein Problem ist, das immer noch aktuell ist.” Walter Felsenstein, transcript, 10 February 1970, Felsenstein 2099.
See Robert Braunmüller, Oper als Drama: Das “realistische Musiktheater” Walter Felsensteins (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2002), 59.
See correspondence between Walter Felsenstein and Friedelind Wagner, Felsenstein 2226.
See the correspondence between Martin Vogler (Komische Oper) and Susanne Heyman (William Morris Agency), 5 April–3 August 1966, Felsenstein 2219.
See Aktennotiz, 23 February 1967, Felsenstein 2101.
See “Unterhaltung Schmid: Üppiger Stil,” Der Spiegel 7, 2 February 1971.
Friedelind Wagner to Martin Vogler, 25 April 1966, Felsenstein 2226, and Aktennotiz, 23 February 1967, Felsenstein 2101.
See the correspondence between Walter Felsenstein and Jerome Robbins, 4 May 1966–18 January 1968, Felsenstein 2225; see also Walter Felsenstein to Jerome Robbins, 4 May 1966, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series I: Theatrical Productions (1944−2000, undated), box 5, folder 16, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
See “Auftakt mit ‘Don Giovanni’,” Neues Deutschland, 7 June 1966.
See Aktennotiz, 27 May 1966, Felsenstein 2101.
See Aktennotiz, 15 June 1966 (signed by Martin Vogler), Felsenstein 2101.
See Aktennotiz (Martin Vogler), 3 January 1967, Felsenstein 2101.
See “Kein Platz für den ‘Fiddler’ – ‘Theater des Westens’ lehnt ab,” Welt am Sonntag, 2 April 1967.
See Walter Felsenstein to Howard Rosenstone (William Morris), 2 March 1967, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series X (Office Files), Sub-series 1 (Names, 1940–2001 and undated), box 506, folder 9.
In February 1967, he mentioned Horst Bonnet as director; Aktennotiz (Walter Felsenstein), 8 February 1967, Felsenstein 2101. Jerome Robbins, note, 15 June 1967, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series I: Theatrical Productions (1944 − 2000, undated) box 5, folder 7. Felsenstein to Robbins, 22 August 1967, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series X (Office Files), Sub-series 1 (Names, 1940–2001 and undated), Box 506, folder 9; a copy is held at Felsenstein 2225.
See Robbins to Felsenstein, 15 February 1967, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series X (Office Files), Sub-series 1 (Names, 1940–2001 and undated), box 506, folder 9; Robbins to Felsenstein, 22 September 1967, Felsenstein 2225.
See Robbins to Felsenstein, 17 May 1968, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series X (Office Files), Sub-series 1 (Names, 1940–2001 and undated), box 506, folder 9. The same letter is held at Felsenstein 4748. It is reprinted in Ilse Kobán, ed., Walter Felsenstein: Theater—Gespräche, Briefe, Dokumente (Berlin: Hentrich, 1991), 102.
See Thomas Holliday, Falling Up: The Days and Nights of Carlisle Floyd, The Authorized Biography (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013), 217; Howard Taubman, “A Lukewarm Welcome: Many U.S. Stage People Apathetic Toward World Theater Congress,” New York Times, 14 June 1967; and “East Berlin to Get ‘Fiddler’ This Year,” New York Times, 5 February 1970. According to Braunmüller, it was Felsenstein who declined; see Oper als Drama, 58.
See Robbins to Felsenstein, 22 August 1967, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series X (Office Files), Sub-series 1 (Names, 1940–2001 and undated), box 506, folder 9.
See the correspondence between Felsenstein and Robbins in 1966 and 1967, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series X (Office Files), Sub-series 1 (Names, 1940–2001 and undated), box 506, folder 9. Copies are held at Felsenstein 2225.
Johannes Felsenstein to Robbins, 29 May 1969, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series X (Office Files), Sub-series 1 (Names, 1940–2001 and undated), box 506, folder 9.
“mit riesigem Propaganda-Aufwand als ‘das Theater-Ereignis des Jahres 1968’ angekündigt worden war, ließ erkennen, daß der Fiddler zum Bestandteil einer bestimmten kulturpolitischen Richtung gemacht wurde … … es kam … die israelische Aggression vom 6. Juni 1967 zur Hilfe. Im Gefolge der von da an außerordentlich anschwellenden manipulierten Woge der west-deutsch-israelischen Freundschaftsbeziehungen … [war es] mit einem Male leicht, den Fiddler in Hamburg unterzubringen. Die Tatsache, daß außer der Illustrierten-Prominenz der israelische Botschafter in Bonn und der Standortkommandeur der Bundeswehr in Hamburg zu den besonders hofierten Ehrengästen der Premiere gehörten, unterstreicht die Rolle, die Fiddler on der Roof zugeteilt wurde.” Aktennotiz “Fiddler on the Roof in Hamburg,” 6 February 1968, signed by Martin Vogler, Felsenstein 2101. A copy can be found in Felsenstein 2215.
Ibid.
See Boris Kehrmann, Vom Expressionismus zum verordneten “Realistischen Musiktheater”: Walter Felsenstein—Eine dokumentarische Biographie 1901 bis 1951, Dresdner Schriften zur Musik (Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2015), 1187.
See Felsenstein to Robbins, 18 January 1968, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series X (Office Files), Sub-series 1 (Names, 1940–2001 and undated), box 506, folder 9.
See Ed Khouri to William Morris Agency, 17 March 1969, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series X (Office Files), Sub-series 1 (Names, 1940–2001 and undated), box 506, folder 9; see also correspondence in Jerome Robbins Papers, Series I: Theatrical Productions (1944−2000, undated), box 6, folder 24. Martin Vogler had contacted the GDR Copyright Agency in early 1967, which endorsed the project at the time but did not see any reason to get involved. See Aktennotiz, 7 March 1967 (Martin Vogler), Felsenstein 2101.
See Aktennotiz, 4 January 1969 (Martin Vogler), Felsenstein 2101.
See Walter Felsenstein to Mikhail Ivanovich Chulaki, 22 June 1969, Felsenstein 4706.
See “Der getanzte Doppelgänger,” Neue Zeit, 29 April 1969.
See Aktennotiz, 5 May 1969, Felsenstein 5474.
See Johannes Felsenstein to Jerome Robbins, 29 May 1969, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series X (Office Files), Sub-series 1 (Names, 1940–2001 and undated), box 506, folder 9.
See Floria Lasky to Jerome Robbins, 14 May 1969, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series I: Theatrical Productions (1944–2000, undated), box 6, folder 24.
See Lasky to Robbins, 19 May 1969, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series I: Theatrical Productions (1944−2000, undated), box 6, folder 24.
See Floria Lasky to Leonard Maajzlin, 21 July 1969 and 31 July 1969, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series I: Theatrical Productions (1944–2000, undated), box 6, folder 24.
See Marianne Schrammer-Kasel to Camillo Harth, 19 October 1969, Felsenstein 2874.
Walter Felsenstein to Peter Felsenstein, Christmas 1969, in Kehrmann, Vom Expressionismus, 1194.
See Arno Hochmuth to Kurt Hager, 7 January 1970, Felsenstein 2607.
See Johannes Felsenstein, Textbuch, undated, with corrections by Stephan Stompor, Felsenstein 2092. Another undated textbook can be found under Felsenstein 2091, also with handwritten annotations, which differ slightly from the other copy but are of no political significance. An earlier, possibly preliminary, translation by East German theater director Harald Quist, dated 29 June 1969, can be found under Felsenstein 2093.
See Willi Schrader to Dieter Heinze, 7 January 1970, Felsenstein 2607.
See Schrader to Walter Felsenstein, 19 January 1970, Felsenstein 2874.
See “Gespräch zur Vertrageskorrektur” (Horst Seeger), 23 December 1969, Felsenstein 2874. For all changes, see “Abweichungen zwischen alter und neuer Ausfertigung des Vertrages ‘Fiddler on the Roof’,” (Stephan Stompor), 19 January 1970, Felsenstein 2874.
See Walter Felsenstein to Herta König, 23 January 1970, Felsenstein 2874.
See Kehrmann, Vom Expressionismus, 1204–205.
Howard Taubman, “East Berlin to Get ‘Fiddler’ This Year,” New York Times, 5 February 1970.
See Walter Felsenstein to Georg Münzer, 3 February 1970, Felsenstein 4468; Foreign Play Leasing Contract, 2 February 1970, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series I: Theatrical Productions (1944−2000, undated), box 6, folder 24. This contract could not be located, a renewal contracted dated to 1981 is held in Jerome Robbins Papers, Series I: Theatrical Productions (1944−2000, undated), box 15, folder 11.
See Aktennotiz, 6 February 1950, Felsenstein 2226. “Die Komische Oper nahm aus organisatorischen Gründen eine Reihe von Spielplanänderungen vor. Die ursprünglich für Ende Mai angekündigte Premiere des Musicals ‘The Fiddler On The Roof’ (Regie Felsenstein) wurde auf Dezember verlegt.” “Felsenstein verfilmt ‘Hoffmanns Erzählungen’,” Neues Deutschland, 14 May 1970.
See Walter Felsenstein to Ute Hertz, 9 April 1970, Felsenstein 2226.
See Aktennotiz, 29 June 1970, Felsenstein 2101.
See Aktennotiz, 10 December 1968, Felsenstein 2101.
See “Zionistische Lügen zurückgewiesen,” Neues Deutschland, 2 March 1970.
See the correspondence between Rudolf Heinrich and Walter Felsenstein, 11 October 1970 and 21 October 1970, reprinted in Walter Felsenstein, Die Pflicht, die Wahrheit zu finden: Briefe und Schriften eines Theatermannes, ed. Ilse Kobán (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 146−47.
See Braunmüller, Oper als Drama, 2.
Walter Felsenstein to Pyotr Andreyovitch Abrasimov, 19 November 1970, Felsenstein 4542.
See also Kehrmann, Vom Expressionismus, 60.
See Tina Frühauf, Transcending Dystopia: Music, Mobility, and the Jewish Community in Germany, 1945–1989 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 243, 247–49.
Stephan Stompor, “Zum Programmheft,” 3 July 1970, Felsenstein 2209.
See “Manuskript zum Programmheft,” 4 September 1970, Felsenstein 2209.
See Stephan Stompor to Horst Seeger, November 13, 1970, Felsenstein 2210.
Ibid.
“Die russische Judenheit hat allmählich die Schrecknisse der Pogrome aus ihrer geplagten Phantasie zu verscheuchen gelernt. Allein die gesetzlichen Nachwirkungen, die insbesondere seit 1908 eingesetzt haben, gewähren ihr auch nicht eine vorübergehende Ruhepause. Das Leid des russischen Juden ist damit verschoben worden: statt einer momentanen Katastrophe droht ihm jetzt ein langsamer Ruin. Mehr als irgendein Bevölkerungsteil in dem Kampf für die primitivsten Menschenrechte gedrängt, sehen die russischen Judenmassen keinen Weg, der dahin führen soll, und apathischer als je ziehen sie sich in ein individuelles Leben zurück. Wo aber gibt es beim russischen Juden ein individuelles Leben, in das nicht rauhe Hände plötzlich eingriffen.” “Die russische Bevölkerung und die Pogrome,” in Die Judenpogrome in Russland, ed. Hilfsfonds Russland (Cologne and Leipzig: Jüdischer Verlag, 1910).
See Walter Felsenstein to Klaus Gysi, 5 January 1971, Felsenstein 4468.
“… alle Textabschnitte, die auf spezifische jüdische Probleme und historisch-soziale Besonderheiten eingehen, sowie eine zu akzentuierte Kritik an Vorgängen aus der russischen Vergangenheit vor 1917 herauszunehmen seien und unser kritischer Standpunkt an der damaligen jüdischen Lebensweise deutlicher betont werden müsse.” Aktennotiz (Stephan Stompor), 8 January 1971, Felsenstein 2212 (copies in 2101 and 2892). For the original program book, see Felsenstein 2211 (copy in 2213).
On Tolstoy’s ambivalent attitude toward Jews, see Harold K. Schefski, “Tolstoi and the Jews,” The Russian Review 41, no. 1 (January 1982): 1−10.
Sholem Aleichem’s 1888 novel Stempenyu about a klezmer violinist inspired several theatrical and musical works, all of which present the musician as an allegory for the shtetl and as sonic representation of shtetl culture: “It was used to portray Jewish social structures and rituals, and to create, for Jewish spectators across the diaspora as well as for non-Jewish audiences, new ways of conceiving of contemporary and historical Jewish identities during a time when many Jews were compelled to leave Russia and Eastern Europe for new homes in America and elsewhere.” Joshua S. Walden, “The ‘Yidishe Paganini’: Sholem Aleichem’s Stempenyu, the Music of Yiddish Theatre and the Character of the Shtetl Fiddler,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 139, no. 1 (2014): 91.
See Walter Felsenstein to Werner Rackwitz, 8 January 1971, Felsenstein 2207.
See Johannes Felsenstein, Textbuch, with corrections by Stephan Stompor, Felsenstein 2092.
See “Kritik der Hauptprobe mit Orchester,” 20 January 1971, Felsenstein 2100.
See Arno Hochmuth to Erich Honecker, 22 January 1971, Felsenstein 1991 (copies from the Bundesarchiv, Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands Zentralkomitee, Akte Günther Mittag, Sign.: IVA2/2.021/86).
None of the granular last-minute changes are recorded in writing. The comparative analysis is based on the libretto and on two recordings: the sound recording of the premiere, Felsenstein AVM-35 0620, and the video recording of a performance from 7 June 1988, AVM-33 2964.
For further details on the Babyn Yar compositions, see Jascha Nemtsov, “Jewish Music and Totalitarianism in the Post-Stalinist Soviet Union,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies, ed. Tina Frühauf (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 309–34.
Rolf Merz’s translation for Anatevka preserves America as the final destination and maintains the word pogrom; see Felsenstein 2094.
Offenberg, “Seid vorsichtig,” 180. See also Lothar Mertens, Davidstern unter Hammer und Zirkel: Die Jüdischen Gemeinden in der SBZ/DDR und ihre Behandlung durch Partei und Staat, 1945–1990 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1997), 313–16.
See Arno Hochmuth to Erich Honecker, 22 January 1971, Felsenstein 1991 (copies from the Bundesarchiv, Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands Zentralkomitee, Akte Günther Mittag, Sign.: IVA2/2.021/86).
“Ich möchte Ihnen bei dieser Gelegenheit auch mitteilen, daß eventuell beabsichtigte Eingriffe in die Inszenierung von Seiten der Behördenvertreter, die die Generalprobe besuchen werden, von mir nicht geduldet werden können.” Arno Hochmuth to Erich Honecker, 22 January 1971, Felsenstein 1991.
See ibid.
“Jeglicher konkreter Bezug auf das Ziel der Auswanderer—Vereinigte Staaten oder Palästina—ist nunmehr vermieden.” Ibid.
On GDR’s anti-Israel stance, see Jeffrey Herf, Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 119–47.
“Die Inszenierung ist in die historisch konkreten klassenmäßigen Hintergründe der Erzählung ‘Tevje, der Milchmann’ einzuordnen.” Hochmuth to Honecker, 22 January 1971, Felsenstein 1991.
For an in-depth study of the Eleventh Plenum’s impact on film production in 1965/66, see Verbotene Utopie: Die SED, die DEFA und das 11. Plenum, ed. Andreas Kötzing and Ralf Schenk (Berlin: Bertz + Fischer, 2015). No comprehensive study currently exists on the impact on music in general. For the impact on popular music, see Peter Wicke, “Popmusikforschung in der DDR,” in Popularmusik und Musikpädagogik in der DDR: Forschung—Lehre—Wertung, ed. Georg Maas and Hartmut Reszel (Augsburg: Wißner-Verlag, 1997), 52–68.
See Lin Jaldati and Eberhard Rebling, Sag nie, du gehst den letzten Weg: Lebenserinnerungen 1911 bis 1988 (Marburg: BdWi-Verlag, 1995), 625.
See David Shneer, “Yiddish Music and East German Antifascism: Lin Jaldati, Post-Holocaust Jewish Culture, and the Cold War,” The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 60, no. 1 (2015): 233–34; see also “Eberhard Rebling, Lin Jaldati, and Yiddish Music in East Germany, 1949–1962,” in Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture, ed. Tina Frühauf and Lily E. Hirsch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 161–86. See also Herf, Undeclared Wars, 51–53.
See anon., “East Germany: Fiddler in Berlin,” Newsweek, 8 February 1971.
See Hochmuth to Honecker, 22 January 1971, Felsenstein 1991.
See Christoph Felsenstein to Dieter Kranz, 27 April 2008, Felsenstein 5546.
See George Richard Marek, “‘Fiedler’ on an East Berlin Roof,” Saturday Review, 21 February 1971.
For details on productions of musicals in the GDR, see Kevin Clarke, “Musicals, Operettas and Heiteres Musiktheater in East Germany 1949−89,” Studies in Musical Theatre 16, no. 1 (2022): 38−45.
On the role of music of GDR’s evolving relationship to Arab countries, see Elaine Kelly, “Performing Diplomatic Relations: Music and East German Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the Late 1960s,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72, no. 2 (2019): 493–540.
“Dieser Zustand ist untragbar, und Sie können ihn der Komischen Oper gegenüber ebensowenig verantworten wie ich.” Walter Felsenstein to Werner Rackwitz, 2 February 1971, Felsenstein 4475.
“Wenn der Vorhang fällt, beginnen sie ihre lange Reise nach Amerika.” 28 February 1973, Felsenstein 1776.
Walter Felsenstein to Hans-Ekkehard Winderle, 28 October 1972, Felsenstein 1776.
For further details on the case of Brecht, see Mark Clark, “Brecht and the German Democratic Republic,” in Bertolt Brecht in Context, ed. Stephen Brockmann, Literature in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 97–104; on Dessau, see Martin Brady, “Paul Dessau and the Hard Work of Socialist Music in the German Democratic Republic,” Twentieth-Century Music 16, no. 1 (2019): 51–66. See also Joy Calico, “The Trial, the Condemnation, the Cover-up: Behind the Scenes of Brecht/Dessau’s ‘Lucullus’ Opera(s),” Cambridge Opera Journal 14, no. 3 (2002): 313–42. For a broader discussion of theater censorship, see Laura Bradley, Cooperation and Conflict: GDR Theatre Censorship, 1961−1989 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
See David Bathrick, The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995).
Werner Rackwitz to Andreas Homoki, 16 November 2007, Felsenstein 5546.
See ADN, “Gratulationscour bei Prof. Felsenstein: Jubilar mit der Johannes-R.-Becher- Medaille in Gold geehrt,” Neues Deutschland, 8 June 1971.
Alisa Solomon, Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of “Fiddler on the Roof” (New York: Picador, 2013), 59. The military junta of Chile went so far to ascribe Marxist tendencies to Fiddler and forbade the screening of the film musical on the grounds that it was destructive statement of all values of Western civilization. See “Junta verbietet Fiedler,” Berliner Zeitung, 30 August 1974. The Fiddler film was never screened in the GDR. In December 1974, artists from the Komische Oper performed excerpts from Fiddler (and other works) alongside the Chilean theater group Aparcoa as part of a solidarity event. See “Heute 22.00 Uhr: Chile-Programm in der Komischen Oper,” Berliner Zeitung, 7 December 1974.
See the translation from the Russian “Sein Leben und Schaffen galt dem einfachen Volk: Zum 100. Geburtstag von Scholem Alechem.” Originally printed in the daily Izvestia, 1 March 1959.
See, for example, Braunmüller, Oper als Drama, which draws upon copious production notes, adaptations, and scenarios to reconstruct Felsenstein’s concept of “realistic music theater,” without glossing over its internal contradictions.
See Kehrmann, Vom Expressionismus.
See Braunmüller, Oper als Drama, 178.
This he emphasized, for example, in a radio interview with Werner Kastor for BBC in 1971. See Walter Felsenstein, Theater muß immer etwas Totales sein—Briefe, Aufzeichnungen, Reden, Interviews, ed. Ilse Kobán (Berlin: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, Berlin 1986), 445.
“Der Augenblick, wo Ihnen der Einfall kommt, einen Traum zu erzählen, muss für Sie selbst überraschender und viel sensationeller sein.” Walter Felsenstein to Rudolf Asmus, 22 January 1971, quoted in Felsenstein, Theater muß immer etwas Totales sein, 416.
See Braunmüller, Oper als Drama, 27−28.
“Wenn zum Beispiel der Prolog heiter und aggressiv sein soll, so deshalb, weil es uns allen sehr schlechtgeht und wir das Bedürfnis haben, trotz Armut und Not unseren Lebenswillen zu zeigen, unser Selbstbewußtsein zu demonstrieren.” Walter Felsenstein, “Aushang an das Ensemble,” 8 March 1974, Felsenstein 346. Reprinted in Die Pflicht, die Wahrheit zu finden, 285−87. Similarly, on 26 February 1973, he had reprimanded the orchestra for mistakes, stressing how important the quality of the orchestra is if one wants to avoid banality and create an operetta-like atmosphere. Theater muß immer etwas Totales sein, 479.
See Erika Roßner, “Zum 500. Male der ‘Fiedler,’” Berliner Zeitung, 4 May 1988.
On the Soviet origin of the concept, its definitions, as well as the rise and decline Socialist Realism’s trajectory in the GDR and Poland in the years 1948 to 1957, see David G. Tompkins, Composing the Party Line: Music and Politics in Early Cold War Poland and East Germany (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2013), 15–94. The divergent implementation and forms of Socialist Realism becomes evident in secondary literature, e.g. Elaine Kelly studies it in classical music with nineteenth-century forms and genres as an expression of late socialism, which emerged in reaction to Socialist Realism (Composing the Canon in the German Democratic Republic: Narratives of Nineteenth-Century Music [New York: Oxford University Press, 2014], 7 and 22), while Laura Silverberg elucidates how composers have tried to balance Socialist Realism and modernism (“Between Dissonance and Dissidence: Socialist Modernism in the German Democratic Republic,” The Journal of Musicology 26, no. 1 [2009]: 44–84)—testimonies of Socialist Realism’s complexity and heterogeneity over time.
See Tompkins, Composing the Party Line, 20–21.
See Michael Wood, Heiner Müller’s Democratic Theater: The Politics of Making the Audience Work (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2017), 35 and 170.
On the GDR view of Socialist Realism and the positive hero, see Braunmüller, Oper als Drama, 179.
See ibid., 180−81.
See Peter Paul Fuchs, The Music Theater of Walter Felsenstein: Collected Articles, Speeches, and Interviews (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), ix.
See Braunmüller, Oper als Drama, 42, 141, and 183. Felsenstein himself distinguishes the fable from the plot by their different functions: the fable aids the whole, the plot serves the detail. See ibid, 141. On the fable as idea or nature of the plot, see also Wulf Konold, “Der festgehaltene Augenblick: Zur Dramaturgie von Verdis Opern,” in Verdi-Theater, ed. Udo Bermbach (Stuttgart: Metzler 1997), 143−45. For divergent definitions of the fable and nuanced differentiations, see Petra Grell, Ingeborg Bachmanns Libretti, Europäische Hochschulschriften I/513 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995), 45−50.
See Braunmüller, Oper als Drama, 4 and 178.
See also ibid., 42−46.
See Stephan Stompor to Uve Urba, 27 October 1992, Felsenstein 2893; and Stephan Stompor to Walter Felsenstein, 5 February 1971, Felsenstein 1769.
See Braunmüller, Oper als Drama, 37.
See Fuchs, ed., The Music Theater of Walter Felsenstein, ix.
See Jaldati and Rebling, Sag nie, du gehst den letzten Weg, 527.
According to Schwärsky’s wife, Felsenstein had asked the orchestral musicians if somebody would be interested to take on the Fiedler part and the violist had volunteered. Schwärsky had received voice lessons during his student years. The author, in conversation with Hilde Schwärsky, 15 May 2022.
See Nahma Sandrow, Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 246.
See Braunmüller, Oper als Drama, 114.
See Fuchs, The Music Theater of Walter Felsenstein, ix.
See Braunmüller, Oper als Drama, 56–57 and 27–28.
The concept of “authenticity” serves here as an umbrella term to capture some of its multivalent meanings as related to origin, heritage, sincerity, and the primitive, the later being advanced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Jean-Paul Sartre. For further details on authenticity and heritage, see Barbara Wood, “A Review of the Concept of Authenticity in Heritage, with Particular Reference to Historic Houses,” Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 16, no. 1 (2000): 8–33.
See ibid., 139−43.
See the documentation by Klaus Schlegel, “Tewje und seine Schwiegersöhne: Zur Analyse von zwei Szenen des Musicals ‘Der Fiedler auf dem Dach’ in der Inszenierung von Walter Felsenstein,” Jahrbuch der Komischen Oper 11 (1971): 65–79.
See Gerd Rienäcker, “Begegnungen mit Felsensteins Musiktheater,” in Realistisches Musiktheater: Walter Felsenstein: Geschichte, Erben, Gegenpositionen, ed. Werner Hintze, Clemens Risi, and Robert Sollich (Berlin: Verlag Theater der Zeit, 2008), 47.
Stephan Stompor to Walter Felsenstein, 17 February 1971, Felsenstein 2101.
See “1.1. Inszenierungen/Musiktheater: Dokumentarische Texte—1. Teil: Politisch-sozialer Hintergrund,” Felsenstein 1762.
See “1.1. Inszenierungen/Musiktheater: Dokumentarische Texte—2. Teil: Jüdische Volkskunde,” Felsenstein 1763.
See “1.1. Inszenierungen/Musiktheater: Dokumentarische Texte,” Felsenstein 1778.
See “1.1. Inszenierungen/Musiktheater: Dokumentarische Texte,” Felsenstein 1761.
See Braunmüller, Oper und Drama, 27−28, 143.
Donal Henahan, “Sing Along with Felsenstein?,” New York Times, 30 May 1971.
See Braunmüller, Opera als Drama, 52 and 57.
See Seeger to Felsenstein, 20 January 1970, Felsenstein 2209.
Leonard Lehrman, “Tevye in Berlin: East and West,” Jewish Currents 38, no. 3 (March 1984): 5–6.
See ibid.
John Rockwell, “East Berlin Cheers Comic Opera Eclat,” New York Times, 3 August 1973.
Ibid.
Henahan, “Sing Along with Felsenstein?”
Arno Hochmuth to Erich Honecker, 22 January 1971, Felsenstein 1991.
See Wolfgang Hasse, “Hauskonzert der Prinzessin,” Neue Zeit, 7 January 1971.
See also Walter Felsenstein to Valery Levental, 26 February 1971, Felsenstein 2223.
See also the press file in Felsenstein 536.
For an invitation to creators of the American production, see the telegram by Felsenstein, 3 January 1971, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series I: Theatrical Productions (1944−2000, undated), box 6, folder 24.
Telegram from Felsenstein to Robbins, undated, Felsenstein 2223.
For the correspondence, see Felsenstein 2223.
Wilfried Werz to Felsenstein, 31 January 1971, Felsenstein 4723.
Gertie Wagner-Régeny to Felsenstein, 24 January 1971, Felsenstein 4860.
“Das Vertriebenenproblem ist ja ein weltweites, aber das anrühren eines Pogroms hat mich natürlich im tiefsten Herzen getroffen.” Beatrice Zweig to Walter Felsenstein, 18 February 1971, Felsenstein 2223.
Heinz Schenk to Walter Felsenstein, 18 February 1971, Felsenstein 2223.
See Heinz Schenk, “Premiere in der Komischen Oper Berlin,” Nachrichtenblatt (March 1971), 16.
See “Jüdische Gemeinde von Groß-Berlin,” Nachrichtenblatt (March 1970), 22.
See Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, “Bittersüße Vergangenheit: Felsenstein inszeniert ‘Der Fiedler auf dem Dach’ in Ost-Berlin,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 January 1971.
See Wolfgang Lehmann, “Brillant—nach Art des Hauses: ‘Der Fiedler auf dem Dach’ in der Komischen Oper,” Telegraf (West), 27 January 1971.
See ADN, “Der Fiedler auf dem Dach,” Neue Zeit, 28 January 1971.
“Zumal Walter Felsenstein Folklore und Heiterkeit und Naivität schnell überspringt und die Ungeheuerlichkeiten durchscheinen und wirken läßt. Sein ‘Fiedler auf dem Dach’ ist weniger ein deftiges, schon gar nicht ein schmissiges Musical, sondern eher ein hintersinniges Drama.” Heinz Josef Herbort, “Der Fiedler spielt Bratsche: ‘Anatevka’ in der Ostberliner Komischen Oper,” Die Zeit, 29 January 1971.
See Klaus Klingbeil, “ՙDer Fiedler auf dem Dach’: DDR-Erstaufführung des Musicals in der Komischen Opera,” Berliner Zeitung am Abend, 29 January 1971.
“wie er sein berühmtes Lied ‘Ach, wenn ich nur reich wär’ aus einem Stoßseufzer entwickelt und zu einer großen sozialen Utopie steigert.” Dieter Kranz, press file in Felsenstein 536.
Wolfgang Lange, “‘Der Fiedler auf dem Dach’ an der Komischen Oper Berlin,” Theater der Zeit 5 (1971): 26.
See Jürgen Beckelmann, “Die armen Juden von Anatevka: Walter Felsenstein inszenierte ‘Der Fiedler auf dem Dach’ in Ostberlin,” Mannheimer Morgen, 30–31 January 1971.
See Susanne Kranz, “Women’s Role in the German Democratic Republic and the State’s Policy Toward Women,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 7, no. 1 (2005): 69–83.
His write-up in the Frankfurter Rundschau repeats these views, as well as those found in subsequent publications; see Jürgen Beckelmann, “Verwandlung eines berühmten Musicals,” Frankfurter Rundschau, 30 January 1971. See also “Frischer Fiedler,” Der Abend (Berlin), 8 February 1971, and reviews in Stuttgarter Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and others.
Floria Lasky to Jerome Robbins, 10 February 1971, Jerome Robbins Papers, Series I: Theatrical Productions (1944–2000, undated), box 6, folder 24.
See Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, “Musical à la Felsenstein: ‘Fiedler auf dem Dach’ in Ostberlin,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 6 February 1971.
“Dennoch verlässt man die Komische Oper mit dem Gefühl, die Schnulze habe sich Asylrecht in einem anspruchsvollen Theater ersiegt.” Ibid.
See Heinz Elsberg, “Theater in Ostberlin: Felsensteins fulminanter ‘Fiedler,’” Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 30 April 1971.
See Walter Felsenstein, Aktennotiz, November 6, 1970, Felsenstein 2101; Felsenstein to Orchestra, 7 April 1971, Felsenstein 346.
See anon., “East Germany: Fiddler in Berlin,” Newsweek, 8 February 1971.
See James H. Sutcliffe, “The Fiddler Plays while the Communists Rage,” Christian Science Monitor, 8 February 1971. See also “Germany (East): Felsenstein’s ‘Fiddler,’” Opera 22, no. 1 (May 1971): 406.
George Richard Marek, “‘Fiddler’ on an East Berlin Roof,” Saturday Review, 27 February 1971.
See Henryk Keisch, “Der Fiedler im Ghetto,” Die Weltbühne, 23 February 1971.
See Heinz Schenk, “Premiere in der Komischen Oper Berlin,” Nachrichtenblatt (March 1971), 16.
See Nachrichtenblatt (June 1971), 21. Years later, Nachrichtenblatt also published a German translation of a rather descriptive review from the Italian Revista Cultului Mozaic, 15 December 1975, see Nachrichtenblatt (March 1976), 21.
See Lothar Mertens, “Außenpolitisch ‘bedeutsam’—im Innern unbeachtet: Die politische Instrumentalisierung des ‘Nachrichtenblatt des Verbandes der Jüdischen Gemeinden in der DDR,’” in Deutsch-jüdische Presse und jüdische Geschichte, ed. Eleonore Lappin and Michael Nagel (Bremen: edition lumière, 2008), 2:257–66.
See, for example, Manfred Schubert, “Saison der akzeptablen Mischung,” Berliner Zeitung, 17 August 1971; Matthias Frede, “Tewje, der ‘liebe Gott’ und die neue Zeit,” Liberal-Demokratische Zeitung (Halle), 26 October 1972; Matthias Frede, “Der Fiedler auf dem Dach,” Thüringische Landeszeitung (Weimar), 28 September 1973; as well as clippings in the press file in Felsenstein 536.
See Ismail Shammout, in al-Muharrer (Beirut), 22 December 1973, Felsenstein 2968 (German translation) and Felsenstein 536 (Arabic original).
See Willi Schrader to Felsenstein, 8 April 1974, Felsenstein 2968.
Walter Felsenstein to Ministerium für Kultur der DDR (Willi Schrader), 13 April 1974, Felsenstein 2968.
See Aleksander Sergej Tulpanov to Walter Felsenstein, undated [late May/early June 1974], Felsenstein 2604.
See LyudmilaViktorova Polyakova, “Na opernykh Stsenakh GDR,” Sovetskaya muzyka 10 (1974): 117−19.
“Lebendiges Theater für die Gegenwart: Gespräch mit dem sowjetischen Dramatiker Viktor Rosow,” Neue Zeit, 18 September 1974.
See “Felsensteins Werk wird an der Komischen Oper lebendig erhalten,” Neues Deutschland, 26 May 1976.
See “Der Tradition und der Gegenwart verpflichtet,” Neues Deutschland, 8 September 1979; and Hiltrud Milewski, “Auch die 300. Ausverkauft,” Berliner Zeitung, 17 May 1980; “Um der Wahrheit immer ein Stück näherzukommen,” Berliner Zeitung, 30 May 1981; “Fahrplanmäßige Abfahrt: Später,” Berliner Zeitung, 16 February 1984; and “Voller Lebensnähe und Gediegenheit,” Berliner Zeitung, 9 May 1986. On Wolfgang Dehler as Tevye, see Wolfgang Lange, “Komische Oper: ‘Der Fiedler auf dem Dach’ von Stein/Bock/Harnick,” Theater der Zeit 11 (1979): 2.
See announcement in Neue Zeit, 20 September 1973; and Hiltrud Milewski, “Auch die 300. ausverkauft,” Berliner Zeitung, 17 May 1980
Leonard Lehrman, “Tevye in Berlin: East and West,” Jewish Currents 38, no. 3 (March 1984): 5–6.
See Schmid, Antifaschismus und Judenverfolgung, 111.
For a detailed account of West Germany, see Harald Schmid, Erinnern an den “Tag der Schuld”: Das Novemberpogrom von 1938 in der deutschen Geschichtspolitik (Hamburg: Ergebnisse, 2001), 411–49.
Susan Neimann, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), 81.
For further details on the events of 1988, see Frühauf, Transcending Dystopia.
See Schmid, Antifaschismus und Judenverfolgung, 114.
See ibid., 124.
See Erika Roßner, “Zum 500. Male der ‘Fiedler’,” Berliner Zeitung, 4 May 1988. See also a brief announcement in Neue Zeit, 4 May 1988, along with a photo of Wolfgang Dehler as Tevye.
See Manfred Schubert, “Seltenes Jubiläum ‘Fiedler’ zum 500. Mal,” Berliner Zeitung, 7 May 1988.
Gerd Prokot, “Wir leben doch nur einmal,” Neues Deutschland, 15 December 1989.
“Wenn ich einmal reich war [sic]: Das Musical ‘Anatevka’ in Rostock,” Neue Zeit, 4 January 1991.
“Allein der Fiedler (Torsten Ostrowski) wirkt unterrepräsentiert, so daß die atmosphärisch mitschwingende Bildsprache Marc Chagalls sich vor allem über die Gestalt des Todesengels als zentralem Motiv auf Günter Altmanns Bühne vermitteln muß.” Friedemann Krusche, “Schrammen auf der Seele—Risse durchs Herz: Großer Erfolg für ‘Anatevka’ in Magdeburg,” Neue Zeit, 22 February 1991.
“sind doch Flucht und Vertreibung von Millionen, gar nicht so weit entfernt vom ‘Gelobten Land,’ gerade heute von bestürzender Aktualität.” Georg Antosch, “Und der Aufwind trägt Leipzigs Musiktheater doch,” Neue Zeit, 10 May 1991. On the performance for the second anniversary of the Wende as a plea for tolerance, see NZ/AND, “Oper Leipzig will 9. Oktober würdigen,” Neue Zeit, 23 September 1991.
