2. The German Theater Crisis after 1929

Lessons of the 'Troupe 1931' Theater Ensemble

The original author of these essays was Ingeborg Franke von Wangenheim.

In order to describe the circumstances leading to the founding of our theater company, I want to begin by shedding light on the situation we’ve faced since before 1931.

Too many theaters were closing their doors. In the German states and their capital cities, public theaters that year alone reduced their operations by 60 percent. The curtains also were dropping on the private venues. We’ve watched theaters shut down, one after another, until there are today about 12,000 unemployed actors in Germany, or 40 percent of 30,000 total.

Of these 12,000, about 4,000 were forced to leave their home-provinces. We watched these thousands of unemployed actors arriving from everywhere to “make it” here in Berlin. They flooded the city during the closing months of the 1930/31 season. During that time, we all knew someone who’d been forced out of this or that shuttered theater. Countless actors and other theater workers, always on the search for housing, often bunking together in cold rooms, or over-nighting at cafes, or elsewhere on the street.

Of 45 theaters in Berlin at the beginning of that year, only twenty were still open by the end. Sadly, among the last of these was Erwin Piscator and his People’s Theater of Berlin. When Piscator fled Berlin for Moscow, our Troupe31 became the city’s only professional revolutionary theater, the last remaining company with any intent to fight the rising National Socialists…..