0769NOTOrestes

0769NOTOrestes_Muethel

Lothar Müthal, director, Oresteia by Aeschylus, produced 1936 at Berlin, Staatstheater am Gendarmenmarkt.

“a notoriously nationalistic Nazi version directed by Lothar Müthel was performed during the Olympic games at the State Theatre in Berlin (1936).” Helene P. Foley, introduction to P. Meineck, trans. Aeschylus Oresteia (Indianapolis: Hackett 1998), p. xi.

“[It] was not simply military and imperial prowess that was extolled; Wilamowitz’ translation — Wilamowitz himself had died in 1931 — was so seriously distorted that Aeschylus’ play about the path towards an enlightened democracy was reduced to a struggle between the Aryans and the Untermenschen.” — F. Macintosh, “Tragedy in performance: nineteenth and twentieth-century productions,” in Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, ed. by P.E. Easterling (Cambridge UP 1997), 308.

"Müthel's production of the Oresteia could be understood as a portrayal of Germany's 'rise' from the bloody battlefields of World War I, the 'betrayal' through the Versailles Treaty, and the 'darkness' of the Weimar Republic to the 'light' brought about by the National Socialists' seizure of power."
— Erika Fischer-Lichte, "Resurecting Ancient Greece in Nazi Germany" in Performance, Iconography, Reception: studies in honour of Oliver Taplin, ed. by M. Revermann and P. Wilson (Oxford University Press, 2008), 493