1. Wolfgang Harich in Der Kurier, May 2, 1946, as cited in Edda Kühlken, Die Klassiker-Inszenierungen von Gustav Gründgens (Meisenheim am Glan, 1972), 16.

2. As cited in the exhibition catalog Jürgen Fehling (West Berlin, 1978), 150.

3. K. H. Ruppel in Jürgen Fehling, 173.

4. Communicated by Friedrich Luft, as cited in Hans Daiber, Deutsches Theater seit 1945 (Stuttgart, 1976), 15.

5. Ihering, Theaterstadt Berlin, 11.

6. Ibid., 11-12.

7. Gustav von Wangenheim, "Bericht über meine Tätigkeit, 1945/46," Archive of the Akademie der Künste (GDR), Estate of Wangenheim, rep. 025, no. 1. There is a copy in the former SED Party Archive/Archiv des Instituts für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, NL 36/680.

8. Wolfgang Harich to Herbert Ihering, July 18, 1946, Ihering Archive, Archive of the Akademie der Künste (GDR), rep. 09 II. ib.

9. Maxim Vallentin, "Einleitende Bemerkung zur Ausarbeitung von Richtlinien: Besprechung bei Wilhelm Pieck, Moskau, 9/26/1944," Archiv des Instituts für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Wilhelm Pieck Archive, NL 36/499; Kulturbund-Archiv, no. KB 98 Gv (3).

10. Das Wort (1938, no. 3), 89.

11. Reinhard Müller, ed., Die Säuberung (Reinbeck, 1991), 560-62.

12. Letter and memorandum to Pieck, May 6, 1945, Archiv des Instituts für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Holdings: Alfred Kurella Office, IV, 2/2068/68.

13. "Gespräch mit Gustav von Wangenheim" (typescript), n.d. [July 1945], Wangenheim Archive, Archive of the Akademie der Künste (GDR), file 287.

14. Walther Karsch in Der Tagesspiegel, January 22, 1946. Reviewing the entire season, Karsch writes: "He [Wangenheim] displayed Reinhardt's magnificence and forgot his artistic precision, ignoring that Reinhardt gave his soul to the smallest of roles and thereby the role its soul." Der Tagesspiegel, August 11, 1946.

15. Wolfgang Harich in Der Kurier, May 31, 1946.

16. Wolfgang Harich in Der Kurier, July 16, 1946.

17. Harich to Ihering, July 18, 1946, Ihering Archive, rep. 19 II. ib. In answer to Ihering's (nonextant) response, in which he apparently protested against Harich's reproaches, Harich dropped the role of the youth admiring his older colleague and became personal and political: he accused Ihering of having compromised himself by working at Vienna's Burgtheater during the Nazi period and with his book on Emil Jannings, and said that he was now trying to put this behind him with an opportunistic change of political hue: "One of the most important theater critics in Germany makes an opportunistic kowtow before the Nazis, ruining his own civil courage with such success that the same man, after the Third Reich has been overcome, throws himself hastily into the arms of an antifascist raised above all suspicion." Harich to Ihering, August 31, 1946, Ihering Archive, rep. 09 II. ib.

18. Der Tagesspiegel, August 11, 1946.

19. Wangenheim to Pieck, August 19, 1946, Wangenheim Archive, rep. 025, no. 1.

20. Wangenheim to General Bokov, August 19, 1946, Archiv des Instituts für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, NL 182/1190.

21. Wangenheim to Bokov, August 24, 1946, Wangenheim Archive, rep. 025, no. 1.

22. Protocol no. 29 of the meeting of the central office on August 21, 1946. Archiv des Instituts für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Holdings: Alfred Kurella, V, 2/2026/68.

23. Personal communication to the author from Wangenheim's son Friedel.

24. Arseni Gulyga, conversation with author, Berlin, July 14, 1993.

25. Die Neue Zeitung, June 1, 1946.

26. Wolfgang Harich in Der Kurier, May 31, 1946.

27. Enno Kind in Neues Deutschland, June 2, 1946.

28. Tägliche Rundschau, June 1, 1946.

29. Wangenheim, "Bericht über meine Tätigkeit."

30. Ibid.

31. Theater in der Zeitenwende, vol. 2 (East Berlin, 1972), 75. In the production of Hamlet, it was chiefly Horst Caspar, a star at the time, who played against Wangenheim's concept. "Horst Caspar, who tried to understand all of his roles from the inner subjectivity of his personality, was not able to follow Wangenheim's demand for a predominantly intellectually active Hamlet figure. ... His internalized acting method, an extremely subjective manner of acting, frequently pushed aside the director's instructions." Ibid.

32. Angelica Hurwitz, as cited in Ihering, Theaterstadt Berlin .

33. As cited in Eberhard Spangenberg, Karriere eines Romans (Munich, 1982), 111.

34. The negotiations that led to his appointment were conducted by Langhoff's old friend Friedrich Wolf, who in December 1945 had already asked him to come to Berlin from Düsseldorf, where he headed the Städtisches Theater. Wolf to Langhoff, December 27, 1945, in Friedrich Wolf, Briefe (East Berlin and Weimar, 1969), 206-7. Max Burghardt, Intendant of NWDR in Cologne at the time and in contact with Langhoff, confirmed that Wolf came to Düsseldorf in May 1946 "on a secret mission" to bring Langhoff to the Deutsches Theater. Sinn und Form, 1976, 986. According to this, the search for Wangenheim's successor was started three months before his dismissal—that is, immediately after the premiere of Stürmischer Lebensabend . Langhoff, who apparently did not want to be considered a regicide, continually urged that the matter be handled as discretely as possible. "Gustav's agreement is of personal importance to me." Langhoff to Wolf, August 11, 1946, Friedrich Wolf Archive, Archive of the Akademie der Künste (GDR), 303/26. From the SMAD ranks, Officer Fradkin, responsible for theater affairs, acted as the official in charge, but it can be assumed that Tulpanov was also involved. He and Friedrich Wolf knew each other from shared time on the Stalingrad front. In Berlin, Wolf belonged, together with Willi Bredel and Erich Weinert, to the exiled intellectuals from whom Tulpanov regularly sought advice. S. Tulpanov, Erinnerungen an deutsche Freunde und Genossen (East Berlin and Weimar, 1984), 132-33. Langhoffs appointment was the result of a well-concerted collaboration of Russian-occupation intellectuals and German party intellectuals. The pressing question is whether this cooperation began after the Russians' decision to dismiss Wangenheim or whether his dismissal was one of its results.

35. Max Burghardt in Sinn und Form (1976), 976.

36. Herbert Ihering, as cited in Edith Krull, Wolfgang Langhoff (East Berlin, 1962), 11-12.

37. Langhoff's aesthetic-political views on the theater could be described as tending to the classics in Stanislavsky's method. For him it was no longer a matter of "serving up an old piece with a new sauce" but "staging the classics for an audience such that ... they are as new and fresh as they were at their premieres." Langhoff, as cited in Krull, Wolfgang Langhoff, 15. Thus, in distinction to Wangenheim, he emphasized a concentration on the past—on the bourgeois and prebourgeois "heritage"—and a decisive renunciation of Marxist reinterpretations of the classics and contemporary political plays. Thus were avoided the conflicts and breaks that had occurred under Wangenheim. It may be said that in the 1950s there arose a counterpart to Gründgens's theatrical and artistic space of the 1930s.