La cultura en el exilio alemán antinazi. El Freie Deutsche Bühne de Buenos Aires, 1940-1948

Abstract

This article describes the composition, workings and activities of the Freie Deutsche Bühne (Free German Theatre), founded in 1940 by some members of Das Andere Deutschland (The Other Germany), a group of German-speaking opposers to the National Socialist régime. Among them were politicians, union leaders, artists and intellectuals, which made up the German wing of an anti-Fascist movement that in Argentina served as a uniting factor and gave a certain programmatic coherence to a group of people that arose from different sectors and covered a wide political and cultural range. The theatrical company’s activities, its nature, and both its expected and actual repertoire were the subject of different interpretations by diverse members of the heterogeneous anti-Nazi German front. Through these, this paper attempts to analize the complex and changing relations between the Freie Deutsche Bühne and Das Andere Deutschland. The search also allows us to go over the various opinions that anti-Nazi exiles had on German residents in Argentina and remark that beyond their thematic diversity and artistic quality, theatrical representations formed a social common ground to Nazi regime exiles and German speakers who had previously resided in Argentina, and thus contributed to the formation of an identity that was both anti-Nazi and German.