Prehistory. The year of upheaval 1933

After Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor, the Jewish population was harassed with laws and administrative measures. In April 1933, the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” [“Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums”] sanctioned the ousting of Jews from all state and municipal offices. In its analogous application, Jewish artists were also successively dismissed from theaters, orchestras, and radio stations. The German-Israelite Congregation, together with other Jewish organizations in the Hanseatic city, then set up a “Counseling Center for Jewish Economic Assistance”  Beratungsstelle für jüdische Wirtschaftshilfe which was responsible, among other things, for finding employment opportunities for Jews who had become unemployed due to Nazi legislation. In close cooperation with the Counseling Center, professional associations were formed, including a “Professional Association of Artists”  Fachschaft Künstler which addressed the Jewish public with its first charity event on May 29, 1933. In the large prayer room of the liberal temple on Oberstrasse, a diverse musical program from Buxtehude and Bach to Schubert and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was offered in addition to recitations. Leopold Sachse had taken on the direction of the evening. After another concert and two evenings of theater with scenes from dramas by Lessing, Schiller and, Kleist, the proceeds of which were again intended to support unemployed artists, the events of the “Professional Association” Fachschaft had become a permanent fixture. In September, the ensemble separated from the “Professional Association of Artists” Fachschaft Künstler and founded the independent “Community of Jewish Artists Gemeinschaft jüdischer Künstler whose three-member board included Ferdinand Gowa. Already after the first performance, a discussion flared up about the question of whether Jewish theater should define itself by the subject matter of its material. There was great uncertainty among the artists who had previously worked on German stages. On the one hand, for most of them belonging to Judaism had not played a special role in their work to date and they did not see the need to change this. On the other hand, the choice of pieces with Jewish content was limited. Also, in view of the audience interests, not yet discernible, it seemed impossible to agree on a future program of plays, and so the Community disbanded again as early as the end of 1933. However, an opera production still took place under its name in January 1934, the only one that Jewish artists were able to realize during the years of their exclusion from public cultural life in Hamburg. The program included Pergolesi’s intermezzo entitled “La serva padrona” and Mozart’s Singspiel “Bastien und Bastienne.” Directed by Leopold Sachse, the pieces featured stage design created by Anny Gowa.

Jurisdictions. A bureaucratic farce

A few days before the opera evening in January 1934, the “Jewish Society for Arts and Science in Hamburg reg. soc.” Jüdische Gesellschaft für Kunst und Wissenschaft in Hamburghad been founded. With Ferdinand Gowa as its managing director and Leopold Sachse serving as artistic director, it was the direct successor to the “Community of Jewish Artists.” Its status and organizational structures were similar to those of the Jewish cultural associations already existing in the Reich. The society Jüdische Gesellschaft für Kunst und Wissenschaft in Hamburg was entered in the register of associations two months later. Although this created a fact on record, the Hamburg authorities were unable to clarify whether the society Jüdische Gesellschaft für Kunst und Wissenschaft in Hamburg’s future program would be subject to a permit requirement. At that time, the founders and organizers of the society Jüdische Gesellschaft für Kunst und Wissenschaft in Hamburg had no idea of the bureaucratic farce that was to unfold at the Reich and state levels to their detriment. In particular, a power struggle broke out between the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVPReichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda) Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda and the Prussian Ministry for Arts and Sciences Reichsministerium für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung. As a result, the company was blocked in its programming for months due to the lack of a theater concession. A long period of waiting began. When in May 1934 the Reich-wide theater law came into force, which generally forbade Jews access to public cultural institutions, this measure was at the same time a cause for hope for the society Jüdische Gesellschaft für Kunst und Wissenschaft in Hamburg: Performances of dramatic works, such as those planned as a registered Jewish association, did not fall under the theater law. After all, they would not be open to the public but exclusively to the members of the society Jüdische Gesellschaft für Kunst und Wissenschaft in Hamburg, i.e., to the artists and their audience. The Hamburg authorities for folklore (Volkstum), church, and arts as well as the trade police were nevertheless again at a loss and turned to the RMVP, where their question triggered a discussion of principles with, for the time being, an open end. The repeated attempts of Kurt Singer, the chairman of the Cultural Association of German Jews Kulturbund Deutscher Juden in Berlin, to mediate could not end the blockade. Although musical and literary evenings, smaller-scale performing arts, and cabaret were allowed, the “permit” for drama continued to be withheld.

Against all odds

In this time of waiting, which was hard to bear, Leopold Sachse turned to Anny Gowa, whom he had probably held in high esteem at least since their collaboration on the previous opera evening, with a request for further designs. Until his dismissal from the City Theater, Sachse had been celebrated for his directing style by the supporters of modern opera productions, but he had been increasingly shouted down by the conservative and right-wing elements of the audience. He had worked there with Panos Aravantinos, among others, a visionary stage designer influenced by Expressionism and Cubism. In any case, as his letter shows, he seemed to be visibly taken with those of Anny Gowa’s designs that were already available; as a former Bauhaus student, she had studied with the artistic avant-garde in Weimar and Dessau. As the letter also testifies, the society Jüdische Gesellschaft für Kunst und Wissenschaft in Hamburg began its work despite bureaucratic hurdles, albeit of necessity for the time being as a visitors’ organization without a theater schedule and without a permanent ensemble. In November 1934, it hosted its first promotional evening. Other events followed, including concerts with Hamburg, Berlin, and Frankfurt orchestras, lecture and recitation evenings, cabaret, as well as dance and film screenings. Eight months later, in July 1935, the theater concession finally arrived at the society Jüdische Gesellschaft für Kunst und Wissenschaft in Hamburg, and so the summer season could be concluded with one-act plays by Schnitzler, Strindberg, and Chekhov. The director was Arthur Holz, once a renowned dramaturge and director at such important houses as Vienna’s Burgtheater and Hamburg’s Thalia Theater. Leopold Sachse had already resigned as artistic director by this time; he was on his way to the U.S., where he was to take up a new position at New York’s Metropolitan Opera at the beginning of the winter season.

Open questions

Just which dramatic or musical work Sachse intended to stage in the summer of 1934 is not clear from his letter to Anny Gowa. The question of whether his plan was adopted and realized by another directing team in subsequent years must therefore remain unanswered. In referring to the man “in the state of Adam before the Fall,” Sachse made use of a common phrase that does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the planned production and its characters. As Anny Gowa wrote to me in the course of our correspondence in 1992, all she had left from those years of artistic creation was a postcard by the painter Kurt Löwengard and this letter. However, she could no longer remember the specific reason for it. What is anything but mysterious, however, is the significance of the letter as a document of contemporary history. Considering the knowledge of the Nazi regime’s racist policy of exclusion, it refers in particular to the distress of Jewish artists, whose creative power had been thwarted by a cynical power play. Those who had the opportunity to leave Germany were mostly forced to adjust to a completely different, often destitute life in a foreign country. For many, however, this life-saving step also meant the loss of their intellectual and cultural potential. In the general context of the relief efforts by Jewish institutions, ranging from the Counseling Center and its professional association to the Cultural Association Kulturbund in its final form, the letter becomes a testimony of self-assertion and solidarity in equal measure: For the Jewish artists, artistic practice meant preserving their professional identity despite the difficult conditions; for the public, excluded from the general cultural life of the city, it offered the possibility of escaping the difficult everyday life for a few hours and experiencing art together with other people.

Outlook

The 1935 / 36 season began with a change of name. The “Jewish Society for Arts and Science in Hamburg reg. soc.”  Jüdische Gesellschaft für Kunst und Wissenschaft e.V. became the Hamburg Jewish Cultural Association reg. soc.”  Jüdischer Kulturbund Hamburg e.V.. Its entry in the register of associations took place in September 1935. Like its predecessors, it was the only forum in Hamburg in which Jewish artists could practice their profession before an exclusively Jewish audience. Ferdinand Gowa continued to manage the business, while Hans Buxbaum, formerly the head of the theater in Bochum, was put in charge of the Kulturbundbühne, the stage of the Cultural Association. Under his direction, the opening premiere took place in September 1935: “Jaakob’s Dream” by Richard Beer-Hofmann. The Conventgarten, a concert hall on the corner of Fuhlentwiete and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, which later had been destroyed in World War II and was famous for its acoustics, had room for almost 2,000 spectators and was the ideal location for such a monumental drama. Anny Gowa was responsible for the stage design; the costumes were designed by her colleague Käte Friedheim. In the following three seasons, Anny Gowa was involved in 12 of the 26 drama productions, supplying designs and paintings. At the beginning of 1939, the Hamburg Cultural Association Jüdischer Kulturbund Hamburg was incorporated as a branch of the unified organization Jewish Cultural Association in Germany  Jüdischer Kulturbund in Deutschland e.V.. In the summer of 1939, Anny and Ferdinand Gowa emigrated to the USA via Sweden. While her husband taught German language and literature at the universities of Pittsburgh and Nashville, Tennessee, Anny Gowa was temporarily responsible for the design of department stores as a decorator. Ferdinand Gowa died in 1972, and Anny Gowa survived her husband by 25 years; she lived to be 91. Leopold Sachse taught at various colleges in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh in addition to his directing work. In 1945, he took on commissions at New York’s City Center Opera for another ten years. Immediately after the end of the war, it was thanks to his very personal efforts that the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA) “adopted” the Hamburg State Opera and provided it with food, clothing, and instruments in a large-scale relief campaign. Leopold Sachse died in 1961 at the age of 81 in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

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