Lilian Karina, Marion Kant. Hitler's Dancers: German Modern Dance and the Third Reich. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003. x + 364 pp. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-57181-300-8.

Reviewed by Yukihiko Yoshida (Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University)
Published on H-German (July, 2004)

Dance and Dance Research in the Third Reich

The role of dance in the Third Reich is well-known in post-war research. Mountain of Truth, published by Martin Green in the 1990s, was widely read. Even researchers not specializing in dance have been aware of the collaboration Rudoph von Laban and Mary Wigman with the National Socialist Party. For a long time, Laban's activities were thought to be connected to occult strands in contemporary counter-culture, though this story and others like it were often recounted without verified data. The authors in this volume have effectively documented the facts of the relationship of Nazism and modern dance in Germany with sources from German archives. Drawing on the documents from the Bundesarchiv, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, the National Resources Center for Dance in Guildford/England, the authors of the volume demonstrate the relationship between dancers and Nazism realistically. This book thus points the way for the next steps of further research.

Because Germany under Nazism displayed many characteristics of typical twentieth-century nationalism, the German case can be seen as prototypical for understanding the relationship between dance and politics. Twentieth-century dance research was heavily anchored in the work of Ausdruck Tanz and Laban. At the same time, Nazi political functionaries pressured the application of their racial and political ideas on German dance. Like Laban, dance researchers and dancers cooperated with Nazi policy, a relationship seen in the "Curriculum of the Master Workshop" (p. 275). The book also shows how dancers were affected by the racial categories of Nazism in places like Auschwitz (p. 281). After the beginning of World War II, Ausdruck Tanz was in great political danger. Mary Wigman fought alone. Dore Hoyer, Wigman's student, committed suicide in response to the political situation, and this story was told symbolically. On the other hand, both Kurt Joos and Laban came back from the United Kingdom and the young Pina Baucsh learned under them. Bausch's well-known style, "TanzTheater," came from Joos's style.

One of the most important selections in the volume is an interview with Lilian Karina by dance researcher Marion Kant. Karina was one of the most important dancers to represent the Third Reich under the influence of Goebbels, who emphasized the important of entertainment for the masses. Photographs of Karina's participation in such shows are well known and have survived into the present.

Here in Japan, some dancers cooperated with Japanese fascism, but their work is little known. This volume will be a seminal work in facilitating the analysis of understanding the roles of dance and body under fascism. The focus on real data allows the reader to contemplate the relationship of the body to politics in nation-states and under fascism. Understanding the continuities in dance from the past will be key to thinking about the relationship of dance to the body in the global age.

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Citation: Yukihiko Yoshida. Review of Karina, Lilian; Kant, Marion, Hitler's Dancers: German Modern Dance and the Third Reich. H-German, H-Net Reviews. July, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9566

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