Berlinische Dramaturgien: dramaturgical practices in the German metropolis

This thesis consists of three substantial case studies exploring the work of dramaturgy departments at three different theatres in Berlin during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: at the Deutsches Theater Berlin under the directorship of Max Reinhardt at the beginning of the twentieth century, at the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer under the directorship of Peter Stein during the 1960s and 1970s, and at the Maxim Gorki Theater in the first season of Shermin Langhoff and Jens Hillje’s directorship in 2013/14. The study locates dramaturgical practices within a wider cultural and political field – from metropolitan culture in Wilhelmine Berlin to the anti-authoritarian theatre movement in West Germany and finally to contemporary debates on postmigrant theatre and cosmopolitanism in the reunified Germany of the twenty-first century. It applies a mixed-methods approach that focuses equally on performance analyses as well as analyses of historical documents such as theatre journals and theatre programmes. In its holistic approach to the practice of dramaturgy, it seeks to make a contribution to scholarship on dramaturgy in historical as well as contemporary perspectives.