Exile in the Spotlight: Kurt Hirschfeld and German-language Theater at the Schauspielhaus Zurich

Kurt Hirschfeld built the Schauspielhaus Zurich into the last bastion of free German theater in the 30s, premiered Brechts Mother Courage during WWII, and brought Swiss literary Giants Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt to the attention of a broader audience. The German-Jewish Émigré Kurt Hirschfeld shaped the Swiss theater landscape and global dramatic culture like few others. On March 9, 2015 a panel of distinguished scholars and critics will discuss Hirschfeld’s career and legacy in the first international Hirschfeld conference, hosted at the Schauspielhaus. The conference will be launched with a dramatic reading, in which the actors Stefan Kurt (Berliner Ensemble) and Friederike Wagner (Schauspielhaus Zurich) will illuminate Hirschfeld’s extraordinary life by reading selected letters from his papers, which are preserved in the archives of Leo Baeck Institute, New York.