Dramaturg

   The office of dramaturg within a German theater's administration is closely bound to the idea of a theater with responsibilities for moral uplift and literary presentation. Few commercial theaters have had dramaturgs, but most subsidized institutions have had at least one on the payroll. Some have described the dramaturg's role as "in-house critic," but in most contemporary German theaters the role of dramaturg enjoys a status much higher than that. He may indeed function periodically as a critical observer, but his tasks also include responsibilities for helping to select repertoires, casting productions, translating or adapting plays, directing, serving as liaison with the media, editing programs, representing the institution to the public at large or to legislators who provide subsidies, dealing with agents, and perhaps a dozen other duties, either assigned to him directly by the artistic director or intendant or spelled out specifically in his contract.

   Most observers agree that Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was the first dramaturg, though Johann Elias Schlegel (1719-1749) adumbrated the dramaturg's role in his 1747 treatise Schreiben von Errichtung eines Theaters in Kopenhagen (Notes on the Establishment of a Theater in Copenhagen). Joseph Schreyvogel's role as dramaturg at the Burgtheater in Vienna ultimately permitted him to become the company's artistic director. Ludwig Tieck was certainly the most important dramaturg the Dresden Court Theater ever had, though his successor Karl Gutzkow became likewise well known. Some directors, such as Otto Brahm and Bertolt Brecht, have actively engaged in dramaturgical work while running their own theaters; other dra-maturgs, such as Botho Strauss, have used the position as a springboard to successful playwriting careers. The most notorious misuse of the term and office of dramaturg was Josef Goebbels's appointment of Rainer Schlösser as "Reich dramaturg" during the Nazi dictatorship. Goebbels permitted Schlösser to strike terror among artists, since Schlösser was the Propaganda Ministry's chief enforcer of Nazi artistic doctrine in German theaters.