Fehling, Jürgen

(1885-1968)

   Director. Fehling was among the most innovative German theater directors in the 20th century, producing significant work from the beginning of the Weimar Republic to the end of the Nazi era. Fehling himself claimed that his most important achievement was continuing the Berlin theater tradition, which he said Otto Brahm had almost single-handedly initiated. Fehling was, however, by no means a follower in Brahm's Naturalist footsteps. Fehling's first productions in Berlin were of Expressionist plays, which he described as "reflections between the playwright's text and the consciousness of the director." Those reflections, he said, were to guide a director in projecting a "theatrical resonance" of reality in performance. His concept of "reality," however, was far more subjective and calculated than that of his contemporaries. The concepts that ended up in performance were furthermore rarely premeditated because he never used a Regiebuch. He allowed actors to exercise substantial freedom in rehearsal, which he thereupon shaped into final form. Fehling did dozens of productions during the Weimar period for a variety of Berlin theaters, including premieres of works by Ernst Barlach, Ernst Toller, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Bertolt Brecht, while also staging stunning productions of Greek classics and William Shakespeare. Leopold Jessner hired Fehling in 1922 as a regular staff director at the State Theater, where he remained through the Third Reich under Gustaf Gründgens. There he did the most extraordinary Shakespeare productions of his career, some of which earned him death threats from Hermann Goer-ing. Yet he also was most often the director of choice for Nazi playwrights Hanns Johst, Hermann Burte, Friedrich Griese, Hanns Friedrich Blunck, and Hans Rehberg.