• Lecturer in Theatre Studies (Theatre Film and Television Studies)

telephone: 0141 3306804
email: Anselm.Heinrich@glasgow.ac.uk

Office hours: Thursday 10-12pm

Research Interests

German and British theatre history, especially regional and national theatres, audiences and repertoires, issues of funding, censorship, and propaganda. Anselm is also interested in contemporary German and British playwriting, comparative approaches in historiography, the arts during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich in Germany, artists in exile (1933-1945), theatre in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, cultural policy, and dramaturgy.

Biography

Dr Anselm Heinrich is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow. Born in 1971 in Bühl in southern Germany and brought up in the Westphalian town of Schwerte he studied English, History and Pedagogy in  Münster and graduated with the Staatsexamen and an MA. He then embarked on a PhD at the University of Hull. Anselm subsequently worked as a teaching assistant (Lektor) in Modern Languages at the University of Hull and then as a Research Associate at Lancaster University before moving to Glasgow in 2006. He has published on various aspects of British and German history, and has also worked as a translator. Anselm supports Borussia Dortmund, plays football (badly) and the drums (mediocre), but loves doing both.

Anselm has featured on the Goethe- Institut’s “Meet the Germans” project featuring Germans living abroad. He has appeared on BBC Radio Scotland, and BBC Humberside (Radio and Television).

Anselm is also a translator. He has worked for different companies and organisations, including the University of Hull, and has done translations for Carolyne Choa- Minghella (film script of The Wisdom of Crocodiles, as shown in cinemas) and for Theatresearch. He has translated Sarah- Jane Dickinson’s play Not Yet for the Goethe- Institut.

His cooperation with the Goethe Institut Glasgow in particular has led to a number of events including a panel discussion on dramaturgy (with Maja Zade from the Berlin Schaubühne), talks by Alexander Weigel (long standing dramaturge at the Berlin Deutsches Theater) and an illustrated lecture by Robert Sturm, artistic director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.

Research Projects

German foreign cultural policy: funding application for two year research project on German foreign cultural policy with the Goethe Institut Glasgow as a case study. Linked PhD, series of workshops/seminars, international conference. Applied at German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) under the “Promoting German Studies in the UK” programme. Value: €41,000.

Staging the Nation – National Theatres in Europe’s New Nations: impending funding application to HERA Joint Research Programme 2012 “Cultural Encounters“ with project partners Prof. Dr. Matjaz Birk (Slovenia) and Prof. Dr. Kristel Pappel (Estonian). Comparative, interdisciplinary research project on the „performance of nationhood“ with three linked PostDocs, conferences, publications.

European theatre under German occupation during World War II: international and interdisciplinary project which will specifically look at those theatres under German occupation, which were run as repertory theatres with their entire programme in German and for a German- speaking audience. Such theatres were founded in different countries occupied by the Germans, although the propagandistic aims in Western and Northern Europe were different from those in Poland and the Baltic states where indigenous cultures where sought to be destroyed. I have already begun work on this project with a two week research trip to Lodz in early 2010 (funded by the RSE) during which I looked at the “Theater zu Litzmannstadt” with a particular focus on programming and audience appeal, its funding structures and political role in the “Reichsgau Wartheland”. Application to AHRC or ERC planned mid-term.

The reception of Shakespeare in Nazi Germany: international and interdisciplinary research project, large grant application envisaged (AHRC or ERC). This project will look at a number of plays (Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, Richard III, Taming of the Shrew) and investigate to what extent Nazi propaganda put claims on these and Shakespeare more generally. The project will bring together international experts on the topic including Dr. Gerwin Strobl (University of Cardiff), Prof. Dr. Konrad Dussel (Universität Mannheim), and Dr Andrew Bonnell (University of Queensland, Australia). Conference, monograph and collection of essays planned as outpouts.

AHRC Research Networking Scheme application with Dr Victoria Reid (French, School of Modern Languages and Cultures), project entitled: “Claims on Shakespeare: Constructing and Deconstructing a European Hamlet”. The project will focus on Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the European dimension of its reception. It will take a diachronic as well as synchronic approach and discuss main trends in interpreting, claiming and using Hamlet for cultural and political purposes. The research will identify a number of key performances to illustrate the changing reception of Hamlet in different European countries, discuss these in details and put them in relation to each other.

• Erasmus Teaching Mobility Grant, Freie Universität Berlin (2011)
• German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Senior Study Visit research award (2010)
• Royal Society of Edinburgh research award (2009)

I welcome applications from prospective MPhil and PhD students wishing to undertake research into any of the above areas. Supervision of current and recently completed postgraduate work includes research on the National Theatre of Scotland, Bertolt Brecht, contemporary German film, 20th-Century Dance, Glasgow’s Arches venue and Pantomime.

Supervision of current and past postgraduate research students:

PhD:
-National Theatre of Scotland (Viva 2009)
-orientalism, primitivism and avant-garde dance (third year)

MPhil:
-Glasgow’s Arches Venue (graduated 2007)
-Music in Brecht’s Dramaturgy (graduated 2009)
-Listening to Visual Theatres (graduated 2011)

Teaching – undergraduate:

• Level 1: lectures on “Theatre and Society in 20th century Germany”
• Level 2: lectures on ancient Greek theatre, German classical theatre, postmodern practitioners (Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch in particular)
• Level 2 performance project (second semester) on Antigone
• Honours option: “Modern German Theatre”
• Honours option: “Issues in Victorian and Edwardian Theatre”

Teaching – postgraduate:

• MLitt in Dramaturgy and Playwriting: Debating Dramaturgy I (core course)
• PG Research Methods

Administration

In 2011 Anselm has taken on the role of Head of Theatre Studies.

He is also Theatre Studies’ Overseas and International Exchange Convenor.

Previous convening roles included:
- Level 2 Course Convenor
- Junior Honours Convenor (2006-09)
- TFTS Learning and Teaching Committee (2007-09)

External Responsibilities

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (www.heacademy.ac.uk)
• Chairman of the Academic Advisory Council of Thalia Germanica (www.sfu.ca/thalia-germanica)
• Member of the executive committee of the Society for Theatre Research (www.str.org.uk)
• Member of the German History Society (www.germanhistorysociety.org.uk)
• Member of TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association, www.tapra.org)
• Associate Member of the Ruskin Library and Research Centre at Lancaster University (www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/ruskin/)
• Reviewer for e-journal Portal and for the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance

Other Publications / Forthcoming Publications

Forthcoming:

• Theater in der Region. Provinztheater im Vergleich. Westfalen und Yorkshire 1918 – 1945. Paderborn: Schöningh (in print)
• “Germania on Stage – the Nazi Thing Theatre” (forthcoming essay in volume of proceedings of Germania Remembered conference, Arizona State University Press, 2012)
• “Dream Palaces – Regional Theatres in Britain and Germany at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century.” In: The Cultural Industries in Britain and Germany. Eisenberg, Christiane and Andreas Gestrich, eds. (forthcoming 2012)
• “Theatre in Łódź under German Occupation“, submitted to Theatre History Studies (currently under review)
• “Shakespeare ist deutsch! Nazi claims on Shakespearean drama“, submitted to New Theatre Quarterly (currently under review)
• “Theater in Deutschland nach 1945” (online article Artikel for Zentrums für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam, to be published in autumn 2012)

Selected Reviews and Review Articles:

• “Politics and the Arts”. Review article of Der “Reichsdramaturg”. Rainer Schlösser und die Musiktheater- Politik in der NS- Zeit, Boris von Haken; and Bühnen der Politik. Die Oper in europäischen Gesellschaften im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Sven Oliver Mueller, Jutta Toelle, Eds. Bulletin des Deutschen Historischen Instituts London 31, no. 1 (2009): 74-82.
• Queen Victoria and the Theatre of her Age, by Richard Schoch. Nineteenth Century Contexts 29.1 (2007): 63-66.
• Das Kulturlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945, by Ernst Klee. Review for H-Soz-Kult (May 2007)
• Hanns Johst: “Der Barde der SS”, by Rolf Düsterberg. Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London 28, no. 2 (2006): 100-105.
• Arts in Exile in Britain 1933-1945, by Shulmatith Behr and Marian Malet, eds. Review for www.theaterforschung.de (July 2006)
• Regular reviewer for Studies in Theatre and Performance, New Theatre Quarterly, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London, Modern Languages Review, H-Net German, H-Soz-u-Kult, and www.theaterforschung.de

Seleted Conference Papers

• Clash and convergence: Perceptions of theatre in Germany and Britain, workshop at Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (November 2011)
• CEMA and Regional Theatre, 1940-1945, Regional Spaces, National Stages: Performance beyond London 1945-2010 conference, University of Reading (September 2010)
• “Nazi Thing Theatre”, Germania Remembered 1500-2009 conference, University of London (November 2009)
• Dream Palaces – Regional Theatres in Britain and Germany at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century, The Cultural Industries in the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Britain and Germany Compared conference, German Historical Institute London (November 2009)
• “New Readings of Germany’s Classical Theatre”, Georgian Theatre conference in Richmond (September 2008)
• “York Memories – oral history and regional theatre”, SIBMAS theatre conference in Glasgow (August 2008)
• “Theatre in Britain during the Second World War”, Society for Theatre Research lecture series (January 2007)
• “John Ruskin and the Development of the National Theatre”, Life Writing conference, Lancaster University (July 2005)
• “Münster’s Theatre During the Third Reich”, Connecting Cultures conference, University of Kent (April 2004)
• “York’s Theatre Royal Between 1877 and 1945”, Shifting Scenes: Theatre Histories Beyond London conference, University of Manchester (September 2003)
• “Theatre Émigrés in Britain 1933-1945”, Thalia Germanica conference, Riga (June 2003)
• “Contemporary German Theatre and Drama”, invited to panel on contemporary European plays and playwrights at Festival of Contemporary European Plays in Huddersfield (March 2002)
• “German Drama and Music at British Regional Theatres 1914-1945”, Thalia Germanica conference, Lund (June 2001)