would have agreed with this, butGermany could indeed boast something genuinely unique. When it came formally into existence at 10 a.m. on 23 April 1864, the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft was the first academic Shakespearian society to be founded anywhere in the world.
Only one problem: Iâd mislaid them. The modern-day headquarters of the DSG was nowhere near William-Shakespeare-Strasse, as Iâd casually assumed. Hastening back to the centre of town after heading in entirely the wrong direction, I asked at the tourist information bureau. All I got was a flurry of furrowed brows. Eventually someone turned up Windischestrasse, a narrow lane less than a hundred metres away.
I sprinted down. There was indeed a large sign reading âShakespearesâ, but it was a bar. They hadnât heard of the society either â Iâd tried tourist information? Through gritted teeth, I explained I had.
Eventually, I found it: a modest white nameplate on the wall of an office building, opposite a mobile-phone shop. In neat type, the nameplate read, DEUTSCHE SHAKESPEARE-GESELLSCHAFT, E.V., GESCHäFTSSTELLE. It seemed to share space with a yoga centre.
The door opened, disclosing a woman in early middle age with a mass of curly brown hair: the DSGâs part-time administrator, Birgit Rudolph. She smiled cautiously and welcomed me in.
âIt isnât much to look at, I am sorry,â she said as we hauled our way up the steep stairs. âIt is more of an office space. We use it mainly to keep information.â
The two-room office was functional, with a forlorn touch of the GDR: a couple of desks, a few exhausted-looking pot plants and an elderly fax machine. Along one wall were neat rows of box files. Near the dusty glass of the window, a copy of the âFlowerâ portrait of Shakespeare â so-called because it was once owned by the family of Edward Fordham Flower, organiser of the same tercentenary festivities Wilhelm Oechelhäuser had so despised â surveyed the scene. There was a pungent smell of old paper, mixed with wet carpet.
It certainly wasnât a patch on the offices of the Goethe-Gesellschaft, which Iâd popped into briefly the previous day: an imposing suite of rooms encased within the Schloss and offering sumptuous views on to the Park an der Ilm.
Rudolph was attempting to hide her smile. âYes, this is true. But we are older, you know this? They are only founded in 1885. We are 1864. They are a little bit sensitive about that.â
Still, it was a wrench to see the society in such incommodious surroundings. When the DSG had convened its first meetings in the 1860s and 1870s, its ambitions â at least measured by the extravagance of its rhetoric â were almost without bound. The philosopher and scholar Hermann Ulrici wrote, âWe want to de-Anglicise the English Shakespeare. We want to Germanise him, to Germanise him in the widest and deepest sense of the word; we want to do everything in our power to make him even more and in the truest and fullest sense what he already is: a German poet.â Another scholar, Karl Fulda, was even more fulsome: âWe have an undeniable right to regard him as ours, because we have made him ours thanks to German industry, German spirit, and German scholarship.â Not for nothing had one historian of the society declared that most of these tributes to Shakespeare were âfar too embarrassing to quoteâ.
Birgit directed my attention to the wall, where a large bookcase was lined with a row of volumes: a full run of the bilingual
Shakespeare Jahrbuch,
still published annually and distributed to all members. She carefully pulled out a few early editions, their leather covers softened to toffee-brown but the gold lettering on the spine still bright. We peered at the faded, closely printed pages, Birgit translating as we went.
The very first issue laid out the DSGâs objectives, âshow[ing] the traces of
Only one problem: Iâd mislaid them. The modern-day headquarters of the DSG was nowhere near William-Shakespeare-Strasse, as Iâd casually assumed. Hastening back to the centre of town after heading in entirely the wrong direction, I asked at the tourist information bureau. All I got was a flurry of furrowed brows. Eventually someone turned up Windischestrasse, a narrow lane less than a hundred metres away.
I sprinted down. There was indeed a large sign reading âShakespearesâ, but it was a bar. They hadnât heard of the society either â Iâd tried tourist information? Through gritted teeth, I explained I had.
Eventually, I found it: a modest white nameplate on the wall of an office building, opposite a mobile-phone shop. In neat type, the nameplate read, DEUTSCHE SHAKESPEARE-GESELLSCHAFT, E.V., GESCHäFTSSTELLE. It seemed to share space with a yoga centre.
The door opened, disclosing a woman in early middle age with a mass of curly brown hair: the DSGâs part-time administrator, Birgit Rudolph. She smiled cautiously and welcomed me in.
âIt isnât much to look at, I am sorry,â she said as we hauled our way up the steep stairs. âIt is more of an office space. We use it mainly to keep information.â
The two-room office was functional, with a forlorn touch of the GDR: a couple of desks, a few exhausted-looking pot plants and an elderly fax machine. Along one wall were neat rows of box files. Near the dusty glass of the window, a copy of the âFlowerâ portrait of Shakespeare â so-called because it was once owned by the family of Edward Fordham Flower, organiser of the same tercentenary festivities Wilhelm Oechelhäuser had so despised â surveyed the scene. There was a pungent smell of old paper, mixed with wet carpet.
It certainly wasnât a patch on the offices of the Goethe-Gesellschaft, which Iâd popped into briefly the previous day: an imposing suite of rooms encased within the Schloss and offering sumptuous views on to the Park an der Ilm.
Rudolph was attempting to hide her smile. âYes, this is true. But we are older, you know this? They are only founded in 1885. We are 1864. They are a little bit sensitive about that.â
Still, it was a wrench to see the society in such incommodious surroundings. When the DSG had convened its first meetings in the 1860s and 1870s, its ambitions â at least measured by the extravagance of its rhetoric â were almost without bound. The philosopher and scholar Hermann Ulrici wrote, âWe want to de-Anglicise the English Shakespeare. We want to Germanise him, to Germanise him in the widest and deepest sense of the word; we want to do everything in our power to make him even more and in the truest and fullest sense what he already is: a German poet.â Another scholar, Karl Fulda, was even more fulsome: âWe have an undeniable right to regard him as ours, because we have made him ours thanks to German industry, German spirit, and German scholarship.â Not for nothing had one historian of the society declared that most of these tributes to Shakespeare were âfar too embarrassing to quoteâ.
Birgit directed my attention to the wall, where a large bookcase was lined with a row of volumes: a full run of the bilingual
Shakespeare Jahrbuch,
still published annually and distributed to all members. She carefully pulled out a few early editions, their leather covers softened to toffee-brown but the gold lettering on the spine still bright. We peered at the faded, closely printed pages, Birgit translating as we went.
The very first issue laid out the DSGâs objectives, âshow[ing] the traces of
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