The Initiation of a Discourse: From Tacitus to Sword Dances in the Middle Ages

When Publius Cornelius Tacitus's long-forgotten historio-ethnographic work De origine et situ Germanorum (dated 98 C.E., also known as Germania) was rediscovered in the manuscript Codex Hersfeldensis in 1455, its twenty-seven chapters about the Germanic peoples had a huge impact on current identity debates and would be instrumentalized by German humanists. Tacitus's little book was reprinted in Venice in 1470, and a second edition was published in Nuremberg in 1473 (Meschke Reference Meschke1931, 135). As legend has it since then, the first known mention of German sword dancing—or something similar to it—can be found in chapter twenty-four of the Germania:

For as long as there has been a discourse on German sword dance and its history, Tacitus's report has been considered the earliest and the only one to confirm the practice of sword dancing on German soil up until the fourteenth century (Meschke Reference Meschke1931, 135). The lack of further reports on the Germanic practice does not allow us to definitively state whether it actually was a kind of dance or rather a ritualized demonstration of athletic skill. In the Tacitus quote, no reference to any musical accompaniment or rhythmic characteristic is made to qualify it as a dance; furthermore, it is the Latin word saltus (jump) and not saltatio (dance) that appears in the text. I argue that the generally accepted view, that Tacitus describes the prototypical German sword dance, should be taken with a grain of salt. Johannes Aventinus (1477–1534), a Bavarian humanist historian and philologist, might have been the first and last one to write about the Taciteian sword performance without linking it to medieval sword dances. Further source reading shows that it was actually the polymath Jodocus Willich (1501–1552) who created the link between the Tacitus quote and the sword dance practices he knew from his own time (Meschke Reference Meschke1931, 135): “The Germans are still dancing between and over sharp swords, and some also allow themselves to lead a sword dance, i.e., they frequently call it the dance of the gladiators.”Footnote ²

In all likelihood, it was Willich who introduced the word “chorea” (i.e., dance or round dance) in the context of exploiting Tacitus's report for the invention of German traditions. Other authors, such as the Swedish writer and ecclesiastic Olaus Magnus in 1555, were to adopt this interpretation immediately, and so the historical misunderstanding that assumed a direct lineage between Germanic and medieval German sword dance entered the discourse and was there to stay. “It was only when the guilds arose as a new and ambitious bourgeoisie in medieval German cities,” Herbert Oetke writes according to the traditional narrative, “that the ‘sword dance’ began to reappear in contemporary documents” (Reference Oetke1982, 114)—documents by town chroniclers that are considerably more reliable and clear in their content. While sword dances performed by the guilds of smiths and cutlers in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg are recorded from 1350, sixteenth century records of sword dances, including a small number of depictions, survive from all over Germany. Generally speaking, the guilds (by no means limited to the cutlers and also including, e.g., shoemakers, furriers, and bakers) danced in the public squares and in the city streets, “in front of important buildings, before the courthouse, the homes of the city councilmen, and the houses of good customers” (Oetke Reference Oetke1982, 129). Nevertheless, the records that survive from Nuremberg outnumber those of any other city.

Photo 1. Sword Dance from Olaus Magnus 1555. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Olaus_Magnus_Sword_dance.jpg.

Photo 2. Sword dance and play of the Nuremberg cutlers, Nuremberg 1600. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:N%C3%BCrnberg_Schwerttanz_der_Messerer_1600.jpg.

In the available literature from the 1870s onward, it was nearly always taken as a given that modern German sword dances were culturally linked to what were believed to be—following the misinterpretation of Tacitus—old Germanic dances. The thousand-year gap in documentation was not taken into account as traditions were invented. Yet, in reality, there was a broad range of sword dances. Depending on their form and function, there were weapon-based, war, and guild dances, which may be classified as follows:

• • Linked [or chained] sword dances (All dancers are joined by their swords and execute most of the figures in this position.)

• • Martial or military combat dances (In these dances, the members are not linked; each dancer holds his sword independently, and two individuals or groups execute maneuvers simulating combat.)

• • Solo sword dances (These are dances of skill and agility. The dancer executes a series of leaps and steps over the crossed swords without touching them.)Footnote ³

In early twentieth century literature, these types and functions seem to have either become confused or were simply ignored, suggesting that dancing with swords must be a martial sword dance, part of a direct lineage of cultic Germanic weapon dances. In many cities, over the course of the nineteenth century, the sword dance had ceased to be a carnival tradition, having “taken on a life of its own and adopting new elements, such as the Prussian jargon for military commands.”Footnote ⁴ As such, the stage was perfectly set for the dance's exploitation as a propaganda vehicle.

Nudes and Swords: Body Culture Theory, Inspired by Tacitus

Amazingly enough, lexica from between 1850 and 1910 mostly offered (at least for the standards of the time) a historically objective assessment of the sword dance as a war dance or weapon dance in antiquity, on the one hand, and as the guild dance of the cutlers since the Middle Ages, on the other. In fact, they often included ethnologically motivated compilations of the sword dance traditions of disparate nations and “natural peoples.” No attempts were made to establish a historical connection between the sword dance of the Germanic peoples and the handworkers' dances still common in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. For the body culture theorists, it is far more accurate to say that Tacitus's report served as one inspiration among many for the sorely needed whipping into physical shape of imperial Germany's un-athletic citizenry. As a result, in reenactments of Germanic rituals, the sword dance allegedly performed by their ancestors became popular, without any serious claims to its authenticity from a choreographic or any other standpoint. For all authors, it went without saying that such weapon dances were exclusively performed by men.

“Although the body culture movement is primarily remembered today for its Philhellenism,” Michael Cowan explains, “the interest in ancient Germanic rituals … was widespread in the decades around 1900” (Reference Cowan, Cowan and Sicks2005, 65). Given that he has elaborated this aspect in close dialogue with contemporary writings, he also uncritically refers to the asserted Tacitus connection in what “early 20th-century body culture enthusiasts” (Cowan Reference Cowan, Cowan and Sicks2005, 65) were reenacting under the label of Germanic sword dance. His informant in this case is Eduard Bertz, who in his article “Kampf gegen Entartung der Rasse” (“The Struggle Against Racial Degeneracy”), published in the journal Kraft und Schönheit (Strength and Beauty) in Reference Bertz1902, “described the audacious Germanic dance amidst upturned swords as a potential antidote to the degeneration believed so widespread among the modern bourgeoisie” (Cowan Reference Cowan, Cowan and Sicks2005, 65; see also Wedemeyer Reference Wedemeyer and Gissel1999a, 37–53).

Bertz had quite obviously been taken in by the questionable but common “sword dance” interpretation of Tacitus's report, instrumentalizing it for his heroic goals of physical education and nurturing it with crude explications of how Germanic training methods had been suppressed by anti-heroic religious powers. As Cowan (Reference Cowan, Cowan and Sicks2005) notes, Bertz shared his ardor for ancient German rituals with many like-minded people who used Tacitus's Germania to underpin the search for a continuous German tradition in general, claiming that Christian churches had superimposed their belief and value system on the German Volk and its “indigenous beliefs” (see Puschner Reference Puschner and Böhlmann2006; Wedemeyer Reference Wedemeyer1999b). As an example of a Germanic revitalization, Cowan names none other than the dancer Olga Desmond, who “achieved near legendary status with her nude staging of the famous sword dance during her “beauty soirées” (Schönheitsabende) in the early twentieth century” (Cowan Reference Cowan, Cowan and Sicks2005, 65). This is especially interesting, given that up to that point in time the sword dance had never had any remotely female connotations. Back then, physical education for girls and women was characterized by markedly different goals and methods from those recommended for young men; here the focus was on “gymnastics and dance,” as Margarethe N. Zepler wrote in Reference Zepler1904 and again in Reference Zepler1907:

In short, body culture, in particular female body culture, was all about beauty. While the author of the above quote was associated with the gymnastics branch of the body culture movement, and with vaguely nationalist undertones, there was also another, much more radical branch. For its proponents, beauty was closely connected to nakedness, even as early as the turn of the century. Nudist body culture, however, did not necessarily have to be connected with beauty but was associated with “nature, innocence, freedom, and truth” (Schneider Reference Schneider, Puschner, Schmitz and Ulbricht1996, 418), and it could also be used toward feminist and emancipatory ends, attempting to de-eroticize the female body (Kolb Reference Kolb2009). There were many movements at the same time: Beauty could be appareled or naked, nakedness could be beautiful with or without an erotic notion. In his essay “One Hundred Years of Nakedness in German Performance,” Karl Toepfer (Reference Toepfer2003) sheds light on the “appeal of German Nacktkultur around 1900” (144) and reasons that it “rested upon the assumption that the act of displaying one's nakedness and the act of observing the nakedness of others could form a group or communal activity representing a powerful set of political values” (144). Toepfer continues: “Nudism constituted a mode of performance insofar as it was a communal enterprise that followed a ‘script,’ or at least a constellation of conventions or ‘rules’ by which members of the enterprise sought to bring to life a large-scale story of social transformation for which they could claim a significant measure of authorship” (Reference Toepfer2003, 144).

Photo 3. Fully dressed female gymnastics. © Zepler Reference Zepler1904, 32.

Photo 4. Fully dressed female gymnastics. © Zepler Reference Zepler1904, 32.

In a serialized contribution to Kraft und Schönheit (Strength and Beauty) entitled “Körperkultur, Nacktkultur, Nacktlogen, Nacktschaustellungen” (“Body Culture, Nudist Culture, and Naked Performance”; 1908), the enigmatically designated author R. v. S. (the “v.” indicates an aristocratic name) defines body culture as

Early Nacktkultur (nudism) social visions were, as Toepfer put it, “profoundly provincial, imbued with insulating fantasies of purified identity, and obsessed with recovering a folkloric idea of social unity” (Reference Toepfer2003, 148). It was here that German nudism started to flirt with völkisch, i.e., the Nazi term for ethnic, ideas (see Schneider Reference Schneider, Puschner, Schmitz and Ulbricht1996, 426–428). On this point, advocates of nudism were in unison with the campaigners for a new, or at least rediscovered, community dance. In a highly emotional “back to nature” appeal for Kraft und Schönheit, published in July Reference Schönemann1908, Friedrich Schönemann claimed:

Kraft und Schönheit (1901–1927), a monthly journal promoting body culture in general, clearly had nationalist undertones, for which Bertz and the above quotes are just two random examples. However, the main interest of the publication was to encourage a healthy, natural lifestyle—recommending physical exercises, up-to-date but arguable dietetics, and nudism—in order to strengthen and beautify the body. Articles titled “Ein ideal schöner Körperbau” (“An Ideal Beautiful Body”), “Der Sport und seine Bedeutung für die Körperkultur” (“Sport and Its Meaning for Body Culture”), “Naturgemäße Lebensweise” (“Natural Lifestyle”), and “Die Bekleidungsfrage für den Kulturmenschen” (“The Question of Clothing for the Civilized Man”, see Kraft und Schönheit, Vol. 8, Nos. 11 and 12), published in 1908, exemplarily reflect the aforementioned thematic profile.

Unsurprisingly, the nudism discourse did not only benefit its health-conscious supporters with a promise of freedom from social constraints. It also enabled nude artists to perform on public stages; in the 1900s, this was a well-calculated scandal. One of these much-discussed figures was the dancer Olga Desmond (1890–1964).

Choreographic Comment I: Olga Desmond's Sword Dance (1908)

Olga Desmond, born in 1890 as Olga Sellin in the East Prussian town of Allenstein (now Olsztyn, Poland), grew up in Berlin-Kreuzberg, where she started to study drama at the age of 15. It was at this tender age that she began appearing nude, working as a model for painters and sculptors to finance her studies. When she met Adolf Salge in 1907, she was asked to join his vaudeville ensemble The Seldoms for a London guest performance of several months. She did so as Olga Desmond, and in the “plastic representations” (or “living marble” statue posing) that she demonstrated together with her stage partner Salge, she rose to fame as the “Venus of London.” Back in Berlin in 1908, she continued to perform on stage, now somewhat institutionalized as co-founder of the Association for Ideal Culture. In so-called Schönheitsabenden (“beauty evenings”), Desmond and Salge continued their re-creation of classic and neoclassic statues. Because they were nude, covered only by white body powder, prohibitions were soon to follow (Runge Reference Runge2009; Schröder Reference Schröder2009).

Photographs of Olga Desmond were printed in the Berlin-based journal Die Schönheit (Beauty) (1903–1927), founded by the rather cosmopolitan libertine Karl Vanselow (1877–1959). The beautiful naked bodies shown here were not linked “to the theme of racial hygiene, for Die Schönheit published images of idealized nude bodies from cultures all over the world,” as Karl Toepfer (Reference Toepfer2003, 149) has stated. Instead, as Toepfer notes, “[B]ody type, rather than racial type, controlled the hierarchy of identities within this beautified world.” The availability of printed pictures, be it in Die Schönheit, or on posters or postcards distributed all over Europe, helped Desmond's notoriety to grow rapidly, and so did curiosity in her more or less public performances. This curiosity was not limited to men. The studio-posed photographic images of Desmond's works projected her dance and body conceptions well beyond the space of her public appearances (see Schneider Reference Schneider, Puschner, Schmitz and Ulbricht1996, 420–426). In an announcement for the second Schönheitsabend, published in the Deutsche Tageszeitung's morning edition on April 22, 1908, the program and intention of the event were introduced to the target audience. It included “the living display of sculptures” by Olga Desmond and Adolf Salge, “barefoot dances by Olga Desmond,” a presentation of “artistic movement sculptures” such as “drawing bows, lifting stones, throwing the ger” (a Germanic javelin), and “a classic wrestling match” (“Kunst und Wissenschaft” 1908).

By publishing this invitation in a daily newspaper, Vanselow must have irritated its readers quite a lot. Advertising a nude performance in a high status venue such as the Mozart Hall of the Neues Schauspielhaus (New Theatre) on Nollendorfplatz, completed as recently as 1906, meant nothing less than to openly violate the law and to undo class distinctions considered to be of great importance for German national respectability. Nude performances belonged in nightclubs and music halls, not in an art nouveau temple of culture. With his startling (and adventurous) ad, Vanselow could be sure to attract public attention.

The performance elements specified in the invitation text reflect the close relationship of the Beauty Society with body culture theory and practice. Not only was the purpose of these events to promote nudity as a thoroughly natural and body-aware way of life transformed into art and put on stage (within the bounds of the law), it also revealed the fascination with ancient Greek gymnastics (as shown in the performance of a wrestling match and of neoclassic sculptures) on the one hand, and with Germanic culture on the other, as the addition of a ger quite strikingly demonstrates. While the nude performances did have avid supporters among body culture idealists, criticism on the part of self-proclaimed guardians of public morals and dubious dance experts followed promptly. Thus, it was not only Olga Desmond's nakedness on the Mozart Hall stage that invited controversy. Supporters of nudism, such as Theodor Lamprecht and the mysterious R. v. S., also questioned Desmond's body shape and her qualities as a dancer (see Lamprecht Reference Lamprecht1908, 9; R. v. S. 1909, 75).

As Olga Desmond's popularity—or rather notoriety—rose, fueled by the debate between supporters and opponents of nudism, Karl Vanselow knew how to capitalize on his crowd-magnet. On May 19, 1908, the Association for Ideal Culture and Beauty (Vereinigung für Ideale Kultur – Die Schönheit) hosted its third Evening of Beauty as a private performance for members only. Vanselow employed this little trick to “avoid the censorship of the Berlin Police, which strictly outlawed completely nude performances and called for heavy veils, no uncovered midriffs, and togas or gowns for the portrayal of living sculptures” (Runge Reference Runge2009, 34). The resourceful organizer got his sums right as “more than 600 invited guests” flocked into the lavishly decorated Mozart Hall (34). “Those in attendance,” as Jörn E. Runge describes this memorable evening, “had a feeling they were in for a sensation, and a sensation is exactly what they got” (Reference Runge2009, 34). Olga Desmond displayed “new dance creations” that were “alternately accompanied by the flute, harp and song, piano or violin. Time and time again she [had] rehearsed for her performance, the dance that [would] prove to be revolutionary” (34). Following a variety of “living sculptures,” in which Olga Desmond appeared together with her partner Adolf Salge,

Unfortunately, there is no record of either the music used or the exact choreography of this sword dance; nor do we know how long it was. And the glowing review above provides precious little information that could tell us more about the sources of Olga Desmond's inspiration. The upturned swords indubitably suggest those in the Germanic sword dance, as mentioned in the relevant discourse referring to Tacitus. But, it is sadly impossible to say at this point whether it was coincidental or not. Lyric tributes like the one quoted above and the increasing public debate might have persuaded Karl Vanselow and his Beauty Society to take it one step further. Riding the wave of success both with his monthly publication Die Schönheit and with the nude performances he organized, he decided that it was time to found an academy in the Berlin Eispalast that was to function as a “Mittelpunkt für die Pflege aller auf die Förderung menschlicher Körper-Schönheit gerichteten Bestrebungen” [forum for all efforts oriented on promoting the beauty of the human body] (Siebenbürgisch-Deutsches Tageblatt, September 23, 1908, 9).

Photo 5. Series of studio photographs of Olga Desmond in her “Sword Dance,” 1908. © Otto Skowranek/Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.

Photo 6. Series of studio photographs of Olga Desmond in her “Sword Dance,” 1908. © Otto Skowranek/Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.

Photo 7. Series of studio photographs of Olga Desmond in her “Sword Dance,” 1908. © Otto Skowranek/Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.

Photo 8. Series of studio photographs of Olga Desmond in her “Sword Dance,” 1908. © Otto Skowranek/Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.

Photo 9. Series of studio photographs of Olga Desmond in her “Sword Dance,” 1908. © Otto Skowranek/Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.

Photo 10. Series of studio photographs of Olga Desmond in her “Sword Dance,” 1908. © Otto Skowranek/Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.

Photo 11. Series of studio photographs of Olga Desmond in her “Sword Dance,” 1908. © Otto Skowranek/Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.

Photo 12. Series of studio photographs of Olga Desmond in her “Sword Dance,” 1908. © Otto Skowranek/Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.

Photo 13. Series of studio photographs of Olga Desmond in her “Sword Dance,” 1908. © Otto Skowranek/Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.

Needless to say, these developments did not please the Prussian authorities, who could no longer ignore the moralist voices that were piping up against the advance of nudism. In order to react appropriately, the members of the Prussian parliament decided to see firsthand what the infamous Evenings of Beauty were all about. Even The New York Times reported—with a not-too-subtle sarcastic undertone—on the representatives' visit to the performance:

Hermann Molkenbuhr, a parliamentarian of the Social Democratic Party, submits an enduring personal account. In a diary entry from November 24, 1908, he put his impressions of Olga Desmond's performance—or rather of her very sparse clothing—on record, stating that she “danced the sword dance for which [she] covered her genitals with such a narrow strip of cloth that all but the hair was visible, making her look like a child from the waist down” (Braun and Eichler Reference Braun and Eichler2000, 103–4).

It is with these two reports on the special performance for the Prussian parliament that we get at least a vague idea of what the actual sword dance performance looked like. Olga Desmond was virtually naked and ran “in and out of the wings” (“Diet Members See Sensational Dance” 1908, C3). Admittedly, this little terpsichorean description has to be classified as part of the derogatory coverage of the event by a journalist employing latent sarcasm as a rhetorical strategy. Nevertheless, Desmond's performance might have borne a resemblance to what body culture adherents made of Tacitus's “naked youths” who “throw their bodies back and forth between sword blades and spears.” The innovation of Desmond's 1908 sword dance was not only the obvious allusion to Tacitus, nor was it the provocative nakedness of the dancer alone. It was the opposition to any evidence of traditional German sword dance at the time, depicting clothed men (never women) brandishing swords as they move.

Olga Desmond might have intended to challenge or to conform to the national mythology of a Teutonic warrior from her female perspective by choosing a more faithful exegesis of Tacitus than anyone else had dared to apply so far. She might also, or rather additionally, have been inspired by the many orientalist dancers of the time who used various kinds of swords in their stage performances; the assumption that she was in no small part stimulated by the reception history of Richard Strauss's Salome does not seem overly far-fetched. However, even though it might be tempting to assume a feminist critique or methodology embedded within Desmond's practice, there is no evidence of what her concept really was. Unfortunately, no statement of her choreographic approach has survived. And even more sadly, her sword dance rendition did not have a real impact on the discussion of her performances: the naked woman on the bourgeois stage clearly dominated the public debate.

And so the inevitable happened: On January 13, 1909, the Evenings of Beauty were the subject of a parliamentary debate, with Olga Desmond sitting in the public gallery. Hermann Roeren, a representative of the Deutsche Zentrumspartei (German Centre Party), had petitioned the Prussian Minister of the Interior, Friedrich von Moltke, in this matter. Roeren classified the Evenings of Beauty—if not nudism as a whole—as “scandalous aberrations” and “obnoxious shamelessness,” claiming that “the public dances of a naked wench” were highly immoral and should therefore be prohibited immediately (Berliner Morgenpost, January 14, 1909, 1–2). With reservations, Minister von Moltke was prompt to agree to this proposal: “only some non-offending slides were permitted to be shown” (1–2). In his closing remarks, von Moltke emphasized a sudden nationalist morality:

Once again, reference is made to what was imagined to be ancient Germanic thinking. But in this case, Tacitus's account of the Germanic people is construed by body culture theorists in quite a different way. For the Prussian statesman, the historical record seems to advocate high moral standards instead of stimulating body consciousness and mobilization. In fact, his reading served as a supportive argument for the prohibition of any nudity on stage—quite the contrary of the body culture theorists' reading. From today's point of view, it is perhaps most astounding that no commentator ever focused on the fact that a female artist had taken on an all-male dance form. There is neither a contemporary feminist evaluation nor any other assessment of Desmond's sword dance that would address issues of gender. Devoted followers of nudism praised her performance; members of the bourgeoisie criticized her because she (as well as her male stage partner) had unjustifiably appeared naked on their high culture stage; folk dancers of the time who knew and practiced traditional sword dances might not even have heard of the Desmond scandal, as they belonged to and acted in a completely different social environment.

It is not entirely clear from the historical sources whether the provisional end of Desmond's career as a nude performer was the result of Prussian prudery or of her doubtful qualities as a dancer. The formal prohibition of the nude performances organized by Vanselow in Berlin (as well as those arranged by like-minded people elsewhere) was due to a transgression the police had responded to, not to the nakedness itself, nor to Desmond's femininity. What is certain, however, is that even with the advent of the Nazi era, nudity and body culture were there to stay, albeit relabeled. In the racist second version of his bestselling publication Der Mensch und die Sonne (Man and Sun, first published in 1924), now entitled Mensch und Sonne: Arisch-olympischer Geist (Man and Sun: Aryan Olympic Spirit, 1936), naturism theorist Hans Surén (1885–1972) propagated nudity as a wholly natural and indigenous Germanic duty:

Surén's abundantly illustrated book circulated widely, and even Adolf Hitler is said to have known and admired it (see Diehl Reference Diehl2005, 55; Schmundt Reference Schmundt2011). Viewed in this light, it is inconceivable that Karl Toepfer concludes the Nazis “did not see in nudity or nudism the manifestations of power needed to solve the problems afflicting Germany. The body exuded aesthetic power only when it was wrapped in seductive uniforms and marked with state-authorized insignia. In itself, the body preoccupied the Nazis only to the extent that it revealed racial identity, the dominant source of value for all bodies …” (Toepfer Reference Toepfer2003, 164). Surén's book tells another—or additional—dimension of the history.

Germans and Swords: Nationalism in Dance, Inspired by Tacitus

The fascination with Germanic culture and an imagined German pre-history seems to have been present throughout the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth century, be it in the context of morality, gymnastics, or body culture (see Kater Reference Kater1997; Lund Reference Lund1995; Krebs Reference Krebs2011; Wiwjorra Reference Wiwjorra2006). It should come as no surprise, then, that the famous (though misunderstood) quote by Tacitus was capitalized on by nationalist dance historians and ethnologists as well: “The idea of ancient rituals surviving into modern times,” Stephen D. Corrsin states, “remains a popular explanation among folk dance revivalists, performers, and casual observers” (Reference Corrsin1997, 10). He adds that “nationalistic sentiments have sometimes strongly affected modern research” (10), specifying by explaining that “writers on sword dancing … typically neglect centuries, indeed millennia, of European social and cultural development. They begin with the sword dance customs of late medieval and modern times, and proceed to assume without real evidence that these are ‘degenerate fragments' of far more ancient rituals” (9).

As a matter of fact, no other folk dance was so prominent in the literature of the Nationalist movement of the early twentieth century—and, later, in the National Socialist (NS) regime—as the sword dance. Its appeal to Nationalist ideologists and NS propaganda makers was self-evident, as the guild dance conveyed topoi-like manliness and martial strength and was suggestive of a direct and historically significant link to their Germanic forefathers; titles such as On the Dance of the Germanic People and the Sword Dance (Röhr Reference Röhr1934, 8–11) and The Sword Dance as a Dance of Camaraderie (Van der Ven-Ten Bensel Reference Van der Ven-Ten Bensel1943, 56) were characteristic of the discourse of the time. In 1935, Hans van der Au and Bernhard von Peinen published a small brochure entitled “German Sword Dance” in which they provided not only a nebulous tale of the dance's evolutionary history, but also related it explicitly to NS groupings:

The two authors did not stand alone with their conception of sword dance history. In his book on German folk dances, Richard Wolfram maintained that German “farmlands” had preserved the sword dance “as a custom with close ties to boys' initiation and a rite of passage qualifying them for entry into boys' and men's groups” (Reference Wolfram1937, 13)—a claim that is false, pure and simple: the sword dance was and is the guild dance of smiths and cutlers. Nonetheless, Wolfram's interpretation reflected the popular consensus among folk dance researchers in the Third Reich and was ideally suited to the work of the Hitler Youth (just as the similarly supported stick dances or the Hitler Youth's self-made acrobatic boys' dances were; cf. Krautscheid Reference Krautscheid2004, 24–25).

For example, Fritz Meinetsberger was far from the mark when he based the historical age of the German sword dance on “mentions by Tacitus and Plinius” and postulated “that it was most likely used by our Germanic forefathers as a test of skill and rite of passage for youths, derived from cultic rituals” (Meinetsberger Reference Meinetsberger1934, 1). In so doing, he effectively equated the thoroughly historically charged (maybe cultic) weapon performance with the knife dance practiced in his own time. He proceeded to describe the influence of Christianity on the later history of the dance, claiming that the sword dance had “all but disappeared from the fields of this new culture as an expression of dexterity, manly skill and bold fighting spirit” and in many cases “only with the establishment of guilds, supported by a characteristic cultural spirit, did it reemerge … as if dredged from the subconscious” (Meinetsberger Reference Meinetsberger1934, 1). Meinetsberger's conception of sword dance history is a prime example of how Tacitus' Germania was “distorted into claiming Germanic superiority and, ultimately, [became] the perfect vehicle for Nazi ideology” (Krebs Reference Krebs2011, blurb).

Such attempts to find or invent historical foundations for the dance practices in the Third Reich can be found in practically every contemporary folk dance publication to address the sword dance – extensive monographs were also published on the subject. In his essay on “Movement and Ornament in Old Figure Dances” (1937), Erich Bitterhof took a similar approach, claiming that one could feel “the sacred acts of the ancient Germanic times, in every movement and in each moment”; there was, he claimed, “no other dance that demanded more inner discipline and alertness, dependability and camaraderie” and “in no other setting is one so palpably and intensely immersed as in the sword dance” (Bitterhof Reference Bitterhof1937, 100). As can be seen in Fritz Meinetsberger's descriptions, which he wrote for the 1934 Handworkers' Week in Nuremberg, the aspect of disciplined camaraderie was truly central and indeed indispensable for the successful performance of the sword dance, the figures of which could “at times even be ascribed a near-mythological significance” (Meinetsberger Reference Meinetsberger1934).

Propagated as having a direct traditional bond to the cultic weapon dances of the Germanic peoples, the sword dance that was actually the guild dance of the knife makers and cutlers was torn from its historical context and recoded as a cultural practice. For the purposes of National Socialism, it represented the revitalization of a legacy from the Germanic age, which, with the addition of “military” vocabulary, allowed the skill involved in the dance movements and the subtlety of the figures to be interpreted as quasi-warlike and quintessentially manly action.

Choreographic Comment II: Harald Kreutzberg's Sword Dance (1936)

When Nazi Germany hosted the Olympic Summer Games in Berlin in 1936, the world was watching attentively. Expectations were high on the part of both organizers and visitors. While some National Olympic Committees were officially considering boycotting the event for political reasons, the world's athletes were eager to participate in the legendary competition that the German executives had carefully prepared, with dazzling effects never seen before in this context: the 1936 Summer Games saw the first Olympic torch relay and were the first to be broadcast live on the radio and filmed for newsreels.

As the event drew nearer, the city of Berlin was decked out in preparation for the huge number of national and international visitors—1.2 million in total—who were to arrive during these first two weeks of August. The propaganda coup was astonishing for all those who had expected to see anti-Semitism and signs of megalomaniacal plans for expansion on every street corner. All that had been carefully hidden and glossed over with an image of a peaceful and welcoming German nation. The only flaws that marred this impression were the military look of it all and the Germans greeting Hitler hysterically wherever he appeared (see Emmerich Reference Emmerich2011; Fuhrer Reference Fuhrer2011; Rippon Reference Rippon2012). The supporting cultural program and the general athleticism, however, soon helped visitors forget these menacing aspects.

It may come as no surprise that the cultural framework for the sporting event had been carefully planned long in advance. The idea of adding cultural performances and artistic competitions (i.e., for architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture) to the Olympic Games dated back to the year 1906, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved Pierre de Coubertin's proposal. Dance competitions were also staged for the 1936 Olympics, as had been suggested by de Coubertin. Acting on his ideas of adding choreography to the artistic competitions, dance critic Fritz Böhme specified in a note for the Olympia-Pressedienst (Olympia News Service) that Coubertin had asked for “processions (cortèges), deployments (défilés), group and coordinated movements (mouvements groupés et coordinés) and rhythmic dances (danses rhythmiques)” (Böhme Reference Böhme1936; see also Prilipp Reference Prilipp1936). Thus, dance was officially welcomed and incorporated into the Internationaler Tanzwettbewerb (International Dance Competition) to which the participating nations had sent their best solo dancers and (folk) dance groups. One of the German representatives was the famous Ausdruckstänzer Harald Kreutzberg, who staged his most celebrated choreographies during the competition.

In addition, Kreutzberg had contributed as a mass choreographer and solo dancer in the Festival Play “Olympic Youth” that was performed in the Olympic Stadium (also called the Reich Sports Field) on the evening of the opening day. While this play was created in cooperation with the IOC and was thus meant to convey the Olympic ideals of peace and fair play to its international audience in a politically neutral manner, the German public authorities and Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels himself significantly shaped its concept and execution (see Dümling Reference Dümling and Krüger2012).

After a full year of planning (see Dümling Reference Dümling and Krüger2012, 57–74), re-adjusting, and rehearsing, “Olympic Youth” was ready to be presented in the Stadium on August 1, 1936. Even before the premiere of the play, the sword dance and its “heroic-tragic imprint” had been highlighted in an anonymous article for the Niedersächsische Tageszeitung on July 29 (“Schwerttanz der Männer” 1936). Stating that it was “associated with bids for a reintegration of men's dance into the völkisch tradition” reinforced the claim that “men's dance itself, quite often symbolizing the victory of light over darkness, is already millennia-old” (“Schwerttanz der Männer” 1936). The printed “Olympic Youth” program for the English-speaking audience made no mention of this erroneous claim, innocuously explaining that

The play consisted of five tableaux that provided a scenic and musical manifestation of youth, portraying the “walks of life from childhood to death as a natural and at the same time fateful development” (Fuhrer Reference Fuhrer2011, 95): The Olympic bell, on which were inscribed the words “I summon the youth of the world,” and a “festive fanfare of welcome,” opened the first tableau, “Children at Play,” as night fell. The trumpeters, though, were not visible at first, standing on the tower above the Marathon Gate. “There were seen only two great choruses grouped in shadows” (“100,000 Hail Hitler …” 1936), consisting of 3,500 boys and girls aged 11 to 12, who then entered the spotlights of the Stadium in order to demonstrate “the wonder of juvenile play,” as speaker Joachim Eisenschmidt extolled. Following Dorothee Günther's choreography, the children “form[ed] rings, and during their play gradually arrange[d] themselves so that they present[ed] a living symbol of the Olympic ideals, the Olympic flag” (Diem Reference Diem1936, 23).

The second tableau, “Maidenly Grace,” featured 2,300 girls dancing into the arena “through the large Eastern Gate and form[ing] a circle” out of which “the famous dancer” Gret Palucca revolved “to the rhythm of a waltz” (Diem Reference Diem1936, 23). Carl Orff had composed the accompaniment for the “rhythmical, musical games” with which the tableau ended (23).

In the third tableau, “Youth at Play and in a Serious Mood,” young boys marched into the Stadium “through the Marathon Gate,” built campfires, and formed themselves “into separate national groups, each singing a native melody of the country represented” (Diem Reference Diem1936, 23). The speaker emphasized at this point that “manly deeds start with youthful dreams and games.” The “hundreds of youths carrying the national flags of the Olympic nations” then marched “in a festive procession around the track, at their head the white Olympic flag, which the speaker praises as the symbol of international peace and youthful happiness.” The tableau ended with the “hymn of Olympic inspiration” and a recitation of the “words of the Fire Hymn” (Diem Reference Diem1936, 23).

Up to this point, the advertised realistic self-presentation of youth was benevolently recognizable, as Armin Fuhrer has emphasized: The unburdened, carefree life of the children is finite, ending with a waltz for the girls and with the facts of life the boys have to be prepared for. Neither the girls nor the boys are shown as individuals here but as youth as an ideal whole. All this, Fuhrer adds, already followed Nazi clichés, culminating in the fourth tableau, “Heroic Struggle and Death Lament,” which formed the dramatic highlight of the play (Fuhrer Reference Fuhrer2011, 95). It featured “a series of dances … presented by the famous artists, Harald Kreutzberg and Mary Wigman” to music by Werner Egk (Diem Reference Diem1936, 24):

A report published in the Anhalter Anzeiger the day after the performance offered further information on the actual choreography: According to the anonymous author, two phalanxes of hostile armies approached each other from opposite ends of the arena. In their midst, the “Homeric heroes”—Harald Kreutzberg and Werner Stammer—met, “provoking one another with taunting words” (“Deine Flamme lohe weiter …” 1936). Their warriors formed a square within which the two leaders began to fight. Their “heroic struggle” ended with the deaths of both combatants, their bodies were then carried away on the warriors' shields (“‘Deine Flamme lohe weiter…” 1936; see also Fuhrer Reference Fuhrer2011, 96; “Tausende begeisterte das Olympia-Festspiel” 1936; Niedecken-Gebhard Reference Niedecken-Gebhard and Diem1936, 31–32). Quite obviously, Kreutzberg had found inspiration in the combat or battle mime sword dance type here, as opposed to the linked sword dance type with its rose figure formed by interlocked swords, where one dancer comes to stand on or is “placed around the neck of a performer in mock decapitation” (Encyclopædia Britannica Online Footnote ⁵ ). This latter choreographic option had likely been deemed a bit too drastic for use in a play about peacefully united “Olympic Youth.”

Photo 14. Group dancers rehearsing the fourth tableau, “Heroic Struggle,” 1936. © Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung der Universität zu Köln.

Photo 15. Harald Kreutzberg directing a rehearsal of the fourth tableau, “Heroic Struggle,” 1936. Next to him: Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard and Werner Stammer. © Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung der Universität zu Köln.

The narrative twist in the play, however, must be seen as nothing less than an intentional distortion of the “peaceful unification of peoples” that the IOC had seen and agreed to when it was still in the early stages of preparation. For librettist Carl Diem, a self-sacrificial death for the fatherland was the ultimate completion of manly life. In the “Olympic Youth” program, he explained his concept for the play:

The speaker recited these verses after the sword dance had been performed in order to explain and glorify Kreutzberg's contribution to the play. They were also disastrous, supporting Carl Diem's ideologically charged message: a heroic death is not a catastrophe to be mourned, as it fulfills the higher purpose of serving the fatherland—and tearing to shreds the Olympic ideal of what the nature of competitions should be like. Diem's play no longer had anything to do with peaceful competition; it was about war (Emmerich Reference Emmerich2011, 136; see also Dümling Reference Dümling and Krüger2012, 69; Krafka Reference Krafka2000, 24). It is quite remarkable that the New York Times reporter seems to have completely missed the point when he wrote: “The morals of this scene were supposedly that modern war destroys both the victor and the vanquished ones,” misinterpreting the pro-war pageant as an anti-war scene (“100,000 Hail Hitler …” 1936).

However, the performance was not to end with an image of war, of what comes before it (the male weapon dance), or of what comes after (the female death dance). In the fifth and final tableau of the play, “The Olympic Hymn,” Beethoven's “Ode to Joy,” sung by 1,500 singers, rose above the “doleful mourning of the women, and the entire company again fill[ed] the arena for the festive hymn” (Diem Reference Diem1936, 24). A sea of torches was lit and flak searchlights formed a massive dome of light (Lichtdom) in the night sky above the Olympic Stadium. In this solemn atmosphere, the total of 10,000 performers left the arena as the Olympic bell was rung (Emmerich Reference Emmerich2011, 136). Diem's play was a tremendous success, attracting 300,000 spectators in its four performances (Fuhrer Reference Fuhrer2011, 96). The New York Times celebrated the whole opening ceremony as “beyond expectations, high as these were.” The article closes with the memorable assumption that “these Olympic Games … seem likely to accomplish what the rulers of Germany have frankly desired from them, that is, to give the world a new viewpoint from which to regard the Third Reich: It is promising that this viewpoint will be taken from an Olympic hill of peace” (“100,000 Hail Hitler …” 1936).

And Kreutzberg? To the best of our knowledge, he never took a firm stance on his role in the play, at least not publicly. He saw himself as a nonpolitical dancer (see Stöckemann Reference Stöckemann and Peter1997, 118). In his autobiography, the Olympic Games of 1936 are not even mentioned (Kreutzberg Reference Kreutzberg1938). In the first edition of Emil Pirchan's biography of the dancer, published in 1941, Kreutzberg's 1936 “weapon dance” is highly praised, describing the “majestic pacing” and “graceful wielding of weapons” by means of which the dancer had not only led a “troop of younglings” but also “inflamed the hundreds of thousands in the Stadium through a monumentality as had never been seen before” (Pirchan Reference Pirchan1941, 74; in the 1956 second edition of the book, this paragraph about Kreutzberg's work during the Third Reich is deleted and replaced by an illustration). There is only one indirect source containing a statement by the dancer himself, as Patricia Stöckemann has brought to light, quoting from an undated letter. When Niedecken-Gebhard asked Kreutzberg to choreograph another mass performance in 1937, the dancer turned him down:

The great solo dancer Harald Kreutzberg had rightly recognized that the individual did not count in the mass choreographies now favored and was afraid to fail. Stöckemann is justified in asking whether he realized that these mass performances also reflected political developments forcing the individual to accept a subordinate role to the Volksgemeinschaft (ethnic community). Yet if so, that didn't stop him from dancing a solo part in Niedecken-Gebhard's mass choreography Triumph des Lebens (Triumph of Life) in Munich in 1939 (Stöckemann Reference Stöckemann and Peter1997, 127–128).