‘Meine Heimat ist der Wagen’: Negotiation of mobility and settledness in two German post-war musicals

Abstract

Persecution and expulsion due to Nazi terror and the Second World War led to massive population shifts within Europe. First was the mass exodus from the German Reich, as a result of racist and political persecution. Then, after the end of the war, millions of German refugees and up to 12 million displaced persons – former forced labourers and foreign concentration camp prisoners – had to find new homes or be repatriated. These movements led to the discursive negotiation of wandering, mobility and settledness in German language musical theatre of the 1950s. This article analyses such relations by looking at the musicals Feuerwerk (1950) and Katharina Knie (1957) and focusing on their structures, receptions and evolutions; in both cases, special attention is paid to the dream ballets. Both musicals (at that time referred to as ‘musical comedies’ or ‘musical folk plays’) premiered at Munich’s Gärtnerplatztheater and, as part of their plots, thematize the nomadic life of circus people opposed to a settled existence.