ABSTRACT
Interesting, fascinating and dramatic though it is, the history of the Berlin Volksbühne during the Weimar Republic does not by itself show the importance of the movement in social and theatrical history throughout the country, and indeed, as tends to happen in capital cities, hot-houses as they are for the growth of intense ideological factions, this Berlin history can even convey a distorted picture of the Volksbühne movement taken as a whole. Seen nationally the Volksbühne movement was neither a tool in the hands of left-wing political activists nor a mere artistic soup-kitchen, but a powerful instrument in the cause of cultural democracy.[ 1 ]
