ABSTRACT
Aussig received a theatre school, and Reichenberg featured a regional music college. The theatre in Troppau played host to yet another festival and had its own municipal orchestra, and the cities of Karlsbad and Eger had their own fully funded theatres, too. Before the municipal theatres were established, professional touring companies from the Altreich had provided theatrical entertainment in a pattern repeated all over occupied Europe immediately following military occupation. The Nazi regime was prepared to fund its theatrical endeavours across occupied Europe with astonishing and rising sums of money. The importance of the German language theatres for the regime can be seen not only from the substantial and quickly rising subsidies paid to them but also in the rising wages, special benefits and awarding of prizes and titles. Wherever the German authorities took over existing playhouses, they stressed the poor quality of what they had inherited from the previous owners.
