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1981
Radio Adaptations
  • ISSN: 1753-6421
  • E-ISSN: 1753-643X

Abstract

George Tabori (1914–2007), a Hungarian-born British playwright of Jewish decent, is closely associated with German Holocaust theatre. Less well-known is his prolific career in German radio drama. This contribution traces the trajectory of Tabori’s short story ‘Weissmann und Rotgesicht’ and its adaptation for German radio in 1978. The overall theme of its narrative can be identified as the issue of competing minoritized groups (Jews and Indigenous Americans), their respective identity politics and mechanisms of ‘othering’. My analysis first asks how the short story presents these questions, as it was written in a North American context primarily shaped by the popular cultural format of the western movie. Secondly, I ask how the topic is culturally and medially transferred to the radio play form, considering the production’s West German context of the late 1970s. My interest is guided by the question whether and how we can read this 1978 radio play as an intervention in the debate on the representation of the ‘Indian’ in popular German culture and its simultaneous erasure, several decades after the Holocaust, of the Jew.

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2024-10-30
2026-04-12

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/content/journals/10.1386/jafp_00116_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): audionarratology; Holocaust; Indianthusiasm; intermediality; Jewishness; othering; West German broadcasting; western movie

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