Ach du leiber, what a play!

"Scenes Of Love And Death In The Third Reich" is the premiere of an original play by Milwaukee's omni-propertied theatrical impresario Dale Gutzman. It's both a biography and a history of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), a physician noted as one of the pioneers of sexology and famous for inventing the descriptive "transvestite."

Hirschfeld is credited with formally organizing gay rights as a movement when he founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in 1897. An openly gay man who frequented cross-dressing nightclubs under the name "Auntie Magnesia," in 1919 he founded the Institute For Sexual Science in Berlin, laying out the groundwork that people like Kinsey would later build on.

The play follows Hirschfeld from the late 1890s until his death in 1935, and it's an incredible story. Long before Kinsey, Hirschfeld used questionnaires to get a handle on what people's sexual needs really were, and this landed him in trouble, for a lot of his clients later became top members of the Nazi party, a situation not improved by Hirschfeld being Jewish (strangely, Hermann Goering, a man very comfortable with transvestism, wasn't one of his clients)

Gutzman brilliantly constructs the story, taking us from the decadent salons of Vienna to the staid lecture halls of universities, showing us Hirschfeld both public and private. Dialogue is tight, often funny and even includes some local color, as Gutzman slyly has Hirschfeld refer to his brother, a physician in Milwaukee at the time. Hirschfeld's relationships with people great and small, heroic and pathetic are poignantly staged in an incredibly human story with an excellent recreation of the early 20th century, when the revulsion to World War I initiated one of Europe's greatest artistic and scientific ages, up until the time the Brownshirts came to close Hirschfeld's institute and burn his books.

Performances are superb. Of note is Karl Miller as Adolf Hitler. Effeminate and insecure, it's hardly the Hitler from history, but as Dr. Walter Langer (see below) has pointed out, the Hitler of newsreel was mainly an invention of his propaganda, and the real deal was quite different. Miller's performance was so effective; I overheard an audience member remark, "...that Hitler is creeping me out!"

You'll get a kick out of Eric Nelson performing memorable song and dance numbers wearing only a strategically placed hat, and as Magnus Hirschfeld, Robert Hirschi turns in an exquisite, multi-dimensional performance. Hirschi's Hirschfeld is a man who's comfortable with his own sexuality but not completely comfortable with others, a brilliant man with plenty of blind spots, a humble man who nevertheless has the competitive ego you'd associate with scientific success. On his visit to New York, when a reporter asks Hirschfeld if he really is "The Einstein of Sex" he replies that he'd rather hear Einstein described as "The Hirschfeld of Physics." That actually happened, and it's a marvelous moment in the play.

When Gutzman sticks to Hirschfeld's story, it's fascinating. When he includes a young Adolf Hitler in the decadent fun of Hapsburg Vienna, he's on shakier ground. Gutzman's source was Lothar Machtan's "The Hidden Hitler" (2002), a book that tried to prove that Hitler was homosexual, but reputable historians have never taken it seriously.

Gutzman has Adolf working as a male prostitute circa 1909, a time when Hitler was actually homeless and teamed up with a professional hobo named Reinhold Hanisch. Hanisch later wrote extensively about his association with Hitler (and died in a concentration camp for it), but never mentioned any homosexual activity. Hitler in fact, spent his evenings at a homeless shelter run by a philanthropic Jewish family, and never made it into Vienna salon society.

Gutzman would probably have done better sourcing "A Psychological Analysis Of Adolf Hitler: His Life And Legend," the famous study commissioned during World War II by the Office Of Strategic Services (OSS).

Dr. Walter Langer, the lead author, noted various sexual paraphilia that were attributed to Hitler at the time, but have since been discounted, since Langer's sources were almost always Nazi defectors such as Otto Strasser, motivated to present Hitler in the worst light. Langer doesn't discount the possibility that Hitler engaged in homosexual acts, but considers it very unlikely, and notes that Hitler's hysterical syphiliphobia (Hitler devotes a whole chapter of "Mein Kampf" to the horrors of syphilis) would have precluded this. Hitler did have a fondness for homosexuals in his retinue though, as Langer notes:

"...It does seem that Hitler feels much more at ease with homosexuals than with normal persons, but this may be due to the fact that they are all fundamentally social outcasts and consequently have a community of interests, which tends to make them think and feel more or less alike. In this connection it is interesting to note that homosexuals, too, frequently regard themselves as a special form of creation or as chosen ones whose destiny it is to initiate a new order."

Langer's analysis fits in well with the remarkable scene Gutzman has written where macho homosexuals who admire the Spartan model of manly love confront Hirschfeld in a gay salon. They take Hirschfeld to task over the effeminism of his approach, which they consider to be exhibitionist and degrading, a conflict that remains to this day.

So even with some questionable history, "Scenes Of Love And Death In The Third Reich" is a remarkable accomplishment, a startling and immensely entertaining play with crisp action, unforgettable characters, a tightly drawn plot, terrific acting and loads of surprises and fun. The audience was on the edge of their seats through the whole thing, responding at the end with a well-deserved standing O.

It plays at The Off-The-Wall Theatre on 127 E. Wells St. in downtown Milwaukee through May 1. Call (414) 327-3552 for tickets.

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