After the breakdown of civilization during the Holocaust, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice quickly regained its traditional position at the forefront of the West German theater scene. Despite or indeed due to the fact that the piece exhibits problematic constructions of Jewishness in the figure of the money-lender Shylock, it became an important reference point and medium of difficult debates regarding the problem of German hate and German guilt. This volume discusses important stations of this contradictory reception history from the perspective of English and German studies, theater studies and commemorative history research.
