The Scholar and Her Nazi

Play recounts detention in German library cell
In 1933, after the Reichstag parliament burned in Berlin, Hitler took power and imposed martial law. Fear and loathing roiled the Prussian State Library, where a young writer and philosopher, Hannah Arendt, drew the attention of the newly formed Gestapo.
In Jenny Lyn Bader's play, Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library, based on actual events, Arendt spends eight days in a basement holding cell in the building while being interrogated about her affiliations.
To convey the tight confines, The Depot Theater, where the production opens Friday (Feb. 27), is using a singular set, says artistic director Alice Jankell.
The premise provides readymade tension. "Some of my favorite plays take place in rooms with no escape," says Jankell, who is directing. "Tight ensemble pieces where we can dig into the characters and let the actors fly make my socks go up and down."
The Nazis suspect Arendt and her coterie are sending so-called "horror propaganda" about the mistreatment of Jews to media outlets abroad.
In Arendt's words, she collected "antisemitic statements in ordinary circumstances," which made her "very happy. First of all, it seemed a very intelligent thing to me, and second, it gave me the feeling that something could be done after all."

She may have sympathized with leftist and Zionist causes but never joined any organization. Even better, Arendt had cover while conducting research at the repository for her biography of Rahel Varnhagen, an influential German Jew with an identity crisis who died in 1833.
The drama is driven by the intellectual interplay that animates the interrogation room, where Arendt (Lily Ganser) is interviewed by Karl Frick (Logan Schmucker), 26, a polite policeman promoted to the Gestapo.
This is Frick's first interview of a political suspect, and he's required to hit tight deadlines, "follow the rules" and "fill in these boxes." Pivoting from bringing charges against perps to quantifying thought crimes is a perplexing task.
The kernel of the story came to Bader when she found a brief mention of the detention in a translation of a three-hour interview Arendt did in 1964 with a German television station.
"I made friends with the official who arrested me," said Arendt. "He was a charming fellow" who "had no idea what to do." He kept telling her, "ordinarily, I have someone there in front of me, and I just check the file, and I know what's going on. But what shall I do with you?"
In response, "I told him tall tales," Arendt recalled.
"Arendt only told that story once in public, and even though it's just a snippet, it's such a surprising description of a Gestapo interview," says Bader.
After the play's 2024 premiere, more than 100 versions bounced around Manhattan to Martha's Vineyard and New Jersey. Bader humanizes Frick so well that "people often come up to me and say, 'I loved the Nazi character,'" she says. "I'm always out to defy stereotypes."
The Depot Theater is located at 10 Garrison's Landing. Tickets are $35 ($30 students) at depottheater.org. Performances continue weekends through March 15. For more information on Arendt, see the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College (hac.bard.edu).