Contemporary Conversations: Jonathan B. Fine on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and the German Enlightenment

On September 7, 1945, only a few months after the Allies accepted the Nazis’ unconditional surrender, the Deutches Theater in Berlin reopened its doors with a very deliberate choice of performance. Like many theaters across the country reopening in the wake of the Second World War, Deutches Theater began its new run with a production of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s comic drama about religious tolerance and reconciliation, Nathan der Weise, or Nathan the Wise, which had been banned under the Naz...