In 1930, after completing his studies in German and Philosophy,In Kurt Hirschfeld took up the post of dramaturge at the Hessisches Landestheater (Hessian State Theatre) in Darmstadt under its director Gustav Hartung. He also worked as an artistic director there. After his dismissal in the spring of 1933, he spent a short time in Berlin, where he received an invitation to work as a dramaturge at the Schauspielhaus theatre in Zurich.

From Zurich, Hirschfeld succeeded in hiring other persons suffering persecution in Germany and bringing them to the Swiss theatre, among them set designer Teo Otto, actress Therese Giehse, and actor/director Leonard Steckel. Hirschfeld’s programme planning for the Schauspielhaus, which was better known for its light drama, was strongly politically oriented; in 1934, this led to a rift with theatre owner Ferdinand Rieser. After a brief period spent working as a publisher’s editor, Hirschfeld went to the Soviet Union in 1935, where he worked as a director’s assistant and a correspondent for the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Stalin’s Great Purge forced him to return to Switzerland in 1938.

By this time, the Schauspielhaus theatre in Zurich was up for sale. Hirschfeld worked with publisher Emil Oprecht to found the company Neue Schauspiel AG, which was then able to take over the theatre. Hirschfeld became chief dramaturge and reinforced the theatre’s anti-Fascist orientation. Bertolt Brecht’s Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder [Mother Courage and Her Children] (1941) and Der gute Mensch von Sezuan [The Good Person of Szechwan] (1943), for example, were just two of the works premièred at the Schauspielhaus.

In 1946, Kurt Hirschfeld was appointed Deputy Director of the Zurich Schauspielhaus, and held the post of Director from 1961 until his death.

Further reading:
Brigitte Bruns: Werft eure Hoffnung über neue Grenzen. Theater im Schweizer Exil und seine Rückkehr [Cast Your Hope Over New Borders. Theatre in Exile in Switzerland and Its Return]. Leipzig: Henschel 2007
Artur Joseph: Theater unter vier Augen. Gespräche mit Prominenten [Theatre Tête-à-Tête. Talks with Celebrities]. Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch 1969