The paper is part of a larger project that examines Erwin Piscator’s three stagings of Nathan der Weise (1942, 1944, 1952) to argue that the Enlightenment drama, in Piscator’s hands, functioned as a form of political action rather than mere artistic representation. By tracing how the same play was redeployed across wartime America and postwar Germany, the study shows how Piscator used Lessing not to transmit inherited ideals but to reinterpret the Enlightenment as a resource for confronting contemporary crises. Ultimately, the project argues that Piscator’s Nathan der Weise serves as a lens to understand how art can shape collective memory, national identity, and the political possibilities of the Enlightenment.
