Periphery to Centre Stage: The Sarrasani Circus in Weimar Germany

ABSTRACT The modern European circus was more than just entertainment: it was a powerful platform where fantasies of empire, ideas of national identity, and notions of racial difference came together and were put on public display. In interwar Germany, the Sarrasani Circus — the largest circus enterprise in the country at the time — built on the legacy of nineteenth‐century ethnographic shows and used modern advertising to draw massive audiences to its vivid spectacles. Yet, behind the dazzling performances were complex negotiations of race, identity and power: while the circus perpetuated imperialist ideologies and exoticised ‘racial others’, it also enabled performers from the periphery to navigate and shape their own political and professional roles. Therefore, by examining the circus through a postcolonial lens, this article situates the German provincial stage within a broader transnational context of empire and popular culture, revealing how shows featuring, for example, Lakota performers both catered to and shaped regional German identities, sometimes reinforcing unity, sometimes highlighting division. In doing so, it offers fresh insights into how imperial legacies lived on in Weimar‐era mass entertainment, blurring the lines between centre and periphery, spectacle and ideology, and re‐situates our understanding of Weimar culture within the wider global currents of imperialism and popular spectacle.