After the conclusion of the war, in 1878, Goldfaden returned to Odessa, where he established a regular Jewish theatre.[118] Women were added to the personnel, and a number of writers began to write plays specially adapted for the stage. Katzenellenbogen, Lerner, Schaikewitsch, Lilienblum, and the founder of the theatre were busy increasing the repertoire. Of these, Katzenellenbogen was the most original and most literary. It does not appear that his dramas have been printed, but the songs taken out of several of them and issued by him in a volume of his poetry attest a high merit in them. Lerner was satisfied with reproducing some of the best German plays in a Jewish garb. Of these he later published, 'Uncle Moses Mendelssohn,' a one-act drama; a translation of Gutzkow's 'Uriel Acosta'; a rearrangement of Scribe's 'The Jewess'; and a historical drama, 'Chanuka,' of which the original is not mentioned by him. The dramas of the other two are quite weak, but they do not yet indicate that degree of platitude which they have reached later in America. The success of the theatre was complete. The original company divided in two, and one part began to play independently under the leadership of Lerner, while the other started on a tour through the Jewish cities of Russia, visiting Kharkov, Minsk, and even Moscow and St. Petersburg. In many towns they were received with open hands, in others the intelligent classes saw in the formation of a specifically Jewish theatre a menace to the higher intelligence which was trying to emancipate itself from the Judeo-German language and all its traditions. They went so far as to get the police's prohibition against the performances of Goldfaden's troupe.