The resettler or life in the country

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Die Umsiedlerin or Das Leben auf dem Lande is a play by Heiner Müller based on themes from the story Die Umsiedlerin by Anna Seghers . Müller began work on this piece in 1956 and reworked it in 1961. The material background is collectivization in agriculture in the GDR . The play was premiered on September 11, 1961 as part of the International Student Theater Week at the University of Economics in Berlin-Karlshorst. Director was BK Tragelehn . The SED declared the piece and its performance to be counter-revolutionary and banned the piece from performing. Müller was expelled from the GDR writers ' association, Tragelehn from the party. In 1964 Müller revised the text and gave it the title The Peasants . It was not until 1976 that the piece could be performed again in the GDR.

Content and artistic design

In fifteen pictures, the play depicts the changes in an East German village as a result of the land reform and the subsequent collectivization of agriculture between 1946 and 1960. It begins with the division of the land in autumn 1946. All large farmers who owned more than 100 hectares of land were expropriated ; the land was distributed to farm workers, smallholders and resettlers. With the award, on the one hand, the land poverty was combated, from which the resettlers in particular were threatened, and on the other hand, the production of the urgently needed food was revived. However, the new farmers received only five hectares of land - too little to be able to work independently in the long term. The socialization in agricultural production cooperatives (LPG), which began in 1952, was almost inevitable. “When the cat is out of the bag, it is called kolkhoz ”, predicts one of the characters in the play. This ambiguity of the historical process is illuminated by Müller in its tragic as well as comic aspects. How can communist policies built on lies and false promises succeed? "Doesn't the wheel of power just keep rolling if the masses again remain the object of a policy of secrecy?"

Initially, the expropriation of the large landowner and the distribution of the land is celebrated by the villagers as an achievement in Müller's text. But soon new conflicts arise: a new farmer hangs himself because he cannot meet the required levy. The tractors promised by the Soviet Union as "start-up aid" come too late and are insufficient. The party secretary and smallholder Flint managed to persuade the farmers to found a cooperative only with great difficulty. Others - like the anarchist drunkard Fondrak - are migrating to the West. His lover, the Neubauerin Niet, who is pregnant by Fondrak, will continue to run her farm alone.

Despite all the setbacks and conflicts, Flint finally achieved his goal: the collectivization of agriculture in the village was complete. Flint is the new mayor after the old one was arrested for corruption. The middle peasant driver tries to evade collectivization through suicide. When he - still alive - was cut from the rope, he used his new right as an employee of the LPG by immediately taking sick leave.

With this conclusion, turned into satirical, Müller once again underlines the ambiguity of the entire process: the political lie on which collectivization is based, as well as the fact that the new form of production does not automatically create the “new man”. Property striving, egoism and corruption are the real opponents of the communist ideal.

Müller's play is in the tradition of Brecht's didactic play , but also features turbulent scenes full of comedy situations that are close to popular theater. Recurring vanitas motifs, “speaking names” and poetic allegories allude to a relationship with the baroque drama. With Flint and Fondrak, Müller created an antagonist couple that reflects the basic conflict of the piece on a philosophical level: progress, plannability, will to build up and social ideals on the one hand, nihilism, vitality without morality and antisociality on the other. In Müller's text, Fondrak represents the function of Shakespearean fools: namely, to describe the world from below and to throw sand into the machine of domination. Müller placed the process of socialist collectivization with these aesthetic-dramaturgical means in a broad historical context.

The resettler is - with a few prose passages - written in freely handled blank verse , whereby the tension between fulfilling and breaking the meter releases gestural material for the actor's play. The apparently brittle subject of a “production piece” experiences an alienating poetic exaggeration through the verse.

History of origin

The resettler was commissioned by the Deutsches Theater Berlin. There the piece should come on stage after the trial performance in Karlshorst. Müller wrote while the director Tragelehn was rehearsing at the same time. However, with the construction of the Wall in August 1961, the political situation changed radically. The premiere in September was under special observation by the SED and the FDJ . Since Müller was unwilling to hand over the text of the play before the premiere, a commission from the Ministry of Culture came to the dress rehearsal. “They watched it for three hours without complaint. Then they got hungry and went to eat. From there they reported to their head of department that the matter was tough, but partisan, that the matter could be dealt with. ”Nevertheless, disruptive measures against the premiere were organized the next day. As Heiner Müller remembers, however, the troublemakers did not work very effectively because they were confused by the presence of the GDR film star Manfred Krug : "He was sitting in the middle, in a wardrobe, and laughed out loud at every joke." The premiere was a success. That night, however, the students who had played in the play were summoned and forced to self-criticize. "The accusation was: counter-revolutionary, anti-communist, anti-humanist, nothing concrete." All students distanced themselves from the author and director and confirmed the allegations. The party leadership suspected an anti-socialist conspiracy; even the arrest of Müller and Tragelehn was considered. Tragelehn got a party proceeding that ended with expulsion from the party. His contract with the Senftenberg Theater was annulled and Tragelehn was transferred to an open-cast lignite mine as a " test in production ". Müller was excluded from the writers' association because of "nihilism" and "blackening". Helene Weigel recommended Müller to practice self-criticism, but this was rejected as insufficient by the cultural department of the Central Committee of the SED.

For two years, Müller was completely isolated and received no writing assignments. He kept himself afloat with odd jobs like a detective radio play that he wrote under a pseudonym. Until 1973, no more plays by the author were played in the GDR. The first official revival of the resettler took place in 1975 under the title The Farmers at the Berliner Volksbühne (director: Fritz Marquardt ). BK Tragelehn, the director of the world premiere, staged the play again in 1985 at the Dresden State Theater - for the first time again under the original title Die Umsiedlerin or Das Leben auf dem Lande .

Expenses (selection)

  • Heiner Müller Werke 3. The pieces 1 . Edited by Frank Hörnigk. Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-518-40895-X
  • (under the title The farmers ): In: Heiner Müller: pieces . With an afterword by Rolf Rohmer. Henschelverlag Berlin (East) 1975

Literature (selection)

  • Matthias Braun: Drama about a comedy. The ensemble of SED and State Security, FDJ and Ministry of Culture against Heiner Müller's 'Die Umsiedlerin or Das Leben im Lande' in October 1961 . Christoph Links Verlag Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-861-53102-X
  • Marianne Streisand: Early pieces by Heiner Müller. Analysis of works in the context of contemporary reception. 2 vols. Diss. Berlin 1983
  • Marianne Streisand: Heiner Müller's The Resettled Woman or Life in the Country . Origin and metamorphoses of the piece . In: Weimarer contributions 32 (1986) 8, pp. 1358-1384
  • Heiner Müller Handbook. Life - work - effect . Edited by Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi. Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-476-01807-5
  • Peter Hacks: About the verse in Müller's resettler fragment . In: Peter Hacks: The standards of art. Collected essays . Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin (East) 1978
  • Gunnar Decker: 1965. The short summer of the GDR . Federal Agency for Civic Education, Volume 1598. Bonn 2015. ISBN 978-3-8389-0598-3

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Genia Schulz: The resettlers / The farmers . In: Hans-Thies Lehmann, Patrick Primavesi (ed.): Heiner Müller Handbook . Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-476-01807-5 , p. 282
  2. ↑ on this: Peter Hacks: About the verse in Müller's resettled fragment. In: Peter Hacks: The standards of art. Collected essays . Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin (East) 1978, pp. 72–77
  3. ↑ quoted from: Heiner Müller Werke 3. The pieces 1 . Edited by Frank Hörnigk. Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-518-40895-X , p. 544
  4. ↑ Heiner Müller: War without a battle. Life in two dictatorships . An autobiography. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-462-02172-9 . P. 168
  5. ↑ ibid
  6. ↑ ibid, p. 171
  7. ↑ ibid, p. 170

Web links