The strange journey of Alois Fingerlein
| Stage work | |
|---|---|
| Original title: | The strange journey of Alois Fingerlein |
| Author: | Rainer Kerndl |
| Premiere: | October 13, 1967 |
| Place: | Berlin |
| Theatre: | Maxim Gorky Theater |
| Genus: | tragicomedy |
| Original language: | German |
| Director : | Wolfram Krempel |
The strange journey of Alois Fingerlein is a play by Rainer Kerndl , which tells of the desire to be good of an individual in a terrible, barbaric time, of his decent deeds and his tragic errors. It premiered in 1967 at the Maxim-Gorki-Theater in East Berlin and was recorded by German television in 1969 at the Karl-Marx-Stadt Theater , but only broadcast on GDR television in 1977.
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Village near Lublin, summer 1942
In the presence of his grandmother, Alois Fingerlein packs his things for the move to another village ordered by the Wehrmacht . Where they live now, they live with Poles , and Germans are no longer allowed to do that. But the grandmother does not want to be relocated because she has lived with the Poles for 83 years and has already set up a hiding place in the house. When she parted, she told her grandson that he was not good for being smart, so he had to try to be good. But while they are preparing to hide their grandma under the roof, they are caught by the soldiers and have to go on the transport together.
Village near Plock
When they arrive in the other village, the local farmer's guide Goldacker shows them their new home. Only the previous Polish owners, Mr. and Mrs. Kochanski, have to leave the house because the Poles are no longer allowed to own land where the Germans are now at home. To prevent them from fleeing, Alois gets the local farmer's guide's pistol to guard them. Alois offers them to stay and run the farm together with him and his grandmother. But when they want to flee into the nearby forest, Goldacker demands that Alois shoot the Pole. When he does not obey this, Goldacker accuses him of treason and favoring the enemy , which is why Alois will end up in prison . Alois has no choice but to follow them while his grandmother is arrested because Alois refused to shoot Kochanski.
Evening of the same day in the partisan forest
Alois is at the edge of the forest and calls for Mr. Kochanski, who suddenly appears in uniform and accompanied by a second partisan . After a long discussion, they take him to the camp, where the lieutenant in charge should decide what to do with him.
Castle park near Plock, autumn 1942
In the midst of the noise of the battle, Alois sits at his observation post, the tomb of the father of his superior Lieutenant Count Skorniecki, during which his wounded leg is bandaged. Then the courier Lubowski comes with the major's message that the partisan unit is locked in by the Wehrmacht and that everyone should try to escape from the cauldron . In addition, the courier accuses Alois Fingerlein of having betrayed the fighting to the Germans, which, however, excludes Kochanski, since he had no opportunity to do so because he was with him all the time. During the interrogation by the lieutenant, Alois says that he no longer wants to be German and is now a Pole. This convinces the superior and he hands him a cap from Armia Krajowa and the Polish name Taschenk, which makes him very happy. Taschenk does not want to leave the injured lieutenant alone and carries him out of the danger zone.
At the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, April 1943
Alois and the lieutenant are now in Warsaw and want to deliver weapons for the rebels in the Jewish neighborhood , which is why they are waiting for David, a friend of Alois, who is a Jew . When the latter arrives wounded and reports that the Germans continue to penetrate the ghetto, the lieutenant immediately disappears through the sewer system , because he does not understand that he should sacrifice his life for the Jews. But Alois stays with his friend and saves his life.
After the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, May 1943
After the uprising has been crushed, Alois wants to persuade his Jewish fighters to flee the ghetto instead of dying, which not everyone likes, as they do not expect any support from the non-Jewish Warsaw residents. Only Rachela's explanation, which Alois got to know here, assuring him that she loves him and wants to continue to live with him, convinces the other friends to dare to break out.
On the first day of the Warsaw Uprising, August 1, 1944
The group found a hiding place in the basement of a Warsaw church and survived there for several months with the help of Father Tadeus. But suddenly they get a visit from the insurgents , who have learned that people are hiding in the church. The newly appointed commander of the road section, Lieutenant Skorniecki, has come to take the people in hiding with him, as the Polish army will leave the underground, but first has to leave some sections to the Germans, but needs every man for the fight. But Alois realizes that the Armia Krajowa's fight is not his fight, which the Jewish members see differently, although they are blamed for the German occupation of Poland. Alois remains in his hiding place while his beloved girl Rachela is shot.
In front of a courtyard in the High Tatras, winter 1945 - the fascists have been driven out
The Polish people are celebrating the victory over the German fascists , but Alois grievously reproaches himself for not holding back Rachela when she left church in Warsaw.
Mountain hut in the High Tatras, spring 1945
Alois, David and Szalom found each other again when one day Szalom and Lieutenant Skorniecki arrived as a prisoner in the mountain hut . Alois persuades this to start again in the village under the communist administration and hands it over to the mayor . For this, Skorniecki refuses to shake hands when saying goodbye to Alois. He wants to stay and live in the village himself, while his friends want to emigrate to Palestine . But the mayor tells him that this is not possible because all Germans have to leave the country according to the law. But he doesn't want to go to Germany, as all the bad things have come from there in recent years, which is why he decides to go with his friends, because farmers are needed there too.
British Mandate Palestine, late 1945
On arrival in Palestine, the group was discovered by the British, but not immediately deported. In a subsequent argument with the Arabs, Aloi's friend David is killed by bullets from his own people and he himself is captured.
British POW camp in the Egyptian desert, autumn 1946
Since Alois Fingerlein is German, he is interned in an English prisoner-of-war camp for Germans in Egypt . There he has the whole camp under control because he was not arrested as a soldier and is constantly drunk, although officially there is no alcohol. Since the camp is to be dissolved, the German clerks in the administration have to negotiate which of the German zones he is to be released into. The representative of the western zone agrees to take it over. The representative for the Eastern Zone Drescher recognizes that the other little fingers want to have to be it for the British industrial police to recruit and tried to convince him to choose his village, which he does not succeed.
A village in the Oderbruch, 1947
Alois didn't like it as an industrial policeman in the west, which is why he moved to Drescher in the east, who here as mayor manages the village of Großblumenau. He lives just outside in a trailer and tried a piece of land at or reclaimed to make. The mayor's daughter, who is called Tomato Karla and who has fallen in love with him, has been watching him for a long time. But her father doesn't like that, because Alois is a loner and drummer who wants to plant his field where he wants, who doesn't move into the village and nobody knows how long he will stay. But Drescher tries to talk to him because the cultivated depression is used as a catch basin for the excess water from the other fields. But Alois does not want to leave the work he has started until he has a long conversation with tomato Karla, in which both become aware that they belong together. Therefore he decides to move into the village and gets the mayor's attic room as accommodation until he can build a house for himself and Karla. After many years, Alois Fingerlein has finally found a home.
Performances
The premiere, directed by Wolfram Krempel , took place on the occasion of the Berlin Festival on October 13, 1967 in Berlin's Maxim-Gorki-Theater .
Another production at the Karl-Marx-Stadt Theater was also edited by Wolfram Krempel as a contribution to the 11th GDR Workers' Festival in June 1969 in the Karl-Marx-Stadt district .
The sets for both performances came from Ralf Winkler , the costumes were designed by Annemarie Rost and the music was composed by Günter Hauk .
The following table lists the actors involved in the two performances mentioned.
| role | Actor (world premiere) | Actor (Karl-Marx-Stadt 1969) |
|---|---|---|
| Alois Fingerlein | Klaus Manchen | Christian Grashof |
| Natalie Fingerlein (grandmother) | Lotte Loebinger | Steffie Spira |
| Goldacker (local farmer's guide) | Gerd Ehlers | Ernst Zillmann |
| Kochanski (Polish Farmer) | Eckhard Muller | |
| Count Skorniecki (lieutenant) | Albert Hetterle | Eugene P. Herden |
| David (Jew) | Dieter Vienna | Manfred Kranich |
| Szalom (Jew) | Hermann Beyer | Lutz Günther |
| Rachela (Jewess) | Renate Reinecke | Margot Busses |
| Drescher (clerk / mayor) | Jochen Thomas | Wolfgang Soergel |
| Woehrmann (clerk) | Christoph Engel | Horst Junghänel |
| British lieutenant | Otfried Knorr | Michael Gwisdek |
| Tomato Karla (Drescher's daughter) | Katja Paryla | Sigrid Skoetz |
TV recording
On June 1, 1969, the Karl-Marx-Städter performance was supposed to be broadcast on German television , even before the official premiere, but shortly beforehand the program was removed from the program without any explanations and only on November 12, 1977 in the 2nd program of TV broadcast of the GDR in black and white . The television film was directed by Margot Thyret , the first cameraman was Wolfgang Ahrens and for the dramaturgy was Norbert Leverenz responsible.
criticism
In Neues Deutschland , Elvira Mollenschott wrote about the premiere:
“A big, moving philosophical theme is designed here - man's longing to be good and the realization that being good in itself is not possible, that it always depends on how man acts in and with certain historical situations what social forces it is connected to. "
Helmut Ullrich finds the following words about the piece in the Neue Zeit :
"Kerndl designs a hero who is, as it were, a secularized Parcifal, who has something of a dumb fool about him, of a naive seeker for his salvation, for the grail of goodness, which in some respects resembles those strong peasant boys in fairy tales who Move out into the world or be driven into it and get into all sorts of insightful adventures against your will. "
The West German weekly newspaper Die Zeit also reported on the premiere in East Berlin. Georges Raymond called the piece:
“A prime example of unpathetic, almost anti-dogmatic theater, influenced by Brecht, of course, but nonetheless unlawful, a play full of the problems with which a whole generation of young Germans, each in their own way, was confronted, a symbolic play, not just for thought stimulating, but compelling. "
Web links
- The strange journey of Alois Fingerlein at Henschel Theaterverlag, with reading sample (PDF; 310 kB)
- The strange journey of Alois little fingers in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The strange journey of Alois Fingerlein in the online encyclopedia of television in the GDR
Individual evidence
- ↑ Maxim Gorki Theater 1961–1970. (PDF; 247 kB, page 6) In: The archive on Gorki.de. Maxim Gorki Theater , accessed on November 12, 2019 .
- ↑ Berliner Zeitung of May 21, 1969, p. 10
- ↑ Neue Zeit of May 24, 1969, p. 9
- ↑ Neues Deutschland, October 15, 1967, p. 4
- ↑ Neue Zeit of October 18, 1967, p. 4
- ↑ Georges Raymond: Alois mustn't be good. In: Die Zeit No. 43 of October 27, 1967.