Anniversary (play)

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Jubilee is a play by George Tabori . The piece was commissioned for the Schauspielhaus Bochum and was premiered there on January 30, 1983 under the direction of the author. The play was written by Tabori with a view to the 50th anniversary of Hitler's rise to power in 1933.

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The play takes place in a cemetery on the Rhine. This is where the ghosts of Arnold, his wife Lotte, their physically disabled niece Mitzi and the homosexual couple Otto and Helmut meet in 1983 and remember, because many anniversaries are celebrated. In addition to historical events, there are also numerous personal ones. Arnold is a Jewish musician with compassion for his fellow human beings and never ending dreams, whose father was a famous singer in Bayreuth and was murdered by the National Socialists. Lotte, Arnold's cynical wife, could only get short-term charms from life and finally died a bizarre death in a telephone booth, the door of which could no longer be opened while water was seeping into her. The mentally alert Mitzi with the spastic paresis kills herself after Jürgen, whom she adores, Helmut's nephew and is also a National Socialist, asks her in a letter why they forgot to gass her. The subsequent dismay of Juergens, who appears primarily as a grave robber, indicates that in addition to all of his repulsive qualities, he also has a human streak. Otto is a homosexual hairdresser whose friend Helmut had himself circumcised out of solidarity with the Jews. Thereupon Helmut is admitted to a clinic for the mentally ill, where he is to be cured of his "peculiarities" with the help of electric shocks and medication. In the presence of his doctors, he pretends to love women and then hangs himself in his hospital room. Thereupon Otto also commits suicide by drowning himself in his bathtub. The gravedigger Wumpf takes care of order over their graves. The play ends with a conciliatory scene in which Arnold's father returns to his son.

People and cast of the premiere

Awards