Mauser (drama)

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Mauser is a theater text by Heiner Müller that is one of his didactic plays . It was written in 1970 and (in American language) in 1976 by a student theater group in Austin ( Texas premiered).

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The play is a dying scene with flashbacks. Revolutionary A (his name was Mauser in an early version) has to justify himself before the party's tribunal, which acts as a chorus . In early Soviet Russia he had practiced the red terror in the city of Vitebsk as a staunch party soldier. In addition to countless counterrevolutionaries, he had also shot his own predecessor B because he felt sorry for peasant class brothers instead of doing the emotion-free, necessary work of killing them. This “work” became unbearable for A himself, he has transformed himself into an unconscious orgiastic executioner who ultimately kills with pleasure: “In his neck the dead no longer weighed him down.” This political failure demands, as the choir demands, as political Answer his consent to his own extinction. With the last words, also spoken by the choir, he seems to be giving it “TOD DEN FEINDEN DER REVOLUTION”, but according to Lehmann / Winacker it remains open “whether he will include himself or join the chorus of self-negation in a mechanical way withdraws. "

Müller's lesson. Comparison with Brecht

Heiner Müller has assigned the text of his "experimental series" to the didactic plays that tie in with Brecht - in contrast to the "Proletarian Tragedies in the Age of Counterrevolution" (Müller). In a note attached to the piece he writes: "MAUSER ... presupposes / criticizes Brecht's didactic play theory and practice." The basic prerequisite adopted by Brecht is above all that the didactic plays are not primarily presented to an audience to be instructed, but rather practical political teachings from the players themselves should be won in and out of the game - on the one hand from the change between game and debate, on the other hand (and primarily) from sensual, physical experience and practice, which can be reinforced by changing roles and action variants. Müller also affirmed in his follow-up remark: "The given text division is a variable scheme, the type and degree of the variants a political decision that has to be made on a case-by-case basis." In the case of a performance in front of an audience, this must be guaranteed the possibility of control and participation.

The criticism of Brecht becomes clear in comparison with his 1930 didactic play The Measure . There a young revolutionary gives, far more clearly than in Mauser , his consent to his own killing by his comrades. During the illegal activity for the world revolution, he had endangered the work of the whole group through too much sympathy for individual individuals, with classmates, and also made himself identifiable as an individual for the class opponent. After his self-sacrifice, the revolution can be further advanced by the group of illegal revolutionaries. The meaning and necessity of sacrifice are beyond question - a constellation that undoubtedly bears tragic-heroic traits, even if it can be questioned after the didactic understanding in the game.

Heiner Müller, on the other hand, could no longer, as he often emphasized, work according to the direction of the Marxist classics Marx, Engels, Lenin: Since the October Revolution of 1917 - since the attempt to translate it into practice had begun - their word could no longer be considered valid Proof of authority must be taken, as was expressly still the case in Brecht's measure . Communist practice itself was now to be questioned in play and debate, especially the antinomies of terror and humanity, of the individual and the revolutionary collective. That happens in Mauser . The antinomies cannot be resolved. Only when the revolution has triumphed worldwide can the existential questions about people and death be asked, and according to the will of the choir, the question of predecessor B also remains open: "Why killing and why dying / If the price of the Revolution the revolution is / those to be liberated are the price of freedom. ”With this, Müller questions the proletarian revolution of the 20th century as a whole without betraying it: is it more than its own purpose? To a certain extent he transfers the handling of her to the “laboratory of social fantasy”. Since this “laboratory” has to be understood not only in terms of social history, but also in terms of general philosophy of history, the Mauser model can be applied to many situations even after the end of Stalinist communism - beyond the concrete historical materiality - for example to the terror of fanatical social and religious movements of the 21st century and the suicide bombers used by them. The "extreme case is not an object, but an example that demonstrates the continuum of normality that is to be broken open."

Structure, language, motifs

In the German first publication from 1976 three temporal levels of the text were marked: “a = the reporting time (after Mauser's death), b = the dialogue between the choir and Mauser immediately before his execution, c = Mauser at the beginning of his assumption of office (execution of his predecessor ) ". Level b is at the same time the framework for the whole, which conveys the perception of the text as a dying scene. On the other hand, the levels and also the two executioner figures A (originally: Mauser) and B merge into one another in the sliding speech gesture of the text. It is a hard, hammering, strongly condensed language in the freely managed iambic verse rhythm. As a leitmotif, rhetorical-poetic linguistic figures recur again and again, most often the central metaphor: “We still have to tear up the grass so that it stays green.” It becomes particularly clear that the language, which is initially perceptible as pathos, is in truth the tragic dialectic of the subject contributes to a large extent: the grass torn from the ground does not stay green, but withers - like possibly the revolution on the excess of terror and its no longer human justification.

The material source is Michail Scholokhov's four-volume novel The Silent Don , where the revolutionary Buntschuk desperately in the second volume of the weeks-long “work” of killing; As early as the 1950s, Müller had addressed the problem in a very emotional way in several poems dedicated to Buntschuk. In the literature, Mauser as a picture is mostly related to the revolver type of the same name (in Vladimir Mayakovsky's Left March it says “Speech, Comrade Mauser!”), Occasionally also to the moulting (renewal of the plumage) of the birds. In general, the influence of the early Soviet art is very strong, " Mauser refers with the topics of depersonalization, instrument technology, revolvers, mechanics, violence and collective based on themes of Russian avant-garde art." The characters A and B from Mauser are closely related in Müller's play cement the Chekists Tschibis and Makar.

Publication and performances (selection)

The piece, written in 1970, was only published bilingual in the United States in 1976 in the German studies journal New German Critique . It was premiered in Austin, Texas (in English) in 1975 by the Austin Theater Group , an amateur student group. The first performance in the Federal Republic took place on April 17, 1980 at the Schauspielhaus Cologne . Directed by Christof Nel , the set was created by Erich Wonder . In the GDR was Mauser never performed; publication and distribution was prohibited until 1988. The planned and previously announced premiere in 1972 in Magdeburg was canceled by the Ministry of Culture . The play was stigmatized as “counter-revolutionary”, and the director and Magdeburg general manager Hans-Dieter Meves, who insisted on the performance, was dismissed without notice.

Further performances (selection)

  • Paris, Théatre Gerard Gérard Philipe Saint-Denise, January 30, 1979, director: Jean Jourdheuil, stage: Gilles Aillaud (together with the world premiere of Müller's Hamlet machine )
  • Stuttgart, Studio im Kammertheater, January 14, 1981, director: Holk Freytag (together with Müller's Philoktet )
  • London, The West Six Theater Company, 11th March 1985, directed by Paul Brightwell (with Müller's Hamlet machine )
  • Milan, Teatro La Piccola Commenda, October 27, 1985, directed by Flavio Ambrosini (together with Müller's Philoctet and Der Horatier )
  • Bonn, Schauspiel Bonn , June 9, 1987, director: Horst Zankl, stage: Kazuko Watanabe (together with Sieben gegen Thebes by Aeschylus and Philotas von Lessing )
  • Sao Paulo (Brazil), Theater Sese Pompaia, July 2nd, 1988, directed by Marcio Aurelio (together with Müller's Philoctetes and Der Horatier )
  • Berlin, Deutsches Theater , September 14, 1991, director: Heiner Müller, stage and costumes: Jannis Kounellis (together with Müller's Quartet , Herakles 2 or Die Hydra and Wolokolamsker Chausse V )
  • Berlin, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, February 19, 2008, director: Frank Castorf , stage: Thiago Bortolozzo, (together with Brechts Die Measure )

Literature (selection)

  • Heiner Müller: Works 4. The pieces 2. Ed. By Frank Hörnigk. Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-40896-8 .
  • Hans-Thies Lehmann, Patrick Primavesi (Eds.): Heiner Müller Handbook. Life - work - effect. Stuttgart / Weimar 2001, ISBN 3-476-01807-5 , esp., Pp. 252–265 (authors: Hans-Thies Lehmann and Susanne Winacker)
  • Yasmine Inauen: Dramaturgy of Memory. History, memory, body with Heiner Müller. Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-86057-216-4 , pp. 122-134.
  • Carola Beck: The lesson in theory and practice using the example of the works "Die Measure" (Bertolt Brecht) and "Mauser" (Heiner Müller) , Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-640-96238-9 [Electronic resource of the DNB]
  • Francine Maier-Schaeffer: Heiner Müller et le "Lehrstück" , Bern / Frankfurt / M. / New York / Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-906750-03-5
  • Genia Schulz: Heiner Müller. Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-476-10197-5 .
  • New German Critique. 4 (1976) 8, Spring 1976, Milwaukee / Wisconsin, pp. 150-156.
  • Hans-Thies Lehmann: The political writing. Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-943881-17-2 , pp. 366-380.
  • Hildegard Brenner: Heiner Müller's Mauser draft: update of Brecht's didactic pieces? In: Alternative. 19 (1976) 110/111, pp. 212-221.
  • Franz Wille: The wheel of history is spinning. Heiner Müller staged Heiner Müller. In: Theater Today. 32 (1991) 10, pp. 2-7.
  • Gottfried Fischborn: Peter Hacks and Heiner Müller , Mainz 2012, ISBN 978-3-940884-72-5 , pp. 90-108.
  • Joachim Fiebach: Islands of Disorder. Five attempts at Heiner Müller's theater texts. Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-362-00438-5 .
  • Reiner Steinweg: Das Lehrstück: Brecht's theory of a political-aesthetic education , Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-476-00352-3
  • Mikhail Scholokhov: The silent Don. Munich 1993, ISBN 3-423-11727-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Thies Lehmann, Patrick Primavesi (ed.): Heiner Müller Handbook. Stuttgart / Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-476-01807-5 , p. 253.
  2. ↑ Heiner Müller: Works. Volume 4: The Pieces. 2, Ed. Frank Hörnigk. Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-40896-8 , p. 259.
  3. ↑ ibid
  4. ↑ "Laboratory of Social Fantasy": a term from the early Soviet art avant-garde that was taken up again and again by some intellectuals in the GDR, in particular by Müller and the philosopher Bernhard Heise
  5. ↑ As in: Note 2
  6. ↑ in: Alternative, H. 110/111, 1976, pp. 182-191.
  7. ↑ As in: Note 1, p. 255.