McKinsey is coming

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McKinsey comes is a play by the German writer Rolf Hochhuth , which premiered on February 13, 2004 in the Brandenburg Theater in Brandenburg an der Havel . The play consists of five acts with five epilogues , which are loosely linked by the same subject matter and the same actors in different roles . It is based in part on the piece unemployed or the right to work , which Hochhuth had already written in 1999.

Hochhuth thematized in McKinsey comes mass layoffs in the course of mergers , which are carried out in an actually flourishing economic situation for the purpose of increasing profits. The topic is examined from different perspectives up to a final hearing before the Federal Constitutional Court on the demand for a right to work . The eponymous management consultancy McKinsey does not appear in the piece, the mere announcement McKinsey is coming serves as a synonym for planned layoffs.

The play is in the tradition of Hochhuth's dramas , in which he often takes a position on questions of contemporary history. Most of the criticism received it negatively. In particular, the name comparison of the CEO of Deutsche Bank Josef Ackermann with Hermann Gessler , who is murdered as a tyrant in Schiller's drama Wilhelm Tell , caused a controversy.

action

First act: Mercedes buys the Oerlikon wagon factory

The site of the machine factory Oerlikon after conversion into the MFO park

Hilde Zumbusch and Kurt take the ICE from Basel to Karlsruhe , where Kurt is a judge and Hilde, as the founder of a party for the unemployed , wants to represent a constitutional complaint . They are debating the power of the economy. People are equal before the law, but not before the economy, which has everyone under control. The two eavesdrop on a grandfather, the Bernese National Councilor, Stucki, and his granddaughter, who are discussing the closure of the Oerlikon wagon factory after the takeover by DaimlerChrysler , which caused 800 people to lose their jobs and a further 2500 jobs in supplier companies. The granddaughter compares the new German ruler with the tyrant Gessler from Wilhelm Tell and asks why they don't take his life if he takes the life of the Swiss.

At the end of the act, the granddaughter speaks the sonnet Warning , which refers to Josef Ackermann and the restructuring of the Deutsche Bank that was associated with job cuts. The sonnet closes with the verses:

“'Step back' A. just like Gessler through - Tell?
Schleyer , Ponto , Herrhausen warn . "

Act Two: Thrown Out I

Disused Siemens-Martin furnace of the Brandenburg an der Havel Industrial Museum

Herta and Inge, two workers at a pharmaceutical company , discuss their situation. After purchasing an American company, her work is relocated to America more cheaply and she is laid off like 1,000 other employees. Herta is particularly affected by the dismissal because she has not yet been employed for three months and is therefore not entitled to unemployment benefits . They rail against the corrupt works council and Federal Chancellor Schröder , the "comrade of the bosses". Herta wants the wall back, Inge a bomb to scare the "moneybags", but ultimately they are powerless.

In Berlin-Brandenburg dialect, Hertha speaks the sonnet Stilljelegte Stadt , which refers to the Brandenburg an der Havel Industrial Museum :

"Because the steelworks is flat, that
has fed the city for 150 years : Twenty thousand steel workers
at the end of communism - but
today a museum director explains to visitors !"

Third act: "Global player" during "media training"

The Globe House , the headquarters of British American Tobacco in London

The president of the tobacco company British American Tobacco is in London with his deputy Brown, his personal advisor, a countess , and a media advisor during media training . He practices a speech in which he emphasizes that the Swiss brand Parisienne will continue to exist after the takeover of the Parisienne and Select manufacturers, but in which he conceals at the same time that the jobs in Switzerland will be cut. Brown has moral objections to the deal. Anyone who makes such profits as her shouldn't lay people off. As the president sticks to his plans, Brown gets his stake out of the company. The president then decides to engage the McKinsey consultancy. You have to be part of the boom in management consultants, as it was back in the early days , whereupon the media consultant remarks that jobs were created back then and McKinsey was liquidating them.

Brown steps in front of the curtain. He recites the poem Greatness, Evil, Religious , which begins with the verses:

“Rhyming words like power - meanness:
keep their owners under control!
Does not release a trust from suspicion that it
also unfairly plays the role "

Fourth Act: Thrown Out II

The marketing department of a Frankfurt company is “redimensioned”, which means: thirteen out of a hundred employees lose their jobs. Walter and Christina are among them, clearing their desks. They want to turn to the media, but they realize that they will remain dependent on the old company even when they are terminated if they do not want to lose their pension . Franz joins them, he is allowed to stay, but has been downgraded to office assistant. You remember a documentary about the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 by Stauffenberg . There it said: in the absence of all legal aids, one becomes a judge in one's own case. But they know: in the end, they reach for vodka , not Kalashnikov .

At the end of the act, Walter steps in front of the stage and quotes the poem People Little Asked :

"More and more people are
needed less and less."

Act Fifth: Stocks go up when workers go down

First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1989

The lawyer Hilde Zumbusch represents the absent Walter Schuster before the Federal Constitutional Court . He was dismissed by Deutsche Bahn and his action for reinstatement was dismissed by all previous instances. Zumbusch calls for a constitutionally guaranteed right to work , which even Bismarck once wanted to introduce. Schulze-Memmingen as State Secretary on behalf of the Federal Government considers this to be priceless and not in the interests of the economy. Six demonstrators enter the room, petitioning this right as a human right. After a discussion with the court, Wetzel, one of the petitioners, lights a European flag that is merely an image of the stars and stripes and demonstrates Europe's dependence on the USA . With this he sets the judges' table on fire and the remaining judges flee.

A petitioner steps in front of the stage and recites the poem unemployed , the last of which reads:

"At the turn of the millennium, Europe has
more stampers than Spain has inhabitants!"

Structure and shape

From the point of view of drama theory, McKinsey is an open drama . The three Aristotelian units , the unity of time, space and action, are not complied with, and the class clause is invalid. The five acts correspond to the number of a regular drama , but not their classic function. They are only loosely linked on the same topic, with three levels of action being distinguished: the lawsuit before the Federal Constitutional Court with an introductory train ride, the dismissed in the second and fourth act, the boardroom in the third act. Overall, there are three different perspectives same subject. There is no tension arc, no final tension towards which the drama would head, at most detailed tension in the individual scenes. The drama is neither a tragedy nor a comedy .

Each act is accompanied by newspaper clippings, such as the fifth act of a poem published by Hochhuth on New Year's Eve 2001. According to Hochhuth, these comments can be placed in front of the act as a prologue , followed up as an epilogue or, in interruption of the act, as an alienation effect by a stepping out actor. Each of the files is followed by a “Nachspruch” poem that is spoken by an unemployed person , which in the third act also applies to the recently resigned privateer Brown. The stage directions also grow into commentaries on current affairs, when Hochhuth digresses in the fifth act when introducing the “complainant” Zumbusch to consider why the “ driving license ” in the Federal Republic contained the “ Führer ”, but in the GDR (in his opinion) was called "driver's license".

The actors are cast in several roles . Hilde Zumbusch is also the countess, the president is also Schulze-Memmingen, the presiding judge is the grandfather, his granddaughter is a petitioner, Wetzel is the media advisor and so on. According to Gert Ueding , this should symbolize the interchangeability of individual roles in society. There is no narrator, no speaking aside , hardly any theatrical means. The text is spoken in dialogues and quotations, in the court scene in authoritarian language. The individual characters use everyday language or dialect , but they still rely on the author's knowledge at any time, for example when they present economic data or facts off the cuff or make allusions to educated middle-class people . The focus of the action is the presentation of the content, facts and theses.

theses

Rolf Hochhuth comes after a reading of his book McKinsey , Duisburg 2005

A core thesis of the piece is Arnold Künzli's statement , which precedes the first act:

“… Our democracy, which suffers from a serious birth defect: it only determines the state, not also the economic order. Democracy implies equality of rights. Citizens are only equal in terms of state laws, however, in terms of the 'laws' of a capitalist economic order, they are starkly unequal. It is not the majority that decides here, but property. That is why our bourgeois democracy was only a half from the beginning. And this half is shrinking the more the undemocratic economy dominates democratic politics. "

In the further course of the play, inequality is presented to the economy by contrasting the situation of workers and employees who cannot defend themselves against the loss of their jobs with the pursuit of profit in the boardrooms.

Further, secondary criticisms of the piece are:

  • Criticism of the five percent hurdle that makes political participation impossible for a party belonging to a minority, in this case the unemployed party.
  • Criticism of Germany's tax policy.
  • Criticism of the policy of the SPD .
  • Criticism of the Greens , who endangered jobs if they slowed down car production in Germany.
  • Criticism of the economic friendliness of the press, namely NZZ and FAZ .
  • Criticism of the excessive use of Anglicisms in the German language.
  • Criticism of excessively high manager salaries .
  • Criticism that East Germany will be dominated by West Germany after reunification .
  • Criticism that the tenure of the councils corrupts them.
  • Criticism that the draft of the Basic Law only emphasized protection against political dictatorship, not protection against economic dictatorship.

reception

Advance controversy

Josef Ackermann 2007

Even before its premiere, McKinsey comes was heavily discussed in the press based on the book version delivered by Deutsches Taschenbuch Verlag in December 2003 , with the discussion centered primarily on the terrorist acts mentioned in the play, in particular the comparison of the tyrannical murder of Gessler and Josef Ackermann as well as the quoted dictum by Jacob Burckhardt of "Murder as an aid [...] in the absence of all legal remedies".

On January 21, 2004, Deutsche Bank spokesman Detlev W. Rahmsdorf announced that the play was “irresponsible”, a “scandal” and that Deutsche Bank was examining “all legal steps” to take action against the play. However, the next day Deutsche Bank resigned from statements based on a “misunderstanding”: “There is no official statement from our side”, and legal action is not expected. On the other hand, Michael Rogowski , the then President of the BDI , spoke up and was indignant: “Hochhuth's text is a paragon of bad taste. Does Mr. Hochhuth want to make murder acceptable as a means of political debate? ”One could discuss“ the level of manager salaries and the appropriateness of severance payments. But anyone who confuses this discussion with class struggle , who brings terrorism and the guillotine into play, leaves the ground on which this conflict must be conducted. Mr. Hochhuth, you are ashamed! "

Hochhuth himself rejected allegations that with his play he expressed understanding for a potential assassination attempt on Ackermann, with the words: “No, you are wrong”. He considered Deutsche Bank “far too intelligent to call the public prosecutor about a sonnet”. The Brandenburg Theater also saw no reason not to perform the play. The press spokesman emphasized: “Hochhuth is not calling for murder. He makes polarizing statements. That is legitimate. ”Nevertheless, the theater felt compelled to print the disclaimer later in the program booklet for the performance :“ The tyrannicide that the granddaughter implies in Hochhuth's play is not covered by the right of resistance under the Basic Law. ”

In later explanations, Hochhuth explained his point of view: “I am not 'bringing the guillotine into a connection with managers', as the BDI President pointed out to me. Instead, I wrote with Benn : A company that - to stick with its most illustrious example: Ackermann's Deutsche Bank - is 'ready for the guillotine' - after a profit of 9.8 billion euros, throws out fourteen percent of its employees: 11,080 bankers! [...] Ackermann knows what a grotesquely harmless man Gessler was compared to him. [...] And he should really fear that it will fare like Rohwedder [...]. That assassination is amoral - as amoral as history as a whole - is one thing . The fact that it can never be avoided in the long run, as tradition teaches, is another. ”In other interviews he continued:“ The unscrupulousness with which industrialists around the world are now hunching the burden of unemployment on the state must destroy the state . I am convinced that a revolution has to come! ”And“ if you read history correctly, you have to fear it will be bloody ”.

Reactions to the premiere

The world premiere of McKinsey comes on February 13, 2004 in the Brandenburg Theater under the direction of Oliver Munk disappointed the critics across the board. Christine Dössel saw a "premiere that had its best moments in advance". She drew the conclusion: “Hochhuth is right about his anger. [...] But he didn't make a piece of it, just a pamphlet. At best a topic. ”For Andreas Fanizadeh , Hochhuth lined up newspaper snippets“ without any recognizable literary finesse. Language and characters are one-dimensional. Likewise the political content ”. The author is “a moralizing dramatist with dismay [...]. With him, social changes disappear behind reactionary chatter. "

Karsten Langer attended a “tough agitprop farce”: “It remains tragic that Hochhuth has gambled away the chance to approach a socially relevant topic beyond the one-dimensional ideological perspective. McKinsey Comes is an anemic lesson that is already losing its strength before the end of the first half. […] Above all, Hochhuth does what the old, saturated men of the German cultural scene do: it repeats itself. That is vain and harms his cause more than it benefits it. ”For Evelyn Finger, too, Hochhuth's theater brought“ the criticism of capitalism into disrepute. ”Hochhuth believed“ in the necessity of revolt, but not in revolt. ”His obstinacy consists in the fact that he “is still making theater in which the problem is the capitalist and not capitalism. [...] Hochhuth, when he lets Ackermann and the McKinseys appear as the cause of all misery, he continues to personalize. Not more."

In the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , Joachim Güntner found "a lot of Switzerland in Hochhuth's piece." But it was precisely these references that he encountered, such as Hochhuth's attacks on the boss of Deutsche Bank: "The target is bank boss Ackermann, who was born in the canton of St. Gallen" . He also found his own newspaper insufficiently described: "The NZZ, which has been thematized five times, is presented as a paper that in principle approves everything that 'saves or brings in money', namely rising share prices at the expense of fired employees." Hochhuth's views incorporated into the piece he condemned: “But not only that Hochhuth's material remains undesigned, dreary politicizing role prose, speaks against the playwright. His economic arguments are anachronistic , his protectionism is sheer nationalism , and the question of violence, its threatened turn from fantasy into practice, is all too sausagely negotiated. Hochhuth may be at the height of his anger, unfortunately he is not at the height of the problems. "

Ernst Schumacher saw in Hochhuth's play against "a donquichotteske attack against the neoliberal turbo-capitalism " which, however, "in traditional patterns and methods dramaturgical handle [...]" remain without "Instead, acting characters are 'the figures consistently in the first place Hochhuth 'Speech tubes' ". Nevertheless, he drew the conclusion: “In contrast to the theatrical mockery of everything utopian in the sense of the imaginability of an improvement in the human race instead of the predicted and practiced sinking into civilized barbarism, Hochhuth relentlessly insists on a ' political theater ' that should trigger social self-understanding. He remains a solitary, productive provocateur even in his old days. That at least deserves respect, not malice. "

Gerhard Stadelmeier pointed out that Hochhuth no longer wrote new dramas in old age, but recycle old ones. In McKinsey, for example, the characters from Unemployed or Right to Work from 1999 “have resurrected as dramatis personae and complain about being thrown out and unemployed in the same lengthy passages and excited free speech articles as they did in 1999, only that they are now also stirring up the McKinsey consulting firm. “The Berlin branch of McKinsey reacted to the play by reserving a media-effective performance in Brandenburg for its own workforce. The office manager then turned to Hochhuth: "We are annoyed that you did not speak to us, since we do appear in your play, that horrifies us a little."

Later investigations

On the occasion of a follow-up performance by the Hessisches Landestheater Marburg , Max-Otto Lorenzen assessed that Hochhuth's McKinsey comes alive “like all of the author's plays, less from his inner drama and plot than from naming real injustices without make-up and thus causing a moral reaction from the audience provoke. ”He drew the conclusion:“ The question posed in the play itself about whether it makes sense to negotiate such issues on stage must be answered with an unequivocal yes. The Marburg premiere showed that the theater can still evoke and strengthen moral feelings. "

Christoph Deupmann likened McKinsey comes with Top Dogs by Urs Widmer . While he saw its expressiveness primarily in his dramatic procedure and the recourse to the form of ancient tragedy , Hochhuth's play remains in the theses. As in all of his plays, Hochhuth placed the moral responsibility of the individual at the center. In McKinsey, he also makes use of dramatic breaks such as the double cast of actors and the conclusion of the scene with epilogues, but the dialect language of the characters reminds one of Gerhart Hauptmann's social drama and the stage directions that have been expanded into economic-political comments refer to a past industrial age . For Christine Bähr McKinsey is the continuation of the documentary theater of the 1960s.

literature

output

Secondary literature

  • Axel Schalk: The class struggle is not over. Reflections on Rolf Hochhuth's most recent political drama . In: Rolf Hochhuth: Theater as a political institution. Conference proceedings with a personal bibliography . Edited by Ilse Nagelschmidt, Sven Neufert, Gert Ueding. Denkena, Weimar 2010, pp. 251-270, ISBN 978-3-936177-78-7

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hochhuth: McKinsey is coming. Molières Tartuffe . P. 23.
  2. ^ Hochhuth: McKinsey is coming. Molières Tartuffe . P. 32.
  3. ^ Hochhuth: McKinsey is coming. Molières Tartuffe . P. 49.
  4. ^ Hochhuth: McKinsey is coming. Molières Tartuffe . P. 59.
  5. ^ Hochhuth: McKinsey is coming. Molières Tartuffe . P. 79.
  6. ↑ Economy: A poem by Rolf Hochhuth . In: Der Tagesspiegel from December 30, 2001.
  7. ^ Hochhuth: McKinsey is coming. Molières Tartuffe , p. 9.
  8. ^ Hochhuth: McKinsey is coming. Molières Tartuffe , p. 63.
  9. ↑ See: Harald Jähner: The exploiter . In: Berliner Zeitung of February 16, 2004.
  10. ^ Gert Ueding : Reaching into Time . In: Hochhuth: McKinsey is coming. Molières Tartuffe , p. 152.
  11. ^ Hochhuth: McKinsey is coming. Molières Tartuffe , p. 11.
  12. ^ Deutsche Bank outraged by Hochhuth . In: Der Tagesspiegel from January 21, 2004.
  13. ↑ a b Christine Dössel: Only “polarizing statements”? ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sueddeutsche.de archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of January 22, 2004.
  14. ↑ BDI boss indignant about Hochhuth's piece . In: Der Tagesspiegel from January 22, 2004.
  15. ↑ Rüdiger Schaper : The thriller instinct . In: Der Tagesspiegel from January 22, 2004.
  16. ↑ Hochhuth comments on Deutsche Bank's allegations . In: FAZ.NET of January 21, 2004.
  17. ↑ a b Ernst Schumacher : Thanks for the explanation In: The Friday of February 27, 2004.
  18. ↑ Hochhuth and the "Murder as an Aid" . In: Hamburger Abendblatt from January 24, 2004.
  19. ↑ Barbara Petsch: Hochhuth: “Rogue prank! Revolution! " . In: Die Presse of March 11, 2004.
  20. ^ Hochhuth: Right to work . In: Potsdam Latest News from February 9, 2004.
  21. ↑ Christine Dössel: If the frustrating man rings twice ( memento of the original from September 11, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sueddeutsche.de archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of February 16, 2004.
  22. ↑ Andreas Fanizadeh: Rolf Hochhuth and the misunderstanding of the “political” theater: a premiere report from the East German Brandenburg. In: The weekly newspaper of February 19, 2004.
  23. ↑ Karsten Langer: Fizzles in a meaningless space . In: Der Spiegel from February 13, 2004.
  24. ↑ Evelyn Finger: Too little cold as hell . In: Die Zeit of February 19, 2004.
  25. ^ Joachim Güntner: Hochhuths anger . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from January 28, 2004.
  26. ^ Gerhard Stadelmeier: Right to Hochhuth . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 22, 2004.
  27. ↑ Torsten Hampel: McKinsey was there . In: Der Tagesspiegel from February 25, 2004.
  28. ^ Max-Otto Lorenzen : The Hessian State Theater Marburg. Rolf Hochhuth: McKinsey is coming . In: Marburger Forum , Volume 5 (2004), Issue 2.
  29. ↑ Christoph Deupmann: Narrating (new) Economy: literature and economy by 2000 . In: Evi Zemanek, Susanne Krones (eds.): Literature from the turn of the millennium: Topics, writing methods and book market around 2000 . Transcript, Bielefeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-89942-924-4 , pp. 155-156.
  30. ↑ Christine Bähr: Breathless. Work and time in Kathrin Rögglas “ we don't sleep ” . In: Franziska Schößler, Christine Bähr: Economy in the Theater of the Present: Aesthetics, Production, Institution . Transcript, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-8376-1060-4 , p. 226.