Wessis in Weimar

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"Wessis in Weimar": rally by Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher on Theaterplatz Weimar (1990)

Wessis in Weimar: Scenes from an Occupied Country is a play by the German writer Rolf Hochhuth , which was premiered on February 10, 1993 by Einar Schleef at the Berliner Ensemble . The play consists of nine scenes and a prologue that are loosely linked by the same theme. It deals with the "sell-out" of the former GDR by the West German economy in the course of German reunification and represents a rigorous settlement with the Treuhandanstalt , which was supposed to administer the former public property of the GDR.

Hochhuth extensively processes authentic documents and allows management staff from the Treuhandanstalt, high officials from the ministries and executives from the boardrooms of large companies to appear in the play. Even before it was published, the piece led to heated controversy. Particularly controversial was the alleged justification of the murder of the former Treuhand boss Detlev Rohwedder in the prologue of the play, which Hochhuth Rügen brought in from politicians.

material

House of the electrical industry , temporary headquarters of the Treuhandanstalt on Berlin's Alexanderplatz

The play Wessis in Weimar deals with the subject of “German reunification” through the documentary representation of individual fates. As the title of the play suggests, in which Weimar stands as pars pro toto for the new federal states , the drama investigates the unforeseen consequences of German unity for both parts of Germany and criticizes the social status quo in unified Germany. The blurb of the first print condensed this criticism into two questions: “Has the German unification made East Germany a colony of the Wessis? Or can the ailing country only be rebuilt with great sacrifices - in East and West? "

The play deals with these questions on the basis of a broad spectrum of social problems that had become manifest only a few years after German reunification, including in particular the ownership structure and the work of the Treuhandanstalt in Berlin (scenes 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9), the liquidation of the east German state as well as the increasing unemployment in the new federal states (scenes 3 and 8).

action

Detlev Rohwedder (1990)

In the “Prologue” by Wessis in Weimar , the last hours of Detlev Rohwedder before his murder in April 1991 by an RAF squad are shown. A lawyer tells the President of the Treuhandanstalt that the Treuhandanstalt has proven to be an institution for plundering the affiliated East Germans. The lawyer compares Rohwedder with the mythical figure Hermann Gessler and predicts Rohwedder a similar death like this:

[...] Think again:
No Ossi - admit that, has some form of legal remedy
against the sale of the national wealth there
to us foreigners, who we
can buy poor Ossis simply
because we are not forty Years were downgraded,
economically destroyed.
That is what you arrange, that is what you represent, that is to say - good.
Hence: You will die from
robbing the Ossis of ninety percent!

The president is assassinated. In the further course of the play, the consequences of the GDR's subsidy policy for an orchard in Brandenburg ("The Apple Trees"), the fate of university teachers in the GDR who had served the East German regime ideologically ("Systemnah"), arose after 1989 Growing speculation ("Goethe-Hotel Weimar", "Book shipment at reduced fee") or the late consequences of the building of the Wall for those property owners who lived on the so-called death strip ("On the ground floor and first floor or: The moods of happiness"), illuminated.

Other pictures depict the fate of the petty bourgeoisie and the mass unemployment that began after the fall of the Wall. A radio journalist traces the worries and hardships of the 55-year-old former employee of a light bulb factory that has no chance on the job market ("wound up"). The piece also shows the suicide of a peasant couple, triggered by the forced sale of their property (“ Philemon and Baucis ”).

The social transformation processes in the new federal states regularly lead to despair and anger and turn into (auto) aggression and open violence: In addition to the assassination attempt on Rohwedder, a letter bomb attack on a building contractor ("book shipment at reduced fee"), a joint suicide ( "Philemon und Baucis") and the cremation of an old castle by an old owner ("Ossis: Thieves, Wessis: Hehler").

Structure and shape

The play is divided into a prologue and nine scenes. There is a break after scene 6. From a drama theory perspective, Wessis in Weimar is an open drama , since the three Aristotelian units , the unity of time, space and action, are not observed. The scenes stand autonomously and are interchangeable. They can easily be changed in performance practice. In Hochhuth's dramaturgy, the characters themselves are no longer portrayed as autonomously acting people, but rather as interchangeable and “replaceable if not superfluous, following the harsh reality of the money society”.

The piece is written in free iamb . The playwright strives almost consistently to use authentic language, as illustrated by several scenes with dialectically influenced speeches. Extensive paratexts ( didascalia ), which oscillate between stage directions, material collection, self-reference and commentary, comment and interpret the action depicted in the respective scenes and guide the reception of the text. Hochhuth extensively processed authentic documents (especially newspaper articles and literary quotations) and events such as the assassination of the Treuhand President Detlev Rohwedder in April 1991 by an RAF command ("Prologue: The Executor"). The objectifying quality of these documentary set pieces is, however, controversial.

Ilse Nagelschmidt defines Hochhuth's aesthetic conception as one of the "thesis-like condensation, alienation and generalization through playing with stereotypes , conscious polarization [and] the satirical exaggeration of the 'winners' and the 'defeated' [...]." As an example for Hochhuth's method she cites the typical contrasting of East and West Germans: “The play seems to reflect reality immediately after 1990 by quoting specific places, events and documents on the one hand, and on the other hand the author deliberately plays with the Ossis and Wessis stereotypes Identification of completely different values ​​and norms. On the one hand, the figure of the arrogant and money-obsessed Wessis demonstrates the winning mentality, on the other hand the incapacitated or conformist Ossi. The tension couldn't be greater. ”Nagelschmidt sums up that this type of drama - for example with reference to the uncontested continuation of the myths founded by the GDR and supporting the system of full employment or the emancipation of women - limits in the merging of reality and Show fiction.

Florian Radvan also judges that the piece, despite the intensive use of documentary materials, cannot “lay claim to objectivity, let alone serve as historical illustrative material”. “Although newspaper articles, letters and legal texts form the basis of the play, one can not simply assign Wessis to the genre of documentary theater. Rather, there is a tendency towards a not always targeted emotional overstimulation, and the piece shows no distillate of reality. ”In addition, Wessis in Weimar lacks the“ politically visionary component ”demanded by Hochhuth elsewhere, which unites one beyond mere description "Building a bridge between daily political business and possible socio-political innovations".

reception

Advance controversy

Rolf Hochhuth, 2005

The play hit the headlines long before its premiere when Manager Magazin went to court with the “Chief Prosecutor of German Literature” in its May 26, 1992 issue and postulated that Hochhuth justified the murder of the Treuhand boss Detlev in his new play Rohwedder. On the same day, the theater critic Gerhard Stadelmaier issued an urgent warning in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about “Hochhuth's Terror Theater”. The early reports in the national media about Hochhuth's unfinished drama sparked a heated debate and sharp reactions, especially from politicians such as Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl , Federal Labor Minister Norbert Blüm and the deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group Herta Däubler-Gmelin . In ignorance of the not yet printed theater text, the federal government implicitly accused Hochhuth of the abuse of his artistic freedom:

“Hochhuth's statements about the murder of Detlev Karsten Rohwedder read like a license for the murderers. At the same time, they mean an intolerable trivialization of the SED dictatorship and its communist mismanagement. "

- The Federal Chancellor, press release No. 275/92, May 26, 1992

In June 1992 the news magazine Der Spiegel printed a detailed excerpt from the prologue of the play, which Hochhuth's critics interpreted as a justification for the murder of the head of the trust. In this context, Norbert Blüm apostrophized Hochhuth as a "smearer for assassins".

World premiere at the Berliner Ensemble

Heiner Müller as a speaker at the Alexanderplatz demonstration in November 1989

The nationwide controversy aroused the interest of the cultural industry. The writer Heiner Müller , at that time a member of the five-man management team of the Berliner Ensemble , agreed with Hochhuth that Wessis would be premiered in Weimar at the Berliner Ensemble. Director Einar Schleef , who fled the GDR in 1976 and was known for his deconstructivist work, was to direct . According to the director, the collaboration with the author was initially cooperative and constructive:

“Talking to and working with Hochhuth in autumn 1992 was still pleasant. Up until then there were only death scenes: murder, suicide, assassination. That interested me. "

- Interview with Einar Schleef, February 19, 1993

After Hochhuth's first rehearsal visit "with representatives of the publishing house, legal advisers, secretary and lawyer" in early February 1993, however, there was a scandal between the author and the director. Hochhuth accused Schleef of “gross nonsense” and arbitrary directing, protested against the de-individualization and mythologization of the processes and wanted Schleef's gloomy production to be legally prohibited a few days before the premiere on February 10, 1993. The play was finally performed on condition that the original text of the play be distributed to the audience of the premiere. Following Hochhuth's protest, the management team of the Berliner Ensemble decided to "no longer employ Schleef for the time being." A legal objection by Brecht's heir, Barbara Brecht-Schall also led to the Brecht poem Who but is the party? could no longer be spoken.

The critic of the Süddeutsche Zeitung spoke after the premiere of a "non-performance", since Einar Schleef had limited himself to a distillate of only about five percent of Hochhuth's text. Schleef himself emphatically counted Hochhuth's original Wessi draft from 1992 among the “most important contemporary pieces”, but disappointedly assessed the final printed version by Wessis in Weimar as a “swollen text mixture”. Numerous theater critics, who had read the play beforehand, pointed to linguistic and dramaturgical deficiencies as well as Hochhuth's peculiarity of explaining each scene in advance in the printed text, and stated, “Schleef uncover deep structures where Hochhuth only superficially shows the same facts ask and complain ”. Schleef's production, which was also successful with the audience, was invited to the 30th Berlin Theatertreffen that same year .

Later productions

The first production recognized by the author was made by the Swiss director and writer Yves Jansen for the Hamburg Tournee Theater Greve, which was first shown at the Ernst Deutsch Theater in Hamburg at the end of February 1993 . The tour production then appeared in a total of 87 cities. From the point of view of some critics, Jansen's staging was faithful to the work and the strengths of Schleef's idiosyncratic world premiere came to the fore. Matthias Wegner ruled in the FAZ laconically: "Jansen pays Hochhuth Schulfunk- naturalism painful toll." Still in March 1993 was followed by a staged reading of Westerners in Weimar at the State Theater Mecklenburg in Neustrelitz .

Hochhuth, who continued to complain about a lack of faithfulness to the work and misinterpretations, finally staged his play himself in December 1994 at the Meiningen theater . It was Hochhuth's debut as a theater director, the result of which, however, critics characterized as "helpless". At the Schlossparktheater Berlin, the author directed another time in December 1999 at Wessis in Weimar . One critic attested Hochhuth's conventional production “awkwardness” and a lack of sense of direction. The Wolfgang Borchert Theater in Münster (1994), the Theater links der Isar in Munich (1995), which advertised with the pithy slogan "Every decent German must know this play," and - twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall - the Brandenburger took further productions Theater in Brandenburg an der Havel in March 2009.

literature

output
  • Rolf Hochhuth: Wessis in Weimar: Scenes from an occupied country . Volk & Welt, Berlin 1993.
Secondary literature
  • Frank Thomas Grub: “Wende” and “Unity” as reflected in German-language literature: a manual . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2003. pp. 513-528.
  • Birgit Haas: Theater of the turning point - turning theater. Film - Medium - Discourse . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004. pp. 79–87.
  • Bernd Herhoffer: Wessis in Weimar: Hochhuth, Schiller and the Germans . In: The New Germany. Literature and Society after Reunification . Edited by Osman Durani, Colin Good, Kevin Hilliard. University of Sheffield Press, Sheffield 1995. pp. 109-127.
  • Dag Kemser: Time pieces on German reunification. Form - content - effect . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2006. pp. 127-145.
  • Birgit Lahann : “Goethe doesn't come with his publisher either!” Rolf Hochhuth and the fuss about “Wessis in Weimar” . In: Same: Beloved Zone. Stories from the new Germany . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1997. pp. 118–129.
  • Ilse Nagelschmidt: "Wessis in Weimar". The project sale. 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. 239-250.
  • Florian Radvan: Fratricidal War in Germany - To Rolf Hochhuth's piece Wessis in Weimar . In: Neophilologus 87 (2003), pp. 617-634.
At Schleef's world premiere
  • Einar Schleef. Diary 1981–1998: Frankfurt am Main, West Berlin . Edited by Winfried Menninghaus, Sandra Janßen, Johannes Windrich. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2009.
  • Nikolaus Müller-Schöll: Development of the moral institution. For the exhibition of language formation in the trailer of Einar Schleef's production “Wessis in Weimar” . In: Spieltrieb - What does classical music bring to the stage? Edited by Felix Ensslin . Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2006. pp. 252–267.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rolf Hochhuth: Wessis in Weimar: Scenes from an occupied country . Volk & Welt, Berlin 1993. Blurb.
  2. ^ Rolf Hochhuth: Wessis in Weimar: Scenes from an occupied country . Volk & Welt, Berlin 1993. p. 25.
  3. ↑ 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 . Edited by Ilse Nagelschmidt, Sven Neufert, Gert Ueding. Denkena, Weimar 2010. pp. 251–270, here p. 266.
  4. ↑ Ilse Nagelschmidt: "Wessis in Weimar". The project sale. In: Rolf Hochhuth: Theater as a political institution . Edited by Ilse Nagelschmidt, Sven Neufert, Gert Ueding. Denkena, Weimar 2010. pp. 239–250, here p. 248.
  5. ↑ Ilse Nagelschmidt: "Wessis in Weimar" . In: Rolf Hochhuth: Theater as a political institution. Edited by Ilse Nagelschmidt, Sven Neufert, Gert Ueding. Denkena, Weimar 2010. pp. 239–250, here p. 245.
  6. ↑ Ilse Nagelschmidt: "Wessis in Weimar" . In: Rolf Hochhuth: Theater as a political institution. Edited by Ilse Nagelschmidt, Sven Neufert, Gert Ueding. Denkena, Weimar 2010. pp. 239–250, here pp. 246, 248.
  7. ↑ Florian Radvan: Fratricidal War in Germany - On Rolf Hochhuth's play Wessis in Weimar . In: Neophilologus 87 (2003), pp. 617-634, here p. 621.
  8. ↑ Florian Radvan: Fratricidal War in Germany . In: Neophilologus 87 (2003), pp. 617-634, here p. 621.
  9. ↑ Peter Saalbach: Hold the poet . In: Manager Magazin, No. 6 (1992), pp. 283-289.
  10. ↑ Gerhard Stadelmaier: additional funds. Hochhuth's Terror Theater . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 26, 1992.
  11. ^ The Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany / Press and Information Office of the Federal Government (press release no. 275/92 of May 26, 1992) on the interview with Rolf Hochhuth of May 26, 1992 in Manager Magazin. Quoted from Frank Thomas Grub: “Wende” and “Unity” as reflected in German-language literature: a manual . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2003. pp. 513-528, here p. 514.
  12. ↑ "Then you will be murdered" . In: Der Spiegel, No. 46 (1992), June 1, 1992, pp. 272-275.
  13. ↑ Einar Schleef: Hochhuth is a coward (interview). In: Die Zeit , February 19, 1993.
  14. ↑ Einar Schleef. Diary 1981–1998: Frankfurt am Main, West Berlin . Edited by Winfried Menninghaus, Sandra Janßen, Johannes Windrich. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2009. p. 240.
  15. ↑ Dag Kemser: Time pieces on German reunification. Form - content - effect . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2006. pp. 127-145.
  16. ↑ Einar Schleef. Diary 1981–1998 . Edited by Winfried Menninghaus, Sandra Janßen, Johannes Windrich. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2009. p. 240.
  17. ↑ Einar Schleef. Diary 1981–1998 . Edited by Winfried Menninghaus, Sandra Janßen, Johannes Windrich. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2009. p. 239.
  18. ↑ Wolfgang Höbel: Treuhandland burned down . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 12, 1993.
  19. ↑ Einar Schleef. Diary 1981–1998 . Edited by Winfried Menninghaus, Sandra Janßen, Johannes Windrich. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2009. p. 291.
  20. ↑ Einar Schleef. Diary 1981–1998 . Edited by Winfried Menninghaus, Sandra Janßen, Johannes Windrich. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2009. p. 291.
  21. ↑ Florian Radvan: Fratricidal War in Germany . In: Neophilologus 87 (2003), pp. 617-634, here p. 632.
  22. ^ Matthias Wegner in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 27, 1993.
  23. ↑ Horst Köpke: Also Hochhuth himself helpless. "Wessis in Weimar" in Meiningen on their own . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , December 13, 1994.
  24. ↑ Gerhard Ebert: Mighty smoke from the scenes . In: Neues Deutschland , December 14, 1999.
  25. ↑ The Theater links der Isar participated with Wessis in Weimar in November 1996 at the 3rd Politics Festival in Bremen.