Wilmersdorfer widows
Wilmersdorfer Witwen is a song from the musical Linie 1 , whose characters of the same name are supposed to represent a specific social class and a cultural milieu of the former West Berlin society. The composer Birger Heymann coined this alliteration with the musical of the Berlin Grips Theater , which premiered in 1986 , and has since been used as a cliché . Volker Ludwig wrote the text of the most successful and most performed German play .
content
The four self-righteous widows who appear in the scene , played by male actors, discover the protagonist sleeping in the subway and immediately suspect that she is drunk, addicted to drugs and is on the streets. They insult her as a bitch from the West and calling for them to vacate the place immediately. Then another older passenger intervenes and consistently shows the women in their place. A controversy ensues : the widows insult the lady, who calls her father a “ soci ”, a “red rat”, while she replies: “Better a red rat than a brown blowfly”. The widows, who identify themselves as “ German national ”, state that they prefer “brown” to “red” and name alleged “advantages” of the “ Third Reich ” such as the motorway and the labor service . In a song that follows, they sing about their worldview and their life story: They describe themselves as “ Diadems of the Reich capital Berlin” and fight “for cleanliness and discipline like fifty years ago”; their deceased husbands held high posts during the National Socialist era and they are still well looked after through state payments. Their worldview is shaped by conservatism , anti-communism and xenophobia . The four Wilmersdorf widows Agathe, Kriemhild, Lotti and Martha sing among others:
“Yes, we Wilmersdorf widows defend Berlin,
otherwise we'd be Russian, chaotic and green by now.
What comes after us is bad
because we are the elite.
We Wilmersdorf widows!
Berlin is suffocating from Turks
and asylum seekers.
Only one thing can still have an effect:
clubs out of the sack!
With God and Diepgen in the association
, our city will soon be
as clean as it was fifty years ago "
reception
The Wilmersdorf widow , who has become proverbial, is considered wealthy and conservative and lives in one of the bourgeois districts in the west and south-west of Berlin. According to the district office of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in Berlin, the song describes the type of a “class- conscious ” elderly Berlin lady who cherishes and upholds Prussian virtues . The Berliner Zeitung stated in a column for new Berliners : “The Wilmersdorf widow can of course also come from Zehlendorf , Charlottenburg , Dahlem , Lichterfelde , Grunewald or Steglitz ; in any case, she is a typical West Berlin phenomenon a well-to-do lady whose ex-boyfriend once sat in a lucrative position ”. The “modern times” are basically “too dirty, too hectic and too immoral” for her, so that she reduces her aggression “best at an afternoon coffee party with like-minded people”. It is about an "older lady with a somewhat punitive look" who exudes the displeasure that is already "slumbering in Berlin" and her "latent pleasure in nagging" breaks out "whenever there is none of the adored grandchildren around is ". The city magazine Tip characterized the characters in the musical as follows:
“Your weapon is the umbrella. They are the personified pleasure in latent nagging. Her uniform is piously black with a compote hat. They made entire dynasties of coffee house owners rich by eating Black Forest cake . "
The actor Dietrich Lehmann , who plays one of the four widows in the musical and lives even in Wilmersdorf said 2011 on the phenomenon guarantees "[...] it was that at the Rüdesheimer place once well-heeled Nazis lived, dealing with Communists from the artist colony like Ernst Busch would have fought. But the widows would no longer attract attention today 'because they no longer dare to do so'. The area has changed too much here. Younger people have moved here who wanted to live green and quiet but still close to the city. "
According to this stereotype was, for example, in a historical gas lantern, Berlin gas lantern museum to see and "ten millimeters thick crystal glass with facet cut and gold ornament is decorated" as Wilmersdorfer widow called. In fact, the former district of Wilmersdorf was statistically shown to have the highest percentage of single women of retirement age in Berlin .
Web links
- Jutta Voigt: The widow. In: Die Zeit , February 19, 2004
Individual evidence
- ↑ He invented the Wilmersdorfer widows: "Line 1" composer died . In: Berliner Morgenpost , July 18, 2012
- ↑ "Get in please!" In: taz , April 29, 2006
- ↑ a b Lexicon of the District Office Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf , accessed on July 15, 2013.
- ↑ Wilmersdorf widows . In: Berliner Zeitung , July 19, 2009.
- ↑ Grips Theater: Wilmersdorfer Witwen (line 1/1986) , Tip , accessed on July 17, 2013.
- ↑ The complainers have died out . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 11, 2011.
- ↑ Glare-free sparkle at night. In: Berliner Zeitung , August 27, 2008.