Cement (play)

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Cement is a play by the German playwright Heiner Müller , based on the novel by Fjodor Gladkow of the same name . It was premiered on October 12, 1973 at the Berliner Ensemble , directed by Ruth Berghaus .

Plot and dramaturgy

The storyline covers the period from the end of 1920 to the end of 1921 - the time of transition from war communism to the new economic policy (NEP) in Soviet Russia . Gleb Tschumalow, a locksmith by trade, returns home from the civil war where he was the regimental commissar. But nothing is what it was before. The cement works in which he worked has been destroyed and serves as a goat shed. The workers are demoralized, but Gleb takes on the task of getting the work going again. His wife Dasha does political work as a party worker for the Soviet power ; she denies herself Gleb and the traditional role of a housewife and mother. Dasha gave their child Njurka to a children's home. Tschumalow has to win over the engineer Kleist, who once wanted to have him shot by White Guards , to rebuild the cement works: Kleist's specialist knowledge is indispensable.

The failure of the German revolution fundamentally changes the world-historical situation of the country: Soviet Russia remains on its own, building socialism in a single country becomes an inevitable task. The 10th congress of the communist party KPR (B) draws the conclusions: The forced collection of grain will be abolished (as shown in the scene The Peasants ), war communism will be replaced by the new economic policy. Contradictions that we must read today as the first symptoms of later Stalinism determine what happens in the second part of the play. The bureaucratic apparatchik Badjin is gaining power and influence. In a major dispute between Gleb and Dasha ( Medea commentary ) it turns out: Female emancipation is both liberation from patriarchal fetters and, for the time being, also hardening and loss of individuality. Sexuality and love have to be relearned where everything changes. The young, deeply convinced communists Iwagin and Polja Mechowa are expelled from the party on the occasion of a "purge". The marriage of the Tschumalovs breaks up, Nyurka starves to death in the home. When the cement works is actually inaugurated at the end, it is not the worker Chumalov but the functionary Badjin, who has become the automaton of power, who is the keynote speaker; and the scene is dramatically put into perspective from the victim role of Poljas and Iwagin. If the new society showed up to the scene The Peasants and the subsequent prose text Herakles 2 or The Hydra their face initially in deprivation, chaos, hunger and the painful loss of traditional role models, the second part of the play becomes a "proletarian tragedy in the age the counter-revolution ". Logically, the poet deleted an originally harmonizing final scene The Liberation of the Dead .

In terms of composition, cement is on the one hand a traditional, episodic plot drama with a temporal and logical continuum, with characters and situational scenes. On the other hand, three so-called intermedia are integrated into the text as prose texts , which have an associative or meta-textual relationship to the topics of the actual plot . They especially carry the appropriation of Greek mythology .

Myth and Emancipation

Even the early Soviet Russian iconography of the October Revolution made use of ancient Greek myths to stylistically exaggerate and heroically glorify their own experiences. Heiner Müller ties in with this in a very free way, replacing the traditional interpretations of mythical stories with his own, more or less opposing readings. Dramaturgically, this metatextual level is realized in three ways: First, through the scene titles Homecoming of Odysseus , Liberation of Prometheus , Seven Against Thebes and Media Commentary . Secondly, through a complex, associative comparability, which goes beyond the title of the scene, of myth and present-day action in the scenes of Media Commentary and Liberation of Prometheus . Thirdly, through the three inserted prose texts (intermedia). The title Seven against Thebes is most likely to be read as a heroic exaggeration of the revolutionary struggle against the counterrevolution . On the other hand, Chumalov, who returned home, a new Odysseus, is not expected from a loving wife; he doesn't have to look after his house, but get production going. Dasha refuses marriage and family motherhood, but unlike Medea, her revolt is not a barbaric act of desperation that negates the role of motherhood: "I am no longer a mother. And I will no longer be. It is important to me that our children are no longer in the homes Will sleep straw. " This socially emancipatory mother role describes gain and loss, it has both a humane and a humane role - one's own child is sacrificed! - Another barbaric component. The Liberation of Prometheus scene contains two of the three intermedia that interrupt the course of the plot. The first tells the cruel murder of Hector by Achilles in revenge for the death of his friend Patroclus and confronts this process with the recruitment of the bourgeois specialist Kleist by Tschumalow. His renunciation of vengeance does not arise from abstract generosity, but solely from revolutionary necessity. The actual liberation story is told by the second intermedium as an alternative to the traditional reading: The worker Heracles is valued compared to the intellectual Prometheus, who is reluctant to be liberated, but who finally takes on Herakles' back the "posture of the victor", "the one on a sweaty horse Cheers of the population ride. " ( Cement ) The intermediate Herakles 2 or The Hydra is a longer text that stands on its own after the scene The Peasants , i.e. between the first and second parts of the piece: a powerful verbal record of a nightmare of a person who on his way through a jungle to himself Hydra becomes - class society , civilization , revolution become associable, while forest, path and monster become identical; and yet man writes "his blueprint (...) with the handwriting of his work and death." ( Cement ) During writer's block, this text was, according to Heiner Müller's information, "the hub to get the next attempt". After that, the play which "as a revolutionary play was in a certain way over" could go on as a play on the difficulty of the revolution going on.

Productions (selection)

Talks and interviews (selection)

Print

  • Encouragement in the class struggle . Conversation with Elvira Mollenschott about cement . In: Neues Deutschland from October 10, 1973, p. 4.
  • About cement : questions from Luise Mendelsohn. In: Heiner Müller, Zement , program of the Hans Otto Theater Potsdam, 1974
  • Don't cheat away the difference . A conversation with Andreas W. Mytze about the wage pusher , cement and the reception of the production pieces . In: Nürnberger Nachrichten of July 4, 1974.

Audio

Müller MP3. Heiner Müller sound documents 1972-1995. Alexander Verlag Berlin Cologne, 2011. ISBN 978-3-89581-129-6

Text output (selection)

  • Heiner Müller: Works 4. The pieces 2. Ed. By Frank Hörnigk . Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 978-3518408964
  • Fjodor Gladkow, Heiner Müller: cement . Edited by Fritz Mierau . Publishing house Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig 1975
  • Heiner Müller: Pieces. With a foreword by Rolf Rohmer. Henschelverlag Berlin (East) 1975
  • Heiner Müller: Stories from production 2 ( pictures - tractor - Prometheus - love story - cement ). Rotbuch / Verlag der Authors Berlin 1987

Quotes

"Our fight has only just begun and we have a long way to go. We will not end it on our feet ... but the earth will still drink all sorts of blood before we can see the goal at least from a distance. " (Tschibis in cement )

Literature (selection)

  • Rüdiger Bernhardt : History and Drama. Heiner Müller's cement . In: Horst Nalewski, Klaus Schuhmann (ed.): Self-experience as world experience. Construction Verlag Berlin and Weimar 1981, pp. 21–40
  • Gottfried Fischborn : piece writing . Claus Hammel, Heiner Müller, Armin Stolper. Akademie Verlag Berlin 1981, pp. 43–95
  • Gerhard Fischer : Cement . In: Heiner Müller Handbook. Edited by Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi. Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2003. ISBN 3-476-01807-5
  • Hans-Jochen Irmer: The world premiere at the Berliner Ensemble. In: Fjodor Gladkow, Heiner Müller: cement . Edited by Fritz Mierau. Publishing house Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig 1975
  • Heinz Klunker: Vanishing points of the GDR theater. In: Theater heute Jahrbuch 1974, pp. 20ff., Erhard Friedrich Verlag, Seelze 1974
  • Fritz Mierau: Cement - fifty years later. In: Fjodor Gladkow, Heiner Müller: cement . Edited by Fritz Mierau. Publishing house Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig 1975
  • Sigrid Neef : cement . In: dies .: The theater of Ruth Berghaus . Berlin 1989, pp. 83-87
  • Henning Rischbieter : Review of the world premiere of cement . In: Theater heute 15 (1974), Erhard Friedrich Verlag, Seelze 1974

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heiner Müller Handbook. Edited by Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi. Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2003. ISBN 3-476-01807-5
  2. ↑ Heiner Müller Handbook. P. 293, edited by Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi. Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2003. ISBN 3-476-01807-5
  3. ↑ Bettina Gruber: Mythological Personnel . In: Hans-Thies Lehmann, Patrick Primavesi : Heiner Müller Handbook . Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-476-01807-5 , pp. 75-82
  4. ↑ Gottfried Fischborn: piece writing. Claus Hammel, Heiner Müller, Armin Stolper. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1981 p. 69.
  5. ↑ Gottfried Fischborn: piece writing. Claus Hammel, Heiner Müller, Armin Stolper. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1981, p. 70
  6. ↑ http://www.adk.de/de/archiv/archivStock/darstellende-kunst/kuenstler/Peter_Konwitschny_2.htm
  7. ↑ http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendung/kulturheute/474748/
  8. ↑ http://www.e-teatr.pl/pl/repertuar/36797,szczegoly.html
  9. ↑ http://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8066:zement-dimiter-gotscheff-wagt-sich-in-muenchen-einmal-mehr-in-einen-woerter-steinbruch-seines -leibdichters-heiner-mueller & catid = 38: die-Nachtkritik & Itemid = 40
  10. ↑ http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/zement-am-maxim-gorki-theater-retro-revolution-fuer-oder.691.de.html?dram:article_id=308991
  11. ↑ http://blog.schauspieldortmund.de/programmhefte/rambozement/heiner-mueller-war-die-droge-ueber-die-ich-ins-theater-gekommen-bin/

Web links

Wiktionary: cement  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations