Alias Anastasius

The author duo Matter*Verse has written a piece for director Fritzi Wartenberg about a dazzling real historical figure: born in 1687 in Thuringia as Catharina Linck, at the age of 15, Linck decides to break out of an otherworldly life in an orphanage and establish a new identity.

Catharina denies life as a man — as Anastasius Rosenstengel — is drafted into the military, is soon considered a womanizer, deserts, is sentenced to death, is able to flee, marries the young Catharina Mühlhahn and is sentenced to death by a court for the second time. Anastasius Rosenstengel was the last person read as a woman in Europe who was executed for fornication with another woman in 1721.