The Captain from Köpenick

“There is no luck with, and there is no misfortune with. Det is janz a clean outright injustice is det! There is more injustice in the world, sheene full-scale injustice. No, Hamse puffed too long for me, Hamse just waxy for me, there's keen pennen more, I want to know Det nu Janz Jenau!”

On October 16, 1906, shoemaker Wilhelm Voigt stormed Köpenick City Hall — disguised as a captain and with two squads of authoritarian soldiers in their wake. A spectacular coup and one of the strangest stories in German history, because it holds up a mirror to a society in a frenzy of uniform. The captain from Köpenick found revenants in figures such as Franz Biberkopf from “Berlin Alexanderplatz” or Beckmann from “Outside the Door,” but none of these outsiders have so cleverly transformed the military in their country. He is therefore not a captain, but a person who does not fit into society and therefore either stands in front of closed doors or is locked behind closed doors. When Carl Zuckmayer edited the material for the stage in 1931, he also went into opposition to the National Socialist regime, for which Joseph Goebbels — like his main character — offered him the prospect of getting to know a Prussian prison from the inside.

Max Hopp, himself born in Köpenick, creates a staged reading with this famous Berlin theme. He reads and plays the shoemaker Voigt as well as the uniform cutter Wabschke, Mayor Obermüller, the Plörösenmieze and many other characters from this true Köpenickiade, the so-called Eulenspiegel of the Wilhelmine Military State. He is accompanied by musician Doris Decker, who composes the stage music together with Marlon Mausbach.