German autumn

Venue: DT Stage - In a new play by Christopher Rüping, a daughter meets her father. She has many questions for him but doesn't get any answers because the demented father has forgotten where he comes from and who he is. In an autumn of election, when great oblivion is spreading in Germany, the theatre evening follows the daughter's questions and the father's silence in order to talk about the disorientation of the present: of speechlessness, of the end of shared stories, but also of possible utopias that arise behind this end. In return, Christopher Rüping and his ensemble are listening to German history. From the Romantic period, from the wars and ruins of the past, they talk about the most German of all seasons and about the vertigo of our days. The play Deutscher Herbst is co-produced with the Ruhrtriennale art festival and premieres at the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum. Just a few days later, the evening can be seen in Berlin.

Anyone who hears German Autumn probably first and foremost thinks of 1977. The terror of the RAF and the reaction of the state shaped an entire generation. But maybe the term brings up other autumns? The fall of the Wall, a song from school days, a painting by Caspar David Friedrich? While the fortunes of other nations change in spring, Germany has its fall. Autumns are phases in which our story thickens.

Christopher Rüping's theatre evening borrows its title in autumn 1946. This year, the 23-year-old Swedish author Stig Dagerman travels through Germany. He is a shooting star in his home country; for the daily newspaper Expressen, he visits Berlin, Hamburg, the Ruhr region: cities and regions that lie in misery, hunger and ruins. Dagerman calls his literary travel report Deutscher Herbst. It rains incessantly, autumn leaves are falling — and the young Swede asks himself the question: Will these people, who stagger so fragile between end and start, find or perish in democracy?

Exactly eighty years have passed since autumn 1946. About a human life. The evening at the theatre takes this distance as an opportunity to describe the present day. The people Stig Dagerman met between ruins will soon no longer be part of this picture or are no longer so. Nevertheless, the questions have remained or are back again. Will this country stagger back into old fears or will it find freedom? Which spring follows this fall?