The Marquise of O. and —

Venue: DT Stage - The unthinkable happens in a northern Italian fortress: While Russian troops storm the city, the widowed marquise of O. is almost the victim of an attack — until a Russian officer, Count F., seemingly heroically rescues her. After the attack, he disappears without a word, and everything seems to be over. A few weeks later, however, she is appalled to discover that she is pregnant. No reminder. Without consent. And without a person who believes their claims of innocence. Banned by her family, she uses a newspaper ad to search for the person who raped and impregnated her.

Heinrich von Kleist published his novel in 1808 with the reference “After a true story” and reports factually, soberly and in precise detail about the story of the Marquise; only for the moment of action itself, he sets what is perhaps the most famous indent in world literature: The language fails, and there is an abrupt cut where the decisive factor should actually be.

In her first work at the Deutsches Theater, Hungarian director Ildikó Gáspár interweaves three more cases “based on true events” with that of the Marquise. Franca Viola was abducted and raped in Italy in 1966 by her criminal ex-fiancé in order to force her to marry him through the legal means of a “recovery marriage.” Erika Renner was attacked, drugged — and then mutilated with lye — by her ex-boyfriend in her own apartment in 2013. And finally, Gisèle Pelicot, the woman who, after 50 years of marriage, learns from investigators that her husband had regularly drugged and raped her and, in this state, offered to rape dozens of other men on the Internet.

Four women. Three centuries. And yet the same pattern: violence. silence. Debt reversal. But also: resistance. voice. change. Whether fictional like The Marquise, historically like Viola or currently like Pelicot and Renner — they all tell us what happens when women no longer remain silent, when they leave the room of shame and force the perpetrators there.