Men's fantasies

Venue: Box - In the 1970s, when fascist perpetration in German society was still largely silent, cultural scientist Klaus Theweleit presented a groundbreaking analysis of the connections between masculinity and fascism with men's fantasies: Based on Freikorps literature from the 1920s, he clairvoyantly put together the destructive self-and female image of the “soldier man” and combined sexuality, gender and violence the development of National Socialism in a new light.

Around 45 years after the initial release, director Theresa Thomasberger adopts Theweleit's work as spoken text for the stage: For her and her team, the epochal investigation forms the basis for a survey of current forms of fascist masculinity, from the devaluation of women* in media reality to current abysmal forms of collectivity.

Because: While the ideal of the “strong man” seems outdated on the one hand, wars produce new forms of fighting; self-empowered hordes storm political institutions and fuel authoritarian backlash. Online equality is also seen as oppression: The Incel community — men living involuntarily without sex — believes they have a right to women and sexuality because of their gender; angry alpha-males and woman*hostile pick-up masters conjure up unattainable notions of masculinity and despair of them at the same time. Instead of declaring these ideals to be a problem, the fear of feminist resistance, which is happening with great force at the same time, is being fuelled.

How do Theweleit's texts work today? What starting points do they offer? To explore this, playwrights Svenja Viola Bungarten, Ivana Sokola and Gerhild Steinbuch have added lyrics to the fantasies of men and thought of them from today's female perspectives.

Gerhild Steinbuch's text portrays a perpetrator mother in poetic language: a woman whose son perpetrates sexual violence against women, who becomes the perpetrator and thus shakes his mother's self-image and image of others. In Ivana Sokola's contribution, an exhausted men's chanting chorus questions their own affiliation in society and searches for their place between singing club, volunteer fire department and fishing vacation. Svenja Viola Bungarten deals with the right-wing edges of Internet culture: in her text, an influencer tells her followers about her personal transformation — from raging feminist to trad wife.