Im Westen nichts Neues

In the organizer's words:

"We are at war with ourselves. Every shot that hits, hits one of us."

With TV star Thorsten Nindel.

1914: 19-year-old Paul Bäumer and his classmates have their A-levels in the bag and, spurred on by their class teacher, enthusiastically sign up to serve in the First World War. Paul survives four years in the constant face of death - everything seems to have a happy ending, but fate has a different plan. Paul Bäumer falls in October 1918 - on a day that was so calm and quiet on the entire front that the army report was limited to the sentence "Nothing new in the west".
His novel named after this report made Erich Maria Remarque instantly famous in 1928: young men, exposed to a hell of drumfire, trenches and poison gas attacks, give an unsparing account of everyday life in the war. They describe the traumatic alternation between idle boredom and deadly combat, between patriotic hero myth and loneliness, between speechlessness at home and comradeship in the field. Without transition, horror stands next to senselessness, the smell of a roast suckling pig next to torn bodies...

Especially today, the questions of young soldiers are more topical than they have been for a long time: Why is someone I don't know, who doesn't know me, declared an enemy? How can I find my place in society again after the war? What happens when social awareness of the importance of war gradually disappears? How fragile is our peace when the war simply takes place in a different place?
Remarque's novel quickly became the anti-war novel of the 20th century, a powerful plea for peace. Hope, solidarity and community break through in it. "Filmed by Hollywood, burned by the National Socialists, Im Westen nichts Neues is one of the most widely read books of all time," writes the Staatsschauspiel Dresden.

"Only now do I see that you are a human being like me."
- Paul in the play

📅 On November 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 21, 22 and 23, 2025 at the Hoftheater in Sendling (Plinganserstraße 6 at @stemmerhof_official). Mon-Sat at 7.30 pm, Sun at 6 pm

🎭 With Thorsten Nindel (Katczinsky, et al.), Gabriel N. Walther (Paul Bäumer), Christian Buse (Koch, Major et al.), Peer-Robin Hagel (Kropp et al.), Anna Wagner (Die junge Frau et al.), Lea Geszti (Mutter Bäumer, Mutter Kemmerich et al.)