Raststätte Jammertal (UA)

In the organizer's words:

"A new song, a better song,

O friends, I will write it for you!

We want here on earth already

To build the kingdom of heaven."

This is what the famous poet Heinrich Heine wrote in his epic poem Deutschland. A Winter's Tale, when he traveled to his beloved, his hated Germany in 1843 to visit his mother. He had already been living in exile in France for twelve years and was longing for his homeland: Heine, the Jew, the Christian, the German, the Frenchman, the romantic, the erotic, the ironic overcomer of romanticism - and the political writer.

The friend of Marx and Engels hopes for an emancipatory revolution for Germany and yet cannot close his eyes to everything that stands in the way and which he artfully and mockingly sings about in his poetry: the German esprit de corps, the stuffiness, the melancholy, the love of order and the not-so-loving order that prevails through violence and censorship in the country of his birth.

And today? Where do we stand in relation to Heine's criticism of Germany and his call for change in the face of global polycrises, the general loss of confidence in democracy, the return of conservatism, authoritarianism, chauvinism, populism, nationalism, the universal "Me First", "Nation First"? What has become of Heine's new song? Are we singing the old one again?

In this play development, author and director Alexander Eisenach draws inspiration from Heine's lyrical work in order to continue his poetic-political exploration of German history in Kassel after Zonenrandgebiet (UA) and Anthropos Antigone (UA) and to pose the question of our pronounced need for security, our fears for the future and reactionary longings - GERMAN ANGST. And yet, despite all this:

"Be content, Father Rhine,

Don't think of bad songs,

You'll hear a better song soon -

Farewell, we'll meet again."

In cooperation with the Institute for German Studies at the University of Kassel and the Sara Nussbaum Center for Jewish Life.