Germania: Tod in Berlin / Der Auftrag

by heiner-muller

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Genres: German Literature, Theatre, Plays, Philosophy, Germany

111 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book during a recent visit to the Strand bookstore in New York City. I was looking for something to read on the plane home to the West Coast, since I had annoyingly left my “primary read” on the plane there. I bought this for the silliest of reasons – because I knew the publisher, and even had become friends with and collaborated with the individuals involved back in the 80s and 90s. I knew nothing about this book, but I figured there would at least be a warm glow of nostalgia surrounding the thing, more or less the right kind of distraction for an airplane read.

So, what was it I discovered on the flight (and since)? Heiner Müller was a writer, primarily a playwright, living in the DDR and active from the late fifties until at least when this book was published, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginnings of reunification. Wikipedia tells me he was more or less a dissident and that his plays were banned in East Germany and that he was thrown out of Party organizations. This book is largely composed of interviews and reviews written by him, punctuated with short bits of poetry and other written works, but none of his drama is shown, only talked about. Honestly, although toward the end of the book there are some mentions, I didn’t get the sense of a “dissident” or suppressed writer from reading this. I got the impression of a Party-line apparatchik with intellectual pretensions. That’s hardly fair, since so little of his actual artistic work is presented here, but his own evasions and refusals to discuss his work in the interviews are where it came from. The low point comes when he mentions, in the context of the Berlin Wall, that even the French revolution had to seal off the borders, then refuses to actually condemn the shoot-to-kill order issued by the SED. “I have answered that before.” Not in this book, you haven’t, buddy.

I suspect that some of this evasiveness is a result of the fact that many of the interviews and written pieces came from before the fall of the Wall, and his need to remain “politically neutral” in order to continue enjoying privileges such as his ability to travel to the West and have his plays performed there. He hoped, I think, that the real message of his work was subtle enough to escape censorship but clear enough to be understood by the audiences who got to see it. He did remain a committed socialist, however critical he was of the Soviet Bloc and its dictatorial approach, and this also complicates the matter, though maybe not in entirely a negative sense. In fact, I suspect from knowing Semiotext(e) as well as I once did, that this was the actual point – to show that there were Left-inclined radicals living in the DDR who could critique capitalism rather than just celebrating the ostensible “freedom” brought on by reunification. Today, it looks pretty out of date, especially as none of his predictions for the future came remotely true, but it could be a valuable snapshot of a moment, from a perspective that is largely lost today.

[Ina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ich würde lügen würde ich so tun als musste ich nicht extrem viele Dinge googlen um die Referenzen zu verstehen. Aber ich würde auch lügen würde ich sagen das hat sich nicht gelohnt.
Eine Satire die vor nichts gescheut ist, sehr brutal an vielen Stellen aber grotesk als Mittel zum Zweck und auch einfach extrem witzig.
Ich würde das Drama unglaublich gerne aufgeführt sehen, besonders wegen der Regieanweisungen und der extreme Bildlichkeit des Inhalts.

[Sherin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Germania: "Hitler bewegt sich, gähnt, macht ein paar Schritte, probiert seine Posen, trinkt aus einem Kanister Benzin usw. [...] Goebbels, mit Klumpfuß und riesigen Brüsten, hochschwanger."

Auftrag: keine Ahnung. Frankreich, Revolution und Rassismus. Die Dreifaltigkeit der Franzosen ig. + Robespierre, Danton und Napoleon

Wie soll man die beiden Stücke bewerten?

[Nika · Rating 1 out of 5]

Germania. Tod in Berlin ist ein schwer zugängliches Drama, dem jeder erkannbare Sinn fehlt. Die Parodien wirken eher grotesk als lustig, die Gewaltdarstellungen und das geschilderte Verhalten sind durchweg abstoßend. Außer dass es beispielhaft für postdramatisches Theater ist, hat dieses Drama in meinen Augen wenig Daseinsberechtigung.

[Mesoscope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of essays, interviews, and short poem-like writings by Heiner Müller - very illuminating to the author's work. Otherwise valuable for his important and thought-provoking views on history, politics, and the theater. Müller was an Eastern European intellectual of no mean intellectual powers, and it's quite interesting to hear the story of the Cold War years narrated by a privileged individual living in the DDR by choice, and not for any lame ideological reasons. I was particularly engaged by his analysis of the separation between real life and work in capitalist countries, and the degree to which East Germany is weak in comparison to the West primarily with respect to categories that the East rejects.

[Erich · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bertolt Brechts Stücke mag ich sehr, aber das hier von Heiner Müller war eine einzige Enttäuschung. Nur vereinzelt hatte ich Spass bei der Lektüre. Meistens war ich aber nur gelangweilt und kontte nicht in seine vielleicht zu subtile Gedanken eintauchen.

[karina · Rating 3 out of 5]

berlin trip study. from library 📚 💪 i like best when he says, the function of poetry is to defend man against his banalization and transformation into an object