Theatre play

A place, somewhere. Between past and present. Messengers appear. They report. They tell. They defend themselves. They contradict themselves. Their themes: Forgetting. Remembering. Germany. All of us. And again and again: A party at a castle, shortly before the end of the Second World War. A party during which over 180 forced laborers are murdered. A party that no one wants to remember and no one can forget.

The feast that Elfriede Jelinek makes the fixed point of her text has taken place: During a so-called SS evening party at the castle of Countess Batthyány, née Thyssen-Bornemisza, in Rechnitz / Austria, more than 180 Jewish-Hungarian forced laborers were killed in March 1945. An event that has still not been finally solved: witnesses died suddenly, the victims were never found, suspects lived unmolested – and the village community froze. A harrowing text about suppression, trivialization and mendacity.

Elfriede Jelinek, born in 1946 in Mürzzuschlag/Styria, is considered one of the most important authors of our time. She received the Büchner Prize in 1998 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004. “Rechnitz (Der Würgeengel)” was premiered at the Munich Kammerspiele in 2008. Enrico Lübbe, artistic director of Schauspiel Leipzig, staged the play in 2012 at Schauspielhaus Chemnitz as the first performance in an East German theater.