As one of the strangest peculiarities of Germany, Madame de Staël perceived the convinced provincialism of the intellectuals, which stood in such sharp contrast to the universalism of German philosophy, for example.
While small townspeople in other countries looked longingly for their capitals, for Paris or London, she found that German authors continued to be proud of their provincial homeland.
De Staël's famous book on Germany was published in 1813. Much has changed in the country since then, including the fact that only a few authors still live, think or write outside of Berlin.
Simon Strauss
Editor in the features section.
Follow I follow
Lukas Rietzschel, born in 1994 in Upper Lusatia, Saxony, is an exception. He lives, thinks and writes in the provinces, in the East German provinces, in Görlitz. His first play "Resistance" was premiered in Leipzig as a theatrical film committed by Enrico Lübbe. A grim tragedy over the fate of the rural area. Where the buses no longer come, the pubs close, the bakeries close, where people fall asleep lonely and nobody notices for a long time. A piece that comes across as undisguised and tangible as the characters it draws and like the story it tells: Isabelle, who became a doctor in Leipzig, comes to visit her home, in the village. To “Daddy” who devotedly cares for his paralyzed wife. Frank goes, that's his name, to Peggy, the physiotherapist, twice a week.which sometimes fries him a fried egg.
In the evening he sits with Steffen, the "system bull", in the pub and plays darts across the country.
Pork steaks, barbecue adventures, endless beer rounds - the full program and in between a G36 made of plastic, which you send to the Minister of the Interior as a deterrent.
This is organized by Basti, who works as a supplier and supplies the village population with Amazon parcels, but secretly dreams of opening a bar in his basement.
So that they don't all leave, like Isabelle, but stay here and have children.
Preferably with him.
Shoot the state
It happens, as it really happens in Germany today, not only in the East: “Daddy” feels the inner compulsion to put up resistance, to draw attention to himself, wants “those up there to panic”. “They” are the people in the cities who consider themselves more valuable than those in the country, whom they look down on because they eat cheap meat, stand in hobby rooms and have no pension provision. The policeman friend gets him a crossbow for self-defense, his wife dies, he gets into the car to "shoot the state". Rietzschel's piece only lasts an hour. In the tried and tested style of
short cuts
it strings together short dialogue scenes that are all permeated by the oppressive mood of loss, the shame of being singled out, and the resulting feeling of inadequacy. Rietzschel justifies nothing of what his characters do; but neither does he defame them. He lets them speak of their needs and does not show them up.
In some respects, his piece pays homage to the French author sociologist Didier Eribon, who with “Return to Reims” wrote a kind of standard work on an autobiographical approach to the native province and its political imponderables. Both are connected by a slight nostalgic trait, which at Rietzschel is not only expressed in the Rotkäppchen sparkling wine, the Marx money box and the "Mutti" saga, but also shows in the dreams of his characters. One wants to sell local oak at the weekly market in Leipzig, the other raves about a time when there were no milking machines. What is more important, however, is that Rietzschel, unlike many of his generation comrades, takes up the tension of the province and expresses it in simple words,without confronting them with a know-it-all theory or language improvements. For some it will be too simple-minded, too naive; but it is precisely in direct, immediate speech that the strength lies here. “Resistance” cannot be seen as a great work of art or as a moral-political paradigm for writing schools, but as a convincing attempt to take the drama seriously in its political education.
The aesthetics of the staging is also interesting. Both the stage and the costume, the appearance and radiance of the characters are strongly oriented towards the highly artificial imagery of Susanne Kennedy, perhaps the most powerful inventor of a new theater aesthetic in recent years. Even if Kennedy himself didn't produce much and has meanwhile almost given up on the theater and said goodbye to the environment, her stage fantasies of the early 2010s left a lasting impression on a young generation of theater people. In Leipzig, Kennedy's influence is asserted through her trusted costume designer Teresa Vergho. This is great luck for the evening and the staging,because how profane would a realistic atmosphere have looked? Only through the surreally shimmering, unreally fantastic train does this provincial atmosphere get what it really misses: the admission of being a world of its own.