Silence.

Almost deafening.

It is believed that the literal pin has to fall like in the theater of Epidaurus.

But we're sitting in the Frankfurt theater: director Felicitas Brucker at her desk in the fifth row, next to her production dramaturge Alexander Leiffheidt and a number of employees scattered in the auditorium.

Everyone is holding their breath.

The dress rehearsal for “Michael Kohlhaas”, a dramatic adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's novel of the same name, begins on the front of the stage.

“What do you want?” Asks Luther, alias Matthias Redlhammer.

His uninvited guest, horse dealer Kohlhaas alias Sebastian Reiss, wants to confess his crimes, but does not want to forgive his archenemy Tronka, who cheated him out of two cents.

Then "Luther turned his back on him", so it is with Kleist.

Claudia Schülke

Freelance author in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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And that is where Brucker's staging begins. “This is not the historical Luther,” the director had explained in an earlier conversation. The figure appears to her as a spiritual authority and "bracket". Bracket? Between the two parts of the one-and-a-half-hour production that premieres on September 19th in the Great House. In the first half she concentrated on the character of the title hero, according to Brucker: “On the path and transformation of a completely normal person. Kohlhaas is not extreme per se, but a middle-class man with whom many people can identify. Only after he has lost his trust in the judiciary and the state system and his wife perished violently does he see himself released from any obligation to the state. ”In the second half, Brucker asks about the system: after nepotism,Intrigue and corruption in the judiciary.

"This is the state of our society"

The Luther scene not only braces the direction concept, it also provides an answer to the question of how a normal citizen can become a terrorist. Kohlhaas feels “rejected” by society because he is “denied the protection of the law!” Kleist said with sympathetic emphasis. "Whoever denies me, he gives me ... the club that protects myself, into my hand." This is the justification of the vigilante justice, which Kohlhaas resorts to and which degenerates more and more into a campaign of revenge: The avenger ignites with his gang to all the cities that harbor Tronka. Then Nagelschmidt joins him. “This is even more radical,” says Brucker. "It stands for a group of young people who are basically no longer ready to accept the prevailing form of society, feel disadvantaged by the elite and are ready toto knock everything over. "

“He continues the story,” says the director. It sounds as if the novella continues from 1810 to the present day. This is exactly what attracted Brucker to the text: “This is the state of our society. We're sitting on a powder keg. Many people have lost confidence in our state and legal system and act with a willingness to use violence. Violence and counter-violence, the police presence and the anger of the citizens are increasing continuously. "The director, who has lived in Paris with her husband and son for six years, knows that an armed vigilante group has already formed there:" And not in the Banlieues. ”Even during her studies in Munich, she was interested in the things that boil under the varnish of civilization and that could break out at any time as something“ beastly ”.When she talked to the acting director Anselm Weber about possible subjects, she caught fire for “Kohlhaas”.