Der Wendepunkt (nach Klaus Mann)

In the organizer's words:

The turning point according to Klaus Mann

by Maria Trautmann

Klaus Mann was an outsider, a child of his time and the son of a famous artist. He immersed himself deeply in the bohemian life of the roaring 20s, from which he was morally torn out by the rise of National Socialism, went into exile and eventually even joined the US army. Klaus Mann describes the most important phases of his life in his autobiography 'The Turning Point'. A biography that was initially written in English and published in the USA in 1942 under the title 'The Turning Point: Thirty-Five-Years in this Century'. The German, greatly expanded edition was only published posthumously in 1952.

DER WENDEPUNKT brings this central text of German cultural and intellectual life from the 1920s to the 1940s to the stage for the first time. In his highly concentrated solo, Sven Gey plays, dances and narrates Klaus Mann's life and gets to the bottom of the core question of Mann's work: How could the Third Reich come about while the whole democratic world looks on? Today, when this ghostly process seems to be repeating itself under new auspices in many parts of the world, the questions raised by this play are more topical and precarious than ever.

Text/director: Maria Trautmann with: Sven Gey

Double bass: Moritz Götzen/Torben Schug

Dramaturgy: Sindy Tscherrig, Jascha Sommer

Sound: Peter Rubel