Die Räuber

The world is in turmoil. Not only are the harbingers of the French Revolution shaking society to its core through class struggles and violence, but the family order of the elderly Count von Moor is also on the verge of collapse. Franz, the second-born son, feels cheated out of his father’s favor and seeks revenge. He hatches a plot against his older, favored brother Karl, resulting in Karl’s disinheritance by their father. Hurt by his father’s rejection, Karl joins a band of robbers to fight against injustice in society. While Karl champions individual freedom and emancipation from the tyrannical state, Franz reveals the dark side of the pursuit of power. The situation spirals out of control; the struggle for individual freedom becomes the spark for a relentless campaign of destruction. Hatred, self-absorption, and unbridled violence run rampant.

When Schiller’s play *The Robbers* premiered on January 13, 1782, at the National Theater in Mannheim, the audience reacted with sheer electrification. Schiller’s new theatrical style was fast-paced, eloquent, and irreverent. “The theater resembled a madhouse—rolling eyes, clenched fists, stamping feet, hoarse cries from the audience! Strangers fell into each other’s arms, sobbing. Women staggered toward the door, on the verge of fainting. It was a general dissolution, as if in chaos, from whose mists a new creation bursts forth!” At the Deutsches Theater, director Claudia Bossard had already explored the connection between family and violence in bourgeois circles in her acclaimed world premiere of Rainald Goetz’s *Baracke*. By interpreting Schiller’s famous classic as a historical document of the era’s mindset, she continues her examination of German middle-class society and explores the interplay of art, ethics, and politics within the terror of the “fortress of the family.”