Glaube Liebe Hoffnung

In the organizer's words:

Elisabeth is confident. Although she has no job at the moment, no trade license and still has a fine to pay, she can rely on herself. Or rather, her body. She wants to sell it to the anatomical institute. For scientific experiments after her death. In return, she hopes to receive 150 marks right now. That would be enough money for her trade license. And with that, she could become self-employed and start working again. And once she had a job, the world would be open to her again! The only problem is that Elisabeth seems to have been completely misinformed. The institute has no interest in acquiring her body. Times are bad. The lonely taxidermist wants to help anyway and lends her the money. She in turn uses it to pay off her criminal record. Of course, he would never have given his hard-earned money to a criminal. He reports her for fraud and Elisabeth gets a prison sentence. Back in freedom, she joins the long queue of job-seekers outside the welfare office. Without success. By chance, she meets the policeman Alfons. The two fall in love, but Elisabeth doesn't tell him that she has fallen foul of the law. When this comes to light, he dumps her so as not to jeopardize his career. Elisabeth is alone again. With no prospects and torn apart by everyday circumstances, she has lost her faith in a better society, her love for Alfons and the hope that she will be lucky again.

How desperate must a young woman be to offer her body for sale? What social circumstances drive people into such hopeless situations? Ödön von Horváth placed these questions at the center of his 1932 play, revealing not miserable people, but conditions that make people miserable. Day after day, Elisabeth walks a very fine line between hope and despair. Lack is her strongest driving force. All she wants is work and independence. All she gets is the constant struggle against social and moral constraints in a patriarchal society marked by unemployment and coldness, in which everyone is afraid of being relegated and in which everyone fears for their own existence.

Julia Hölscher first studied singing and worked as a singer at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg before studying directing at the local theater academy. Her first productions took her to Schauspiel Hannover, Schauspiel Düsseldorf and Schauspiel Frankfurt. From 2009 to 2013, she was in-house director at Staatsschauspiel Dresden, and from 2015 to 2020 at Theater Basel. She has also been directing music theater since 2013 and works regularly as a radio play director for Deutschlandfunk Kultur. She also teaches at the Theaterakademie Hamburg and the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt.