VERGELTUNG

In the organizer's words:

"Perhaps we really must finally learn to understand that the fabric of our civilization is itself woven from fire and smoke." (W.G. Sebald) It all begins at an altitude of 4000 meters: a 600 meter wide and 30 kilometer long stream of US bombers moves towards a city. Below them, bombs falling shortly afterwards, the parachutes of a bomber crew, low-flying aircraft and flak towers. At the bottom, houses and streets on which staggering people are "grilled" in boiling tar. Air raid shelters, cellars, confusion, an unbelievable horror scenario. A mother searches for her son, who has already died as an anti-aircraft helper; a young woman is buried with a man she doesn't know and raped by him under the rubble. Gert Ledig's novel VERGELTUNG takes a cold and unsentimental look at the destructive violence of an Allied air raid in July 1944. The city referred to here remains nameless - but could be called Kiev, Tehran or Cologne. Here too, after the night of May 30-31, 1942, the cathedral was the only thing left standing in a vast landscape of ruins. The book was published in 1956, when Heinrich Böll or Günter Grass had long since drawn the post-war reality of the Federal Republic of Germany. It was soon forgotten. To this day, the trauma of the air raids remains largely unaddressed, while the jumbled post-war architecture of the inner cities continues to silently bear witness to the horrors of that time. Director Sebastian Baumgarten is staging Ledig's declaration of war against war-mongering phrases of "fatherland, heroism, tradition, faith and honor" as a world premiere for Schauspiel Köln.