Benedikt Brachtel

Heinrich Mann’s perceptive bildungsroman published in 1914 «The Loyal Subject» is a wickedly humorous portrait of the Wilhelmine Empire and its self-congratulatory middle classes with their nationalistic fantasies of being a great power. Mann’s protagonist Diederich Hessling is a spineless opportunist with no moral courage. He only forgets his insecurities at the stammtisch, working himself up to give great nationalistic speeches. However, Mann does not present Hessling as a joke – he is a complex but ultimately warped personality with a blind faith in authority.

A UFO in the shape of a weisswurst lands in front of the Bayerische Staatskanzlei: is this a film or reality? The film maker and asphalt cowboy Klaus Lemke embarks together with a group of aliens on a high speed, madcap journey through Munich’s history in search of what the city once was and could perhaps be in future. Albert Ostermaier’s new play is an affectionate homage to the film poet Klaus Lemke, who died in 2022, and both a hymn to and reckoning with his home city of Munich.

When Goethe set «Götz von Berlichingen» down on paper in 1771 in a true writing frenzy, the 22-year-old writer was still a complete unknown. This came to an abrupt end with the publication of «Götz», as suddenly the young poet was being talked about everywhere. Goethe’s early work is a powerful stage epic with over fifty locations, several plots running in parallel and a huge cast of characters. What is more: Goethe dispensed with all the customary conventions that 18^th century drama had been using up to that point.

A prince of fashion and a fairy-tale king. A bird of paradise and a cult figure. A Munich original and a philanthropist. During the course of his lifetime, Rudolph Moshammer was given countless of these nicknames and soubriquets. Everyone recognized him as an eccentric with his dog Daisy on his arm, a talk show guest and man of society. Like his role model, Bavaria’s fairy-tale king Ludwig II, he loved glamour, opulence, and excess. In his appearances as an actor and in advertisements, as a singer in the preliminary round for the Eurovision Song Contest and with books like «Mama und ich» (Mama and Me), he became a cult figure and his fashion boutique «Carnaval de Venise» in Maximilianstraße became a cult address and place of pilgrimage for Mosi fans.

The French frigate «Medusa» is shipwrecked two days' voyage from its destination. For author and director Alexander Eisenach, the events that follow symbolise a society in which the values of communal coexistence have lost their validity.

Austrian playwright Ewald Palmetshofer translates Shakespeare's royal drama «King Henry IV» into the present day of eroding democracies with sophisticated language and defiant humour.