Monika Pangerl

Elisabeth Gärtner, a retired architect, has only one more wish: she wants to die. Her beloved husband died of cancer three years ago and without him life has no meaning for her any more. A drug that would allow her to die of her own volition has been refused her. Now the Ethics Council must make a decision on her case. Expert witnesses from the fields of law, medicine and theology argue over the question:  Does a human being have a right to determine their own death? Are doctors allowed to help someone commit suicide? And who do our lives actually belong to? To us? To the state? Or to God?

The Munich dramatist Frank Wedekind spent over twenty years working on what he called his monster tragedy which, due to harsh censorship, would never be performed in his home city during his lifetime. It was too indecent, too lewd. In Lulu, Wedekind created a snake, a creature «to tempt, to seduce» – and to murder. For her lovers, Lulu is like a screen onto which they can project their desires – whatever a man wants, he will find it in her. And it goes further: Lulu’s seductions drive an entire succession of her lovers in Munich and Paris to their deaths until she ultimately throws herself into death’s arms in the back streets of London.