Der Untertan (The Loyal Subject)

«Diederich Hessling was a dreamy, delicate child, frightened of everything, and troubled frequently by earache». This is how Heinrich Mann’s perceptive bildungsroman published in 1914 begins. «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. It is unsurpassed as a portrait of the morals of late Wilhelmine society, in which Mann’s protagonist Diederich Hessling celebrates his social rise based on his «cyclist’s mentality» – bowing to those above while kicking those below. He only forgets his insecurities at the stammtisch, working himself up to give great speeches that he never follows with any actions. However, Mann does not present Hessling as a joke – he is a complex but ultimately warped personality with a blind faith in authority. Mann offers clear echoes of the state of mind that Hessling’s unshakeable belief in his superiors may lead to, for which his novel «The Loyal Subject» is viewed as an early harbinger of the fascism that was to come. Later Mann would say that he «lacked the terminology then for the fascism as yet unborn, but not the idea behind it».

Following his critically and publicly acclaimed productions of «Götz von Berlichingen» and «Sankt Falstaff», resident director Alexander Eisenach continues his exuberantly theatrical exploration of societies at a political crossroads with Heinrich Mann’s «The Loyal Subject».