Der Vorleser

In the organizer's words:

Play based on Bernhard Schlink, stage version by Mirjam Neidhart

Guest performance Westfälisches Landestheater

From 14 years

Description

At the end of the 1950s, 15-year-old Michael meets Hanna. She is 36. The initial excitement, the longed-for and yet unexpected act of love, develops into a relationship that becomes a key experience for both of them that shapes them for decades. As regularly as they sleep together, it is important to Hanna that he reads to her from works that he is studying at school and that she suggests to him. He becomes her reader. And she becomes the authority on which he orients himself. Until she suddenly disappears. Seven years later, as a law student, Michael attends a war crimes trial against former female guards at a subcamp of Auschwitz and discovers Hanna among the defendants. He realizes that she is illiterate and could not have committed any of the crimes she is accused of. He could intervene, he could save her - but he doesn't.

Bernhard Schlink's novel The Reader, published in 1995, revolves around the complex questions of guilt and responsibility in the aftermath of the Holocaust. From 1988 to 2006, Schlink was a judge at the Constitutional Court of North Rhine-Westphalia in Münster, but then concentrated more and more on writing. His novel, which has been translated into over 50 languages and made into a highly successful film starring Kate Winslet and David Kross, was his breakthrough as a writer. Today, he is one of the most successful German-language authors.