Im Menschen muss alles herrlich sein

In the organizer's words:

The novel Im Menschen muss alles herrlich sein by Sasha Marianna Salzmann tells of the collapse of a political system, of times of social upheaval and their effects on the lives of two friends, Lena and Tatjana, who left Ukraine in the 1990s and became stranded in Jena, and their daughters Edita and Nina - who each in their own way try to come to terms in the present with the almost unknown legacy of their mothers, with the collapse of the colossus Soviet Union and its aftermath. Through various detours, through conversations with relatives, through books, through work, through research on the Internet, the daughters only gradually realize what made their mothers (and grandmothers) the women they are today - and in the process come across numerous unknown spots, the beautiful and the terrible, the forgotten, the repressed, the silences. "The land they were born into has already been amputated, but it still hurts. Little else can be said with certainty." Is it still possible, Nina wonders, to speak to one's mother not in the past, or in the future? To look her in the eye only in the now? To stop reproaching herself for what was, or lamenting what will never be? But the closer they get, the blurrier the picture seems to become, the more questions arise.

In the NZZ's series "Was mich bewegt" (What Moves Me), in which important voices of the international literary scene have their say, Sasha Marianna Salzmann writes: "'Secrets' is the name of a Ukrainian game in which children dig a hole in the ground, throw in everything colorful they can find - blooming flowers, shiny stones, garish hair elastics, shimmering doll clothes - then they put a glass pane over the pit, cover it with earth and run away. Only when they feel unobserved do they return, uncover the spot again, and view their secret treasures through the glass." It is after this game that one of the most distinctive voices of contemporary Ukraine, Oksana Sabushko, named her 2009 novel: Museum of Forgotten Secrets. Zabushko traces this game back to the time when the Bolsheviks took power in Ukraine and people felt compelled to bury their icons or their jewelry, in fact, anything that was dear to them. When Zabushko was asked a few years later whether it made any sense at all to dig up the long-hidden Ukrainian secrets, she replied that this was the real question in Ukrainian society since the country's independence. After all, at least two generations lived with silence. The essence of a secret is that one remains clueless as to who else knows and about what exactly. Even whether one knows the whole story oneself and whether it corresponds to the truth remains hidden from one. If, as in the case of Ukraine, it is a historical event, a genocide, then the mystery is part of a collective experience that flows like lava under a crust of silence." The novel Im Menschen muss alles herrlich sein leaves room for these mysteries - and finds a language, for the questions that should be asked.

Director Sebastian Nübling and author* Sasha Marianna Salzmann have a very long collaboration, he has already premiered Salzmann's first novel Ausser sich at the Maxim Gorki Theater.

Premiere on 27/October 2023

Photo: Esra Rotthoff

In the context of the 6th Berlin Autumn Salon 2023 LOST - YOU GO SLAVIA This content has been machine translated.