Mephisto

MEPHISTO

Based on the novel by Klaus Mann

Hendrik Höfgen is an actor and dreams of great success - and of Berlin. He wants to shine in the major roles of dramatic literature on the great stages of the capital in the 1930s. While he single-mindedly pursues his career, the political situation becomes increasingly tense. Eventually, the National Socialists took power and the actually apolitical Hendrik Höfgen became one of their cultural representatives. Former companions increasingly disappear from his field of vision as dissidents. The character of Mephistopheles in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Faust" was to become his signature role. It is precisely this seducer of evil that takes on a special and ambivalent significance in the face of the National Socialist seizure of power.

Klaus Mann published his novel in exile in 1936, making him one of the first authors to deal with the conditions within the "Third Reich". He paints a picture of a man who is prepared to uncritically place himself at the service of an authoritarian power in order to achieve personal artistic success. In the actor Hendrik Höfgen, he saw the exponent of a "profoundly untrue, unreal regime".
Introductory soirée: