Roman Knižka & OPUS 45: „Dass ein gutes Deutschland blühe …“. Leben nach Kriegsende 1945–1949 (Schwerpunkt: Hamburg) Musikalische Lesung anlässlich 80 Jahre Kriegsende

In the organizer's words:

May 8, 2025: It is the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War started by Hitler's Germany and the liberation of Germany from National Socialism. To mark the occasion, Roman Knižka and the OPUS 45 wind quintet return to the early post-war period of 1945-1949 in their new program. 8 May 1945: With the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht, Hitler's Germany was officially defeated. The Second World War had lasted almost six years and cost an unimaginable 60 million victims. In Germany, the major cities lay in ruins. Countless people were homeless, on the run or prisoners of war. The victorious powers were now in charge of the country.

"That a good Germany may flourish ..." uses literary texts, reports and contemporary testimonies to tell of a country between apocalypse and awakening, of the arrival of the victors, of the Germans' confrontation with the atrocities of the Nazi regime, of the fate of Jewish concentration camp survivors who wandered through the land of the perpetrators as "displaced persons" after their liberation, of hunger winters, displaced persons and war returnees. Political caesuras such as the Potsdam Conference, the Nuremberg Trials, the currency reform or the Berlin Blockade are addressed, as are the often questionable practices of denazification procedures in everyday life.

Literature and music after 1945: The program also deals with cultural awakenings and new beginnings. Whether or how one should still write after the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship and the catastrophe of the Second World War was intensively discussed by writers of the time. Roman Knižka recites from works of post-war literature by Wolfgang Borchert, Bertolt Brecht and Nelly Sachs.

Shortly after the end of the war, forums for new music were established in completely bombed-out cities such as Darmstadt and Munich. OPUS 45 interprets works by the post-war avant-gardists György Ligeti and Karl Amadeus Hartmann as well as other compositions on the pulse of the times by Dmitri Shostakovich and Hanns Eisler. There will also be music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Charles Koechlin and Jean Françaix. Swing and contemporary hits, which round off the musical portrait of the era, convey how the young post-war generation in particular developed an often almost insatiable desire for entertainment and dance.

May 8, 1945? For many Germans, the official end of the war was an unspectacular day in the ongoing chaos. People in the country often experienced the end of the Second World War at different times and in different ways.

In the first part of the program, Roman Knižka reports in detail on what happened in Hamburg.

"That a good Germany may flourish ..." - Life after the end of the war 1945-1949 recalls the devastating consequences of the Second World War and the Nazi dictatorship. Based on the epochal caesura of 1945, Roman Knižka and OPUS 45 shed light on an ambivalent and tense transitional period between destruction and a new beginning. This ended with the founding of two German states and thus the division of Germany, the consequences of which can still be felt today.

Texts by Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Wolfgang Borchert, Margaret Bourke-White, Bertolt Brecht, Stig Dagerman and Nelly Sachs, among others

Music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Hanns Eisler, Jean Françaix, Jacques Ibert, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, György Ligeti, Dmitri Shostakovich and Richard Strauss, among others

Recitation: Roman Knižka

Dramaturgy: Kathrin Liebhäuser

The artists: Roman Knižka + Wind Quintet OPUS 45 = Ensemble OPUS 45

Roman Knižka was born in Bautzen in 1970, initially trained as a theater carpenter at the Dresden Semperoper and left the GDR via the Green Border before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

After studying at the drama school in Bochum, he first acted at the local theater and then began to make a name for himself in TV dramas, romantic films, "crime scenes" and various cinema productions. He also regularly records audio books and is very successful on stage. His distinctive, versatile and engaging voice delights both children and adults.

The OPUS 45 wind quintet was founded during an orchestral project in Berlin: Johannes Brahms' "Ein deutsches Requiem" (opus 45) was on the program and has given the ensemble its name ever since. The wind quintet, consisting of musicians from the Hamburg State Opera, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover and the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, among others, has been exploring new, interdisciplinary paths together with actor Roman Knižka for some time now. This has resulted in literary chamber music evenings that are unique in the German-speaking concert landscape, such as the program on Nazi resistance ("Den Nazis eine schallende Ohrfeige versetzen!") or the staged reading on the history and present of right-wing violence in Germany, which the ensemble titled with the Primo Levi quote "Es ist geschehen, und folglich kann es wieder geschehen ...". In the program "I once had a beautiful fatherland ...", Roman Knižka and the five musicians look back on 1,700 years of Jewish life in Germany. They illustrate the fascinating diversity of Jewish life on German soil, report on the disenfranchisement, expulsion and extermination of German Jews under the National Socialist regime and provide insights into Jewish life in Germany today, 80 years after the end of the war.

The ensemble tours nationwide with all its programs. In June 2022, OPUS 45 released its first DVD, the above-mentioned program on Nazi resistance "Den Nazis eine schallende Ohrfeige versetzen!" in cooperation with various state centers and the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb). The film and accompanying educational material have been elaborately prepared digitally and can be viewed here as a reference: https://www.opus45-derfilm.de/.

Contact the ensemble:

Benjamin Comparot Bredenbekstraße 2 22397 Hamburg

Phone: (0176) 62110083 E-mail: benjamin.comparot@gmx.de

"Showreel" (role examples) by Roman Knižka:

https://t1p.de/dm6ms

www.opus-45.de

www.opus45-derfilm.de

www.facebook.com/opus45

www.instagram.com/ensembleopus45

Responsible: Dr. Sabine Bamberger-Stemmann