Zum letzten Mal | Eisenstein von Christoph Nussbaumeder

In the organizer's words:

It all begins with a lie in April 1945, when young Erna Schatzschneider flees Bohemia to escape the Red Army. She wants to go to Eisenstein, a small town in Bavaria, where her uncle works on the farm of the wealthy Hufnagel family. Her fiancé died a long time ago in the Russian Winter War. But Erna keeps this secret from the Hufnagels. Instead, she tells them that he was recently shot while they were on the run together. She has to let her fiancé live a little longer in order to lend credibility to the story that is supposed to save her life.

Erna met an escaped concentration camp prisoner on her way to Bavaria and walked part of the way with him, keeping each other warm at night. And when they parted shortly before Eisenstein, Erna was carrying a child in her womb. She is lucky that Josef Hufnagel, the owner of the farm, likes her. He gives her a roof over her head and comforts her over his wife's illness. Erna claims that the child is his. He lets her stay on the condition that she keeps quiet about his supposed paternity. When Erna finally has the courage to tell Josef about the white lie she once told, it is already too late. The stone that sets the avalanche of misfortune rolling has long since been set in motion.

In six time jumps between 1945 and 2008, Christoph Nußbaumeder tells the gripping and touching family saga of the Schatzschneiders and Hufnagels in the village of Eisenstein over three generations. This takes place against the backdrop of important events in West German history, in which lying, concealing, covering up and reinventing biographies were all the rage after 1945. Nußbaumeder shows how this original lie leads to many others and how it unfolds its comprehensive destructive power over time, generation after generation. At the same time, the drama develops a strong pull and provokes a deep empathy with the children and grandchildren, who on the one hand have become the victims of their grandparents' actions and on the other cannot and must not shirk their responsibility.

"Eisenstein" is a powerful piece of new German drama that premiered in Bochum in 2010 and has already been performed on many stages.

Christoph Nußbaumeder has not let go of this complex and touching material, as it also served as the basis for his first and immediately award-winning novel "Die Unverhofften", which was published by Suhrkamp in 2020.