For a few weeks now, the Weimar Art Festival has once again been about right-wing terror in court. While last year the focus was on the trial in Bavaria against the Thuringian NSU terrorist Beate Zschäpe, this time the focus is on Hesse.
Weimar (dpa/th) - The theater director Marie Schwesinger sees a major challenge in bringing right-wing terror to the stage and processing it artistically. The question of what language one can use to meet right-wing positions artistically on stage was a concern for her with Werwolfkommandos, which premiered as part of the Weimar Art Festival on Saturday (6 p.m.) at the German National Theater (DNT) Weimar, she says German press agency. Nevertheless, it is important to bring the topic to the stage and to work it up. For weeks, Schwesinger sat in Frankfurt am Main (Hesse) in the process of murdering the Kassel district president Walter Lübke. First of all only as a private observer. She then goes into the trial against Bundeswehr officer Franco A. with the conscious intention of working towards it. Both cases involve right-wing terror. Both cases are being heard in Frankfurt. Sometimes in the same room, by the same judges. "There was a very exciting parallelism," says Schwesinger, "also in the questions and problems."
Walter Lübcke was shot dead at close range on June 1, 2019 on the terrace of his house. The act is considered the first right-wing extremist murder of a politician in the Federal Republic. The Bundeswehr officer Franco A. was sentenced to five years and six months in prison in July after a 14-month trial by the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court for preparing a serious crime that was dangerous to the state, among other things. He is said to have planned attacks on high-ranking politicians and public figures.
Schwesinger worked this out together with the dramaturgs Julia Just and Fabiola Eidloth. Even when it comes to trials in Frankfurt am Main, according to Schwesinger, there is a connection between "werewolf commandos" and Weimar. "Both places have a connection to the issues and to the processes that were negotiated there," she says.
Since the end of August, an artistic discourse program by the three young women on right-wing terror has been shown daily in the festival pavilion on Theaterplatz in Weimar. The premiere as a guest performance at the DNT in Weimar is to be followed by the Frankfurt premiere at the Landungsbrücken on October 20th. It is not the first time that the art festival has focused on right-wing terror in Germany and how it is dealt with in society, politics and the courtroom. Last year, the trial of the right-wing extremist terrorist group "National Socialist Underground" (NSU) from Thuringia was staged with the production "438 days of the NSU trial - a theatrical search for clues".
