Einsame Menschen - Schedule, Program & Tickets

Einsame Menschen

Gerhart Hauptmann, who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature, was only 27 years old when he wrote his drama EINSAME MENSCHEN. In a time full of social upheavals, he describes the struggle of individuals who are looking for new forms of community and yet cannot find each other.

Four people at home endlessly who can no longer find their way out of their dependencies: The young academic Johannes Vockerat leads a secluded life with his wife Käthe. The long-time friend Braun, who is trying to overcome his creative crisis as an artist, and Johannes ’pious, but outwardly jovial mother, live with them in the rented country house. Johannes and Käthe have recently become parents, and the relationship is already in crisis: She does not find the fulfillment of motherhood as prescribed, he reproduces patriarchal structures despite all his enlightenment and suffocates in the supposedly ideal world around him.
The domestic isolation is suddenly interrupted when the student Anna Mahr from Zurich shows up with the family. She wants to see Braun, her old friend from college, again, have conversations, maybe even settle old bills. But Johannes is immediately euphoric by Anna's demeanor: inappropriately, urbane, and also full of enthusiasm for his philosophical manuscripts! Käthe is also fascinated by her emancipated quick-wittedness. And yet happiness is short-lived.
Hauptmann's drama revolves around the dilemma of freedom, clinging to traditions, the search for new relationship models - and personal happiness that has to find its way between all these positions. Even today it poses valid questions about our way of living together: How much sacrifice am I prepared, how much do I insist on my self-realization? How can I feel free without depriving others of their freedom? And how can we break away from the dogmas of previous generations without unconsciously repeating their dynamics?

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