2023-11-18 12:51:04
Is that still “Prince Friedrich of Homburg” or “Nothing new in the West”? On the dark sandbags that tower up in front of the audience lies a soldier in a camouflage suit who is wheezing and wheezing, gasping and spitting like in the brutal death scenes of the Oscar-winning film. His counterpart is Homburg, the assault rifle in his hand and a knife ready to deliver the final blow. His suit is red, and not just from blood. This is how you get in the mood: the war is terrible and it has many servants.
In her first work at the Berlin Schaubühne, director Jette Steckel turned Heinrich von Kleist’s great state drama into a war drama that takes place between trenches and battle hills. As in “Full Metal Jacket,” the first question is what it means to become “war-ready.” The answer: It is the willingness to become part of the war machine. At the front of the ramp, the actors take off their civilian clothes and put on their uniforms. They erase themselves to take on a new role.
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As scary and overwhelming as Florian Lösche’s stage and Pauline Hüners’ costumes are, a sense of unease creeps into the first half hour of the evening, in which the violence is supposed to become drastically palpable. How realistically must the cruelty of war be witnessed in the theater, where the barely bearable images of war from media and film are almost omnipresent? Does something that has already been seen too often still affect you?
Now one should not and must not close one’s eyes to these images – not even in the theater, which is looking for its place in a society in which the government threatens the population with “military readiness”. But when the actors spectacularly throw themselves over the sandbag dune in the misty backlight and roll down as if lifeless, the suspicion arises that the aesthetic appeal is stronger than the moral accusation that is supposed to be made palatable to the audience. And that feels stale.
From left to right: Renato Schuch, Bastian Reiber, Jule Böwe, Holger Bülow
Source: © Armin Smailovic
The atmosphere is still impressive. Right down to the music by Mark Badur, the dark setting of “Homburg” – almost all scenes take place at night and are about the dreamlike nature of the enlightened mind – is translated into powerful images. Erich Schneider always creates overwhelming lighting atmospheres. A three-winged spotlight monster that hovers over the sandbags like a terrible dragon reflects the archaic and modern nature of the war machine in the theater’s effects machine.
“In dust with all of Brandenburg’s enemies!”
The merciless look into the gears of the war machine raises questions: Is Homburg, who acts on his own initiative but successfully, a hero because he rebels against the hierarchy of the army? Conversely, one can also see in him a dark pioneer who breaks down the feudal containment of war and removes boundaries to the point of total war. The aversion to the mechanical nature of war would be based on a romantic, organic transfiguration and the breaking of the law would obey a sovereignty that, in Carl Schmitt’s sense, decides on life and death beyond the law.
However, Renato Schuch as Homburg is not a fanatic of war, but rather someone who doubts and ultimately despairs. The fact that he attacks the enemies without waiting for the order of his elector – wonderfully played by Axel Wandtke as a strict man of principles who, however, does not want his army to have a test of strength of ancient proportions – becomes a manifestation of a decision in Steckel, which does not want another attack, but rather a complete withdrawal from the war.
One soldier among many: “Prince Friedrich von Homburg” by Jette Steckel
Source: © Armin Smailovic
How great the prince’s personal sacrifice is is foreshadowed in a Pietà picture when he lies like a naked Christ in the arms of the Electress (Stephanie Eidt). Homburg, the Prussian savior? Who at the end joins in the war cry “In dust with all enemies of Brandenburg!”? That would be a questionable glorification and heroization that sounds more like Veterans Day than like a stage show. But Steckel avoids all of this by letting Homburg die unexpectedly in the end – by his own hand.
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The blackmailed reconciliation between the warriors in the final image does not occur; it is sabotaged by Homburg. Instead, he lets out his hatred of the soldiery and complains about the incompatibility between man and soldier. This Homburg must perish because it no longer has any space between the fronts. He chooses a soldier’s exit; the solution of “war against war” is still far away. But it is in the air.
There is a grinding noise in the machine
This unusual Homburg betrays his life as a soldier and, as collateral damage, his tender love for Natalie (Alina Vimbai Strähler). Where falsehood reigns, does betrayal become a duty? As a strict Kantian, Homburg – in this respect closer to the Königsberg omnislayer than his author, who was shaken by the Kant crisis – is committed to his moral law. As strange as this persistence seems today in the ruins of the postmodern “Anything Goes,” as more and larger wars loom, the question of which law one is loyal to is becoming more and more virulent. Homburg goes to the zero point of the chain of command.
It is the rebellion of an individual who unwillingly becomes an enemy of the state. “I am supposed to be a mere tool for his unknown purposes – I cannot do it,” says Homburg about the state that has become a war machine. And after his death? One can imagine that the dead Homburg’s uniform is back at the front of the ramp – for someone else. For the war machine, the individual whose death is included does not count. And yet the suicide at the end is a strong symbol that the machine is beginning to grind.
“Prince Friedrich of Homburg”: Berlin Schaubühne; December 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th and 12th
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