She calls him Frederick. He’s that German after all. You don’t get his real name. But this much: His parents come from Turkey. And they definitely don’t say Friedrich to their son. Only she calls him that – she, who herself hasn’t had a name in the radio play for a long time The half and the whole and at some point it’s called Sophia. Is she an alter ego of the author Safiye Can, as the relationship of the first names might suggest?
There are no clear answers in this story, there cannot be. The only reliable knowledge of the two characters, who are close friends but presumably not in a relationship, is that the racially motivated attack in Hanau two years ago, in which nine people were murdered, sharply aggravated the question of the identity of people with a migration background. It was not easy to answer before.
At first, Friedrich and Sophia argue about whether they are half German and half the other – that’s Friedrich’s position. Or both in full, which Sophia insists on. Friedrich’s attitude would mean, Sophia argues, that he is only half happy if Germany wins in football. How is that supposed to work? One cannot, Friedrich counters, be one whole twice.
But identity is not a mathematical equation. And you certainly don’t come to a solution if, in the case of the Hanau attack, you assign yourself to the group of victims as well as the group from which the perpetrator comes, and you want to try to offset them against each other or put them in relation to each other. You can probably only rub against it or capitulate.
Safiye Can, who has Circassian ancestors, deals with identity issues in a very clever, very graphic way in her radio play, directed by Andrea Geißler and starring Kristin Alia Hunold and Murat Dikenci. Above all, she doesn’t overload her characters, doesn’t make Friedrich and Sophia stand in for too many conceivable positions. Instead, both are given a story that is their very own and in which supposed trivialities also play a serious role. Safiye Can also does not force Friedrich and Sophia to make any compromises. Why in The half and the whole also discharges a whole lot of anger.
The half and the wholeHR 2, February 20, 2022, 10 p.m.