It’s too seductive: Heinrich von Kleist’s novella “Michael Kohlhaas” with the “Murder Burners” running amok for defamation reasons seems to be the ideal reflection of the outbursts of anger of today’s angry citizens and moral fundamentalists of all stripes. Like a distant kinsman from an unsecured contemporary who said “Resistance!” chant and want to replace rule of law standards with vigilante justice, or the moral right-wing man with a penchant for dogma and sole representation claims, Kleists Kohlhaas procures his own right, or whatever he thinks it is. If necessary, by burning down entire cities. No wonder that theater adaptations of the novella are booming. Now Simon McBurney, a world star of the theater, is preparing the classic at the Berlin Schaubühne together with Annabel Arden, like he was a founding member of the British theater group “Complicité”, and Andreas Kriegenburg will follow in the coming season at the Deutsches Theater Berlin.
Arden and McBurney, who is actually a virtuoso of the video-amplified theater booth magic, use British pragmatism at the Schaubühne to use the rather dry, didactically valuable school radio variant with text supplier actors behind microphones set up parallel to the ramps. As a small ironic signal, before the show begins, the relevant Reclam issue can be seen briefly on the screen in the background. And that’s exactly what follows: the reclam booklet, retold with awareness of the effects, an undoubtedly honorable detention in the classic canon program in times of decline in education, but not necessarily an overly complex evening at the theater.
Kohlhaas acts terribly, not although, but because he is a righteous guy
As a subject heading and central question of the class work, the evening is preceded by a quotation from Kleist’s letter, the problem dealt with below in the area of tension between the state and its citizen: “I should do what the state demands of me. For its unknown purpose I should be a mere tool be. I can’t. ” This suggests a somewhat crude identification of the author with his character (including the implicit identification offer for the anarchist, which every middle-class theater-goer suspects in high-spirited moments).
Then it can start with the story of the horse dealer Kohlhaas, who catapulted himself out of all human order and, according to Kleist, one of the “most righteous and horrific people of his time”, distributed over five speakers around the Kohlhaas actor Renato Schuch. Whereby righteousness and the talent to spread fear and horror do not correct each other, but reinforce each other: Kohlhaas acts terribly, not in spite of, but because he is so mercilessly righteous.
As if to legitimize his rampage, injustice happens to him in increasing stages on the part of the authorities: an arbitrarily levied duty, the perversion of the feudal class justice, horses withheld as pledge and battered, a servant beaten half-dead, and finally his wife, who at a petition to the elector is fatally injured by whose guards. No wonder that the poor man goes crazy and takes matters into his own hands, essentially nothing less than the just institution of the world! A man sees red, the German Michel feels like the “governor” of the Archangel Michael. In popular culture terms: it is home to a Charles Bronson who is ready for civil war.
Videos of the storm on the Capitol draw parallels to lateral thinkers and angry citizens
In Kohlhaas’ vengeance campaign, the brains of his enemies splash cheerfully against the walls if they are not simply thrown out of the window to their death with their wife and children. Because the German understands thoroughness, it does not stop at individual murders, the warlord Kohlhaas torches entire cities with his horde. With faded-in videos, for example of the storm on the Capitol, the staging quite clearly parallels this with the self-empowerment gestures of today’s angry citizens, including the associated escalation potential. It is a very short-winded update, if only because Kohlhaas is demanding what the angry citizens protest against – something like a halfway functioning constitutional state.
The soundtrack with which McBurney and Arden underline this dramatized narrative is involuntarily funny: the clatter of horses and neighing, the clatter of weapons, fires and machine gun salvos from off-camera demonstrate the joy of effect in the head cinema and childlike pleasure in the acoustic illusion tricks of the radio play studio. To intensify the pathos, close-ups of the emaciated horses or the battered body of the beaten servant show the suffering creature. The vengeance of the victim of justice becomes a passion path – no wonder that Renato Schuch elevates his Kohlhaas to a feverish redeemer figure. With long hair and a full beard, he looks as if he came straight from the Passion Play in Oberammergau. So that even religiously disinterested minds do not miss the sacred dimension of the ordeal, powerful passion music provides a clear pointer to heaven. Which the involuntary comedy doesn’t necessarily make it smaller.