Obituary: Peter Sodann: The Defianceist

This inspector was called Bruno – Ehrlicher. As if honesty leads to a good goal. The almost partisan name was not a very subtle joke, but rather a really rude thing. That suited Peter Sodann. He took note of a certain amount of rudeness in his every move. Because he sought to be clear. If asked about his universities, he would probably have answered bluntly: the lowlands. Where the dirt gets under your fingernails – it’s also called work. Then work on one’s own aura: even when winning, maintain the radiance of the lowly, the stubby, the clumsy.

The first East German “crime scene” commissioner after reunification was more honest: Saxon not as a dialect, but as an attitude. The man did not come from heroism, but from the neighborhood. Grocery bags were closer to him than the holster. As cleverly conceptual as a provincial Columbo, as cleverly simple as a Schweik, as clever as he is treacherous, he stirs up false suspicions: he is perhaps just an old-fashioned Simplicius Simplicissimus of the civil service.

In Halle, director Sodann, with strength, cunning, perseverance, imagination and many loyal colleagues, has for over 20 years transformed an old cinema into a cultural island that made national headlines. Because this cultural place in Saxony-Anhalt remained so decidedly local, so down-to-earth, Halle, so to speak. Without any externally controlled alignment with current media-political trend exchanges.

This “new theater” was the center of a culture of education, entertainment and pubs. There is also a puppet theater, a gallery and a library. If Shakespeare’s Lear said of himself that every inch of him was a king, then every inch of Sodann was a rascal. Buddy on the imperial throne. He did a lot to create this impression. Shuffled, walked to the regulars’ tables as if the path there was entirely red carpet. Maybe not carpet, but red.

A native of Meissen, but far from anything porcelain. He preferred to leave behind shards rather than always follow a smooth, seamless, window-dressing attitude. His father was a puncher who remained in Hitler’s war, his mother was a farm worker – such people had good reason, after the time of ruin, to praise a state that measured workers’ power based on what a worker made of himself. And a worker like Sodann had made the right thing of himself by not letting everything happen to him. He belonged to a generation that, when it dies out, will also have the term ABF died out: worker-peasant faculty.

In 1961 the state locked him up because he was a member of the Leipzig student cabaret “Rat der Spötter”. Six months in solitary confinement. Despite the harassment, the tough guy didn’t allow himself to be made an enemy (no matter how hard the state and Stasi, one tied in the other, could try). Strange coincidences: On television, the once persecuted man later portrayed, of all people, General Mielke, in the “Deutschlandspiel,” and another state security officer, in “Nikolaikirche” by Frank Beyer and Erich Loest.

After forced lathe work at VEB Starkstromanlagenbau Leipzig, he was then allowed to continue his acting studies; he played at the Berliner Ensemble (Krach mit der Weigel), in Erfurt, in Karl-Marx-Stadt, and became acting director in Magdeburg. Then Hall. He cursed the SED, but later gave a eulogy to one of the many Stasi spies who were assigned to him. He called himself a praying communist and hung Jesus, Lenin and Einstein – his utopian trinity – in the Halle Theater-Café. He didn’t call the fall of 1989 a revolution, but rather a “prison uprising” – a people chased away their guards.

As director, he had fun with the stubborn assertion of an ensemble of young and old, and also with having the BE director Manfred Wekwerth stage a production with him – just at the moment when the big things were approaching for the ex-ZK member and academy president Theater refused to be politically correct. As comedian boss, Sodann united the circus director with the pastor; he was head and caretaker, family guardian and king of the world. A socialist principal Striese, Peter the Great: Tsar where he was also allowed to be a carpenter. After the end of the GDR, organizer of popular (combative!) May Day parades, on stage stubborn and bluntly believing that one could combine Büchner and Millowitsch, Schiller and Ohnsorg. He could.

The director’s credo: “I don’t do any fucking on the grand piano.” He played and staged theater in a gnarly, folksy, unfussy manner. This also worked in films by Lothar Warneke (“Addio, piccola mia”), Roland Gräf (“The Tango Player”), and Bernhard Wicki (“Sansibar or The Last Reason”). His old comrade in Andreas Dresen’s “Gundermann” is unforgettable. Then in the film there is an SED comrade, hardened in class struggles, now a cardigan grandfather, who has a lot of understanding for the young rebellious excavator operator – no: only apparently, because the face turned so turned turns out to be an inquisitorial mask of an icy reckoner. Trust as an instrument of torture. A veteran presumes to condemn himself, i.e. the removal of a young insubordinate from the party. An old, cold god who smiles warmly. A lurking on velvet paws. The leather of ideological hardening is still suitable as a whip. Terribly repulsive, heartbreaking.

Then a player was completely out of the background, he didn’t dazzle with presence, but he did shine, cunning, with a preference for the damaged and marked. Proletkult at the height of romanticism. And: He knew how to solve a problem in the most obvious way. Quite simply: you quickly turn to another problem. Then one day he was no longer the principal of the Theaterinsel in Halle, another day he was no longer the TV commissioner, and the left-wing candidate did not become Federal President in 2009 either. So he changed the field of attention: He concentrated with great passion on his GDR library. In Staucha (Meißen district) it thrived tremendously, in the converted hayloft of the cowshed and in the barn of a former manor. It grew and grew. The inventory includes several million copies. The library is alive: it blows up spaces. A happy problem.

Friends said this chiseled guy was a fossil. This is cheerfully named sadness: true clowns are always a thing of the past because their awkwardness remains inappropriate; the unsatisfactory disturbs. Then he never stopped with very simple but stubborn thoughts. For example about the unfair distribution of wealth, work and power. He remained a plebeian, with Diderot and Brecht on his lips. The plebeian manner as an intelligent exploitation of the prejudice that the plebeians lack, above all, intelligence. Plebeianism is sovereignty from below, directed against everything that attempts to rule from above. In this sense, Sodann was never a Trotskyist; he remained a Trotskyist. Earthy, eastern, weatherproof, uncomplicated, non-trivial, handcrafted, sturdy, robust. Not very cosmopolitan – but the true overview comes from the awareness that it is the fine crack that bursts every concrete wall. Peter Sodann has now died at the age of 87.