Theater literature: speaking through graves and trenches

Robert Mießner called him a “spoilsport of power” in the “Taz”. This writer is a “trapper,” as Hans Dieter Schütt put it in this newspaper on the occasion of his 80th birthday last January: Lothar Trolle is one of the most radical playwrights of the second half of the 20th century, but stayed because he cannot conform to any system. allows too much reality in his texts that should remain unheard.

He was born in Brücken near Sangerhausen, in the southern Harz. The father was Jewish and communist. Einar Schleef, who was to become much more successful as a theater maker, also often referred to as a “berserker,” went to his parallel class; Maybe because one could read more of the martial, power-art Germany into his work. In any case, Trolle initially completed training as a commercial clerk and became a stage technician at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. He dropped out of his philosophy studies with the ever-popular Hegel and Hölderlin expert Wolfgang Heise – probably with the best of conscience. With Bernd Wagner and Uwe Kolbe he published the underground magazine “mikado”. He left the GDR in 1988 – possibly because he is a poet who is too proletarian and also artistically serious.

His greatest stage success was the play “Hermes in the City”, staged in 1992 by Frank Castorf at the Berlin DT: Here, Trolle links the myth of the patron god Hermes with the brutal reality of life in the big city, i.e. murder, manslaughter, villainy and – particularly unpleasantly – hopelessness a world where ideology and noble words no longer play a comprehensible role.

The Leipzig publisher Spector Books is now dedicating a multi-volume series to Lothar Trolle in a stylish, pragmatic presentation, namely cardboard and glue binding. The series is edited by dramaturge and director Jan Hein. The first booklet “Heimatland” was published in 2023; This year “History Lessons” was published. The book is rounded off by a beautiful anecdotal afterword by the East Berlin writer Barbara Honigmann, which is of particular interest to those born later.

The volume opens with the story of a cruel castle mistress, spoken by a choir. The most comprehensive text is based on the brilliant, stubborn Bavarian writer Oskar Maria Graf, who stirred up the 20th century as an anarchist from a family of bakers. “NO ONE ASKS HOW I’M FEELING AND WHAT I WANT TO BE ONE DAY,” is what it says shortly before the end of this adaptation of Graf’s “Unrest Around a Peaceful Man.” Sometimes the author takes us to the barren, poor countryside after the devastation of the Second World War. In just a few pages, Trolle deals with an “episode from the Seven Years’ War,” and another text leads to the Old Testament, to Judith and Holofernes. But Trolle doesn’t strive for sandal heroism, doesn’t want to fulfill crypto-Christian wishes, i.e. let moral theological dialogues take place in a fantasy land for educated citizens.

Trolls does not serve any expectations of sophisticated souls for identification or plots committed to tension for after-work entertainment: dense blocks of prose, logging passages, abrupt documentary, quick changes of perspective, sudden capital letters, then verses again – the forms and formats change off, merge into one another. The texts are simply called “texts”. This is not about a gimmick for art lovers, but about writing methods that gain their urgency by distorting their material – stories from the war, about extreme poverty, arbitrary tyranny – beyond recognition. This is what “history lessons” consist of. However, we don’t want to give the impression that Trolle’s texts are completely devoid of humor. In the “Märkisches Fragment 1945” it says something like: “I want my shaving kit back / otherwise it won’t take three weeks / and I look like Karl Marx.”

These texts, material battles and battle material, do not constitute comfortable reading, but are extremely advisable for developing the mind to get to know the singular literary phenomenon Lothar Trolle with the help of this small, worthwhile series or to remain faithful. Additional tip: Trolle’s radio play “Dshan”, based on motifs from the novella of the same name by Andrej Platonow, is currently available in the ARD radio play database.

Lothar Trolle: History lessons. Edited by Jan Hein. With an afterword by Barbara Honigmann. Spector Books, 180 pages, br., 22 €.