Daphne von Andechs

“Finally in Munich I can have anyone, but I’m not a pleasant guest. Whenever I took a nail from the tool cupboard I asked myself how they could still stand me. After I had painted the final paintings, I went. When my aunt Ella was dying, I painted, and when one of my daughters tried to commit suicide, I painted. And now that I am trying to lose Susn, I am painting: monkeys are climbing on my table. With every painting that is being picked up, the house loses a piece of your soul, Susn writes with her round handwriting. The last time she was here, I whispered into her face excitedly: ‘Again, neither my heart nor my head was torn’. But when you’re writing, of course it’s so much quieter than whispering. You’re discreetly passing a message to someone, which is why literature can only be communication between initiates. On the phone, Susn said this was a play about the two of us, and again this cheap soullessness. I wrote it in five consecutive days, and as always, I can’t imagine ever writing a play again. The rift couldn’t be more balanced: Breitenbach, the basic situation isn’t fixable, exactly like Arizona. But the blooming of the orchid shrub is inexplicable to me. Give back one of my last pictures, it’s called ‘As they come’.” (Herbert Achternbusch)

Only hours before he passes away in the muddy Nile, Amenhotep dictates his life’s story to his pupil Seth:
Memories of a hard, filthy childhood in the “dirt hole”, of the inhumane exploitation of the farmers by the tax collectors, of his rise to being the catamite of the recruit scribe Hori (owing to his “most beautiful butt”) and finally to being a “regal scribe of lower rank” himself, of his love for the beautiful “night-blue” maiden Psut…
And bit by bit, the whole old-man chit chat, the walk down memory lane becomes a love declaration: to literature, to the art of writing and telling stories, the only way to make the banality of life larger than itself, to remembering and inventing, mildly ironically glorified…

The boy is digging up questions that will remain unanswered. But while exploring his heritage, the old man reveals his model, his construct, that tries to span the before and after.
The men - with figures in their chests - are “survivors”, as opposed to the women, who are “onlyvivors”, whose existence is limited to a set timeframe. The girl with the insatiable desire for freedom is searching for the vertical connection to her predecessors, designing her own language, making her a pariah in the realm of women…
What will be is gathered from what was. An image of the future, obeying its own logic, is conceived. Clinging to the attempt to overcome one’s own (temporal) limits, to fight the sudden end, but also to remove one’s own isolation from the others, from nature.
The movement of this consideration aims in two different directions itself: it is a venture ahead, into the future, as well as a persistent advance into the past. This poses the question of whether a predecessor is behind or unstoppably ahead in time, if he is ancestor or a pioneer for the one who follows… “The last thing I heard was: Build the city/ Build the city”.
"This is a landscape, that, like any other landscape, came into existence by destroying the previous landscape. Let’s have a nice day.”
(Herbert Achternbusch)

“I wrote Da im Kafenion on a good Saturday, it was the 26th of September 87. After three weeks of separation I was waiting for Susn with new-found joy. She had cheated on me and I knew, as always, that I would be humiliated and leave, getting aggressive. I want to apologise to the truly beautiful light of the landscape, because I didn’t notice it anymore and even cursed it. Now, after eight years have passed, I approach it from the bygone future-loop or the future bygone-loop and enjoy them again and want to accept the peace that they offered me.”
Herbert Achternbusch

Herbert Achternbusch wrote Pallas Athene in four days in March.
“Did I understand you correctly? Pallas Athene, not born by a woman, but arisen from Zeus, the divine man, given to the world without hatred, I mean Hades, immortal, only committed to knowledge. Only devoted to knowledge in sadness. Not giving in to the sadness about mortality and futility. Pallas Athene is the female Mozart, and much more than that, because she isn’t corporal, only figurative, knowing. Old man, you dreamed of this - I envy you.” (Alois in Pallas Athene)
In a Bavarian beer garden:
Retired classicist Alois is decently married, underemployed actor Adolf is dreaming of Pallas Athene. Aside from their philosophical disputes about thinking and thoughts or myth and chaos, there are inevitably political innuendos and many grotesque debaucheries…

A young couple make their way through fog and industrial snow to the stone bridge of Regensburg. Their agreement: here, their life will be at a turning point. They take their time, talking about buying a winter coat or about pubic hair that got left behind in the tub. Unsentimentally and profanely they talk about ending their life: “It’s only stupid that we will be all over the German newspapers tomorrow”.
After jumping, the existence is inverted: “Nearly all behaviour was considered not right. (…) I believe, that all behaviour upon Earth was nearly wrong.” As a photographic negative relates to its print, life relates to life after death. Jumping into the Danube turned everything inside out: inability changes to ability, knowledge to ignorance, secrets are recited in an embellished way, people who existed are absent and the dead meet, going about their business. “In darkness, everything is brought to the light of day.”
An angel redeems them and brings them to the next stage of being: they sit naked under seven blue mountains (each has a vase on its top) and chat (“I don’t know what you are talking about”/ “It’s not even worth talking about”). Then, events follow in quick succession, until HE finally rides off, lance under his arm, with the words: “Be told: others may attach their imagination to reality… I attach reality to my imagination.” This tempts HER to out herself, too: “Now I can tell you who I am. I am a tree”.

Sitting at a table in a beer hall are “Stupid Cloud”, “Me, who writes”, and “Susn”. “Stupid Cloud” is Erich and Erich is “Stupid Cloud”. And he does as one does when one gets drunk: he talks. Stupid Cloud starts with the biggest question of all time: the meaning of life. But he negates it: you’re alive, that’s enough, why ask for a meaning, being alive is the meaning. At least in the Lower Bavarian beer hall he only answers questions and comments with “yes”, Stupid Cloud states, since no one there would understand anything anyway. But sitting opposite “Me”, he starts orating: a whole chain of associations from language criticism to the void, to drinkers and Lower Bavaria is raining down on his table neighbours – as playful and profound as pub monologues tend to be. And Me replies with “yes” from time to time. Apart from that, Me and Susn are doing as one also does when drinking: they stay silent. At the end, a one-word sentence- “Yes.”- is enough to tell their story.

In this masterstroke, Achternbusch manages to capture the whole experience of a pub night in only a few strokes – profound, ironic and substantial.

The rising of the seas, the dying of the forests and even the two world wars are said to have been predicted by the forest prophet Mühlhiasl, who allegedly lived in the 16th century in the area of Straubing and entered the mythical world of the Bavarian Forest as the Bavarian Nostradamus. The playwright, author-filmmaker and poet Herbert Achternbusch uses this legend to tell of a society that does everything in its power to preserve its prosperity. After all, the whole village lives on the fame of the expensive ruby glass from the local manufactory - except that the glass master who has just died took the secret formula to his grave. The cowherd Hias, who was summoned in a hurry to remedy the situation, confirms the clairvoyant abilities attributed to him by being there before he was even called. Driven by his gloomy prophecies on the one hand and by the tyrannical glassworks owner Goldfinger on the other, the whole village gets into turmoil and is soon ready to sacrifice their peace of mind for wealth. (Announcement of the Munich Residenztheater)

“It is best not to be born at all. And if born, to disappear as soon as possible. Shit. Tragedy.”

Alcibiades from Athens, pupil of Socrates, was considered the most idolised youth of his time. But he switched sides too often; a betrayal causing his death. In Achternbusch’s play, Socrates’ follower is already fleeing from the Spartans. Tormented by the hostile soldiers, he first takes refuge with his teacher, then with the courtesan Timandra, but he can’t evade his death.

"You, frequent Olympic champion, rising with steeds like chestnut trees, have sunken onto my bed and imprinted a light onto the sullen Athenians until the very end, rammed a stick up the lice-ridden Spartans’ arses and put a bit in the mouth of the foolish Persians. You mastered everything, could do everything, imagined everything, Socrates’ favourite (he wasn’t picky with the ones that came to him, but with those who stayed), you were his star, the favourite of Pericles, your uncle, who you couldn’t overtake because time destroyed your racecourse. The run of things precipitated, and the lesser won, the nice and embarrassing, the small advantage destroyed the great dream of Athens. We must roam as ghosts, glam up the cerebellum of many hucksters who become doctors of convenience and put up cages in their dim brains, believing to have caught us. How they studied our language and multi-surfaced artefacts, but the mind evaded them, the mind of uniqueness, for they come from centuries of imitation. Stop it now, men! Put the shovels from your view, hide the hacks behind the gravestones. Girls, come out with the flowers and scatter them wide, to hide how narrow this grave is!"

1. The chair that isn’t a chair anymore
Tukulti: “Here I am. But, where are you?”
Tukulti, in a retrospective address to Ztsrupsi, the tongue-twister, the You, God, who acted as orientation and benchmark: “You’re gone, Ztsrupsi. I’m alone.”
2. The chair is a throne
Ztsrupsi from distant Ur sends his orders through envoys to Tukulti.
“Is Ztsrupsi still Ztsrupsi, if he talks through someone else?” Tukultis’ disappointment forms into doubts, evolving into a new, offensive insight: “We have been fooled. A God who leaves us, was never with us.” Tukulti anoints himself God “You say it. Where God once sat, I sit.”
3. Man is God (the empty throne)
Tukulti wages war.
The Pharaoh sends Tukulti his most beautiful daughter as appeasement. Tukulti declares his approval: “I am grateful and will take a new title: Highsoupapeidiot.” The wedding of Tukulti and Senfmut is celebrated.
4. God is nothing (four soldiers are carrying the stone throne, singing, before putting it down. With son Üsmi.)
“My father Tukulti, I suspect you know the enemy better than yourself. But you must know yourself better to see the enemy, do you recognise yourself in the enemy?”
Tukulti is attacked and mauled to death by a savage from the mountains.

Achternbusch succeeds in distilling a concentrate, an example case for the structures of power we designed and are surrounded by. While the characters move safely in their cages of reasoning, watching their behaviour creates the wish for a counter draft. In the changeable constellation of man and chair, the macrocosm of the history of mankind is mirrored as well as the microcosm of the history of a tribe, a single person.

SCHAUSPIELER Wenn jetzt die Marie persönlich von der Mariensäule herabsteigt und Ihnen sagt, wo Sie sind, glauben Sie es dann?
PASSANT Nein.
SCHAUSPIELER Warum nicht?
PASSANT Sehen Sie mal, wie soll die alte Dame wissen, wo sie ist. Meinen Sie, daß der in all den Jahrhunderten jemand gesagt hat, wo sie ist? Die schaut weg. Die steht da oben und schaut weg. Sie schaut über alles weg. Sie Gutgläubiger, wenn Sie meinen, daß sie Augen hat. Irgendwie ist sie schon lebendig, meinen Sie, und weil jede Meinung mehr Leben hat als eine tote Figur, wird diese Figur schon irgendwie lebendig sein. Und was lebendig ist, schließt ja nicht unbedingt aus, daß es hilfreich ist, und so schustert ihr Bayern euch die Religion zusammen.
SCHAUSPIELER Sie Arschloch, Sie!

Kopf und Herz is a young woman’s view of her life and of life itself. It’s the view of Herbert Achternbusch’s mother. But it’s more than that:
Kopf und Herz is – like Ella, like Gustl – a monologue like a flowing river, breathless and without breaks, but not a true monologue, for the woman talks to the unwanted child in her belly. The child doesn’t even have a name yet, but a big mouth… the young woman is an athlete, ‘dreaming of an international career’. Getting pregnant is the last thing she wanted: ‘you’re in the way, bastard.’ She wants to get rid of the child, she wants her freedom back. The baby, a know-all little shit, fights back with all he has: ‘Even when I have to be inside of you, I have my very own world. Don’t sin, I’m only your guest.’
While they fight like this, a life’s story develops. …It’s a juicy, floating, strangely touching play, filled with biographical details and many beautiful Achternbusch-sentences…

"Kopf und Herz seamlessly fits into the big, autobiographic novel of his life, which, in the end, consists of all the texts Achternbusch has written: stories of the world according to poor Herbert.” (Theaterheute)

“I am a grave from which life rises. You can think this once, but only once. I love these thoughts. But I also fear them. They scare me. This is my life. Another thought emerges after escaping from the wintery sadness onto the highway to Verona: I look out to the gyrating Padan Plain and feel like it’s Birkenau.
When I was asked after an Italian performance of “Susn” in Turin if there was a Herbert in my new play of 1994, I denied it slightly embarrassed, slightly surprised, slightly disconcerted. Is he confusing me with someone? To let it rest I can say that my uncle Herbert, who died 65 years ago, suffocated at the age of eight from the same illness I nearly suffocated from at the age of six. Whatever could be confused here has more to do with my life than I wanted it to or realised it to be. And again, I had to think of Susn. Didn’t she steal all my vitality? But then Paula came and I thrived again. For the first time, I felt like I didn’t have to give way to life again. (Herbert Achternbusch)

"I never thought there was any use in thinking like a famous writer. Also, the whippersnappers shouldn’t think that they are great. Arcadia isn’t Elysium, it is the bear country, where many things you like to dream of don’t exist. I came up from the sea in 1971. There it was: the land was glowing contentedly after a thunderstorm. Even my wife was happy. The children screamed for joy. And I was happy and remained silent."
Herbert Achternbusch

“Dear H.!
...You are a great artist, and I think it is this that also distinguishes us. I am a bit afraid, for Herbert, who I love - still and always - dissolves into art more and more. The most dangerous rival is art. To merge with it is my only chance. I do what I can, but a turtle is always a bit slow… Cautiously and (sometimes it seems to me much too) slowly, I start loving the woman in me, the woman I can and want to be, when (and hopefully soon) I manage, to free, to redeem myself from the acquired image of the subservient, humble slave. And I can only achieve this through the torture of loneliness, being separated from you, my ‘better me’.
You confused me so… So much, that I’ve been writing this letter for weeks… And I always add a tiny piece, then think it isn’t good like that, then think it is, just write how you feel and tell him everything happening inside your mind, finally, after not doing it for so many years when you should have, because it would have been the best and only way…”

NANNY Now it’s time for Herbert to come, because the apple strudel is nearly finished and he prefers it hot. Or should I clean up his slobber first?! No, then I will feel disgusted while eating, I will do it after the meal.

HITLER Can I sit down?

NANNY No! If you must, on the table. I can wipe the wax cloth down after. Help me lift him, Luiserl, Hitler is heavier than he looks.

LUISA The thing about Hitler is that he starts thundering immediately after eating a potato salad, not after hours of fighting the agonising bloating. He is not an inhibited one, not an inhibited farter. But a talented…

ANNAMIRL And you’re listening to that rubbish!