Ulrich Zaum

Blattgold
Stück in 3 Akten
3 D, 11 H, 3 Dek
UA: 28.04.1990 · Bühnen der Landeshauptstadt Kiel · Directed by: Johannes Klaus
In 1918, towards the end of World War I, those left behind and invalid meet on a deserted fairground: a count with his assistants, a doctor and his blind patient and a man gone mad from the war. A few variety artists mingle with this varied company in the hopes of capitalizing on the desolate state of this war society. The most well-known amongst them is Hanussen, an artist and clairvoyant who is planning a spectacular at the front with a violinist and a magician. The end of the war destroys his plans. Hanussen is highly in debt and decides, after ten years in which his situation became more and more hopeless, to commit suicide. But he survives and finds himself in the company of an uprising SA clique which the count belongs to as well. Hanussen scents his chance and tries himself as the “seer” of the movement. After Hitler’s rise to power, as reward for his involvement, he demands support for his most extravagant show yet. The National Socialists murder the cumbersome confidant, however. The fact of his Jewish origins comes in handy for his henchmen: Herschel Steinschneider alias Count Erik Hanussen.
Ulrich Zaum depicts the path of an opportunist in his play, but one who is nothing but the puppet on the strings of those in power. He succeeds in drawing a picture of the changing times, not the least through his choice of an extraordinary circle of characters which is completed by dream characters such as the fopp ghosts, the wild man, the blind man, the dead magician. Hanussen, the clairvoyant, cannot see his own fate – or he sees it, but cannot escape it.