Thomas Mann

Der Zauberberg
Für die Bühne bearbeitet von Stefan Bachmann
2 D, 4 H
UA: 27.09.2008 · Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin · Directed by: Stefan Bachmann
Hans Castorp, a young Hamburgian, only wants to stay with his sick cousin in an alpine sanatorium for three weeks. A light head cold leads to the extension of his stay. At first he is astonished at the way of life "up here," and he hesitantly enters the spa. Illness and death seem omnipresent and dominate the thoughts and conversations of the international patients, who exist beyond civic duty in a state of timelessness. This atmosphere exudes a fascination for Hans Castorp, one which is accompanied by an increasing lack of interest in the "flatland" world. Through the rituals of the sanatorium life, between recuperation and fever, he also begins to perceive time differently. He falls into a state of oblivious emptiness, and time becomes "uncontrolled present". His planned short stay turns into seven years. In his novel, published in 1924, Thomas Mann imagined a purgatory of modernity in which the categories of time and space are overridden, and language becomes a battleground.

Hörspiele

Thomas Mann
Der Zauberberg
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