Gerhard Meister

Friedrich Miescher, who became a pioneer of genetic research through his discovery of nucleic acid in 1869, fell ill with tuberculosis at the age of fifty. He spent the last one and a half years of his life in the lung hospital of Doctor Turban in Davos.
Miescher's failure due to his early death and his unfinished work is the starting point of this play, and of the dream which penetrates the solitude of the sick-room more and more deeply.

Short, minimalistic scenes between the doctor, the patient and the nurse Anna reflect the monotony of the patients' day in constantly recurring dialogue sequences. Scaffold-like, they hold the piece together. At first, the scenes are written by Anna, in her letters to her distant lover. Thus, she still maintains contact with life outside the hermetic world of the sanatorium. Later on, Miescher's dreams or fever delusions increasingly determine the progress of things, and testify to his unstoppably advancing disease.

Contrary to his own maxim, the pragmatist Turban comes more and more under the spell of the theorist Miescher. More and more, he encourages him to ask questions about his research. As the distance between the doctor and the patient gradually disappears, Anna falls deeper and deeper into the maelstrom of her relationship with Miescher.

His death at the end of the play means not only his own tragic failure in his unfinished work, but also that of the doctor. And Anna writes to her beloved that he must forget her. She will not leave Davos.

Mieschers Traum came about as part of the Dramenprozessor, a project for young Swiss authors. It was presented in June 2002 in a scenic reading at the Theater an der Winkelwiese in Zurich.