We start our 40-year journey with Victor Klemperer and his wife Eva in 1918, and travel with them through his record of everyday life as a Jewish academic alongside a non-Jewish Aryan spouse. Their life is touched by cats, financial struggles, the music of Bach and by his study of the German language. In the 1930s and in WW2 the tension becomes palpable, and his diary juxtaposes the mundanity of life against the ever-growing risk of annihilation.
From 1945 Victor shares remarkable insights as the communist GDR emerges from fascism and the chaos of war.
Suite no. 1
In 1918 at the end of WW1 Victor Klemperer, a German professor, soldier and prisoner of war, returns to his composer and musician wife, Eva. He is Jewish and she is Aryan. He commences a diary, a work miraculously hidden throughout the Nazi era, and saved from the bombing of Dresden.
Victor returns to work at the university, teaching French literature. With Eva, he enjoys cinema, including «Der Blaue Engel» starring Marlene Dietrich, and novels, such as «Little Man, What Now?» by Fallada, a portrait of Germany haunted by poverty and unemployment.
Victor is jealous of Eva’s success as a musician, and of her male colleagues. He is bothered by her impatient desire to build a house with a garden outside the city. He worries about his financial situation, and «Eva’s» house only adds to the concern.
All these matters are as trifles when Hitler wins the election in 1933. Some of the Klemperers’ friends, Jews as well as Aryans, support the Nazis. Victor disagrees with them, and it turns out that his fears are well founded as the persecution begins and gradually becomes more brutal. Jews start fleeing Germany, mostly to the US. Others move to Palestine, and Victor compares them to Nazis, writing that Hitler wants to create an Aryan Germany while the Zionists want to create a Jewish country.
Klemperer observes that the Nazis use the language: words have new meanings; phrases are constructed differently; the radio becomes an important tool for the government. His observations, at first just notes in a diary, will be the basis of his study published in 1945: «L.T.I. - Lingua Tertii Imperii”, which provides the title for our performance.
As a former soldier, married to an Aryan, Victor avoids transportation to a concentration camp, but he loses his job even after pledging his loyalty to Hitler. However, antisemitism does have some benefits; Jews are no longer allowed to have property abroad, a friend is obliged to sell her house in London and Victor can borrow money to build the house. However, just before the outbreak of war, they are forced to move into a small room in the Jewish ghetto.
Suite no. 2
WW2 is presented as a combination of piano concert - one of Eva’s favourite works - and radio drama, broadcasting «episodes» from their life until the bombing of Dresden in 1945. They are separated in the massive destruction, but they manage to find each other again. Victor’s diaries are saved, but all of Eva’s compositions are lost and for the rest of her life she refuses to compose.
Suite no. 3
They stay in Dresden, now a part of East Germany, he joins the Communist Party with a certain scepticism and is back at the University. Eva’s death in 1951 is a terrible loss and Victor suffers from loneliness and a bad conscience. Nonetheless when he meets Hadwig Kirchner, a student, he falls in love. They marry in 1952, and she stays with him, a wife and assistant, until his death.
A profound and moving performance. A vivid testimony to love, language, and survival in the face of history. Text by: Tore Vagn Lid, based on the writings of Victor Klemperer
Dramatist, Director and Composer: Tore Vagn Lid
Set and Video Design: Kyrre Bjørkås
Costume Design: Ingrid Pettersson
Lighting Design: Eirik Brenne Torsethaugen
Sound Design: Nils Jakob Langvik
Graphics: Julia Jayko Fossland
Makeup Design: Alice Norberg Poulsen
Dramaturge: Olav Torbjørn Skare
Producer: David Parrish
Cast:
Actors: Ola G. Furuseth, Hanne Skille Reitan, Stine Fevik, Ågot Sendstad
Pianist: Eirik Hellerdal Fosstveit
Producers: The Norwegian National Theatre
Co-producers: Sibiu International Theatre Festival
Performance in Norwegian, with Romanian and English translation
