COURAGE

connecting collections

The 'Knights of the Rounde Table' is an anachronistic drama in three acts by Christoph Hein. The author noted that in this play, he did not want to stage GDR history but rather reinterpret anew something old. Hein sought to present a transformed version of the Round Table’s virtuous knights, who were now in a later stage of their lives and had realised that they had not lived up to their earlier ideals. The political connotation of the script could not be ignored, as it was clearly an allegory for the GDR’s political elites.

At first, most theatres declined to stage it, and it was only in 1988 that the theatre in Dresden showed interest to stage the play. Censors at the local level did not always share the same opinions of the central authorities, and the censors in Dresden disagreed with those in Berlin whether the play should be staged or not. However, despite the fact that the authorities in Berlin allowed the play to be staged, parts of the script were censored and performances were documented by the Stasi. 

The play lost significance in the new political environment post-1989, and it was seldomly staged. The material preserved in the 'Theatre in‘der Wende’ collection held currently by the Archive of Performing Arts at the Academy of Arts in Berlin includes flyers, posters, and theatre programmes from various theatres where the play was eventually performed.

During the 1960s, the SED (the communist party in power in East Germany) regime engaged in covering the gap of contemporary socialist theatre performance on GDR stages. Consequently, in 1963 the German Theatre (Deutscher Theater) in Berlin commissioned Heiner Müller to stage the novel Spur der Steine by Erik Neutsch. Müller’s critical adaptation of the novel as Der Bau (The Construction), which departed significantly from the original novel, was met by fierce criticism from the SED. Following seven revisions of the play, Müller was still unable to stage his work. It was only in September 1980 when the adaptation found significant success with the Volksbühne Theater in Berlin under the guidance of director Fritz Marquardt. However, censors forced the creators to change the play’s title and the names of the characters.

The controversy around the performance was linked to the play’s subtle critique of the GDR shown as detached from reality, dominated by a rigid bureaucracy, with citizens alienated by socialism, and the overemphasising of ‘development’ and ‘modernisation’. The play was greeted with praise by audiences, although the East and West German media reacted differently. West German press generally responded that the themes touched on in the play should have discussed years earlier, whereas the GDR press thought that the delay from real events was appropriate, such as discussion around the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The subtle staging of the political event, such as the construction of the Berlin Wall, created space for debate within the play’s audience. The play was staged twenty-nine times within a year of the opening night, and further performances were organised throughout the GDR. However, the fall of the GDR also meant the end for the play, which was staged only another two times, and only alongside other plays of Heiner Müller.

Currently, documents related to the play are preserved as part of the Theatre Performance Documentation collection of the Archives of Performing Arts of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

The photograph features the window of a 1980s bookshop in the centre of Braşov, Romania. What is striking is the presence of only two titles, specifically two classics of Romanian literature, by the poet Mihai Eminescu and the prose writer Ion Creangă. No book written by a foreign author can be seen on display. The author of the photograph intended to capture ironically the scarcity of the reading offer which the Romanian book consumer had to face during communism. The picture also suggests the isolation caused by the cultural policy of the Romanian communist regime after 1971. This cultural policy was intended to eliminate any Western influence upon Romanian art and literature, while promoting only local authors and artists. Also, this cultural policy led to the emergence of the so-called protochronism, a cultural movement developed in Romania during the 1970s and 1980s that exaggerated the achievements of Romanian culture and presented them as “anticipating” Western ones (Verdery 1991, 174–175). The photograph is a document which also reminds us of book market practices in Romania at the time. In the 1980s, when someone wanted a certain book, they were forced also to buy other books that were not on demand, such as those which can be seen in abundance in this photograph. In fact, bookstores forced their clients to buy whole cardboard boxes of books, even though they were interested in only one book in the package.