Reflection on Winterreise
I hadn’t really gotten into the first play that we saw at Maxim Gorki – partly because I wasn’t feeling well but also partly because I had a hard time connecting to that one. (I could appreciate it for the messages it wanted to convey but it hadn’t stirred much up for me.) It was also hard to see around the “guns” that had been introduced beforehand – it gave me a different impression of the play going into it and caused me to expect something entirely different from the play than what actually happened.
Winterreise, however, had my full attention immediately. I was really, really excited to hear them using Arabic. Arabic is a language near & dear to me since I’ve been learning it for the past year, but it’s a language that’s fraught with politics. It was beautiful to hear the actors speaking Arabic and seeing the Arabic script written at the beginning. They could have easily done this play in just German with English subtitles, and I’m glad they chose to use the Arabic. I really loved everything about the design – the screen that set the background, the images they used, and the “chapter titles.”
I was a little confused about the bus tour and the purpose of taking them on a tour of Germany at first. But then the connection I made was that Germany had seemed like a safe place to come to, a place that seemed very different in the imaginations of people who came here seeking refuge – and perhaps even in the minds of the German people who view their home with rose tinted glasses. When Niels takes them all on a journey through Germany, they all begin to see the reality of what they’ve come to, represented abstractly by the cold of Winter but also by coming face to face with the fact of the existence of Pegida (the protests against refugees and immigrants). Niels himself seems to think only of all the wonderful things he will show them (the romanticism of Germany!) but is also thwarted by the reality of what refugees face in Germany.
Seeing this play right now is particularly poignant for me. Along with Arabic, I’ve been doing a lot of coursework and learning about immigration/refugees, issues in the Middle East, and much about Arabic culture. I’ve read books about these issues, read personal accounts of refugees escaping their homelands, I know about Asymlum protocol throughout the world, etc… but coming to Berlin on this program has given me a chance to get to know some of these people in person – one, in particular, and his story was on my mind as we watched this play and I was wondering what he’d think of the play and what his perspective might be. I thought this play did a great job of showing personal accounts of the refugee experience contrasted with the prejudice against them. (I loved how the play also handled the politics without beating us over the head or belaboring the point.) Seeing this play while now knowing someone personally who is in the position of “refugee” helped to “close a gap” of sorts for me. It’s not just theoretical or anecdotal anymore, it’s personal. I appreciated that it was less about the politics (though not dismissing them completely as they are definitely a major piece) but more about their experience, their stories, them as people, and how they’re feeling about their journey. I don’t feel like we get enough of that, “refugees” tend to be lumped together and all the struggles are told as the same. The personal stories seem to be getting lost or, as in my experience, it becomes theoretical rather than real stories of real people.
I did some googling when I got back to my room afterwards. I had never heard of Pegida before (and I’m surprised,- as, unfortunately, it seems like a large group.) I’d rather not spend a lot of time thinking or writing about them, they’re unpleasant. But one does have to wonder how much time they spend thinking about Germany’s history (or the history of many parts of Europe) and what they tell themselves – if anything – to reconcile something like the persecution of the Roma, Jews, etc with their actions today. (A bit of a stupid thought on my part, I suppose – people that protest and march against refugees and commit hate crimes aren’t exactly the type to look back and think, “That was a terrible hint that happened in history.”)