Der Kleine Prinz
('The Little Prince')
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Little Prince comes from the depths of our solar system, or from the asteroid 'B 612', to be more precise, which is 'hardly bigger than a house', and which he shares with a rose and three dangerously rampant baobab trees. He also has three volcanoes, which he has to sweep every morning. One day, the Little Prince decides to look for friends on neighbouring asteroids. On one of these, he meets a king who is delighted to have a subject at last; on another, he meets a business man who owns the stars.
Finally, he comes to Earth, where he tells his story to a pilot who has had to make an emergency landing, and does not manage to draw him a proper sheep. This story references the author's life. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a passionate and daring aviator.
A crash landing in the desert near Cairo ended his attempt to fly from Paris to Saigon in record time. The book about the Little Prince has become an immortal classic, and one of the 20th century's biggest literary successes, thanks to its deep humanism, which the author steadfastly continued to believe in, despite the terrors of wartime.
Ulrich Matthes has been a member of the ensemble of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin since 2004; he is known to a wide spectrum of cinemagoers for his memorable character performances. He played major roles in the films Downfall and The Ninth Day, or the docudrama Todesspiel, for example, and was president of the Deutsche Filmakademie from 2019 to 2023.
