Die verbrannten Dichter
('The burnt poets')
Based on the anthology of the same name by Jürgen Serke
Ernst Toller once wrote that he simply could not believe the suffering people cause other people.
In Germany, the Nazis ordered all books by authors who had been declared enemies of the regime to be burnt on 10 May 1933. Great literature and scientific works by innumerable authors were thrown into the fire in front of cheering crowds. Over the following decades, many of the authors concerned, who often went into exile, were forgotten. From 1976 onwards, the journalist Jürgen Serke sought out the surviving authors and interviewed them, initially for a series of articles in Stern magazine, that led to a wide audience rediscovering their writings. On the basis of the series, Serke's epochal book Die verbrannten Dichter was published a year later; the currently available edition is the third, and has been reviewed and extended. It also commemorates authors who died in exile or on the journey there.
Nicole Heesters and Gerd Wameling pay homage to the books and the fates of the persecuted authors. They also remind people of a country and a society of which Heinrich Heine already warned with a sense of foreboding in 1823: '...where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.'
Nicole Heesters has worked with directors such as August Everding, Peter Stein, Peter Zadek, Klaus Michael Grüber, Thorsten Fischer, Andrea Breth and Claus Peymann. She has played the great roles offered by the world's literary works at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, the Schauspielhaus Bochum and at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg. She recently performed at the Theater in der Josefstadt, the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and the Schauspiel Stuttgart theatre. She is also well-known to a wider audience thanks to her numerous roles in TV productions.
Gerd Wameling was a member of the Berliner Schaubühne ensemble, where he worked with Peter Stein, Luc Bondy and Robert Wilson, for almost 20 years. He has also performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna and at the Salzburg Festival. On the big screen and on TV, he has appeared in Wim Wenders' Faraway, So Close! and Peter Stein's Trilogie des Wiedersehens , as well as the TV crime series Bella Block. Gerd Wameling is an Emeritus Professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. His productions with students have won much praise.
