In the dignified Christian Wolff Hall of the Halle City Museum, between paintings from the 18th century and equally old furniture, there is a dominant chaise longue on the parquet floor. On it, wrapped in blankets, huddled up, an androgynous person with a distinctive footed moustache who immediately electrifies the room with her first exclamation: “Don't look so concerned! It is the worried faces that make me ill.” A clear message: No one here wants to be pitied as Christians, but rather to be admired tragically... It rises, wearing a nightgown and with a confused look: Friedrich Nietzsche. And reach out to the ranks of the audience. Ask “Peter Gast” from the audience to get a bottle of wine from his cupboard because his pain is too great. He later also asks to scratch his back: “Not so timid — or are you a convent student? “And rips apart under the exclamation “I destroy all altars! “a picture of Wagner, throws paper into the audience as “brain footage.”

Yes, anyone who sits at the front of this piece gets up close and personal with the Nietzsche of the 1890s, not at all, but between madness and rearing, storming and urging genius, oppressed by sister and mother in Naumburg¹. The play tells this narrative Nietzsche, or The German Misery by Austrian Alexander Widner, brought to the stage in Halle an der Saale by solo theatre artist Andrea Ummenberger.

It tells a fictional episode in which Lou Salomé (who in reality did not meet Nietzsche in person after their intensive time together in 1882) visits the “House of the Dead,” as Nietzsche calls the location of his sisterly care in the play. Lou tries to encourage Nietzsche, who believes in his recovery in the sunny south, although severely physically and mentally impaired, to travel to Italy again. Both Lou and he himself fluctuate between motivation and doubt — Nietzsche once again embodies exactly the qualities he criticized crushingly in his actions, for example:

You should only live in countries where garlic is appreciated! Countries hostile to garlic are sense-hostile countries! That's where you write; instead of nurturing and pampering your senses. You write your fingers sore, you think your ganglia crooked, you pour out your heart — instead of filling it. To the south! To the south! In a paperless area!

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Nietzsche, the poetic philosopher of ambiguity, an apologist of statements such as: “There are no facts, only interpretations.”² In this piece, he is presented in facets that can be interpreted in many ways, including from his left-wing, anti-German and state-critical side. In this respect, the choice of Alexander Widner's piece, which bears criticism of the German nation in its title, is certainly a good one — especially in the current times when, according to surveys, a nationalist party in the federal state has 40% of the performance.

Alexander Widner portrays Nietzsche as a critic of all “supernatural” instances, from state to church to spirit itself, as a philosopher of the body who upholds the power of nature and instinct. He makes him call, in reference to Zarathustra³: “We are body, not mind! [...] We are Earth! Earth! Earth! [...] I implore you, my brothers, remain loyal to the earth and do not believe those who speak to you of supernatural hopes! ”

More relevant than ever: Back then, it was the Christian priests who wanted to stir up false hope with the supernatural god, today it is the tech billionaires who preach infidelity to the earth in other ways: hope for extraterrestrial colonies in space, hope of immortality through genetic engineering and nanochips, hope of disembodiment through digital alter egos. With Nietzsche, this can also be countered here by respecting the earth in terms of the environment and not striving for limitless growth on a limited planet.

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But even more than these serious subtexts, the piece is also an ode to the “dancing and laughing God,” because Andrea Ummenberger knows how to incite viewers to laugh and smile with subtle or direct humor and therefore — as Nietzsche certainly approved — to stimulate the affects instead of the ganglia. As a result, she has already secured a certain fan base in Halle. Good conditions for taking on the complex matter of Nietzsche as a “one-woman show” as a next step and refreshing to see the “whipping” Friedrich on stage in a woman's body — at the same time an acknowledgment that, despite all criticism of it, the spirit (and philosophy) is exactly what is beyond gender and thus a bridge-building force.

In view of so much courage and commitment, minor technical faux pas can easily be overlooked and express the hope that this piece, with Ummenberger as Nietzsche, will find many more spectators, may travel to the stages of many cities and that the outstanding actress may even be able to afford a few more people on or backstage at future performances.

Anyone who wants to experience the “old” Nietzsche “resurrected” in his natural habitat should not miss the opportunity to see, hear and feel him so close to his penultimate place of work and so authentically staged. The piece will be played in Halle until May 30.

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Mandus Craiss (born 1983) grew up in Ludwigsburg and studied political science, cultural studies, philosophy, new history and geography in Tübingen and Leipzig. He has socialized in the ecological and age-mondialist movement and traveled extensively in this context, largely by hitchhiking. As central editor of the former BUNDjugend magazine Kritische Masse ("Critical mass") he has also published articles and interviews on political philosophy from Fromm to Foucault. His master's thesis deals with the works of Deleuze & Guattari with regard to the unconditional basic income. He lives with his son in a house community on the outskirts of Leipzig.

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The article image was photographed by Juliane Apel.

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Footnotes

1: Widner has the piece set around 1896/97, but mistakenly locates Nietzsche to Jena, where he was in a psychiatric hospital in 1889/90.

2: Posthumous Notes No. 1886 7 [20]

3: Cf. Preface, 3.