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sueddeutsche.de

Dachau: Greta Fischer School performs play about its namesake

Süddeutsche Zeitung, by Martin Wollenhaupt

"Thoughts are everywhere. Author and director Wolfsmehl - whose real name is Michael Kumeth - is pacing up and down. Wiring here, the script there, the cookies there. For the actors, for concentration, from his wife. Has everything been thought of? Soon they will come into the rehearsal room, his actors, at any moment and - he suspects - they will be joking around, giggling, missing their cue.
Because the cast is not from a theater school, they are still at the very beginning. In acting as in life. They are fourth and ninth graders from the Greta Fischer School. Children who have special educational needs, difficulties with learning, language, emotional and social development, says head teacher Victoria Ledermann. "This makes their performance all the greater."

It should be about the children

It becomes even bigger when you consider that the children are not only on stage, but also co-wrote the script themselves. The school's namesake, Greta Fischer, plays a role, as do fleeing children and the Second World War. Big themes for small minds.

While Wolfsmehl prepares the rehearsal, he looks back on what has happened so far in short sequences. A year ago, he says, the artist met with the children for the first time. A script was needed. Wolfsmehl actually likes the solitude of writing. But this project is a little different. The children should get a taste for it. Reading, writing, theater - it has something to do with life, with their lives.

"Don't necessarily put a picture of me in the newspaper," Wolfsmehl will later say between door and door, "the children are the important thing." What is important is their self-confidence, their trust in the future, their place in the world. "Many carry a huge rucksack of problems around with them that they can't help," he says.

Director Wolfsmehl writes the children's thoughts on a play

Simply placing them in front of a thick copy of Buddenbrooks would hardly work here, in the Special Education Center, as it does for most children. The idea of the Friedrich Bödecker Kreis, which is behind the project, is therefore a different one. The children should shape the text themselves, create it, work with it. A bit like plasticine, they already know that.

And who better to accompany them than someone who has dedicated his life to literature? The children contributed their creativity, shared their ideas, Wolfsmehl wrote along with them. They improved, scene by scene, and he wove their thoughts into the story.

Wolfsmehl and the Greta Fischer School are not the only partnership of this kind. She is part of a whole network of author sponsorships by Friedrich Bödecker circles throughout Germany. Around forty publications are produced each year. The federal government supports the project.

Greta Fischer and the topic of flight

Gradually, the script took on a more serious tone. Two themes emerged: children on the run and, relatedly, the school's namesake, Greta Fischer. They have more to do with each other than you might initially think: The social education worker came to Dachau in 1945. She set up a safe place for traumatized children in the Indersdorf monastery, backed by a team from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. It was the first international children's center in the US zone.
Many of the children there had suffered the same fate as Greta Fischer, who was Jewish. The Nazis had murdered her parents in a concentration camp. The orphans found a temporary home in the Indersdorf convent. Jewish and non-Jewish children were given something to eat, medicine, psychological support, an education - and one thing above all: support.

Greta Fischer's story in 18 scenes

Now, 78 years later, the story has been cast in 18 scenes. The roles have been assigned, the stage set designed and the costumes collected through an appeal for donations from the school. The children visited the Indersdorf monastery themselves and went on an excursion to a Munich theater to get a taste of the stage.

Thursday's play will be about a fictitious gang of children who survived Auschwitz concentration camp. They will make their way home to Germany on foot. Greta Fischer is waiting for the children at Indersdorf Monastery - and with her a new, better life. Adventure, friendship and hope meet loss, danger and hunger. Shots are fired. A gorilla that escaped from Prague Zoo during a bomb attack and a cat make a guest appearance.

Yes, you read that right: Holocaust and gorilla, real history and childish fantasy. In these elements, the play emancipates itself from reality. Indersdorf historian Anna Andlauer personally read and approved the script.

Andlauer is also the one who recently had contact with Greta Fischer's Israeli relatives. Michael and Rena Plaschkes wanted to come to the performance. Their place of residence in Israel is close to the Gaza Strip, where there is now a war. That's why they have just been staying with relatives, so a trip to Germany is out of the question. "We are tired of traveling around as refugees", they write in an email to Andlauer.

Back in the rehearsal room. Wolfsmehl's stage directions fill the room: You're hungry! You haven't eaten for days! Don't laugh, this is serious! Not everything is going according to script. Here in the rehearsal room as well as out in the world. In the midst of the chaos, Neli sits upright on a chair in the middle of the room. She is playing Greta Fischer, waiting intently for her cue. The tips of her toes barely touch the carpet."