Lenz

A young man is hiking in the mountains. He is assailed by the fog, cold and damp. Between a dream-like state and wakefulness, time and space begin to dissolve. Great fear overcomes him. And yet – when he later says to a dead child, “Stand up and walk,” it is not sheer madness that makes him believe it will happen, but his absolute faith. He believes in the same way as he once loved. Published posthumously as the novella “Lenz,” Georg Büchner based this fragment on a report by the social reformer and priest Johann Friedrich Oberlin, in whose house Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–1792), who was already well-known as a Sturm und Drang author at the time, lived for a certain period.

With this adaptation, Swiss director Werner Düggelin, who staged his first play at the Schauspielhaus in 1956, will be showing his 55th production. He most recently staged “Happy Days” by Samuel Beckett and “Texts by Jacques Brel” at the Schiffbau.