Aghet 99+1=100

The Baghdad Railway was the dream of many powerful men. Sultan Abdulhamid II dreamed of progress and expansion, the German Emperor of oil on the Arabian Peninsula. In 1903 Frankfurt's Philipp Holzmann AG began construction on the Baghdad Railway. The rails and locomotives were supplied by Krupp AG, Borsig, Cail, Hanomag, Henschel and Maffei. Beginning in October of 1915, the Baghdad Railway also
served as a vehicle for the systematic deportation of Armenians to the Syrian desert. The German Empire was informed of and involved in the mass murder of the Armenians from the very beginning. Human lives were insignificant to Wilhelm II. The German involvement in the mass murder of the Armenians thus belongs to the prehistory of the Shoah. Aghet 99+1=100 presents these historical yet still politicallyrelevant
entanglements over two evenings in a semi-documentary theatrical performance. Reinhold Böh, great-grandson of an engineer, comments on a replica of the Bagdad Railway; Kevork Gregorian cooks and tells of life in Turkey after the mass murder. Photojournalist Erol Gurian deals with the international Armenian diaspora's relationship to its homeland.