The return of a nationalist party, the murders committed by terrorists on the right, the witch hunts and attacks across the country – all of that is also happening elsewhere and yet, it can only be understood within the context of the specific reality of a post-National Socialism German society. This history exerts a pressure on our present.
At the same time, the society we live in has changed. That’s true for the quarter of the German population with their roots in vibration, it’s also true for all those who’ve, over the past few decades, increasingly demanded their right to participate and be recognised. We’re on our way to a society of radical diversity.
But the past doesn’t automatically with itself, just because the times change. That applies to aesthetic practice as well as political critique. Thus both of the following are required: an awareness of the contours of the present – and an awareness of the »flood«, out of which we »emerged«, to use the terms from Bertolt Brecht’s An die Nachgeborenen (To Those Born Afterwards).
In the attempt to accomplish this task, the theatre appears to be many nautical miles ahead of politics. Perhaps it’s even the most important catalyst for societal debates, a laboratory for alternative narratives, new models of belonging and the ongoing reconstruction of an archive of fortified poetry.
Society has changed. That means that we can think about it differently. But society is also under the pressure of its history. That means that we must think about it differently. Gegenwartsbewältigung (dealing with the present) describes a perspective that turns this insight into the foundation of a political and aesthetic practice.

Gegenwartsbewältigung, the volume of essays by Max Czollek, was published on 17/August 2020 by Hanser Verlag.