“The Investigation – Oratorio in 11 Cantos’ – a special reading on 27 January 2025 in Johannis-Church

MAGDEBURG PUPPET THEATRE AND DOM CHOIR REMEMBER THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ EIGHTY YEARS AGO IN JOHANNIS-CHURCH

27 January this year marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp by the Soviet army. In his ‘Oratorio in eleven songs, The Investigation’, based on the testimony in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial of the 1960s, the playwright Peter Weiss creates a haunting memorial. With a staged reading with the participation of the Magdeburg Cathedral Choir, the ensemble of the Magdeburg Puppet Theatre, together with guests Gabriele Grauer, Gerhild Reinhold and Peter Wittig, not only commemorates the National Socialist crimes, it also uses this text to highlight the causes and effects of this crime against humanity. Special guest Michael Roth, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag, will take part in the one-off performance on Holocaust Memorial Day in Magdeburg’s St John’s Church.

Organiser
The Magdeburg Puppet Theatre, the Magdeburg Cathedral Parish, the Cathedral Music and the Johanniskirche Peace Forum.

Mitwirkende
Richard Barborka, Holk Freytag, Gabriele Grauer, Luisa Grüning, Linda Mattern, Lennart Morgenstern, Gerhild Reinhold, Michael Roth, Sabine Schramm, Jana Weichelt, Kaspar Weith, Peter Wittig and the Magdeburg Cathedral Choir conducted by Cathedral Cantor Christian Otto, directed by Holk Freytag, dramaturgy by Moritz von Schurer
The performance begins in St John’s Church at 8 pm, admission is 13 euros.

About the play
Based on the testimonies in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial from 1963 to 1965 and in formal reference to Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’, the playwright Peter Weiss describes the structure, everyday life and consequences of the crimes committed in the largest extermination camp under Nazi rule in eleven ‘songs’. He invites us to take part in a process of coming to terms with the past, which includes the concrete memories of the victims as well as the suppression of guilt by the perpetrators, who had returned to office as experts with technical expertise in the West German economic miracle country. With his method, Weiss provides the occasion for an examination of history that invites us to use the past as a teacher for the present. As Weiss repeatedly emphasises, his aim is not to recreate the Frankfurt trial on stage, but to make the death factory comprehensible. ‘Die Ermittlung’ is a passion play in every respect. It is not about condemning the accused once again, but about showing what people are capable of and willing to do when they are allowed to do anything, when hatred and contempt have become the norm. ‘The Investigation’ shows a world in which there are no laws. At the same time, a world that is hermetically sealed and no longer has anything to do with the world in which we have established ourselves. Weiss shows that Auschwitz was made possible by an ideology based on the superiority of one group of people over others.