Klaus Mann's novel written in exile – a satire about opportunism and the betrayal of once socially accepted values – was immediately banned in 1936. In the spotlight: the famous actor Gustaf Gründgens alias Hendrik Höfgen, who became "a clown to entertain the murderers" during National Socialism. Frank Castorf confronts us with the intoxication of power, the eroticism of betrayal and the charm of downfall – no less alluring then than it is today.
Klaus Mann's exile novel, subtitled "The Story of a Career", which he said he intended "to only portray types, not portraits", was immediately banned after its publication in 1936. For it was easy to recognise the actor, director and artistic director Gustaf Gründgens, once a close artistic colleague and brother-in-law of Klaus Mann, who had risen to fame in the role of Mephisto, in the main character of Hendrik Höfgen. As a writer who had fled the Nazis, was openly homosexual and part of the antifascist resistance, Klaus Mann's "Mephisto" is a scathing satire about the opportunism of the former drawing-room communists who mutated into "monkeys of power" in the blink of an eye in Germany between 1925 and 1936. Gründgens became a prime example of the contradiction between high art amidst the basest barbarism. "But I’m only an ordinary actor" is the last thing Höfgen says in the novel, and an actor has to act.
Klaus Mann committed suicide in 1949 by taking an overdose of sleeping tablets. Gustaf Gründgens too, who was a skilled at contorting himself to court success in every system, died fourteen years later of an overdose of sleeping tablets. But the duel between the two dead men lives on in "Mephisto". Frank Castorf confronts us with the intoxication of power, the eroticism of betrayal and the charm of downfall, which we can still be seduced by today just as we were then.
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Hendrik Höfgen
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Juliette Martens
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Klaus Mann, Geheimrat Bruckner
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Der Ministerpräsident, Direktor Schmitz, Saxofon
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Dora Martin, Lotte Lindenthal
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Oskar H. Kroge, Theophil Marder
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Hedda von Herzfeld, Nicoletta von Niebuhr
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Rahel Mohrenwitz, Barbara Bruckner
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Angelika Siebert
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Hans Miklas, Otto Ulrichs
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Live-Kamera
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Kathrin KrottenthalerLive-Kamera
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Jonathan BrunsTonangel
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Theo von MechowTonangel
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Jens CrullLive-Schnitt
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Maryvonne RiedelsheimerLive-Schnitt
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Meret BlaseLive-Schnittassistenz
- Frank Castorf Regie
- Aleksandar Denić Bühne
- Adriana Braga Peretzki Kostüme
- William Minke Musik
- Andreas Deinert Videodesign
- Ulrich Eh, Steffen Heinke Licht
- Amely Joana Haag Dramaturgie
- Sebastian Klink Künstlerische Produktionsleitung
