MEIN KAMPF

In the organizer's words:

In a homeless shelter in Vienna, Jewish book seller Schlomo Herzl falls into the arms of a naughty young man who has arrived from Braunau am Inn and is called Hitler. Herzl looked after the new arrival with indulgence and devotion. He lends him his only winter coat, gives him a distinctive beard trim and is not sparing with practical life advice. While Herzl wants to write a book to banish the evil from his heart - the book is to be entitled "Mein Kampf" - Hitler considers a political career after a failed application to the art academy. His behavior became increasingly brutal and an aggressive anti-Semitism became apparent. Hitler matures into a demagogue who can instrumentalize other people, who allies himself with Frau Tod herself and who will answer Schlomo Herzl's love with a pogrom.

Director and author George Tabori (1914-2007) was convinced that the content of every joke is a catastrophe and that laughter is just as existentially liberating as crying. In his grandiose farce, he takes up historical facts and counters them in a subversive and comical way. In his play, which premiered in Vienna in 1987, he combines the deepest pain with philosophical wisdom and unwavering Jewish humor against the backdrop of the Shoah.