Theatre
Großvater und Halbbruder
Not translated into English
Thomas Hürlimann · 1981
Synopsis
On 1 September 1939, an émigré turns up at the swimming pool that Grandfather Ott keeps on the shore of Lake Constance, facing the German bank. The village immediately calls him a Jew, and the family wants nothing to do with him. The man claims to be called Alois and to be Hitler's half-brother; no one knows whether he is lying to survive. The grandfather decides to let him spend the winter and the war in his pool, and the two men wage a private winter war against each other, then fight another together against the village. When word gets around, it is the grandfather who is pursued as a friend of Hitler.
Context
The play, in fifteen scenes, was first performed on 15 October 1981 at the Schauspielhaus in Zurich, in a production by Werner Düggelin, and was published the same year by Ammann. A radio version, in which the author himself speaks the narrative, followed in 1982. It begins on the first day of the war and ends on a summer evening after the war, in a country where, for its inhabitants, the war has not taken place. At the beginning of the eighties it opened one of the first debates on the role of Switzerland in the Nazi period and on the reception it gave to foreigners.
Who it is for
A short play, in fifteen scenes and eleven roles. It is as well to know that no one ever learns whether the stranger is telling the truth.
Prizes and reception
Created the year its author received the Aspekte prize for a collection of stories; broadcast on the radio from 1982.
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