Max Czollek: Zweifelssohn Theatre

Throughout his journey, Zweifelssohn is haunted by traces of violence – on trains, over dinner with strangers, on holiday with his girlfriend, or alone in anonymous hotel rooms. This is bound to his Jewish perspective on Germany, a way of seeing from which he cannot escape and to which he is, at the same time, deeply subjected. As he travels north, Zweifelssohn tries to cling to surfaces – to fashion, music, excess – but the violence grows ever louder, forcing itself into view as though it were a glimpse of an approaching future, even when he tries to look away. Much like the prophet Jeremiah, whose life he desperately does not want to see reflected in his own, yet inevitably does, Zweifelssohn rejects the prophet's visions of destruction while simultaneously finding them echoed in the present.