For our Denkfest „Enlightenment on Trial“, which took place in Potsdam in summer 2024, the Einstein Forum was proud to produce a musical play Herr der Luft: the Ballad of the Miller and the Devil, based on Daniel Kehlmann’s prize-winning novel Tyll. Those who missed the premiere in Potsdam can now enjoy the Berlin premiere in Gorki-Theater. With brilliant lyrics in English and German by Daniel Kahn and Stella Morgenstern, music by Christian Dawid and pictures by Jerry Merose, the play gives us a stunning picture of what the world was like before the Enlightenment. It was a world in which curious people were executed as witches, knowledge was suspect and superstition pervasive, where the limits of your life were determined by the borders of your village, and most people were damned to do exactly what their parents did. The story of the poor miller Claus, whose unconventional search for knowledge led to his doom, uses irony and pathos to convey this world in one unforgettable evening.
At the Maxim Gorki Theater on 22 February at 19:30.