Jewish Community and Director of Play Viewed As Anti-semitic Are Moving Closer to a Confrontation

The Jewish community here and the director of a play it views as anti-Semitic moved closer toward a confrontation after he restated Monday his intention to premiere the play on November 13 and the community’s leaders announced its members would take over the stage and prevent the performance.

Guenther Ruehle, director of “Garbage: The City of Death” by the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder, said after a special performance of the play for journalists and critics, “We did not do all this work for nothing.” He continued:

“I do believe that our Jewish citizens recognize that they have acted against the law. Let’s hope they will not disturb the next performance ….” His reference about law-breaking was to the disruption of the original premiere of the play last Thursday evening by 30 members of the community, who took over the stage and stopped the show from going on.

The Jewish community responded by stating that it will not allow the rescheduled premiere to take place. Members of the community have already bought tickets to the show and intend to occupy the stage again, if all other measures fail to stop the performance.

SEVERAL MEASURES ARE PENDING

Several such measures are pending. An unidentified Jewish resident of Frankfurt has asked a court here to issue an interim order cancelling the premiere. At the same time, the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland, the West German Jewish community’s official body, called upon Frankfurt Mayor Walter Wallman to use his authority to ban the premiere.

In a letter to Wallman, Zentralrat’s president Werner Nachman said the municipal theater of Frankfurt, where the play is being readied for its new premiere, was abusing the freedom of the arts to circulate anti-Semitic attitudes and legitimize such views. This behavior, Nachman continued, contradicts basic principles of democracy and tolerance, and endangers the reconciliation between Jews and non-Jews.

Wallman is scheduled to address a meeting of the Frankfurt Jewish community November 10, three days before the rescheduled premiere. While some observers here believed he will announce at that time whether or not the show will go on, others pointed out that such a decision would put Wallman in a difficult position. He would appear, they said, as a politician trying to impose his views in an extremely sensitive area.

Ruehle has carefully tried to head off criticism of the play as anti-Semitic by the use of several theatrical techniques. One is to downplay the role of the main character, the unnamed “Rich Jew,” a heartless real estate speculator who kills a woman he loves and escapes prosecution because the Germans feel they owe the Jews something.

In Ruehle’s version, other issues, such as the homosexual relations between the characters, is given more prominence. Additionally, there is a heavy use of music and dance, which sometimes gives the play the flavor of a musical.

Commenting on these changes, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, the editor of the literary supplement of the “Allgemeine Zeitung” of Frankfurt, said that “what they have done is ridiculous. They tried to give the bad’ Rich Jew’ who is undoubtedly the most important character, a supporting role only. And they made of him a melancholic rather than a sadistic person, as he was in the original version.” He added:

“Another thing they have done is to give the role of the Rich Jew to someone who has an ‘Aryan’ appearance. But all this is nonsense. It makes no difference whatsoever. Of course the play remains an anti-Semitic piece.”

Criticizing the play along similar lines, German author Rudolf Kraemer-Badone lashed out at the municipal theater staff, saying they had “made a parody of the play, thus hoping to defuse some of its anti-Semitic elements. The result is an unsuccessful and contemptible cover-up operation.” He continued:

“It is worse than the original Fassbinder (version). All the original anti-Semitic elements are there.”