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PR image of the Uppsala Stadsteater: Piece about journalists' bluff
Photo: Uppsala State Theatre
The counterfeiting scandal involving former SPIEGEL journalist Claas Relotius is coming to the theater stage in Sweden.
From the beginning of December, the Uppsala City Theater will be showing a reality-based play about "perhaps the biggest journalistic bluff of all time," as the theater announced on Wednesday.
Director Viktor Tjerneld dealt in depth with the Relotius case, which fundamentally changed German journalism.
It's "about the man behind the lies."
The work »Spegelmannen« (Der SPIEGEL-Man) should therefore celebrate its premiere on December 3rd.
»The story of Claas Relotius is incredibly exciting.
Especially because journalism of our time has become a kind of battlefield," Tjerneld was quoted as saying in a statement from the theater.
In an industry where one is not allowed to deviate from the truth, the narrative is constantly being fought over.
DER SPIEGEL itself made the scandal public at the end of 2018.
Since 2011, around 60 texts that Relotius wrote or in which he was involved have appeared in the magazine and online.
In it he had partly invented protagonists and scenes.
In Germany, the case is also the subject of the media satire »A Thousand Lines« by Michael Bully Herbig, which has been in cinemas since the end of September.
The film is inspired by a book by Juan Moreno, who caught up with Relotius while researching a common story.
Moreno reports on this in his book »A Thousand Lines of Lies – The Relotius System and German Journalism«.
feb/dpa
