More than 250 visitors experienced a dignified and gripping commemoration of the resistance fighters of the "White Rose" in the Weilheim municipal theater.
Pianist Jürgen Geiger and the theater group "Die Wolken" not only cultivated memories.
They opened up spaces for further thinking.
Weilheim
– “This will make waves!” At the end, these four words stand like big exclamation marks in the darkness of the theatre.
Words from the last conversation between 21-year-old Sophie Scholl and her parents, a few days before she was murdered by the National Socialists.
Six members of the “White Rose” resistance group were executed in Munich in the spring of 1943.
However, the rulers could not do away with the ideas, the courage and the hopes of these six people and their supporters.
80 years after the deaths of Hans and Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf and Kurt Huber, there was a moving memorial concert at the Weilheim City Theater last Saturday.
The local church musician Jürgen Geiger and the young Munich theater group "Die Wolken" interwoven texts from the resistance fighters' letters and flyers with expressive acting and impressive piano music.
And were rewarded for this in the fully occupied theater with concerned, devout listening - and in the end with long applause and shouts of "Bravo".
Performed several times in the atrium of the Munich university
At the beginning of this commemorative concert, which has taken place several times in recent years in the atrium of Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians-University, the main effect is the music.
Jürgen Geiger plays all three movements of Beethoven's dramatic "Storm Sonata" on the grand piano, with great virtuosity and full of feeling.
Only in the background does a human chain form over long minutes of silent comings and goings.
No word, no eye contact, just stares.
A sea of conformity that leaves no chance for the small island of resistance.
The doubts of the young resistance fighters - and their incredible strength
It soon becomes more expansive, the scenic play (director: Thomas Ritter).
The twelve performers, mostly students, act around the piano, sometimes walking, sometimes dancing, sometimes whispering, sometimes screaming.
They don't just think, they empathize with the resistance fighters, who were almost as young as they were, showing their doubts and longing and strife - and their unbelievable strength.
"I am very strong and calm," writes 24-year-old Hans Scholl, with the execution in mind, in his last letter to his parents: "Thank you for giving me such a rich life."
Connections of the "White Rose" to Weilheim
The group's connections to Weilheim - to the Gmünder Hof and to the Catholic youth of the town parish church - are also discussed.
And to quote sentences from the six leaflets of the "White Rose", the young actors go into the middle of the audience and look their viewers in the face one by one.
"Everyone is able to contribute something," they say from the stage afterwards: "Make your decision before it's too late!" At the latest, when hundreds of leaflets sail from the theater balcony onto the visitors, goosebumps set in.
Personal questions for Hans and Sophie Scholl
But as direct as the address is, the space opened up by this production is just as large.
To the sounds of Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Chopin and from Jürgen Geiger's own pen, there is an opportunity to trace and think further.
And completely in the silence, the young actors speak their own questions to the Scholl siblings and their circle - very small and very big questions: Sophie, what music do you actually like to dance to the most?
Hans, how do you know who to trust?
Were you afraid, Christopher?
What would you have liked to have experienced before you died...?
This memorial concert showed in a gripping and touching way that even 80 years after the murder of its protagonists, the “White Rose” has not yet been told.
And it's up to us to carry their legacy into the present day.