In the vertigo between history and the present

In the fall of 1946, the young Swedish author Stig Dagerman travels through devastated Germany. In his literary travelogue German Autumn, he probes Berlin, Hamburg, and the Ruhr region – places marked by hunger, ruins, and exhaustion. Dagerman describes a country teetering between ending and beginning and asks an uncomfortable question: Is this country ready for freedom? Exactly 80 years later, a human lifetime, the celebrated director Christopher Rüping takes up this question. The winner of the 2025 Theatre-Award-Berlin, together with the ensemble of the Deutsches Theater Berlin, turns his ear to German history: 1946, 1977, and other autumns – times of transition, uncertainty, responsibility. When memory vanishes and history becomes a search, the question arises again: How much freedom do we carry within us? Who are we when all certainties fall away?

Co-produced by Ruhrtriennale and Deutsches Theater Berlin.