Everything we don’t remember

• Theatre

A German-Polish project by Gernot Grünewald, Jarosaw Murawski / after the book by Christiane Hoffmann / directed by Gernot Grünewald

At the end of Nazi Germany and the World War it had initiated, more than 12 million Germans were on the run or displaced from their homes: A collective trauma which resonates in families up to this day. It also connects to the fate of millions of refugees in our days, most recently owing to the war in Ukraine.

In January 2020, writer and journalist Christiane Hoffmann sets off on foot towards the west from Róyna (Rosenthal), a village in North Silesia, retracing the 550km that her father undertook as a nine-year-old fleeing from the Red Army as part of the trek of his village. His route finally led him to Wedel near Hamburg.

The emotional starting point of the daughter’s walking project is the attempt to find a connection with a father who has recently died and whose non-existent memory of those times have shaped her life. How does the flight trauma of one generation impact those that follow? The long-time international correspondent and current deputy spokesperson of the Federal Government also experiences her undertaking as an exploration of Europe and the common history of Germany, Poland and Czechia.

In February 2024, director Gernot Grünewald travelled to Róyna, accompanied by Christiane Hoffmann and the polish author Jaroslav Muravski, in search of documentary material for the theatre project in Gaußstraße. They spoke with contemporary witnesses and descendants of the polish families that were expelled from Ukraine in 1945 and now live in the village and in the former house of the Hoffmann family. Also accompanying the team is video artist Jonas Plümke, offering a visual documentation of the enormous displacement of populations and its traces in people, houses and landscapes along the flight route.

world premiere 29th November 2024, Thalia Gauss