Willen Waffen Wahn

The scenic-musical evening confronts the thinking of the Prussian military scholar and war theorist Carl von Clausewitz with the emotional power of modern music and brings the fault lines of today's conflicts into sharp focus. Excerpts from "On War" meet the musical voices of a wounded century. Clausewitz’s reflections on “defense,” “deterrence,” and “total war” sound frighteningly contemporary. The interplay between theoretical analysis and human experiences - as expressed in songs and piano works by Hanns Eisler, Stefan Wolpe und Paul Dessau, among others - creates a disturbingly current dialogue in which thought and feeling question one another: the language of strategy meets the sound of experience, analysis meets outcry, reason meets loss. Against the backdrop of current debates on war, rearmament, and conscription, the evening asks: How can we reflect on war without legitimizing it? How rational can violence be? And when does war serve an ideology?