Thomas Brasch. Die Liebe und ihr Gegenteil oder Mädchenmörder Brunke

Press release 2005/6/15

Thomas Brasch (1945-2001) - narrative writer, movie director, poet, playwright and translator of Shakespeare - in the middle of the eighties, happened upon the historical Brunke double murder case. A small newspaper clipping from 1906 became the inspiration for his final work. From this emerged a text-composition, of about 4000 pages, comparable to a musical Fugue.

The main title "Die Liebe und ihr Gegenteil" betrays his preoccupation to submit an extensive outline about life and art. The LeseFuge picks up here the "work of a public dreamer" (Thomas Brasch).

Seven actors: Blixa Bargeld, Marion Brasch, Herbert Fritsch, Lars Rudolph, Otto Sander, Anna Thalbach, and Angela Winkler, read various Brunke-text variations that will be projected over beamers. Brasch, Brunke, east, west, Jewish, German, murderer, bank teller, piano teacher, Kabbala, bachelor-machine, - a wondrous aural and visual navigable textlandscape.

On August 26, 2005 the "Dux", the central motif for every fugue, will be inserted live into the installation LeseFuge by the actors, who will read the first variations of "Brunke". On August 27, 2005 the entire installation of Lesefuge can be seen during "Die lange Nacht der Museen".

Since April 2004 Hartmut Fischer's Juliettes Literatursalon peripherprojektil organized reading machines have been rotating with the friendly support of the Thomas Brasch community of heirs and the Stiftung Archiv Akademie der Künste zu Berlin. The culmination point is now Lesefuge, hosted by Jüdisches Museum and partially financed by HauptStadtKulturFonds.