Political Theater | “Inside Bundestag” at the Prinzenallee Ballhaus: National Fools

A theatrical review of the last week of sessions: "InsideBundestag" Photo: Dominik Maringer In the third episode of the theatrical inspection of parliamentary conditions, the debates and discourses in the Prinzenallee Ballhaus are once again dissected. According to the concept of the series, it should not only be re-staged, but also analyzed what and how is spoken and discussed in the House. Because: What and how is spoken does not happen in a vacuum, it finds its echo in the language, in the minds of the people. Well, it's all a bit pompous, you might think. Who listens to all of this would be a counter question.

It's not just the hard facts that make you think differently. In the current electoral trend, the AfD is around 30 percent nationwide; Their presence in the minds of the other parties, as we become increasingly aware of this evening with desperation, is also a given. Everyone is working through it, no matter how much the party makes a fool of itself.

The ensemble of “InsideBundestag” led by director Lukas David Schmidt looks at these debates as if under a magnifying glass. Something is brewing here, a new coexistence is emerging here and these new conditions can be seen in the form and content of the debates. There is, as the last episodes have already shown, a right-wing conservative hegemony that is establishing itself, which can also be seen in this new episode.

Now it's about the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, about the planned support for the country, about, as the AfD sees it, Chancellor Friedrich Merz who despises his own country and loves Ukraine. The debate about commemoration and remembrance in the current hour called by the AfD then takes on similarly nationalistically twisted features. People lament that the sightlines of the monuments are blocked by wind turbines. It is a lecture that, had it not been delivered that way, could not have been invented. No less irritating is the billion paid out by the coalition without a tender to a former Bundestag employee who is now happily lobbying for a drone factory in Ukraine.

Otherwise, this episode was a bit free-floating and lengthy. The approach to how this week of meetings can be processed in an intellectually and playfully sophisticated manner using theatrical means could perhaps be described as a documentary re-enactment. A theatrical look back at the last week of the session, so to speak, in which the small ensemble around Aljoscha Stadelman, Ännie Engelhardt and Christoph Schüchner played a larger role than in previous episodes. There was also a bingo show that was funny because it was silly, but otherwise irrelevant.

Stadelmann stood out with casually disavowing gestures and, by the way, made the AfD politicians he portrayed the more interesting show hosts. This is also always a bitter realization: the AfD's pleasure in foolishness and the inability of the others to cleverly counter it.

This article cost you nothing. Us: research, production and technology. We saved on office rent as well as on printing and distribution. And we gave up salary. Nevertheless, the calculation doesn't work without you. We need 300,000 euros by the end of the year. You pay what you can, in return we keep writing.

No paywall, no small print, just one goal: that nd stays.