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FREE THE INVESTIGATION: ORATORIO IN ELEVEN CANTOS PDF

Peter Weiss,A. Gross | 206 pages | 01 Jul 2000 | Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd | 9780714503011 | English | London, United Kingdom The Investigation -

Peter Weiss — was a German writer, The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos, graphic artist, and experimental filmmaker. After the German occupation of the Sudetenland, his family moved to Sweden, where Weiss would spend the rest of his life, becoming a Swedish citizen. Weiss died in In it, the ones responsible for the functioning of the machinery of annihilation stood in front of a tribunal. In this play, which was premiered in fifteen theatres The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos East and simultaneously inPeter Weiss re- constructed the facts about the hell on earth that was Auschwitz, which had been brought to light during the trial, in cantos, among them the cantos of The Loading Ramp, The Camp, The Bunkerblock. In those cantos, perpetrators and victims are confronted with one another, and in that way the horror of the death factory is revealed, especially since the reconstruction of individual experiences is neglected and emphasis is placed on the functional aspects of the camp. At the same time, Weiss shows the possibility of similar events recurring and the necessity of preventing this. His play The Investigation. Oratorio in 11 Cantos brings to paper and to the stage that which can be expressed about the trial and the cruelties that were tried there in a highly artificial yet direct manner. German title: Die Ermittlung ca. Peter Weiss. Other publications. Zum Seitenanfang. The Investigation: Oratorio in 11 Cantos - Peter Weiss, Alexander Gross - Google книги

It carries the subtitle "Oratorio in 11 Cantos". Weiss was an observer at the trials and developed the play partially from the reports of Bernd Naumann. The Investigation was originally supposed to be part of a larger "World-Theater Project", which was The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos follow the structure of Dante Alighieri 's . The three-part theater The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos was supposed to include the three realms of ParadiseHelland Purgatory. In an inversion of Dante's beliefs, The Investigation was supposed to correspond to the "Paradise" and yet be a place of despair for its victims. Infernowritten in but first published in as part of Weiss' estate, described the netherworld in its title. Due to the historical significance of the Auschwitz Trial, the Divine Comedy project was shelved. Weiss published the first third separately as The Investigation. The play takes place in a courtroom during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials — Weiss did not intend a literal reconstruction of the courtroom nor representation of the camp itself. The Investigation is divided into eleven Dantean " cantos ," each of which is subdivided into three parts. This part structure mimics Dante 's Divine Comedy. Weiss's cantos depict the 'progress' of the victims from the ramp upon arrival at Auschwitz to the gas chambers and The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos ovens, revealing ever more horrendous moments in the perpetration of The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos Nazi genocide. Weiss refrains from all dramatic embellishments. The focus is entirely on the spoken word, often taken verbatim from the trial. The Investigation succeeds in transforming the actual protocols into a work of literature and art — to the extent that art may be best suited to convey a sense of the experience and preserve the memory of the Holocaust. In the cantos, the dramatist sets the statements of the anonymous witnesses against the named defendants and former SS concentration camp The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos. Unlike at the historical trial, only eighteen defendants stand before the court. The statements of several hundred witnesses at the actual trials are condensed in the play in the Witnesses 1—9. Two of the witnesses worked at the camp but side with the defendants, the others, including two women, are victims who through an unlikely series of coincidences as they repeatedly emphasize survived the camp. The victims' testimonies are numbing in their endlessly detailed inventory of the atrocities committed at the concentration camp. This goes to the core question of how much room for individual action and responsibility is available even under the most constricted of circumstances. The play ends before the verdicts are announced, an ending which rejects the notion that there could be any punishment commensurate with genocidal crime or which might bring closure to the victims. Peter Weiss — was born in Germany but in went with his family into exile and lived for all of his adult life in Sweden where he also became a citizen. The Investigationlike most of his work, was written in German. It consists of clear, straightforward sentence structures, a strict parataxical style and has no punctuation at all. The past is recapitulated factually The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos soberly, without emotion. The alienation effect is used to achieve an intensified dramatic effect on the viewer. The rhythm of the utterances of the figures The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos towards the same goal. As part of the goal of universalization, the word "Jew" is not used in the entire play. The defendants use a number of strategies to exonerate themselves by minimizing, denying, or justifying their actions:. Few of the defendants acknowledge their guilt. Witnesses 1 and 2 are primarily apologetic. Weiss uses this to illustrate the complex of "second guilt", a concept which Ralph Giordano brought up in his book The Second Guilt and the Burden of Being German. Giordano argued that in their failure to acknowledge and address the collective crimes of the Nazi era, contemporaries of the Third Reich after brought upon themselves a "second guilt", distinct from the guilt associated with the crimes themselves. Nevertheless, the script, which had been published in its entirety in the two months prior to the debut, among other places in the theater magazine " Theater heute ," attracted multiple attacks. Theater critic Joachim Kaiser criticized the play for robbing the audience of its freedom of interpretation. In the debate about a suitable staging concept, two productions in the multiple-stage debut stand out. Piscator let the audience look out at the trial and the defendants from the perspective of the survivors. Peter Palitzsch 's production at the Staatstheater pursued an anti-identification conception with regular role-switching by all the actors. The roles of the perpetrators and the victims were thereby depicted as basically the same. The international productions of The Investigation display a great conceptual diversity, ranging from a representational play to scene reading to concert performances of the oratorios. After a twelve-year break, the play was brought back in in a provocative comedy-style production authorized by Weiss in the Castle Theater directed by Thomas Schulte-Michels. Inconceptual artist Jochen Gerz staged the play interactively with players on three Berlin stages. The continued relevance of Weiss' play, the geopolitics of Syria and ISISwas furthered on the closing weekend of the production by the November Paris The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos. In the s several works which became part of the emerging discourse on the ethics and aesthetics of the representation of the Holocaust in literature denounced The Investigation. According to the critics Weiss's play was a distortion and exploitation of the Holocaust for ideological reasons, a judgement which seems to reflect the Cold War Weiss was a member of the Swedish eurocommunist party VPKit was artless, lifeless and mechanical, and most disturbingly in the view of these critics, it wasn't even about the Jews. The latter assertion was based on the fact that the words 'Jew' and 'Auschwitz' are indeed never mentioned but neither is the word 'German' though the play leaves no doubt about any of this. The s produced a number of refutations of these attacks. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Die zweite Schuld oder Von der Last Deutscher zu sein. Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Auschwitz in der geteilten Welt Auschwitz in the Divided World. Retrieved October 20, Langer: The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination. Admitting the Holocaust: Collected Essays. New York,pp. Chicago, ; James E. Bloomington, Irene Heidelberger-Leonard ed. Opladen, Jost Hermand and Marc Silberman eds. Peter Lang Publishing, Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Deutsch Italiano Svenska Edit links. Capesius Dr. Frank Dr. Schatz Dr. Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials — The Investigation: Oratorio in 11 Cantos von Peter Weiss - Suhrkamp Insel Bücher Buchdetail

The somewhat uneven reading included six of the original 11 cantos, the term German playwrights used for subdivisions, although only one canto — Canto 6 — was presented in its entirety. Holocaust survivors Ruth Zimbler far left and Fredrick Terna far right. Twenty-two defendants, who were mid- to lower-level officials at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, were charged under German law for their roles in the Holocaust. Weiss did not intend the play to be performed in a courtroom setting and wanted Auschwitz to be present only in the words of the Auschwitz- Birkenau guards and lower-echelon leadership, the victims, and the prosecutor. It is important to note that the Frankfurt trial singled out those who were believed to be guilty of murder on their own initiative and not those who had perpetrated genocidal actions while following orders, as the courts had held that to be the lesser crime of accomplice to murder. The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos most moving portion of the program was a panel featuring two Holocaust survivors, Ruth Zimbler, born in Vienna inwho along with her The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos Walter left the city via a Kindertransport in Decemberand Fredrick Terna, born in Vienna inwho was interned in several concentration camps including Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Kaufering, which was part of the Dachau complex. The two led an audience discussion concerning what they experienced under Reichtskanzler Adolf Hitler. The Roosevelt Hotel, named in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt and located on Madison Avenue and 45th Street in Manhattan, announced plans to close amidst the coronavirus pandemic-induced downturn in travel. The 1,key hotel welcomed its first guests on September 22, Its last day open will be 96 years and 39 days later, on October 31, and it has served as a witness to history since opening day. The Roosevelt …. Indeed, restrictions on travel led to some oddities, such as a period of time when Air Tahiti Nui, a French carrier based in The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Cantos with a fleet of four Boeing Dreamliners, operated …. About Contact Us Advertise. Southwest Airlines, one of three U. Follow Us. By Jonathan Spira on 19 January Tweet Share.