Nominated for the Cologne Theatre Award and the Kurt Hackenberg Award for Political Theatre 2025
What does resistance mean? When do I become active? And why?
These are questions Anna and Otto Quangel grapple with – based on their Gestapo files, Hans Fallada created the first German resistance novel after the war. For a long time, the Quangels were complicit in the Nazi regime; now they want to resist. But they are quiet people who have no interest in loud protests or organized underground resistance. What form of resistance suits them?
The two actors Lisa Bihl and Jonas Baeck, in the roles of Otto and Anna Quangel, guide the audience on an audio walk through Cologne to the former trade fair grounds. Fallada’s novel is interwoven with real-life survival stories of victims of Nazi persecution. The story of one person persecuted as a Jew is further recounted by Eva Majbour from the association Zweitzeugen e.V. (Second Witnesses). The young Sinti woman Alana Polak continues to tell her personal family story, representing the perspective of Cologne’s Sinti community.
At a time when approximately ten million people in Germany vote for far-right parties and roughly the same number abstain from voting altogether, this audio walk-performance focuses on participation, courage, and taking action on a small scale.
