Jürgen Kuttner Lecture: Eisler on the Beach – A Communist Family Constellation Therapy

Based on his collaboration with the Bolshevist Orchestra (Bolschewistische Kurkapelle), and Tom Kühnel at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, Jürgen Kuttner will present to us in his talk the story of the Left in the 20th century as a family tale. His talk will be delivered in English.

On 11 May 1947, Hanns Eisler, the 'Karl Marx of music', appeared for the first time before the Un-American Activities Committee – "perhaps the most important case ever to appear before the committee" (Richard Nixon). In the summer of the same year, Eisler’s brother Gerhart, a communist official and an expert on Spain, China, and the Soviet Union, was sentenced to three years in prison. A witness to the prosecution was their sister Ruth Fischer, former international first lady of the Communist Party of Germany, who in the meantime had become a fervent anti-Stalinist. "With the Eislers, family relations are like those in Shakespearean dramas" (Charlie Chaplin).

Jürgen Kuttner was born in East Berlin and studied Cultural Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin, where he received his PhD in 1987. Before, during, and after the fall of the Berlin wall, he worked as a newspaper editor, talk radio host, stage director and performer. He has been giving lectures based on video snippets at the Volksbühne in Berlin and the Deutsches Theater Berlin. Working in Berlin, Hannover, Munich, Basel, Hamburg, and elsewhere, Kuttner has staged plays based on texts by Bertolt Brecht, Heiner Müller, Michael Frayn or Ayn Rand.

If you have any questions, please email André Fischer at andrefischer@wustl.edu.