What kind of relationship can you have to this city when your own family had to flee from Berlin?
A really difficult question to answer from my perspective. Even though we all have dealt extensively with the Holocaust and its consequences, having a real encounter with descendents of parents or grandparents who had to leave Germany can become an emotional tour de force.
The author Andrea Stolowitz is such a descendant. Her great-grandfather, Dr. Max Cohnreich, had to escape from Berlin in 1936 and started a new life in New York. For his children and grandchildren, he wrote a diary about his life in Berlin.
In 2015 Andrea visits Berlin to explore the life of her great-grandfather through his diary. An exciting and true story that has now premiered as a theatrical play on the stage of the English Theater Berlin. We talked to all the people participating in the creation of the piece. Each one has given us a piece of their personal Berlin Diary…
.
.
Victoria J Mayers
Actress (moved from Austria to the U.S. and then to Berlin one year and a half ago)
photo: Marc Aden Gray
What moves you most about this piece?
The journey of discovery she went on in finding out about her life and her history.
What kind of connections have you drawn between Berlin Diary and your own personal experiences?
It has made me more curious about my own past, about who came before me and what their lives were like. I’ve actually always loved looking people up online, so Andrea’s detective work really appealed to me.
At this very moment, how does your own Berlin diary look?
Incomplete. The story is still unfolding in so many ways!
How do you feel about Berlin these days?
Better than my husband and I arrived a year and a half ago. One thing I can definitely say about Berlin is that it’s never boring. Berlin is a bit like a grumpy neighbor, once you get to know them, humor and warmth begin to appear.
.
.
.
John Julian
Actor (lives in Berlin for two years, prior to that, 20 years in Munich)
What kind of connections have you drawn between Berlin Diary and your own personal experiences?
My mother is German, and I also come from a small family that is not very close, so there are many things that I can relate to in Berlin Diary. One thing in particular is that I also chose to move because of a drive-by shooting in America.
At this very moment, how does your own Berlin diary look?
My own Berlin Diary currently looks like a rehearsal schedule. Not much else going on besides rehearsing at the moment, but I’m enjoying the process with great colleagues in a very challenging piece of American theater.
How do you feel about Berlin these days?
It’s an exciting city and I really appreciate the diversity of people and cultures, which reminds me a bit of Los Angeles, where I grew up.
.
.
.
Daniel Brunet
Director & Producing Artistic Director of the English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center
(lives in Berlin since 15 years, grew up in the State of New York, USA)
What moves you most about this piece?
Berlin Diary inspires me in its use of humor and formal experimentation to examine a horrific chapter in human history as well as to ask universal questions of family and a sense of belonging in a manner that will resonate with audience members in Berlin and beyond.
What kind of connections have you drawn between Berlin Diary and your own personal experiences?
Everyone who comes into contact with the play seems to identify strongly with Andrea’s questions about her family. It opens space for reflection and comparison between the current patterns of global migration and those in the 1930s and 1940s where Europe served more as a point of departure than as a place of arrival.
At this very moment, how does your own Berlin diary look?
As someone who moved to Berlin at the age of 22, my Berlin diary is indiscernible from my Brunet diary. As a resident of the Hauptstadt for the last 15 years, I feel as though I have grown up and grown with the city over this time. I see myself as an immigrant to Germany and immigrant to Berlin and am tremendously grateful to be able to call this most international of cities my home and the center of my work.
How do you feel about Berlin these days?
Berlin is currently facing a crossroads: how can it grow responsibly with increased international attention while at the same time protecting and safeguarding those who have called it home for generations? It is a very exciting time to be part of Berlin’s Freie Szene, or independent performing arts community, and to continuously seek to use the tools of theater and performance to foment discussions between artists and audiences about the city we live in.
.
.
.
Tamar Ginati
Costume & Set Design (grew up in Israel, lives in Berlin since 4 years)
What kind of connections have you drawn between Berlin Diary and your own personal experiences?
“I think we are moving forward very fast nowadays, we think less about the past and more about the moment and the future. “There will be no one else to remember” is a line from the play. I sadly suspect that very soon, the holocaust in the second world war would be no more then a terrible story that had happened many years ago. At the end of the day, this is our personal responsibility to read, research, talk to our children about it.
At this very moment, how does your own Berlin diary look?
People move to Berlin because it is cool, relaxed, alternative, affordable…. they put less weight on the past. I am one of them I guess…Though, I must say that sometimes I stop and think what would happen if I got fired, or would be stopped from entering a restaurant simply because of my nationality…
How do you feel about Berlin these days?
Berlin has become a small metropolis. People move to Berlin to meet other people from different places. In this sense it is very important, and somehow feels like what we should learn from the Holocaust- that everyone is equal and that there should be no place for hatred and racism. Those thoughts are what inspired the set and costume design.
.
.
.
Noemi Berkowitz
Regiehospitanz (lives in Berlin since 6 months, grew up in Nebraska, USA)
At this very moment, how does your own Berlin diary look?
My own Berlin Diary is a strange combination of Deutsch, English, and Polski words about chasing after dreams and art and history. It has a lot of blank pages left as I continue to figure out what building my life in Berlin looks like.
How do you feel about Berlin these days?
I grew up in Nebraska with my wonderful parents, a Jewish dad and a Polish mother whose first language in common was German. With my family and my history spread out all over the world and also coexisting in me, the multicultural Berlin made sense as a place to keep writing my own story.
.
.
.
Daniel Sauermilch
Author and Assistant to the Director
What moves you most about this piece?
As a descendant of Holocaust survivors myself, I’m most moved by how BERLIN DIARY examines the disintegration of the family unit post-war. Memory is a transient and often tenuous thing that can often fail to bind people together and this play explores that frailty.
What kind of connections have you drawn between Berlin Diary and your own personal experiences?
I moved to Berlin in March 2015 to find a coat my great-grandfather made for the wife of Hermann Göring before he and most of my family living in Berlin at the time were killed in camps across Poland. I identify with arc of Andrea’s investigation of her family’s history. It starts with reluctance, just one drop at a time until becoming a full-fledged compulsion. Of course, I was also writing a play about my own investigation, so the parallels are numerous.
At this very moment, how does your own Berlin diary look?
My Berlin diary feels sprawling and looks a bit like a corkscrew.
How do you feel about Berlin these days?
I’ve had enough of Berlin summer. I am greatly looking forward to a long winter.
* * *
.
.
Thank you for letting us all read into your Berlin Diaries.
If you are interested in watching the play check out the dates here.
