A picture and a book by Dr. Bruno Kreisky rest behind glass in a worn cupboard: “Between the times” – memories from five decades. The same cut-out newspaper article sticks out of the book twice, as a bookmark or perhaps as a reminder: “Shoot, you dogs, we’re dying for freedom”, is written under a roughly screened black and white photo: in the foreground, in the lower third, three steel helmets, four rifle barrels and a beret. Bodies and uniforms are indicated, dark silhouettes, no faces are recognizable. The anonymous death docks. He aims at six men in workmen’s clothing who are standing with their backs to the wall. One of them stares at the wooden floor – a stage. Three of the men fix their killers and two catch sight of us Recipients. Their eyes saw their loved ones for the last time, never again will they “drive in”, never again will they enter the “Kaue”, Kanzler Dollfuß “knocking for the last shift”. The photo – taken shortly after the event – shows six people before you were shot. It also represents the last seconds of some of my relatives. “Anton Zarabnicky was my sister Antonia’s husband, she never got over it,” I can still hear Anna Krüger say today, “his brother Josef survived seriously injured. What Lourdes is to Christians, Holzleithen is to socialists ,” she kept repeating.

Great-grandmother Anna Krüger, a Zupancic born in 1902 in Altenessen in today’s Ruhrpott, lay in a small first floor room of a barrack converted into a house until her death in 1984. She was devotedly cared for by her daughter-in-law and my grandmother Wilma Krüger, for which no one thanked her. On a deck chair, just skin and bones in a purple robe, immobile due to a fractured neck of femur. A motionless pair of legs on leather footrests. Insufficient, gloomy light. The living room is cold, a stark reflection of family togetherness. It literally smells of the past; you can see the depression and feel the wounds of broken bones and society. A greenish linoleum floor with holes in it, nicotine-stained furniture, empty eyes, dusty shot glasses, hair dyed an unnatural silver-blue. The eastern wall with the small window is grotesquely clad with a photo wallpaper, whose subject of an autumnal birch forest contributes to the un-homeliness of the room. Mounted on one of these two-dimensional trees is a portrait of a wolfhound made of wooden inlays. Because of its dangerous nature, it was a popular topic in conversations and family stories, alongside the everyday complaints, the local booze consumption, the countless fights and the political situation. “Rigo” was a gift from Dr. Franz Edlinger.

Dr. Edlinger, who was a friend of my great-grandfather Rudolf Krüger, works council member of the Wolfsegg-Traunthaler-Kohlenwerks-Aktiengesellschaft (WTK), who died in 1977, was a survivor of the Ebensee concentration camp and came to Thomasroith in the municipality of Ottnang am Hausruck after 1945 as the general manager of this mining company. He helped my great-grandparents get a cheap plot of land with a wooden hut near the railroad embankment.

My family’s roots in the Hausruck region go back 159 years. Seen from the air, shaped like a wooded horseshoe (which only brought luck to a few), the village of Thomasroith lies on the left, western opening and often in the shadow of the Pettenfirst. Today inhabited by 600 people, where 75 years ago more than 1800 men, women and children lived and made their living exclusively from brown coal mining, our family base camp still stands to this day. My deep-seated childhood memories were suddenly awakened when the rector of the University of Art and Design Linz, Prof. Dr. Reinhard Kannonier, told me about an exciting theater project in the Hausruck in 2004. At the time, I was a student of “Sculpture-Transmedia Space” and chairman of the Austrian Students “Union at my university. Kannonier asked me to help organize an interdisciplinary course in set design/stage design through the Austrian Students” Union. I did so and took part in the course myself. The lecturer: Stefan Brandtmayr, director: Georg Schmiedleitner, author: Franzobel, title of the play: hunt oder der totale Februar, theme: civil war in Austria.

In February 1934, Austrians shot at Austrians. Social Democrats against Christian Socialists, Schutzbund against Heimwehr. Democracy against the corporative state. Despair against contempt. Dead on both sides! The fighting in Hausruck was particularly fierce. The terrible and cynical climax was the shooting of four Schutzbund paramedics in the cinema hall of the Holzleithen workers’ home. A murder without a verdict, still unsolved today! Right in the middle of carnival, murder on a decorated stage. Lanterns as moons of the dead, tinsel as the Order of the Justified.

The mountain ridge that rises abruptly behind Gaspoltshofen, the Hausruck, lives up to its name. Again and again, “Leiden” (slopes) slide and houses have to move. These movements, together with the countless dents in the forest caused by the collapse of old mining tunnels, can be read metaphorically for the movements in dealing with local history. Distortions open up, cracks appear. The dark places in the Hausruck as an allegory for deliberately erased events. The attempt to clean up damage to the land on the cheap as a parable for the actions of politics, society and individuals. Even before the truths of the past can be unearthed and recovered, they are hastily concealed, suppressed and filled in, creating “cavities of history”. Against this backdrop, it is surprising that Thomas Bernhard called his novel set in the neighboring town of Wolfsegg “The Erasure”; “The Backfilling” would probably be more appropriate. It is less surprising that people turn away from the earth after terrible events and turn their gaze to the heavens. Perhaps this is why Wolfsegg also calls itself a climatic health resort. In any case, the collective Hausruck view of the Alpine foothills is fantastic; on a clear day you can see as far as the Ötscher. But “you can’t eat a beautiful view”, as Wolfsegg’s mayor Emil Söser once remarked. In any case, these “natural” diversionary tactics worked perfectly for almost 70 years. Until 2002, when the idea was born in Ottnang, the district of which is Thomasroith, by the cultural worker Ingeborg Aigner to reappraise the bloody events of February 1934 in a documentary play. This idea matured into an EU Leader+ project towards the end of 2002. (European program for innovative strategies in rural development). Despite project approval by the province of Upper Austria, the implementation threatened to fail due to financial hurdles. Roland König, chairman of the tourism association and SPÖ mandatary in the municipality of Wolfsegg, took up the idea and pushed it forward together with Mayor Söser in his own parliamentary group. The latter sponsored the necessary own funds in the amount of 7,500 euros. The “Theater Hausruck” association was founded in June 2004.

Theater association and production team from the very beginning.

(Chairman: Roland König, Deputy Chairman Josef Nagl, Secretary: Elfriede Steinkellner, Treasurer: Franz Loidolt, Josef Leitner Infrastructure at the crusher, Ingeborg Aigner Coordinator for contemporary witnesses, Production Manager Chris Müller, Costume: Kornelia Kraske, Set design/stage design Stefan Brandtmayr and students of the University of Art and Design Linz, music: Rupert Schusterbauer, Bergknappenkapelle Kohlgrube under the direction of Kurt Brunnbauer, director: Georg Schmiedleitner, author: Franzobel)

Kohlgrube, a district of Wolfsegg formerly inhabited by miners and their families, provided a unique and fascinating location for the theater project, which could serve as the inspiration for the story. A theater space that radiates monumentality, grandeur and at the same time dormant brutality. You only get to see it after walking through a wooded area surrounding it at the lowest point of the village. The archaic-looking concrete dinosaur was built in 1922 as a 20-metre high, 22-metre long and nine-metre wide coal crushing and sorting plant and was in use as such until 1968. After the end of lignite mining, the crusher became a symbol of the region’s decline. A superficially meaningless architectural sculpture, a concrete skeleton that nobody cared about: Not mentioned in any architectural guide, erased from the public’s consciousness, stamped as an eyesore and hidden in the woods.

The unpunished murders of 1934, the decline of mining and this concrete solitaire, bought at auction in 2000 by the Wolfsegg-born brothers Peter Weinhäupl, commercial director of the Leopold Museum Vienna, and Wolfgang Weinhäupl, architect, and thus saved from complete decay, gave the project radiance and were, as it were, the initial spark for the theater work on the crusher site. Students from the Linz University of Art spent months adapting the site for Franzobel’s play. It was drained, gravelled and wired. Stage superstructures and a wooden grandstand for 700 visitors were created and tracks were laid. There was mowing, hammering, chiseling and, as usual in the Hausruck, swearing. Mountaineers and miners, pensioners, unemployed people, firefighters and many other volunteers from the region helped to create a bizarre natural theater that makes you shudder with its rugged beauty. A relic from a time when shoveling coal was something completely different from today. As a result of this joint effort, a former “eyesore” was to develop explosively into a universally appreciated symbol of a region with a tradition of industry and working-class culture. At the same time, the crusher became the logo and banner for Theater Hausruck.

Acting star Karl Markovics, local hero Franz Froschauer and Burgtheater actress Stefanie Dvorak were immediately enthusiastic about the idea of contemporary historical and political theater on historical ground. They were joined by over 250 amateur actors, miners, musicians and volunteers from the region. Due to the conflict-ridden coexistence of rural and rural-industrial character, the geographical location and the pronounced love of freedom of the people deeply rooted in their homeland, recent history holds many political conflicts and human tragedies, countless Hausruckers got caught up in the wheels of political power struggles and were crushed by them. The Hausruck is therefore also a place that is perfect for theatrical archaeological excavations. The many events of the last hundred years, some of which have been forgotten and often suppressed, make the Hausruck an enchanted, almost mystical region. A region that knows how to offer material for committed political theater.

The daughters and sons of this region were invited to take part. In order to prepare the actors for “hunt or the total February”, they spent a whole year rehearsing texts in workshops, internalizing “the time”, i.e. the historical events, and their characters.

The examination of the historical background and the current political discourse on the subject of the “Civil War 1934” was particularly intensive. Evenings with contemporary witnesses, discussions and readings were organized. Former top social democratic politician Casper Einem read from the novel“So starb eine Partei” by Jura Soyfer, followed by a discussion in the packed Thomasroith workers’ home.Dr.Thomas Hellmuth, from the Institute for Modern and Contemporary History at the Johann Kepler University Linz, led a discursive weekend for historically interested laypeople in Ottnang, which had some explosive eruptions in store: an 80-year-old contemporary witness climbed onto the stage with a steel rod, explained its use and handling, and there were plenty of emotional pro and con contributions from the audience. Numerous documents were viewed and historical locations were visited in a black and red vintage bus, the so-called “history cab”. The findings of these theatrical-archaeological journeys were brought to light, discussed and some of them were woven into the project.

The artist Franzobel, who came from nearby Pichlwang, initially knew nothing about the events of 1934. Nor did he know anything about the neighboring Holzleithen, where his play about the Social Democratic Schutzbund leader Ferdinand Fageth is actually set. The play with its ambiguous title caused quite a stir in the run-up to the production. The ÖVP member of parliament and district party chairman Anton Hüttmayr, who lives in nearby Puchkirchen, feared that rifts would be opened up. “Censorship!” was the reaction of the theater association, the uproar went through the Austrian media landscape, the conflict found its way onto television.

On July 27, 2005, asthe setting sun silently struck the western Hausruckwald, the “foolish” hustle and bustle began in front of a packed audience in feverish anticipation: the whining of two historic “Maurersachs” mopeds opened the performance. The two leading actors Karl Markovics and Franz Froschauer enter the scene very dynamically, Markovics as Fageth and Froschauer in a double role as radical Schutzbund leader Skrabal and Heimwehr leader Frühwirt chase each other, rushing across the grounds. Like director Nicholas Ray in the film “Rebel without a cause”, with James Dean in the role of a lifetime, director Georg Schmiedleitner sets the scene for a breakneck competition right from the start. A neck-and-neck race for the ideological pole position ensues. The rattling and coughing of the high-speed mopeds is the signal for the members of a 30-strong tour group arriving on set to get rid of their modern rain ponchos, revealing clothes from 1934 underneath. The second time the two main actors circle the coal crusher on their archetypal companions, the men and women also start to move towards the workers “home indicated. There they sway and dance – in masks, it is carnival in February 1934. It is the merry eve of the revolution, carnival doughnuts as a last meal. The Schutzbündler wear red shirts, the Hahnenschwänzler black ones. On a balcony above the scene, almost above it all: The masked district governor, Doctor Frühwirt, an impoverished aristocrat with a penchant for decadence, shouts down to Schutzbund leader Fageth: ‘A bullet belongs to you in any case, you agitator.’ Fageth replies in the jargon of the time: ‘I’m not curious about your cock-and-bull frieze.’ It becomes dead silent, the unleashed dance of the people is now quieter, humming, choreographed. The group in the workers” home now moves like the branches of a tree before a storm. After the silence, the first clashes begin.

The quarrel between the two now spreads to the people at breakneck speed. Black and red abysses open up. The play picks up speed and Schmiedleitner pulls out all the stops. Wild crowd scenes alternate with deliberate, quiet and intimate moments. There is room for monumental visual aesthetics as well as for small details and doubtful nuances. Above all, it is the “red” Ferdinand Fageth who is the subject of Franzobel’s breathtakingly beautiful monologues and visions of loyalty and betrayal, of hesitation and action in love and politics.

Karl Markovics plays the hesitant Hausrucknapoleon in a gripping way. He becomes the symbol of an emaciated, indecisive social democracy and declares in his final monologue:

“The people are a whore, it shows with every upheaval. Horrible. Sees what it wants and does it to anyone who pays. But am I any better? What political direction you take, whether right or left, depends on the circumstances, but what you make of it, whether you’re a human being or an asshole, that’s what you have to measure yourself by.”

Both the plot and the characters themselves are accompanied, embraced and driven forward by the sound of the region. Played by the famous “Bergknappenkapelle Kohlgrube”, the 20-throated “Hausruckchor” or the extravagant “Zwüfihüttn-Trio”. The extraordinary sound of the “hunt Brass Band” under the direction of Rupert Schusterbauer is almost always present. It whips, encourages and escorts. Whether it’s a coffin ballet, a battle of the houses or a brothel scene: “In the brothel, there’s always a right to stand”, say the whores Pepi and Resi, as the Heimwehr leader Frühwirt, who has become a cattleman, drives into a traveling brothel in his underpants, has fun with champagne and whores and then blows the horn to storm the “bastille of the proletarians”, the workers “home. The climax of the play is the historically documented execution of the six Schutzbund paramedics on the stage of the movie theater in the workers” home. Fageth is no longer present at this point. He escaped earlier, into the surroundings, and is later apprehended in women’s clothing despite his disguise.

The showdown in Holzleithen is effectively arranged. The final curtain falls in the form of a white flag measuring over 200 square meters. With it, the oversized shadows of the murdered men disappear, silhouetted against the light. What remains, as always in the men’s war, are the women, the misery, many questions and a path prepared for the strengthening of the coming National Socialists. The play about the development of social democracy in the last century never turns into a clumsy didactic or agitational play. On the contrary: political theater that deserves more than the name folk play. At the most traditional and coveted Austrian theater award Nestroy, “hunt” was the most successful play in 2005, winning the special prize and the author’s prize, more successful than the Burgtheater and all festivals. The following year, the play was awarded the Upper Austrian Stage Art Prize and the regional Bühnenkunstpreis and the regional VöcklaKultur-Award. Unexpected awards that show what is possible with commitment and a willingness to take risks. The theater performance of “hunt oder Der totale Februar” was not only an award-winning success with the press, audience and jurors, but is also proof that summer theater can be critical, unwieldy, politically offensive AND successful. The 12,000 visitors became the midwives of a new type of political theater. Always in clear distinction to the Schickeria-Treff in Salzburg and the nostalgia party in Mörbisch.

The success of Theater Hausruck is based not least on the magnificent performances of the actors – both professional and amateur. The collaboration between well-known actors and playful people from the region not only impressed the audience, but also helped to qualify the amateur actors in this highly professional theater environment. In other words: Applied art education that goes far beyond the level of typical summer theater entertainment. This also includes the involvement of regional musicians (composition of the theater music by local musician Rupert Schusterbauer and live performances by regional ensembles) and theater enthusiasts (dramaturgy, collaboration on stage construction, set design, make-up and costumes). Theater Hausruck’s approach to art education is consciously integrative: young people, adults, senior citizens and people with disabilities develop and contribute to the productions to a significant extent. Theater Hausruck oscillates between reality and fiction, between present and past, memorial and folk play. In front of and behind the scenes, actors with a political consciousness fight against forgetting, act as sculptors and form a social sculpture that causes an international sensation despite or because of its deliberate regional roots. In 2005, they set a vibrating dynamo in motion that not only generated a stream of 30,000 visitors by 2008, but also provided important impulses for the regional economy.

Thanks to the courage of those responsible for the theater association and the commitment of hundreds of dedicated people, it was and still is possible to uncover history that was thought to be lost and to raise the question of how to deal with historical events. In 2010, lenz will complete the contemporary history trilogy begun with hunt and z!pf . With this trilogy, whose venues form a triangle on the map, the tip of which points to Braunau, the birthplace of the “Führer”, the initiative has set itself the task of promoting and documenting the reappraisal of forgotten, suppressed or unknown events before, during and after the National Socialist tyranny in the Hausruck region of Upper Austria. Research is carried out on an interdisciplinary basis, all year round and largely on a voluntary basis. The researched topics are presented in the form of a play. All three parts, hunt, z!pf and lenz are written by Franzobel and directed by Georg Schmiedleitner. A research team is accompanied by a film crew, a DVD of each part is produced with interviews with contemporary witnesses and usually premiered at a folk festival.

All findings about the “KOHLEctive memory” of the former Hausruck mining region will be made publicly accessible in the form of an archive once the contemporary history trilogy has been completed. In addition, Theater Hausruck will make every effort to respond to guest performance and cooperation offers from Luxembourg, France, Lithuania and Germany.

From the traces of the civil war to theater fog, from Thomas Bernhard to Franzobel, from a single performance to a trilogy. From project to theater, from coal mine to culture pit: “hunt oder der totale Februar” gave the Hausruck, the participants – and me personally – a restless, enduring midsummer night’s dream that should – and will – last a long time.