Heinz-Uwe Haus on Culture and Politics

The late 1980s saw the dissolution of the Iron Curtain and the development of democracy in Eastern European countries that had been oppressed by a range of varieties of communist totalitarian regimes. In Germany, this development led to the abolition of the so-called German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the re-unification of Germany. Heinz-Uwe Haus was one of the leading voices of the movement credited with being instrumental in the collapse of communism in the GDR. In addition, as a leading theatre director in GDR times and beyond, his thinking and action have always combined politics and theatre and the arts overall. In this book, Haus provides a unique narrative of the context before German unification, unification itself, and the aftermath of unification across the decades since. He explores the difficulties on the way, from the perspective of the insider. Haus then widens the context from post-unification Germany to encompass issues of broader current relevance, such as Europe, America and Islam. Theatre provides the conceptual framework for this wide-ranging debate.