The long-planned gala nevertheless had to remain a piecemeal affair. Schorsch Kamerun, the noble performer with a kick in the cabaret, hosted. The Police drummer Stewart Copeland sent a video greeting after his performance in the Weimarhallenpark with the wish for the best possible election results in Thuringia. And the Goethe quote “A people that does not honor its strangers is doomed” was never seen on banners as often in Saxony and Thuringia as in the last weeks of summer. All of this flowed into this gala, for which there was only one rehearsal in the afternoon and whose planned program had lasted almost twice as long. The gala format “Come as you are” in the well-filled German National Theater was an invitation to everyone and definitely a brave action. They quickly took place in the middle of the art festival, which began on August 21 and ends on September 8. Obviously, the course that the Weimar Art Festival has been following for years does not fit with many of the ideas of the potential election winners, the AfD. If the shift to the right were to occur after the Thuringian state elections, this concerted commemoration of the election would be a singing and speaking event at the peak of self-risk for the largest avant-garde festival in the new federal states, which is of course also dependent on state subsidies.
There was a major cancellation for personal reasons two days before the gala: the actress Sandra Hüller, who was born in Suhl and lives mostly in Leipzig, was almost the only protagonist of Thuringian origin in the program. But the media designer and political singer Tommy Neuwirth had found out (also as a video greeting): In his satirical song he pleads for the CDU, sees the shift to the right as the icing on the cake of a comprehensive change and feels really high with his fictional patchwork family in this election decision: “Life is great with the CDU. I say I, I say you, I say CDU! Thuringia, I vote CDU. Thuringia, I say YOU!” Cheerful, didactic and a little crazy is Neuwirth's little miracle of irony, which he garnishes with a style of movement that in pre-modern times would have been perceived as “typically gay”. The artificial rapprochement between gender equality and the conservative People's Party turned out to be by far the funniest, most subtle and yet most malicious contribution to the program.
Otherwise, no names were mentioned, nor were there any crude or latent accusations against political actors and groups of any stripe. On the stage there is a transparent melon tent with a carousel seat in the shape of a swan. The Theaterplatz with the Goethe-Schiller monument was constantly broadcast live. Towards the end, Kamerun mingled with the flaneurs outside, reading texts that seemed a little confused to outsiders, not entirely safe. In doing so, he caused some passers-by to be amazed and amused in solidarity, while others stared in bewilderment. Well-intentioned and grotesque quickly merged. Eva Mattes read Erich Kästner's critical poem “The Development of Mankind”, which would remain the same as the old apes even after the nuclear fission, and warned against an escalation comparable to the avalanche of escalation almost a hundred years ago. René Marik had his puppets talk and gesticulate amusingly. It was more of a funny thing about “Green like Kermit” than a part of the traffic light.
The fact that the music gala became a text gala was due to the power of the spoken contributions after a fierce performance by the band Horizontaler Gentransfer, founded in 2022 (including criticism of the crisis-ridden rail traffic). Nils Lauterbach and Lydia Ziemke set an oppressive break in their art festival performance after the “climate piece” by Chris Thorpe: A couple talks about the impending elimination of their brother and brother-in-law in a “death cell” filled with nitrogen. Johanna Geißler as the girl in the pink dress and Martin Esser later delivered the gently sharpened dialogue about the uniformization of people and the opposite polar recognition of individual persons and forms of being.
Those present knew what was meant and always burst into jubilant cheers. The Weimar Art Festival stands for the positive values of democracy, the positive utopias of Weimar's personalities, and a constant remembrance of the Holocaust and the great catastrophes of the 20th century up to the present day. Such a discursive interface between art and politics is necessary, regardless of the outcome of the Thuringian state elections.
