"A man comes to Germany. He was away for a long time, the man. For a very long time. Perhaps too long. After waiting outside in the cold for a thousand nights, he finally comes home." After the war, the soldier Beckmann returns home, but no one is expecting him. His son has been killed by a bomb, his parents, who were loyal to the regime, have committed suicide, his wife has another man, his house is inhabited and his attempt to find work fails miserably. Beckmann tries in vain to shed responsibility for the deeds he committed during the war. When he realizes that all doors to a return to life are closed to him, he finally despairs: "And you - you say I should live! For what? For whom? For what? Am I supposed to let myself be murdered and keep on murdering? Where am I supposed to go?" Wolfgang Borchert wrote "Outside the Door" after his return from the war in 1946 in just a few days while delirious with fever in his sickbed. His world-famous anti-war play tells of the destruction that experiences of war and violence cause in society and especially in interpersonal relationships. In "Outside the Door", Borchert deals with what happens to people who have experienced or perpetrated violence and poses the question of how the spiral of violence can be broken. The war that has been raging in Europe for almost four years now and the rearmament unfortunately make this almost eighty-year-old play highly topical again today. "Draußen vor der Tür" will be staged by the students of the degree program "Darstellendes Spiel" at RPTU in Landau under the direction of Dr. Niklas Füllner.

The project is funded by the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung in Mainz.

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