Leben des Galilei (Life of Galileo)

In 17th-century Padua, the physicist Galileo Galilei proved that the earth was not the centre of the universe, but that it orbits the sun along with many other planets. So Copernicus, who had been ostracised by the church, had been right! But his claim that the earth is a soulless lump of stone is used by the Church against the scientist. Facing the threat of torture, Galileo revokes the truth which he sees with his own eyes. It is not until many years later, as a broken man, that he smuggles his writings out of the country – past the Church and in the service of truth. In his 1939 play, Brecht poses the question of who claims the authoritative interpretation of reality. By placing the astronomer Galilei in the conflict between empirical truth and ecclesiastical worldview, he depicts the dilemma of science, which can be extrapolated to include the political and social dimension of science and research. Who owns the truth? Who twists it into the service of gaining and maintaining power? Galilei tells of the infant days of the Enlightenment, which intended to emancipate people but whose achievements are now questioned by many today. The title role is played by Burghart Klaußner, who appeared in 2019 in Breloer’s docudrama Brecht as the older playwright and who has already performed at the Schauspielhaus in Heisenberg and as Shylock in the Der Kaufmann von Venedig (The Merchant of Venice).