Ella Dershowitz (left) as the graduate student Hannah Stern, with Brett Temple as the recently promoted Gestapo officer Karl Frick, in Jenny Lyn Bader’s Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library.
Jenny Lyn Bader’s Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library is an intellectually stimulating and profoundly moving historical drama currently running at 59E59 Theaters. Directed by Ari Laura Kreith, and inspired by real events, the play is a compelling portrait of a young Gestapo officer who arrests a graduate student suspected of illegal research.
Set in the late spring of 1933 in Berlin, the play begins just after Hannah Stern (Ella Dershowitz) and her mother have been arrested by a Gestapo officer. They are both taken into “protective” custody (Hannah’s mother remains offstage throughout). When the lights go up, one sees the 26-year-old Hannah hesitating at a cell door. A 25-year-old Gestapo officer, Karl Frick (Brett Temple), thrusts her inside. He then orders her to give him her purse, her coat, and her gloves. He frisks her, and once convinced that she isn’t concealing anything, curtly excuses himself to complete her intake form.
The iconic twentieth-century thinker Hannah Arendt arrives in her jail cell, and Gestapo officer Karl Frick performs the required intake procedures.
Karl has just been promoted from the criminal division to the political one. Hannah is his first arrest in his new position. What he doesn’t know is that he is facing the woman who will become the iconic twentieth-century thinker Hannah Arendt. In subsequent interrogations, Karl will discover that she is a distinguished young woman who already has a doctorate. Eventually she will be one of the world’s most renowned public intellectuals, famously coining the term “the banality of evil” when covering Adolf Eichmann’s trial for The New Yorker in 1961. The term will cross over into the broader culture and serve as a warning about how ordinary individuals, without malicious intent, can commit horrific acts simply by following orders and conforming to norms. Bader, in crafting the characters of Hannah and Karl, brilliantly dramatizes the “banality of evil,” and more.
The strength of Bader’s work is that it explores the question of innocence and guilt from a range of shifting perspectives and offers no easy answers. For example, when Hannah wandered through the Prussian State Library in search of a strudel recipe for her mother’s birthday, did she ever duplicate and then disseminate the anti-Semitic materials she found on the adjoining pages of the newspaper? Hannah, who can’t even bear the aroma of mimeograph ink, denies it. Yet how can she prove her innocence?
The arrival of the lawyer Erich Landau (Drew Hirshfield) midway through the play brings new dramatic layers. For starters, he is a Zionist, which could be a liability for Hannah if he were to defend her before the wrong German judge. Still, Hannah is struck by the depth of Erich’s information on the changing political landscape in Germany. Hannah explains to Erich that the Germans had her sign a Schutzhaftbefehl, which declared that she had requested imprisonment, so that they could maintain their legal authority. But Erich tells her that it’s only a charade: “Oh, please, they have legal authority already! … Their cabinet can now make laws without consulting the parliament or the president.”
Erich also shares with Hannah that it was the librarian at the State Library, where Hannah has spent countless hours researching, who reported her to the authorities. Hannah is outraged, especially since she recalls having lively discussions with the librarian on the philosopher Kant (“I can’t believe a Kantian would do that. … I am done with intellectuals.”)
The Zionist lawyer Erich Landau (Drew Hirshfield) informs Hannah that she is charged with treason. Photographs by Stephanie Gamba.
In spite of Karl being a Gestapo officer and Hannah a German-born Jew, they bond with each other as the play unfolds. Karl and Hannah share a deep affection for their mother tongue and reminisce about the childhood stories they listened to as schoolchildren. Hannah explains to Karl that she decided to stay in Germany rather than join her husband, who left the country a little over two months ago, largely because the German language is precious to her: “Yes, but there is a tremendous difference between a foreign language and the sounds you hear as a child. That is precious. To lose that. … The music of Germany, its books, all the poems we learned in school.”
The three-member cast is excellent: Dershowitz and Temple are entertainingly argumentative as Hannah and Karl, and Hirshfield’s Landau is their phlegmatic counterpoint, a lawyer who is a decorated veteran of the Great War, which protects him from the new laws in effect.
Those who yearn to see a show that is both educational and entertaining need look no further than Mrs. Stern. It allows one to have a fly-on-the-wall theatrical experience, eavesdropping on one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century.
Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library runs at 59E59 Theaters (59 E 59th St.) through November 10. Evening performances are 7:15 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2:15 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; added shows on Sunday, November 3 at 7:15 p.m. and Thursday November 7 at 2:15 p.m. No performance on November 5 (Election Day). For more information, visit 59e59.org.
Playwright: Jenny Lyn Bader
Director: Ari Laura Kreith
Sets: Lauren Helpern
Costumes: Deborah Caney
Lighting: Cameron Filepas
Sound: Megan Culley
