Die letzten Tage der Menschheit mit Erwin Steinhauer & Freunde

Name: Die letzten Tage der Menschheit mit Erwin Steinhauer & Freunde
Start: 2026-09-18
End: 2026-09-18
Location: Veranstaltungszentrum der AKNÖ

Friday 18 SeptemberVeranstaltungszentrum der AKNÖ · niederoesterreich

What's it about?

Karl Kraus' most famous work today, "Die letzten Tage der Menschheit" (The Last Days of Mankind), was created as an immediate reaction to the First World War. It reflects human depravity, cruelty, and stupidity in countless facets – oppressively timeless and relevant for all eras and countries. Although created 100 years ago, we encounter not only historical figures – Vienna remains Vienna – a dangerous threat, as Karl Kraus put it.Erwin Steinhauer succeeds in this production in precisely tracing the author's razor-sharp formulations. Joachim Ried writes in DIE ZEIT on 07.08.2014: "That a purist approach to The Last Days of Mankind does not have to result in a meager theater evening was proven (...) by the outstanding human actor Erwin Steinhauer in the Theater in der Josefstadt: He performed a cynical reading of a selection from the drama, which he had previously recorded in the studio. (...) he sat imperiously in a black frock coat behind a lectern and sent his voice on a journey to the larvae and lemurs, to the entire cast of the apocalypse. With his physical presence, he dominated the stage, with sparse gestures, yet there was more going on than in the mass scenes of the other productions. Steinhauer hit every note astonishingly precisely, his voice sounded threatening where the severity of the text demanded it, was coarse, doddery, ignorant, offended, bloodless, excitedly cackling, or senile. He maneuvered concentratedly through the tangle of voices and forms. A rare stage event. "Tones race and rattle through time and swell into the chorale of unholy action," it says in the preface. A single person can have all these sounds from the Mars theater on their tongue.The music is an essential part of this production. It is the acoustic and emotional foundation. With an unusually instrumented orchestra (Theremin), collage-like assembled fragments of military or salon music, operetta and Heuriger (traditional wine tavern) songs, as well as abstract, cinematically conceived soundscapes are created. A cruelly comical, disturbing, and Viennese apocalypse operetta resounds.