John Rabe – End of the Line Siemensstadt

John Rabe was in Nanjing during the Second World War as manager of the Siemens Company. It is said that he saved a life of 250,000 Chinese. As a result, he was recalled to Berlin soon after the fall of Nanking.

His life was plagued by illness and food shortages due to his membership of the Nazi party, and he died in Berlin Spandau.

The courage of an ordinary man to take action against Hitler’s policies, fueled by humanism. And the fact that he died in poverty because of it. I wanted to put these two events to music. John Rabe never regretted his life, even when he was forced to live in poverty, and he never blamed anyone. He is grateful for the life he still has. What a personality!

I spent the whole winter of the pandemic working on the John Rabe project, which I’d been working over 10 years. Perhaps it was just as well that I was locked away. We called it a ConcertPerformance, not an opera, not a music theatre, but a theatre piece where the music speaks for itself. On the other hand, the co-performers, the HistorikerLab group, will present historical material about John Rabe in the role of “narrative” in the performance.