Willen Waffen Wahn

This theatrical-musical evening juxtaposes the ideas of the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz with the emotional power of modern music, bringing the fault lines of today’s conflicts into sharp relief. Excerpts from On War meet songs and piano works from a wounded century. Clausewitz’s reflections on “defense,” “deterrence,” and “total war” sound alarmingly relevant today. In the interplay of theoretical analysis and human experience—as expressed in the songs and piano pieces by Eisler, Wolpe, and Dessau—a disturbingly timely dialogue emerges in which thought and feeling challenge one another: the language of strategy meets the sound of experience, analysis meets an outcry, reason meets loss. Against the backdrop of current debates on war, rearmament, and conscription, the evening explores how we can reflect on violence without legitimizing it and the rationality of power.