Death as Performance in the Conversations between Heiner Müller and Alexander Kluge

Abstract

Abstract The subject of this essay is the East German dramatist Heiner Müller (1929–1995) focusing on his role of inter­viewee and analysing his 24 conversations for the West German television with the director and producer Alexander Kluge (1932–). The conversations took place between 1988 and 1995 and are presented, in a shortened and modi­fied version, in the two volumes edited by Kluge, Ich schulde der Welt einen Toten (1995) and Ich bin ein Landvermesser (1996). Indeed, Kluge is the first and only interviewer who turns Müller the individual into both a subject and an object, not only of recent historical events, but also of art itself. In this peculiar context, Mein Rendezvous mit dem Tod (1995), one of the last conversations between the two German artists, represent a unique case, in which Müller performs his illness and his own death in front of the cameras, thus becoming the protagonist of his last drama.