Over the weekend I saw an outdoor play called Die Gladow-Bande, about a gang of teenagers in destitute, occupied, postwar Berlin who robbed and killed people in Friedrichshain. A babyfaced 17-year-old named Werner Gladow led the gang; he was obsessed with film noir and Al Capone. To Communist authorities in the nascent East Germany -- according to this play -- the obsession looked like a decadent and unacceptable disease of the west.
Some of the acting was only OK. But this guy, Alfons Kujat, was brilliant and scary as a worker named Gustav Völpel who participated in one of the killings. We got to watch Völpel rave and drink schnapps in an old Friedrichshain kitchen:
posted by Michael Scott Moore |
