"Long live the German shepherd" - Germania 3: A Hunter Blew into His Horn (Heiner Müller)

Bunker. Hitler's chancellory.

HITLER: (Tears up a map.)
Poland a joke France a piece of cake
The Balkans Greece Who counts my victories
In Russia snow in Africa the sand
The Jew was my undoing he drinks the
Gasoline I need to win His ashes
Are clogging the wheels of my tanks.

(Enter STALIN, with an entourage of rats.)

Stalin

The king of rats who has a giant's back
He still savors Siberia Not for long
Your back will be your hunchback when I'm gone
When they will count the corpses, yours and mine
Welcome to hell You Bolshevik
They will know how good we were for them
When everywhere humans devour humans
Because there isn't land and food for all

Nation without a space And they will jabber
Of our butcheries day in day out
While human blood is dripping from their teeth
At every meal hypocrites and traitors
I've wanted just the best A humankind
Ready for pain and death and free of Jews
The German shepherd is going to thank me.

Rattenhuber.

(Enter RATTENHUBER.)
You've got the gasoline.
RATTENHUBER: Yes, my Führer.
HITLER: We will be needing it.
RATTENHUBFR: Whereto, my Führer, will we travel.
HITIER: To
Valhalla.

RATTENHUBER: That is far, my Führer.
HITLER: Yes.
(Pause.)
Ask the ladies to enter now.

(Enter GÖBBELS with dead children.)

GÖBBELS: These were my children They were my future
I've butchered them and they are yours now
We leave behind what will come after us
The future our enemy Victory is ours.

(Exit STALIN, waving. Enter LADIES, RATTENHUBER with containers of gasoline.)

HITLER: My ladies. I thank you for all the work you have done most loyally, what would life be without the loyalty of woman, I won't speak of death, in my service for Germany, which will perish with me. Well deserved, as I have to admit, treason and cowardice everywhere and at all our fronts. (Cannonade, detonations.) You hear the triumph of the subhuman who is assuming his rule. The subhuman has demonstrated that he is the stronger one.

Humankind may perish. I am, you know it, the superhuman. I've done my part in the extermination of humankind that is flooding our planet. Others will come after me who shall continue my work. I shall leave this world since it has become too small for me, together with Miss Eva Braun whom I have married an hour ago, here you see the official document, signed by Mr. Richard Wagner, please, check his signature, so that neither hell nor high heaven will be able to separate us, because her hands are clean, and my hands are bloodied as the hands of all great men of history are bloodied, Alexander Caesar Frederick the Great Napolean (softly) Stalin. In the domain of history blood is a more efficient fuel than gasoline is, it leads you to eternity, and loyalty is the marrow of honor. I go back to the dead who have given birth to me. Jesus Christ was a son of man, I am the son of the dead. I've had my astrologer shot, Mister Friedrich Nietzsche, so that he shall precede me to the realm of death that is the only reality and whose deputy on earth I have been.

Our grandchildren will understand me. Survive will my program: Against the lying babble of the priests LOVE YOUR ENEMIES the honest commandment of my German catechism DESTROY THEM WHEREVER YOU FIND THEM. Against the fundamental lie of Communism NO ONE OR EVERYONE the simple and popular truth THERE ISN'T ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE. I have elected Europe as my stake. Its flames shall relieve me of my duties as a statesman. I'm dying as a private person.

(Pause) Yet the smoke of the burning cities will carry my glory all over the globe, and the ashes from the crematories will darken the skies and be my monument that the winds carry to the stars after I am gone. Because forever shall live the fame of the deeds of the dead, as the Edda said, the Holy Book the bible of the North. Long live the German shepherd. (Shoots his dog.)

LADIES: Heil Hitler.

(Exit HITLER. Two shots, Dance of the ladies before the background of the burning German capital to the tune of Wagner's GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG.)

In: A Heiner Müller reader: plays, poetry, prose. Edited and translated by Carl Weber. PAJ-Book: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984, p. 195-197.


"Trauermarsch" from opera Götterdämmerung (Act III, Scene 2)

Dritter Tag des Bühnenfestspiels "Der Ring des Nibelungen"
(Third day of the stage-festival drama "The Ring of the Nibelung")

Siegfried - Siegfried Jerusalem
Conductor - Daniel Barenboim
Choir und Orchestra of Bayreuther Festspiele
Stage & direction - Harry Kupfer
Stage design - Hans Schavernoch
Costume design - Reinhard Heinrich
Video director Horant H. Hohlfeld
Artistic Supervision - Wolfgang Wagner
Filmed in Bayreuth Festspielhaus, June & July 1991