At Your Command, Fuhrer!

The monodrama written by the Austrian author Brigitte Schwaiger is more than a careful examination of the mind of a woman who builds her life around the figure of the Fuhrer and the principles of Nazi ideology, her fascination with the Nazi leader turning into obsession. The origin of the play probably has a direct connection with the fact that Brigitte Schwaiger's grandmother, the opera singer Carola Seligmann, was a victim of Nazism and died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. "At Your Command, Fuhrer!" was written when the war was already over, when its wounds were meant to begin healing, but when the questions were still painful. The one that came to people's lips most often was the most ordinary question in the world: how was it possible? And how did it happen that totalitarian hysteria took hold of so many? How did Nazism come to be a religion? How could the victims come to worship their executioners? And to stand at their command?