Klaus Michael Grüber – Homo Viator

The theatre and opera director Klaus Michael Grüber (1941-2008) was not existentially affected by flight and migration throughout his life. Nevertheless, he obviously felt close to the immigrants, refugees, homeless people "on the great road", "dark figures of the people", unsettled clochards who appeared again and again in his productions. Far from using the wanderings of such lost people in his art for the ideology of a Christ-following, he rather transposed and transformed their principle of life into that of a homo viator under the auspices of the coming God of Hölderlin and Heidegger. This volume brings together documents from Martin Grüber's private archive and the Klaus Michael Grüber Archive of the Berlin Academy of the Arts in the form of a wide variety of life testimonies as well as text and image documents, enriched by articles from artistic and private companions. The executor Martin Grüber has given the editors Klaus Dermutz and Friedemann Kreuder permission to publish documents from his private archive and the Klaus Michael Grüber-archive at the Berlin Academy of Arts. With the presentation of these archival documents and the publication of new texts, this volume reflects new basic research to be used by future generations of theatre historians. The different documents of Grüber's life, including the perspectives of texts and photographs of his artistic work, are completed by contributions by artistic and personal friends and colleagues. Numerous memory-fragments of Grüber's theatre fit together like different coloured small stones in a kaleidoscope.