Minna von Barnhelm

When the wealthy Minna von Barnhelm arrives with her confidant Franziska, she sends the major to a worse room. Minna's search for Tellheim, her fiancé, comes to a surprising end - but a happy ending is a long way off. Because after the war nothing is the same as before.


Arguments begin about the possibility of a relationship on equal terms: Tellheim measures this in terms of evenly distributed wealth and personal honor, thereby catapulting himself into the sidelines. Minna, on the other hand, sticks to her view that all that is needed is love.


The question of gender roles and attributions was already an issue in Lessing's time: What (own) expectations are directed at the “stronger sex” and the “male providers”? How and why does a woman have to struggle to be able to love freely and independently decide about her life? Love, as an anarchic and comical state that can undermine the reason of even the coldest people, mercilessly exposes self-doubt and life plans determined by others.


Minna von Barnhelm shows a world dominated by money and marked by war that questions itself and its social panorama. Who is fighting? Who cleans up? Who is left? Who pays? Whoever loves, loves.