Sandra Prechtel "Einar Schleef – No Germany Did I Find"

Theatrical premiere featuring Sandra Prechtel, Gerhard Ahrens, Thomas Irmer, Katja Weingartshofer, and Martin Wuttke

Einar Schleef was a theater maker, set designer, writer, photographer, painter, and filmmaker. A total artist. Born in 1944 in Sangerhausen, Saxony-Anhalt, he lived in both East and West Germany, under four different political systems. He found no home in either Germany—and is therefore its most accurate chronicler. He delved into German reality and its abysses using every artistic means at his disposal. He chose a life of extremes straddling the arts.

He first studied painting at the Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, was expelled, began taking photographs, and became a master student in stage design under Karl von Appen, who had previously collaborated with Brecht. His very first work at the Volksbühne caused a sensation; he then moved to the Berliner Ensemble, co-directing with B. K. Tragelehn. The production of *Miss Julie* led to acclaim—and his dismissal. In the West, he began writing. In 1980, *Gertrud*, a novel about his mother, was published.

Productions in Frankfurt and, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, back at the Berliner Ensemble—such as *Wessis in Weimar* and *Puntila*—sparked heated debates. Dismissals were followed by new engagements. On stage, Schleef—who suffers from a severe speech impediment—finds a way to speak through the text. With every production, Schleef pushes the boundaries of German spoken theater. His use of choruses, borrowed from ancient theater, remains influential to this day. The war into which he was born is not over for him; rather, it is the source of everything, and the alienation between East and West has never dissolved for him. “Tragedy is the world as it is,” says Schleef. “Comedy is the respite from it.”

Schleef must be rediscovered, says director Sandra Prechtel, who, with her film, dares to take a deliberately subjective approach—to Einar Schleef as a person, an artist, and a tragic figure who, through his work, assimilates the ghosts of history in order to hold them up to society in a distorting mirror.

Drawing on the wealth of archival material—much of which is housed at the Academy of Arts—Prechtel has crafted a condensed, complex montage that takes viewers on a whirlwind journey through Schleef’s biography, one that poses questions to the present day.

Einar Schleef – I Have Not Found a Germany

Documentary, Germany 2026, 93 min.

• Research, Screenplay, Direction: Sandra Prechtel
• Editing: Olaf Voigtländer, Katja Dringenberg
• Featuring: Einar Schleef, Wilhelm Schleef, Karl von Appen, Jutta Hoffmann, Jürgen Holtz, Gertrud Schleef, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Martin Wuttke, Peter Iden, Rolf Hochhuth, Gerhard Ahrens, Elfriede Jelinek, Sigrid Löffler, Alfred Biolek

Guests include director Sandra Prechtel, Schleef’s former dramaturg Gerhard Ahrens, and actor Martin Wuttke

Moderator: Thomas Irmer (editor, *Theater der Zeit*)

Introduction: Katja Weingartshofer (Performing Arts Archive, Academy of Arts)