Zurück nach Uskow. Von Janosch - Premiere

With Andreas Jahncke

Everyone knows Janosch - or at least the Tiger Duck, that yellow-and-black striped creature on wheels, and her friend, the little tiger. The two set out to see the world and ended up right where they had always lived. Happy and content. Oh, how wonderful is Panama.

A work for children - and the moral? "Everyone has always lived in paradise, they just didn't know it," Janosch once told the Frankfurter Rundschau. A thought that keeps gaining new relevance today. Home. Where is that, exactly?

For Janosch - born Hans Eckert - home was once Zabrze in present-day Poland, where he was born in 1931 when the city still bore the name Hindenburg. In 1946 the Eckert family fled to Germany, and over the following decades little Hans became the great Janosch - the Polish and Silesian form of Johannes. He created nearly 300 books, some translated into 70 languages, and alongside his children's books wrote novels and stories for adults - and, as few people know, two stage plays.

One of those plays is now at the Stalburg Theater: "Zurück nach Uskow". It tells the story of someone searching for their homeland. The autobiographical thread is plain to see - Uskow is Zabrze, Janosch's birthplace. Whether the seeker arrives there or wanders like the little duck and the little tiger, Janosch tells in his own way: sometimes sharp, often prickly, occasionally melancholic, but always grounded and laced with his characteristic dry wit.

Janosch turned 95 in March and has lived with his wife on Tenerife for three decades. Asked what he does there all day, he replied: "I think about the cheerful pointlessness of existence." That's Janosch for you.