Hans Castorp's Journey into the Night - Kreuzgangspiele extra 2026/2027

Scenic live radio play based on the novel "The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann's literary masterpiece transports us into the bizarre world of a lung sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. Hans Castorp travels there to visit his cousin. What was meant to be three weeks becomes seven years spent on the "Magic Mountain". As old Europe crumbles and moves toward World War I, Castorp encounters extraordinary figures surrounded by snow and ice, who confront him with politics, philosophy, love, illness, death, and himself. With subtle irony and precision, Mann traces the path from word to violence, from democracy to dictatorship, capturing the atmosphere before the First World War. In rapid shifts between read passages and performed radio-play scenes, Achim Conrad and Thomas Zieler stay close to the novel's protagonist and uncover surprising parallels to the "great irritability" of our contemporary society.

A production by movingtheatre.de/Cologne