Club der toten Dichter

A literary-musical evening: 20th anniversary tour "Galgenlieder" - Christian Morgenstern set to new music

20 years of Club der toten Dichter - an anniversary worth celebrating, with a remarkable poet and a special guest vocalist! "O schauerliche Lebenswirrn, wir hängen hier am roten Zwirn!" - so begins the Bundeslied der Galgenbrüder by Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914). Isn't it sometimes useful to see things with a touch of gallows humour? Morgenstern himself wrote that "gallows poetry" was a piece of his worldview, and that from the gallows one sees the world differently. With his Galgenlieder he wanted to "spread a little spiritual lightness, cheerfulness, freedom, to animate the imagination, to thaw just a little of the music of the soul frozen in the post horn". Half a century later, Marcel Reich-Ranicki recommended all the Galgenlieder in his canon of German-language poetry.

Actor Hans-Werner Meyer (Letzte Spur Berlin, Baader Meinhof Komplex) joins as the guest vocalist for the anniversary project - he took to the new settings immediately and will also play violin during the performances. Bassist Markus Runzheimer (Element of Crime) is back in the lineup and will additionally play percussion this time around. Reinhardt Repke plays guitar as always and has composed the new musical settings for the poems.