present The Ratcatcher , only now there would be no lip-service paid to democracy. Not only did he write and direct it himself but he supervised every aspect of the production. He took particular care over the posters, which read âWolfram Meier and his Bettlertheater present â¦â We were horrified. Since when had the theatre become his? And yet we said nothing, not from cowardice but from embarrassment. We were unwilling to draw attention to such overweening ego.
He played on that embarrassment along with the faint unease that each of us felt in his presence since, while we were expressing solidarity with the proletariat, he was the real thing. He had grown up among prostitutes, pimps and pushers. The experience had marked him â literally, in the livid scar on his frequently exposed chest. He was the representative of the class that our parents had oppressed. Our sense that they had exploited him left him free to exploit us. It was time to make amends.
His cause was aided by his intense physical allure. Everyone fell for him. The author just fell the furthest. He exuded sex with his shock of white hair and his rake-thinness, his appealingly pockmarked face and his feral smile. He used to say that hack actors had to be beautiful to be loved, but that he could make audiences love him in spite of his looks. He wore the same ragged clothes every day and rarely bathed: a practice he maintained throughout his life and one that became progressively less acceptable. At first, however, it seemed like a return to the natural man: an authentic whiff of the streets: two fingers raised to the deodorised department -store world. Besides, it was 1967: the theatre was thick with incense.
He consolidated his position by seducing Liesl Martins, the third member of the companyâs original triumvirate and thesource of much of its finance. Their subsequent affair, played out largely in public, placed her boyfriend, Manfred, in an acute dilemma. According to his own code â not to mention his agreement with Liesl â he had no right to be proprietorial. And yet his amour propre had been pierced. When the relationship became too heated for him to ignore, he engineered a showdown with Wolfram, who responded by seducing him too. For one who was by nature a cynic, he held an incongruously romantic view that sex would secure a personâs loyalty. Which, by and large, it did. When it became clear that he had both of them hooked, he ditched them unceremoniously while continuing to live in their house, conducting his tortuous liaisons under their very noses.
With Wolfram at the helm, the Bettlertheater became Munichâs most fashionable venue. The cream of the cityâs radical youth flocked to our exposés of the older generationâs sins. As has been well-documented, among their number was Andreas Baader. He regularly attended performances with members of his set â I hesitate to call it a group since I doubt that, at that stage, it had become so organised. It was, rather, a crowd of like-minded friends who gathered around a mesmeric figure the way that we gravitated towards Wolfram. They made an enthusiastic but critical audience who would jump to their feet and harangue the actors when they judged our analysis to be wrong. Sometimes they provoked stand-up fights in the auditorium as the worlds of art and activism clashed. Soon, more conservative theatregoers were booking seats in the hope of witnessing a confrontation. They felt cheated if a play proceeded uninterrupted to its close. Some of the company were outraged, but not Wolfram, who recognised the value of a scandal. At the time I accused him of opportunism, but I realise now that his commitment ran deeper. He and Baader shared an agenda, embracing disruption both on and off the stage.
The Baader connection dogs the surviving members of the company to this day (the author of this memoir can never embarkon any project without the Red Army Faction
He played on that embarrassment along with the faint unease that each of us felt in his presence since, while we were expressing solidarity with the proletariat, he was the real thing. He had grown up among prostitutes, pimps and pushers. The experience had marked him â literally, in the livid scar on his frequently exposed chest. He was the representative of the class that our parents had oppressed. Our sense that they had exploited him left him free to exploit us. It was time to make amends.
His cause was aided by his intense physical allure. Everyone fell for him. The author just fell the furthest. He exuded sex with his shock of white hair and his rake-thinness, his appealingly pockmarked face and his feral smile. He used to say that hack actors had to be beautiful to be loved, but that he could make audiences love him in spite of his looks. He wore the same ragged clothes every day and rarely bathed: a practice he maintained throughout his life and one that became progressively less acceptable. At first, however, it seemed like a return to the natural man: an authentic whiff of the streets: two fingers raised to the deodorised department -store world. Besides, it was 1967: the theatre was thick with incense.
He consolidated his position by seducing Liesl Martins, the third member of the companyâs original triumvirate and thesource of much of its finance. Their subsequent affair, played out largely in public, placed her boyfriend, Manfred, in an acute dilemma. According to his own code â not to mention his agreement with Liesl â he had no right to be proprietorial. And yet his amour propre had been pierced. When the relationship became too heated for him to ignore, he engineered a showdown with Wolfram, who responded by seducing him too. For one who was by nature a cynic, he held an incongruously romantic view that sex would secure a personâs loyalty. Which, by and large, it did. When it became clear that he had both of them hooked, he ditched them unceremoniously while continuing to live in their house, conducting his tortuous liaisons under their very noses.
With Wolfram at the helm, the Bettlertheater became Munichâs most fashionable venue. The cream of the cityâs radical youth flocked to our exposés of the older generationâs sins. As has been well-documented, among their number was Andreas Baader. He regularly attended performances with members of his set â I hesitate to call it a group since I doubt that, at that stage, it had become so organised. It was, rather, a crowd of like-minded friends who gathered around a mesmeric figure the way that we gravitated towards Wolfram. They made an enthusiastic but critical audience who would jump to their feet and harangue the actors when they judged our analysis to be wrong. Sometimes they provoked stand-up fights in the auditorium as the worlds of art and activism clashed. Soon, more conservative theatregoers were booking seats in the hope of witnessing a confrontation. They felt cheated if a play proceeded uninterrupted to its close. Some of the company were outraged, but not Wolfram, who recognised the value of a scandal. At the time I accused him of opportunism, but I realise now that his commitment ran deeper. He and Baader shared an agenda, embracing disruption both on and off the stage.
The Baader connection dogs the surviving members of the company to this day (the author of this memoir can never embarkon any project without the Red Army Faction
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