FOCUS:

»It was like watching a snowball rolling down the Alps,« mused a reporter from Macedonian Television (MTV). He was referring to the back-to-back Schiller Readings in Macedonia during the »Schiller Year.«

The first Schiller reading took place in August in the picturesque Saint Sophia Church during the Ohrid Summer Festival under the title A Schiller Monodrama. As poetry performances go, this one was aimed at both tourists and aficionados — the hip cultured crowd who simply wanted to hear Schiller’s ballads spoken in German by an actress who could reach the last row without a microphone.

A month later, the same Dorothea Moritz was invited back to Macedonia to give a Schiller Reading at the National Library in Skopje. The performance this time had to be moved to the spacious foyer to accommodate an overflow crowd of two-hundred fans, young and old, students and poetry lovers. They came to encounter a poet synonymous with freedom, idealism, and the joy of life.

Astonishing, to say the least. For how many people in Macedonia are acquainted with the poetry of Friedrich von Schiller in the first place? Schiller’s dramas, yes. His poetry, maybe. And how many would readily comprehend the reflective intricacies woven into the verses of Die Kraniche des Ibykus, the crowning ballad of the Schiller performance? No matter. The Macedonians are a highly cultivated, imaginative, and inventive people. Ilko Stefanovski, the artistic programmer at Ohrid, hit upon the idea of beaming onto a large white overhead screen the texts of Schiller’s ballads in Macedonian while Ms. Moritz was reciting the same verses in German. The novelty worked — primarily because the Ohrid Summer Festival on picturesque Lake Ohrid thrives on what is euphemistically known hereabouts as »mono-dramas.« These are one-person musical performances or dramatic acts geared to fit the snug environment of an ancient church.

Among Ohrid’s 35 churches St. Sophia is unique for its breathtaking beauty. Built at the beginning of the 11th century, then converted into a mosque during the 500-year reign of the Ottoman Turks, the frescoes on the walls have been partially restored to their original splendor. Acoustically speaking, St. Sophia Church is appropriate for choral groups and concerts. On one evening, the Munich Philharmonic was present with Brahms, Dvorak, and Strauss. On the next, the »Schiller Year« was celebrated with poems and ballads rendered in German by actress Dorothea Moritz. Although the Ohrid Summer Festival benefits indirectly from its membership in the Geneva-based European Association of Festivals, it depends largely on cultural partners. For the Schiller — A Monodrama performance on »German Day,« for instance, festival director Zoran Strezovski extended a personal thanks to Volker Marwitz, head of the Goethe Institute in Belgrade, and to Matthias Vollert, the cultural attaché at the German Embassy in Skopje.

A month later, Matthias Vollert invited Dorothea Moritz to visit Skopje with a follow-up »Schiller-Lesung« in the St. Clement National Library. This time, the performance was enhanced by musical interludes by the Ars Nova String Trio — Ana Stojanova on violin cello, Julija Nelkovska and Goce Vangelovski on violins. At that gathering the overflow crowd was greeted by German Ambassador Ralf Breth. He underscored that the Schiller Reading is part of the »Europäischer Tag der Sprachen« (European Day of Languages). Prof. Peter Rau, head of the German Department at the University of Skopje, spoke on the life and work of Friedrich von Schiller. Students of German language and literature arrived from Bitola and Tetovo. Afterwards, a glass of wine whetted the appetite for an encore: the actress Dorothea Moritz pulled out all the stops with a rousing rendition of Schiller’s Die Bürgschaft ballad.

The story doesn’t end there. A week later, the Schiller Year was celebrated again in Pecs, a university town in the south of Hungary, with a »Schiller Lesung im Lenau-Haus.« The occasion was the First »Film Celebration« Festival in Pecs, a competitive festival for young directorial talent from Central European filmlands. György Karpati, one of the festival organizers, hit upon the idea to program an extra added cultural attraction for the German minority in Pecs. After all, this is a city well acquainted with German poetry through the writings of Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850), Austrian lyric poet. The Schiller ballads, spoken by Dorothea Moritz, were accompanied with musical interludes on the flute by the talented young Krisztian Ömböli.

Ron Holloway