About the work
Heiner Müller's „The Mission: Memory of a Revolution" („Der Auftrag") was premiered in East and West Berlin in 1980. The text deals with revolution, betrayal and colonialism through the example of three emissaries of the French Revolution sent to ignite a slave uprising. Müller weaves historical drama, dream and reflection into a dense postdramatic fabric.
Plot
On the orders of the revolutionary French Convention, three emissaries travel to Jamaica to organise, in the name of liberty, a slave revolt against English colonial rule: the former slave Sasportas, the peasant's son Galloudec and the bourgeois Debuisson. When news arrives that the revolution in France has failed and Napoleon is in power, the shared mission falls apart. Debuisson betrays the cause and returns to the bourgeois world; Sasportas and Galloudec hold fast to liberation and go to their deaths. Embedded in the text is the famous monologue of the „man in the lift", who, dispatched by a superior, loses his bearings in the elevator and finally his mission — an image of the loss of historical certainty.
Cultural significance
„The Mission" is among Müller's most important texts on the legacy of revolution and the entanglement of liberation, race and betrayal. The play links the material of the Enlightenment with the experience of the failure of socialist hopes and is performed internationally and widely received in theatre studies.