About the work
Der blinde Passagier is a play by the Austrian writer Maria Lazar, written around 1938/39 during her exile in Denmark. It was neither published nor staged in the author's lifetime; it first appeared in print in 2024, taken from her estate, in the volume Die vergessenen Theaterstücke from the Viennese publisher Das vergessene Buch. Laura Linnenbaum directed the world premiere at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus on 31 May 2025.
Plot
In the winter of 1938 a small Danish cargo vessel lies in thick fog off a German port. Carl, the captain's son, pulls Hartmann, a Jewish doctor fleeing the Nazis, out of the freezing water and hides him in the hold. One by one the whole family on board learns about the stowaway: Captain Petersen, the mother, Carl's sister Nina and her fiancé, the helmsman. Each of them has to decide whether the refugee will be protected, taken out of the country or handed over to the authorities.
Cultural significance
The play is one of the belatedly discovered dramas through which Maria Lazar has in recent years been reread as an important voice of exile literature. After the premiere, critics praised the precise construction and moral force of this chamber play about looking away and civil courage; a review in Die Welt credited it with the potential to become a modern classic. Within a year several theatres in Germany and Austria added the play to their repertoire.