About the work
“F. Zawrel – Erbbiologisch und sozial minderwertig” is a documentary hand-puppet play by Nikolaus Habjan, who wrote the text and built and performs the puppets alongside director Simon Meusburger. It premiered on 23 March 2012 at the Schubert Theater in Vienna; much of its story came directly from Friedrich Zawrel, born in 1929, who related it to Habjan in personal conversations.
Plot
As a teenager in the 1940s, Friedrich Zawrel is committed to the Vienna children's institution Am Spiegelgrund, where Nazi doctors classify him as “hereditarily and socially inferior” and abuse him. After escaping and spending years as a homeless youth and repeat offender, he encounters his former tormentor, institution doctor Heinrich Gross, again after the war, now a respected expert giving testimony against him once more. Habjan plays Zawrel, Gross and other characters himself, using hand puppets he built.
Cultural significance
The play did much to bring Zawrel's life story and the Nazi crimes at the Am Spiegelgrund institution to a wider public, winning the 2012 Nestroy Theatre Prize for best independent production and the Swiss Grünschnabel cultural prize in 2014. Habjan has since performed it at numerous theatres across the German-speaking world.