About the work
"Letzte Station Torgau. Eine kalte Umarmung" ("Last Stop Torgau. A Cold Embrace") is a documentary theatre project by Regine Dura and Hans-Werner Kroesinger at Schauspiel Leipzig. It is devoted to the Closed Youth Workhouse (Geschlossener Jugendwerkhof) Torgau – the only closed facility of its kind in the GDR. Between 1964 and 1989, more than 4,000 young people were "re-educated" there into "socialist personalities" through military drill, punishment and humiliation. Drawing on archival material, visits to the memorial site and conversations with those affected, the piece brings this history to the stage in documentary form.
Plot
The evening dispenses with invented plot and instead assembles real testimony: the unguarded personal texts of the interned youths are set against documents and statements from their overseers. In Hugo Gretler's stage space the performers remain isolated, avoiding eye and body contact; props such as the "seesaw" (Wippe), used in Torgau's courtyard for physical drill, point concretely to the institution's daily routine. Out of the young people's rage, self-assertion and struggle for self-respect emerges a picture of the system – and an act of restoring dignity to those whom Torgau sought to strip of it.
Cultural significance
The Torgau youth workhouse stands as a symbol of the repressive side of GDR youth welfare; coming to terms with it remains part of pan-German memory work to this day. "Letzte Station Torgau" belongs to the documentary theatre of Hans-Werner Kroesinger, who for decades has brought political and historical subjects to the stage through meticulous source work. The piece understands theatre as a form of historical enlightenment and gives a voice to those affected – a voice long absent from official historiography.