About the work
Wie Grischa mit einer verwegenen Idee beinahe den Weltfrieden auslöste (roughly: How Grischa Nearly Caused World Peace with a Daring Idea) is the stage version of Jakob Hein’s satirical novel of the same name, published by Galiani Berlin in February 2025. Hein combines an invented picaresque tale with a real chapter of German-German history: the billion-mark loan with which Bavarian Minister-President Franz Josef Strauß helped the insolvent GDR. The stage version premieres on 25 September 2026 in the Kammerspiele of Deutsches Theater Berlin, directed by Wilke Weermann.
Plot
In the 1980s Grischa, a young and shy assistant at the State Planning Commission in East Berlin, belongs to a working group on Afghanistan that has practically nothing to do. Looking for a way to bring hard currency into the cash-strapped state, he hits on the idea of sourcing cannabis from the socialist brother country, and a planning group travels to Kabul to inspect it. Through a German-Afghan friendship shop in the border area the goods find customers from the West, and soon hundreds of young people queue at the Invalidenstraße crossing, wanting to get into East Berlin. Once the government in Bonn hears of it, the situation escalates, until the GDR proposes a deal to West Germany that it can hardly refuse.
Cultural significance
The novel won Jakob Hein the Grimmelshausen Prize in 2025, worth 10,000 euros; the jury singled out its satirical view of both German states. Literary critics, including those of Deutschlandfunk and Die Zeit, also praised the book’s wit and lightness.