Munich Machine

A UFO in the shape of a weisswurst lands in front of the Bayerische Staatskanzlei: is this a film or reality? For the film poet of Schwabing and asphalt cowboy Klaus Lemke, it makes no difference. But then an alien climbs out of the spaceship! She is looking for an idea, for a utopian society for their home planet. And they think Munich is the ideal object to study. Lemke senses that this is great material, so they embark together on a high speed, madcap journey through Munich’s history. They live through the city’s highs and lows, encountering legends such as Helmut Dietl’s Tscharli from «Münchner Geschichten» riding through the Siegestor, the young Franz -Josef Strauss and the then unknown Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in a salon in Schelling at the turn of the century. They land in the middle of the Schwabing riots in 1962, the Olympic Games of 1972 and are eyewitnesses to the proclamation of the Munich Soviet Republic.Albert Ostermaier’s new play «Munich Machine» is a magnificent theatrical triptych, a Munich altarpiece in three parts: both a hymn to and reckoning with his home city – over what the city once was, is now and could be tomorrow. Above all, however, it is an affectionate homage to the great Munich film maker Klaus Lemke, who died in 2022 at the age of eighty-one.