Ronald M. Schernikau is gay and a communist. He lives in West Germany and desperately wants to move to East Germany. His goal: to study at the Johannes R. Becher Literary Institute and obtain East German citizenship. Poignant, combative, silly, sublime. Gay fantasies mix with political analysis. Classicism meets camp. Glamour meets grief. Schernikau dies of AIDS in 1991.

This musical reading aims to introduce you to a queer author who sadly succumbed to AIDS in 1991. Shortly before his death, Schernikau completed the book “Legende” (Legend). The manuscript remained unpublished for a long time. Schernikau’s magnum opus is a bible and a travesty, an epic and a musical, a documentary record of both Germanys in the 1980s that is disturbingly topical – and always a cheerfully profound exploration of the changeability of the world.

Tucké Royale and Jens Friebe have worked on Schernikau both separately and together. Kristin Bönicke is Schernikau’s estate administrator and is working on an edition of his letters for Verbrecher Verlag. Elmira Bahrami was involved in the first performance of the program at Theater Basel.