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What if Hitler had won the war? If the Third Reich had actually come true and dominated all of Europe? Robert Harris’ political thriller “Fatherland” plays with this vision alternate history, the alternate world history. When the British author’s debut novel appeared in 1992, 25 German publishers initially rejected the publication (it was then published by the Swiss Haffmans Verlag). The book was perceived as “anti-German”; Karl-Heinz Janssen spoke in the Time of a “frivolous bad taste” – an idiosyncratic reaction to the Nazi and Holocaust themes in connection with the science fiction genre. But the historical thriller, which became an international bestseller, neither downplays the past nor does it cultivate a Nazi ideology. It still bangs and even tolerates the comedy that the director Claudia Bauer brings out or stages, as can now be seen at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden.
