falter on "zettel"

Otto Grabner, Ilse Tasler

prelude to zu "hölderlin" by peter weiss
place: the pavement outside the stadthalle
time: 17. 6., 7 p.m., 30 minutes before the play starts
dramatis personae: christian ide hintze, distributing leaflets; a liveried stadthalle person, a policeman and us.


hintze is notified by the stadthalle person first in a polite, then in a hostile manner, that he is not allowed to distribute his leaflets on this pavement because this pavement is the property of the stadthalle. when he carries on distributing, a policeman is fetched over. “i sent him away, but he won’t go”, says the frustrated stadthalle person. the policeman asks for some i.d., hintze doesn’t have any and points out that his personal particulars have been taken by the same policeman the day before. during this exchange of words a woman taps hintze on the shoulder: mr hintze, your texts are great. the policeman looks baffled, but is not going to be put off his official duties and takes hold of hintze’s lower arm in order to lead him to the legally trained public servant. we join them, saying that we can identify him, we are energetically turned away at the door to the room of the legally trained civil servant. the policeman says he doesn’t need witnesses there.

we are standing in the entrance hall to the auditorium when we see hintze coming out of the room again. our tickets are already torn. we try to go up to him, but we are stopped. “you’ll have to wait until the interval to leave the stadthalle now, or, if you absolutely must go outside now, i can’t let you back in again”. hintze has resumed his leaflet distribution outside (only a few metres further on). the stadthalle person says he doesn’t understand it. if the ground belongs to the stadthalle, then the stadthalle also has the right to prohibit leaflet distribution here. “next time, I’ll lock him up, until 2 in the morning, he can stew there!“ says the policeman.


(Otto Grabner, Ilse Tasler in: Falter no. 26/27, what’s on magazine for Vienna, Vienna, June 1977)