Wanderer's night song

In Dresden in August 1839, the painter Caroline Bardua visits her sick friend Caspar David Friedrich, who is sitting in his studio above the Elbe after suffering a stroke and is no longer able to paint. Instead, he torments his wife with endless monologues full of anger at the art world, which has forgotten him or treats him with scorn. Bardua is not deterred by this, as she has decided to help him and his family. She convinces Friedrich to sit for her for a portrait and tell her about his life. Friedrich's monologue turns into an hour of memories of his arrival in Dresden, his first successes and his admission to the Academy, his encounters with Goethe, Carus and Kleist and the time of the Wars of Liberation. But the years of his childhood in Greifswald and his travels to Rügen and Bohemia also come back to life, while Bardua carefully tries to encourage him to write a new work.

Author Holger Teschke, who comes from Bergen auf Rügen, has written a chamber play for Theater Vorpommern to mark the Caspar David Friedrich anniversary in 2024, which shows Caspar David Friedrich at the end of his life as a wanderer between worlds, whose last home is memory and whose last hope is art.