by Ödön von Horváth
Youth is hope. It is not yet spent, it still has a basic moral impulse, it is not yet jaded and resigned. Or is it? What if a teacher is suddenly confronted with contempt for humanity and racism while correcting class tests? When he is confronted with a class that has completely internalized what its environment exemplifies? Confronted with a murder in the ranks of his pupils, he searches for the truth. At the same time, an entire society falls away from the faith and the next world war looms on the horizon.
Horváth's novel Jugend ohne Gott (Youth without God), published in 1937, is an analysis of a society in which shifts in values, norms and morals can be observed. Horváth uses the image of a school class to show the creeping change in a political and social system. This manifests itself in the school, the place where society is formed, and comes to light in the pupils.
Length: approx. 90min (without intermission)
