END OF A MISSION

What begins as a small act of disobedience turns into an absurd farce about the state, order, and social conformity. With sharp, subtle irony and a distinctly sarcastic tone, Heinrich Böll tells a story of protest that is not opposed, but rather defused, absorbed, and ultimately co-opted by the system itself.

Cabinetmaker Johann Gruhl and his son Georg live and work in the small town of Birglar, somewhere in the Rhineland between Cologne and Bonn. Burdened by heavy tax debts, Johann struggles to keep the family business afloat. When Georg is drafted into the Bundeswehr, their financial situation becomes even more precarious.

At the end of his military service, Georg receives a bizarre assignment: to drive a DKW MUNGA military vehicle around aimlessly in order to accumulate the mileage required for a routine inspection. Instead of carrying out this absurd order, he drives home to help his father with his work. Together, father and son transform the army jeep into a strange ritual object and ceremonially set it on fire in a field near their hometown. The act inevitably leads to criminal charges and a trial.

Within a single day, the case is heard before the district court of a small county town, where nearly everyone involved—from witnesses to spectators—is connected by friendship, family ties, or longstanding acquaintances. Only the recently transferred public prosecutor from Bavaria and a court observer from the »nearby big city« remain outsiders.

What initially appears to be a politically motivated crime gradually takes on increasingly absurd dimensions. Thanks in part to the testimony of an art historian, the destruction of military property is ultimately reinterpreted as a »happening« and elevated into the realm of anti-art. The aging judge, presiding over the final case of his career, proves as lenient as his reputation suggests. In the end, the defendants receive little more than a symbolic punishment: compensation for damages and six weeks in prison for gross mischief.

Yet beneath its comic surface, Heinrich Böll’s novel offers a sharp critique of post-war West German society. The apparently triumphant outcome reveals how effectively democratic systems can absorb, domesticate, and neutralize dissent. Describing the trial as a kind of »Rhenish family gathering«, Böll turns the courtroom into a stage on which the authority of state institutions is gently but relentlessly called into question. The result is a satirical portrait of society and a passionate plea for individual freedom over blind obedience.

Born in Meschede in 1964, director Armin Petras moved with his family to the GDR in 1969. He studied directing at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin from 1985 to 1987 before relocating to West Germany in 1988. From 2006 to 2013, he served as artistic director of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, followed by a five-year tenure as artistic director of Schauspiel Stuttgart. Since then, he has worked as a freelance director at theaters across Germany, including Theater Bremen and the state theaters of Cottbus and Saarbrücken. Following LENZ by Georg Büchner and the world premiere of BLUT WIE FLUSS by Fritz Kater, END OF A MISSION marks his third production at Theater Bonn.