Freddie Rokem

(Tel Aviv)

Possessed by Theatre: The Dybbuk at the Habima Theatre, Moscow 1922

Mousonturm Studio 1

Antrittsvorlesung

Public lecture in english language

S. An-Ski’s play Der Dybbuk: Zwischen zwei Welten  shows how a restless, dead man’s ghost (a Dybbuk’s) invades a young bride’s body.  The production of An Ski’s play in 1922 in the Habima Theatre in Moscow under the direction of Jewgenij Wachtangov, became a legend and can be understood as the origin of Israeli Theatre. In the lecture, the ritual and biblical sources of the play and the performance will be explored and thereby a specific focus will be set on the complex meta-theatrical dimensions. At the same time, it shall be demonstrated how they conduced to the construction of a secular, Jewish identity.  From this semester on, the chair of theatre studies at the Goethe University will constantly give out a Friedrich-Hölderlin-guest professorship for “Allgemeine und Vergleichende Dramaturgie” to international guests, who will link theory and artistic practice through their work in a commendable manner. We welcome Freddie Rokem as the first guest within this new professorship.


Freddie Rokem holds the Emanuel Herzikowitz-professorship for the Art of the 19th and 20th century at the University Tel Aviv and is now professor emeritus of the local theatre-scientific department. Guest-professorships lead him i.a. to Stanford, Berkeley, Stockholm, Berlin and Helsinki. His latest publications were among others: Philosophers and Thespians: Thinking Performance (2010); Jews and the Making of Modern German Theatre (Mit-Hg., 2010), Geschichte aufführen. Darstellungen von Vergangenheit im Gegenwartstheater (2012).

Antrittsvorlesung des Friedrich Hölderlin-Gastprofessors