Ahasver

Pontius Pilate’s doorkeeper Ahasver refused to allow Jesus, as he bore the cross, to rest on his threshold. As a punishment Ahasvar is condemned to wander the world without home or purpose until the Day of Judgement. The story of the wanderer became a central and recurrent myth, most famously in Goethe and Heine, and of course in Wagner.
Whereas the romantic idea of redemption is in the foreground in Wagner, in Kirchner the theme is political. Ahasver’s wanderings lead him through each period of European history and offer a view of so-called historical progress stripped of illusions. In nine scenes and one epilogue, interrupted by eight extensive monologues (“night watches”), the composer describes the incessant search for home, identity and spiritual fulfilment in broad historical pictorial scenes. Ahasver encounters a series of historical figures – Johannes Gutenberg, Martin Luther – each of whom confirms an insuperable wall of xenophobia and ideological blindness.
In the epilogue Ahasver suffers the fate of today’s refugees. Merely a number, completely deprived of his individuality, he joins the anonymous mass of human fellow-sufferers.