The penultimate chapter in Thomas Mann’s novel, published in 1924, is entitled “Die grosse Gereiztheit” (The Great Irritability). An eerie, quarrelsome malignancy suddenly flares up among the smart guests suffering from lung disease on the “Magic Mountain.” Thomas Mann follows this great irritability with the final chapter entitled “Donnerschlag” (Thunderclap) – the outbreak of the First World War in the flatlands, which also disgorges the principal character, Hans Castorp, onto one of Europe’s battlefields. They should have known, but polite society has elegantly ignored the information and thus fallen victim to catastrophic upheaval. Frank Schirrmacher credits Thomas Mann with phenomenal intuitive powers and interprets the novel as “a sensitising training course for the occurrence of unexpected events.” In the tense Europe of 2019 – whose post-war order has long since been a thing of the past – director Karin Henkel develops her own very personal interpretation of this complex subject matter.
