Sad love and loss: Ruth Maier's moving story on stage!

Sad love and loss: Ruth Maier's moving story on stage!

Wien 1, Fleischmarkt 24, Österreich - In Gmunden, the musical "Letters from Ruth" celebrated its premiere on February 25, 2025, based on the diaries and letters of the Jewish Viennese Ruth Maier. These moving records document their lives before and during the Second World War. Ruth, who was able to flee to Norway in 1939 in front of the Nazis, experienced a love story with the Norwegian poet Gunvor Hofmo. But fate was cruel - in 1942 Ruth was deported to Auschwitz and murdered there. The letters and diaries published in 2007 were a legacy that comes from the estate of Hofmo, Ruth's great love from years of flight and despair, such as vienna.at reported.

a moving musical

director Philipp Moschitz presents a mixture of musical and spoken theater that captures the different tonalities of Ruth Maier's life. The staging helps to present the tragic loss and carefree past of her youth in Vienna before the National Socialists took control. During her stay in Norway, where she initially spent a good time with Hofmo, Ruth was plagued by loneliness and despair. The brutal circumstances of her arrest by Norwegian police officers in 1942, which was described as shocking, ended in a cruel fate that not only shaped Ruth, but also the surviving gunvor Hofmo, like the Arolsen archives .

The music and the performances invite the audience to empathize with the emotions and fights that Ruth and their loved ones connected. Until her death, Hofmo remained shaped by the grief of the loss of her "twin soul". Her poems are devoted to the painful memory of Ruth, which was a flame of hope in a time of deep darkness. The premiere in the Vienna Chamber Opera and the subsequent performances are an impressive testimony that this moving story must not be forgotten and Ruth Maier has actually achieved what she once dreamed: memory beyond time.