Output details

The Archive Trilogy: A collection of three radio plays written by A.Ganz ('Listening to the Generals' first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 15/04/2009; 'Nuclear Reactions' first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 15/06/2010; 'The Gestapo Minutes' first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 31/07/2013)

Ganz’s Archive Trilogy consists of three 45-minute radio plays - Listening to the Generals, Nuclear Reactions and The Gestapo Minutes (transmitted by the BBC between 2009 and 2013) – dealing with aspects of the historical experience of German Jews during and immediately after the Second World War. The plays rely heavily upon primary archival research - including the transcripts of German POWs recorded by refugees working for the British Secret Service (in the National Archives), the transcripts of German Nuclear Scientists bugged by the British at Farm Hall as they heard of the Hiroshima bomb (in the Library of Congress) and minutes of meetings between the Head of the Jewish Community and the Gestapo (in the StadtArchiv in Mainz) - as well as interviews with those involved in the creation and release of material (including Ganz’s own father, Peter Ganz, Fritz Lustig, Professor Soenke Neitzel then of the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz and Sir Michael Atiyah, FRS OM). The plays themselves combine historical record with personal narratives which, through the use of different artistic strategies, explore the complex processes of remembering and forgetting involved in the survival of trauma and passing on of cultural memory to the next generation. In this respect, Ganz’s work also involves an investigation into the possibilities and limitations of adapting and dramatising historical transcripts, and exploring different kinds of creative response to the gaps and silences that the historical record leaves (including the use of diegetic and non-diegetic music, unreliable narration, and the employment of radio journalist Robin Lustig to give voice to the archive). Ganz has reflected upon aspects of this process in a paper for the Adaptation Studies Conference in Berlin (2010) and for History Workshop Online (‘On Speaking and Silence and the Refusal of Historical Accuracy’, http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/on-speaking-and-silence-and-the-refusal-of-historical-accuracy/).