Der Lusitanische Popanz. Portuguese colonialism in a german drama

Abstract

The article contextualizes the play "Der Lusitanische Popanz / The Lusitanian Bogeyman" in the work of Peter Weiss and reconstructs the materials and processes that the writer applied in the construction of this piece on the basis of the positions assumed as "author in a divided world" and corresponding to the principles of documentary theater. Weiss used newspaper articles, documentaries and other sources, especially the book "Portugal am Pranger", which Gerhard Kramer published in 1964 at Dietz Verlag in Berlin in the then German Democratic Republic (R.D.A.). In all cases, the author works and orders the information in a way to build a model of resistance to colonialism, and not just a portrait of the specific Portuguese case. Particular dramaturgical attention is given to the staging of terror and violence that oscillates between individualization and representativeness.