Every Frozen Structure has its Academy

Directed by Alexander Kluge

At the time of the conversation Heiner Müller was the president of the Academy of Arts - East. At the beginning he describes his daily routine to Kluge. He is an unwilling president who has to lead an academy - which will soon be absorbed into a "European Artists Society" - at a time of upheaval. As he is describing the only functional and innovative part of the academy, the "Music Section" that trains master's students, he starts talking about how he almost became a master's student of Brecht. In retrospect he is glad that he missed this chance and escaped Brecht's powerful influence, which took away the individual creative space of his collaborators. Müller describes how he got by with various jobs during his application period and afterwards in 1951: book reviewer, translator of Stalinist songs. When Kluge asks about the basic concept of an academy, the discussion returns to its starting point: Müller claims that the academy is a space that is free from the state.