Back Insurance

The Civic Theater of Mannheim on the Rhine, in the U.S. zone of Germany, was enjoying a fine season until the time came to rehearse the next play in the repertory: Arthur Koestler's powerfully anti-Communist Darkness at Noon.

Actor Gerhard Just, billed for the leading role of the purged Bolshevik Rubashov, grumbled uncomfortably that the play was "unsuitable." The whole cast refused to appear for rehearsals. Company Manager Hans Schueler thought he knew the trouble: his performers were not necessarily Communists--they were simply taking out Rueckversicherung, which literally means "back insurance." This is the German word for forehanded protection against occupation by the Russians, if it should come. There are many varieties of Rueckversicherung: wealthy Hamburg businessmen who keep yachts fueled and supplied for quick getaways; non-Communist Germans who carry Communist Party cards just in case; Ruhr industrialists who protect their eastern plants by buying expensive advertising in Communist newspapers.

Manager Schueler refused to release his actors from their contracts, but did give each a little Rueckversicherung: a letter acknowledging that the actor had "left nothing untried" to avoid performing in the play.

Still the actors took no chances: on opening night last week, they went out of the way to give unconvincing performances. Just's Rubashov, snapped a critic, was "a melancholy Don Quixote of the Revolution," and the rest of the actors were only "bearers of cues." Detmold's Red newspaper, Volks-Echo, lambasted the cast and said with a snarl: "Its resistance broke down easily before the propaganda offerings of the Fascist warmongers." Even in taking out Red insurance policies, the actors found themselves refused. The reason given by the insurance company: weak hearts.

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