Einen alten Baum soll man nicht verpflanzen? Il topos della vecchiaia nel teatro di Fred Wander

This paper analyses the topic of ageing in two plays written by the Austrian Jewish writer Fred Wander in 1979. After the Holocaust, to the survived author, ageing represents both a subject and a method for the analysis of dramaturgy, enabling him to discuss genocide in the past and in the present, as well as wealth and property at the time of the GDR. Therefore, ageing functions as a synecdoche for life, which guarantees a dialectical point of view on the present to promote memory and responsibility about the own and collective past. Ageing also allows for the reinterpretation of western literary and religious traditions, which have legitimated middle-class narrow-mindedness and aggressive behavior, that is to say anti-semitism, hypocrisy and materialism.