das_spiel_von_elsenberg_1961hq

April 10, 2026·1 hr 5 min·4 clips

The Traveler tells Hilda he has spent 20 years searching among crowds, dusty roads, and dark alleys for a single face — and found it next to this fireplace.

1. 'Das Spiel von Elsenberg' is a 1961 German radio drama (Hörspiel) by French playwright Marion Georges Valentini, translated by Maria Frey, and broadcast on the podcast 'Meine Liebe zu Hörspielen.' 2. The cast includes Der Reisende (the Traveler, Paul Edwin Roth), a commercial Vertreter (Hans Stetter), the innkeeper Wirt (Christian Schmieder), Hilda the waitress (Dagmar Altrichter), Lisbeth the second waitress (Gaby Reichardt), Lucie (Ursula Dierichs), Jean-Marc (Ernst-August Schepmann), a passerby (Hans-Martin Köttenich), and Die Stimme — the Voice of Death (Wolfgang Büttner). 3. The drama is set on November 12 in the small town of Elsenberg, a fog-bound community near the sea, during its centuries-old annual ritual encounter with a spectral rider who represents Death. 4. A traveling stranger arrives in Elsenberg by chance and is brought to the Commerzcafé, where the townspeople are locking all doors, barricading windows with iron bars, and setting up loudspeakers to relay the 'game' taking place at the Restaurant am Wall and Gasthaus zum Hahn. 5. The Commerzcafé has no microphone because it is too small, and the chef is openly resentful of the larger establishments; a commercial salesman who has arrived by coincidence loudly demands a drink and entertainment, refusing to take the ritual seriously. 6. Hilda, a waitress, describes Elsenberg as always smelling of 'very old ivy and many dead birds among the roots,' contrasting it with other cities where girls have names 'called out loud toward the sun'; she is characterized as inwardly sad despite appearing soft and tender. 7. The spectral rider (Death) gallopses through the city on horseback and calls individuals by name from outside the sealed doors; those called must engage him in dialogue and either win — by defending their will to continue living — or lose and go outside. 8. The Traveler, sitting by the fireplace, tells Hilda he has been searching for a single face for twenty years through new countries and unknown cities; by the firelight he declares he has found it in her — and she confesses she has waited twenty years for a man to say exactly this. 9. Death approaches the Commerzcafé and speaks directly to Hilda through the walls, describing in precise detail her previous evening: exhausted after the innkeeper's errands, walking through an indifferent city where no young man turned to look at her. 10. Death reveals that although Hilda's lips did not move, he heard her calling for his horses — her 'silent cry rang louder over the city than the wind on the wall' — an acknowledgment of her desperation from the previous evening. 11. Death then exposes Hilda's history with the innkeeper — exploited since the age of fifteen — and attacks the Traveler's idealization by detailing the reality of her past. 12. The Traveler responds by kissing Hilda in front of the entire café, declaring it the first kiss she has received since the age of fifteen; the innkeeper looks away. 13. At the Restaurant am Wall (transmitted via loudspeaker), Lucie holds Jean-Marc physically in her arms while Death speaks to him, revealing that Jean-Marc secretly paints, was driven to gamble away clients' funds in order to buy his freedom to be an artist, and longs to escape small-town Elsenberg for 'cities full of sun.' 14. Lucie makes a total declaration of sacrifice — she will sell everything, work in roadside taverns, let Jean-Marc paint all day, and worship his hands — a declaration Death calls 'magnanimous.' 15. Death then delivers the killing revelation: while gambling away the clients' money, Jean-Marc took a red-haired girl to his room; Lucie's arms open involuntarily in shock, Jean-Marc rises, and the iron bolts fall of themselves. 16. Lucie's final cry of 'Jean-Marc!' goes unanswered as Death says 'too late'; the loudspeakers from Restaurant am Wall go silent and the town mourns the couple. 17. The commercial salesman finally understands the stakes and wants to leave on the first morning train; the drama's narrator-voice suggests he will travel alone, because Hilda is still held in the Traveler's arms. 18. The drama closes with the Traveler describing a sunrise over Tuscany to Hilda — black cypresses slowly taking on color, flocks of birds lifting off lakes, daylight borne by wings — so she will believe morning is coming and not be alone with her fear by the dying fire. 19. The production is directed by Frenzel Roloff and features a full voice cast with distinct character voices; the radio drama format relies on sound design and voice performance without any music accompaniment described in the transcript. 20. Listeners who appreciate mid-century European radio drama, allegorical theater in the tradition of Cocteau or Sartre, and intimate character studies set against supernatural frameworks will find this production deeply atmospheric; those expecting horror, action, or conventional narrative resolution will find the ending deliberately open and quiet.

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