The Biedermanns

The play directed by Adam Orzechowski on our Big Stage is inspired by a true, complicated story of a Łódź family of industrialists who due to WW2 faced a hardest choice…  

- Every day travelling around the city we pass places marked with human stories. This time I suggested Adam Orzechowski and Anna Wakulik, the author of the play, to refer to the history of the Biedermann family – industrialists who built our town. We want to tell a story about inhabitants of Łódź who believed in Łódź and were devoted to Łódź – Ewa Pilawska, director of Powszechny Theatre says. – Main characters of the play by Anna Wakulik, directed by Adam Orzechowski, are Bruno, Luiza and Maryla. And again a woman, Maryla,  is the main protagonist of the play – she was in conspiracy, in Home Army (AK) and she fought the Nazis. The Biedermann history is very complex and multilevelled – Ms Pilawska adds.

- The Biedermann family were very supportive of Poland. Bruno took part in the Polish-Bolshevik war as a volunteer in the 28th Regiment of Riflemen of Kaniów. After the war he was transferred to the reserve in the rank of captain. For the service to Poland he was twice awarded with the Cross of Merit. I know that the most important award for him was the Cross of Valour which he received for his participation in the 1920 war. His daughter Maryla also actively participated in Polish affairs. She was in conspiracy – the Home Army (AK) in section „N” (counterintelligence), she helped the prisoners of Radogoszcz and in September 1939 she transported the wounded to hospitals. For her activities she was imprisoned by the Nazis in Radom and later in Łódź – Karol Biedermann, the Biedermann family descendant, tells us. 

- Bruno Biedermann was a very well educated industrialist, he graduated from foreign universities, with good training, well prepared to run a firm and at the same time he looked out for his employees – director Adam Orzechowski says. – They often said that they were treated by the Biedermanns with respect, like a family. That was a different time and different attitude of the firms’ owners to the employees – but in the Biedermanns factory the social service was very well developed. For instance when a baby was born to a worker, Bruno Biedermann used to put on his suit (he usually wore a protective overall), come to the factory to visit the worker and give him a box of good cigars and a layette. Some workers joked they would prefer „a box of cigarettes” instead. At Christmas and Easter time there were parties for all the workers’ children and during the parties there was a doughnut lottery, with some doughnuts stuffed with gold five-ruble coins. I know of a woman who broke her leg while she was working and in consequence could not move well so Bruno created a special technical inspection post for her to help her keep the job – Karol Biedermann says. 

- Bruno decided to sign the Deutsche Volksliste in the name of the whole family under the pressure because he was worried about his life and the life of his family, about the future of the factory and the workers. By doing this Bruno, just as the family of Paweł Emanuel Biedermann, saved their workers – it was proved later at the rehabilitation trial. Maryla refused signing it – she did not collect „Kennkarte”. She decided to do it only later, while in prison in Radom, after she had received a special consent of the AK leadership. She was raised as a Pole and she considered herself to be a Pole – Karol Biedermann emphasizes.

- When the war broke out Maryla was 25, she spent two years in the prison in Gdańska Street in Łódź; when she escaped from the prison transport she was extremely exhausted. Her sister Adalisa decided to leave Łódź for Munich during the war, but Bruno, Luiza and Maryla stayed in the city though they could go away, too. Why did they stay? Why did not they want to leave the city? We ask those questions and we try to find the answers to them – Adam Orzechowski says.

- The spectacle is inspired by the history of the Biedermann family, we get to know them at a terminal moment – an extremely tragic one. At the moment when Bruno Biedermann decides to kill his wife, his daughter and himself just after the Red Army marched into Łódź in January 1945 and the Soviets occupied the Biedermanns’ Palace. This was a no-win situation. Bruno had to choose between transferring his wife Luiza, his very sick daughter Maryla and himself to a Soviet prison run by NKWD (Russian State Security) in Sikawa in Łódź and their death on his own terms – „free death”. He chose free death. I cannot imagine myself in such a situation, having to make such a choice… In the spectacle we watch last hour of the lives of Bruno, Luiza and Maryla and we figuratively tell about the situation when war and violence are at the gate and they are the true and real danger – director Adam Orzechowski says.