Post photo: Käthchen von Heilbronn | © Shutterstock
Unless you're from the region, this fairytale drama from 1810 might be less well-known. Heinrich von Kleist is the author and his play premiered on March 17, 1810 in Vienna.
I was allowed to get to know the play during my school days and to this day have not had the urge to read it again. More important than the piece itself are its effects on Heilbronn: Käthchenhaus on the market square, one Käthchen fountain figure from Dieter Lapple, which I also don't like very much, neat little Käthchen dolls from the city marketing department and last but not least the Heilbronner Käthchen herself, of which there is now even a main and three side-kets.
Every two years, including this year, the Heilbronner Marketing-Gesellschaft (HMG) and the Heilbronner Verkehrsverein Heilbronn look for this symbolic figure for Heilbronn anew.
In the meantime, the Käthchen is determined by its own casting show, which, after a fundamental revision, still attracts up to 400 visitors. In 2018, at least as far as I know, the demand was made for the first time to choose a male Käthchen for a change - "a Käthchen Conchita"; this demand was put forward during the last casting show by the cabaret ensemble Heilbronner Leibgerüch. The Heilbronn voice, on the other hand, was a bit more conservative and would first like to admit applicants who come from Heilbronn but no longer have their main focus in life there.
In any case, it is clear that the Käthchen figure is no longer up-to-date in its current form and, like the Heilbronn hare meal, also needs to be fundamentally revised. It doesn't help much either, as suggested by the voice, to look for "guest worker" Käthchen or to follow the wish of the Heilbronn personal rumor and to contrast the three Käthchen with three "Kätheriche", but you really have to go with the times and the follow up their own socio-political demands, which are so nice to hear especially in Sunday speeches.
That's why you could easily open the call for the upcoming Heilbronner Käthchen to all genders and age groups. And if you can't agree on the choice afterwards, put several Käthchen on an equal footing: a male, a female, a "trans" Käthchen or even a grandma or grandpa Käthchen.
By the way, we owe the realization that Heilbronn can do without Käthchen entirely without Käthchen, which we owe to the Federal Garden Show last year, which impressively demonstrated with the BUGA-Karl that new concepts and ideas can also be very successful.
BUGA-Karl was a dwarf, even a pink one, but without question and surprisingly without any criticism, male.
"We need men who can dream of things that never were, and ask why not."
John F Kennedy, Speech in Dublin (June 28, 1963)
