Reading: Purpur by Karin Hermes

The Berlin-based dancer and sculptor Oda Schottmüller is torn between her desire to dance and create artistically regardless of the political situation, and her need to stand up to the Nazis. When her friend Hans Coppi asks whether the resistance group around him—called the “Rote Kapelle” by the Nazis—may use her studio in her absence to transmit radio messages, she agrees hesitantly. Later, she also passes on encrypted information through dance scores. She carries a score in the false bottom of her suitcase to Munich, from where it makes its way to Zurich. There, the coded information is received by Elfriede and taken to the Swiss group of the Rote Kapelle in Bern, which radios it on to London and Moscow.

Oda Schottmüller and her fellow activists are arrested in 1942 and sentenced to death. Oda dances with death, accompanied by prison chaplain Harald Poelchnau, who secretly shelters Jewish people.

The historical fiction  Purpur sheds light on a little-known aspect of resistance to National Socialism. The narrative arc extends as far as the Swiss Crypto scandal, in which Max, Elfriede’s grandson, is implicated—turning his life of luxury upside down.

Purpur emerged from the project Die Rote Kapelle, which was awarded the Swiss Dance Prize, Cultural Heritage Dance, in 2020. Bern-based choreographer and choreologist Karin Hermes developed a historical fiction in collaboration with  the SAPA Foundation, Swiss archive of the Performing Arts, the Deutsches Tanzarchive, and the Centre National de Danse in Paris, placing Swiss dance heritage within the context of the Second World War.