My poster design for the play Michael Kohlhaas (Mihael Kolhas) by JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theater in Belgrade, Serbia.
Michael Kohlhaas is a theater adaptation of a novel with the same title by the German author Heinrich von Kleist, published in 1810. The novel is based on the 16th-century story of Hans Kohlhase.
The merchant Hans Kohlhase lived in Cölln on the Spree (now incorporated into Berlin) in the Margraviate of Brandenburg in the 16th century. In October 1532, he set out on a trip to the Leipzig Trade Fair in the neighboring Electorate of Saxony. On the way, two of his horses were seized, at the command of the Junker von Zaschwitz, as a supposed fee for passage through Saxony. Kohlhase sought redress in the Saxon courts but failed to obtain it. Outraged, he issued a public challenge in 1534 and burned down houses in Wittenberg. Even a letter of warning from Martin Luther could not dissuade him, and Kohlhase and the band he collected committed further acts of terror. In 1540, he was finally captured and tried, and he was publicly broken on the wheel in Berlin on March 22, 1540.
The merchant Hans Kohlhase lived in Cölln on the Spree (now incorporated into Berlin) in the Margraviate of Brandenburg in the 16th century. In October 1532, he set out on a trip to the Leipzig Trade Fair in the neighboring Electorate of Saxony. On the way, two of his horses were seized, at the command of the Junker von Zaschwitz, as a supposed fee for passage through Saxony. Kohlhase sought redress in the Saxon courts but failed to obtain it. Outraged, he issued a public challenge in 1534 and burned down houses in Wittenberg. Even a letter of warning from Martin Luther could not dissuade him, and Kohlhase and the band he collected committed further acts of terror. In 1540, he was finally captured and tried, and he was publicly broken on the wheel in Berlin on March 22, 1540.
