Nathan’s Children

Nathan’s Children

Nathan the Wise, Lessing’s plea for religious tolerance, is one of the most-performed German dramas. It now appears as a thrilling novel focused on this current topic. Clever, far-sighted and brilliant – a novel that provokes in a contemporary way, but not without hope for a more peaceful coexistance of religions. An extraordinary masterpiece.

Jerusalem, during the era of crusades around 1192: The Christians have lost the Holy City to sultan Saladin. He only pardons one of the captured crusaders: the young Curd of Stauffen, of the order of the Templar. The good deed is followed by more: The order of the templar saves Recha, a young girl, from the flames of her house. She is the daughter of the Jewish merchant, Nathan, who is called the Wise one. While Recha and her live-saver, the Jewess and the Christian, misjudge each other at first and go separate ways, doom approaches Nathan. Sultan Saladin orders him to appear and asks him the most difficult of all questions: Which religion is the only true one? Nathan answers him with the famous ring parable – but will that satisfy the sultan? Furthermore, Nathan does not know that in the meantime the Christian patriarch of Jerusalem and a Moslem captain are out to kill him…