Heimat lesen · Bayerischer Rundfunk

Rolf Stemmle: Gurrletta Steinhöfl (7)

·32 min·3 clips

A pigeon named Gurletta obsessively watches a café, hoping to snatch a croissant in the cold streets of Regensburg.

1. Heimat lesen is a BR Heimat radio program presenting literary readings; this episode features two stories by Rolf Stemmle from his Gurletta Steinhöfl series, set in Regensburg. 2. Host Stefan Semhoff introduces Rolf Stemmle as a contemporary Regensburg author born in the early 1960s known for lyric poetry, novels, and short stories depicting ordinary human and animal life. 3. The episode's core appeal is a pigeon's-eye view of Regensburg's cultural and urban life, using Gurletta as a wry, curious observer of human behavior. 4. In 'Rätselhafte Aida,' Gurletta is waiting near her favorite café on the Dreimoorengasse hoping for a croissant fragment when she encounters Tillmann, a pigeon who lives in the roof of the Stadttheater. 5. Tillmann offers to smuggle Gurletta into that evening's Aida performance through a loose roof tile and a cable shaft, after she discovers the opera is playing tonight. 6. Gurletta's motivation is rooted in family history: her mother Renata Scottini once lived at the Arena di Verona and would coo the Triumphal March from rooftops and hum the love duet at bedtime. 7. Inside the theater, Gurletta perches on a lamp stand in the fourth gallery, watching the conductor smooth his score before raising his baton — an intimate moment before the Verdi overture begins. 8. When the curtain rises, she finds a modern living room with grey furniture and veneer walls instead of Egyptian pyramids, and her confusion deepens as soldiers enter with machine guns. 9. Gurletta asks herself 'Die Musik ist von Verdi, aber woher sind die Möbel?' (The music is by Verdi, but where do the furniture come from?) — summarizing her encounter with Regietheater in a single question. 10. She remains in her seat despite the dissonance, occasionally swaying to the music, and waits for the Triumphal March she recognizes from her mother's singing. 11. When the Triumphal March begins, Gurletta involuntarily begins to coo loudly, is grabbed by a theater worker, bites his finger, escapes to the stage, and eventually hides above the fly gallery for the rest of the performance. 12. After the show, Tillmann meets her at the truck and explains that a listener once called modern Regietheater inaccessible to the unintelligent, making Gurletta quietly alarmed. 13. The second story follows Ludwig, a young pigeon who has recently moved to a solo nest near the Kohlenmarkt, and whom Gurletta notices obsessively arranging small objects on his terrace rooftop. 14. Gurletta imagines increasingly alarming explanations: extortion by criminals, a cult demanding symbolic tribute, or contact with extraterrestrial pigeons requiring coded information about Regensburg. 15. She decides to intervene after Ludwig collapses from exhaustion following two nights of rain that destroy his arrangements. 16. Ludwig reveals that his friend Karl told him tourists photograph everything 'to have it for later,' and he had been making physical 'Merkfiguren' (memory figures) from natural materials as a pigeon substitute for photography. 17. Gurletta questions whether tourists actually ever look at their photos, and tells Ludwig that pigeons live without documentation and are still happy. 18. The tone across both stories is gentle, comic, and observational — Stemmle uses pigeon culture to reflect on human habits including art appreciation, memory, and documentation. 19. The ideal audience is German-speaking listeners who enjoy literary radio readings and gentle animal-perspective satire of urban life. 20. Not suited for listeners who do not understand German, or those seeking dramatic plot or factual content rather than literary prose.

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