Rigor Was His Mark of Quality(Härte war sein Gütezeichen)

Heiner Müller defines Stoicism as an attempt to deal with anarchy. For him, Erich Honecker is an example for "forced stoicism". Müller agrees with the following quote by Goethe: May God save me from self-awareness! For Müller, it represents a stoic attitude. When asked about "patriotism" in the sense of "What would you risk your life for, if necessary?", he can only come up with something "silly" at first: his daughter. But Müller is also a patriot of theater, in the sense of "maeeuticism", of putting-effort-into-it.