Pershing (UA)

This documentary theater project explores the background and repercussions of this pivotal event in Heilbronn’s history—always with an eye toward the present. The result is a play created specifically for the city of Heilbronn that connects local conditions with the reality of Germany as a whole, both then and now. In cooperation with the Heilbronn City Archives January 11, 2025, marks the 40th anniversary of the Pershing accident at the Waldheide in Heilbronn. It was this incident—in which three American soldiers were killed and 13 others were injured, some seriously—that briefly made the city the focal point of the West German peace movement of the 1980s. The explosion of a Pershing II missile engine in the immediate vicinity of the nuclear warheads stored at Waldheide had alarmed more than just the people of Heilbronn. On February 2, 1985, thousands of people demonstrated against the missile deployment with a silent march from Heilbronn to the Waldheide, and on February 8, an indefinite blockade of the Pershing site began. Suddenly, it became clear even to the last person just how quickly a catastrophe could occur in the immediate vicinity of the city. Barely two weeks after the accident, the Heilbronn City Council—which for years had been barred from addressing the “Waldheide missile site”—passed a unanimous resolution to remove it. Subsequently, the citizens of Heilbronn, together with local and national peace activists as well as prominent representatives of the peace movement, demonstrated against the immediate consequences of NATO’s Double-Track Decision. The protests took on such an alarming form for political leaders that then-Defense Minister Manfred Wörner came to Heilbronn on April 25, 1985, to reassure the public—without success. The protests ultimately ended only with the signing of the INF Treaty in 1987. What hasn’t happened since then? Two years after the disaster, the major powers mutually committed to their disarmament efforts in the INF Treaty; just under five years later, the Berlin Wall fell. The end of the Cold War was foreseeable and was finally sealed with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1993. Suddenly—at least for a short time—a world seemed conceivable that was not defined by bipolar power relations: an open, peaceful world in which diplomatic relations and mutual trust had replaced the arms race between the major powers. A utopia that was destined to be short-lived. dura & kroesinger take the commemoration of the day of the Pershing accident at Heilbronn’s Waldheide as the starting point for their research project. How did the deployment of Pershing II missiles in Heilbronn come about as part of the NATO Double-Track Decision? What did city officials know about it, and why was the public not informed about the missile site? What significance did the missile deployment and the Waldheide accident hold for Heilbronn? And what traces did the accident and its consequences leave on Heilbronn’s civil society? This documentary theater project examines the background and repercussions of this pivotal event in Heilbronn’s city history—always with an eye toward our present. The result is a play specific to the city of Heilbronn that connects local conditions with the reality of Germany at that time and today. A research project marking the 40th anniversary of the Pershing disaster at Heilbronn’s Waldheide by dura & kroesinger.