Demise of Timmy the whale inspires satirical play exploring German identity

A performance of the play at the Ernst Deutsch theatre in Hamburg, in which a blow-up replica of Timmy is raised on a cross. Photograph: Georg Wendt/dpa View image in fullscreen A performance of the play at the Ernst Deutsch theatre in Hamburg, in which a blow-up replica of Timmy is raised on a cross. Photograph: Georg Wendt/dpa Demise of Timmy the whale inspires satirical play exploring German identity Timmy: Hope Dies Last elevates stranded humpback into Jesus-like figure, igniting hope and grief When people in Germany organised a daring rescue mission for a humpback whale stranded on the Baltic coast in April, it briefly looked like a country stricken with political division and economic anxiety was rallying around a common cause. A new satirical play inspired by the episode, however, suggests the spectators, social-media influencers, politicians and millionaires who flocked to the seaside in support never just wanted to rescue the cetacean that came to be nicknamed Timmy, but for Timmy to rescue them. Timmy: Hope Dies Last, which premiered at Hamburg’s Ernst Deutsch theatre last Saturday, reimagines the media spectacle as a passion play in which the leviathan is worshipped, crucified and eventually cut up into sacramental blubber bites. “In his immeasurable kindness he became a vehicle to us” is a line from actor Noah Tomiak in the play, dressed in liturgical robes and stood behind an altar laden with a blow-up replica of the sea creature. “And we placed everything inside: our fears, our guilt, our desires, our loneliness. And while we said: ‘we have to save him’, it was maybe already the other way around: maybe he came to save us.” Timmy the stranded humpback whale swims into transport barge The elevation of Timmy into a Jesus-figure has drawn criticism from Catholic theologians, but found praise on the pages of news weekly Der Spiegel. The play, it wrote, revealed “how willing a secularised public seeks refuge in quasi-religious structure as a vehicle for hope”. The humpback whale was first spotted in German waters in March, stranded at the Timmendorfer resort – inspiring the nickname that, it would later turn out – misgendered an animal that was in fact female. An earlier nickname, Hope, better conveyed the emotional pull of the whale’s tragic fate on the national consciousness. Throughout the new play, director Alexander Klessinger plays audio snippets from interviews with people who descended on Timmendorfer to seek a connection with the ailing mammal. Raw and unfiltered, these confessionals show the extent that people believed the whale was speaking directly to them. “I felt like he was waiting for me, I can’t explain it but he wanted me, says one woman. Over the course of the one-hour show, the adoration of the whale takes on a cultish fervour, as actors declare their love via songs and placards. In one recording, a woman explains why she travelled to the Baltic sea to help the whale with an Aboriginal chant that would “plug energetic