›Dienstbare Geister‹ (“subservient spirits”) tells of two migratory journeys in opposite directions.

In 1905 an impoverished young woman leaves Berlin and emigrates to the German colony of Cameroon. Her social advancement is achieved at the expense of her native neighbours and servants who are engaged in stubborn but futile resistance against the Germans.

In 2015 a young man sets off from Cameroon for Germany. Through dogged self-exploitation he manages to secure a permanent job in Berlin. He increasingly loses contact with his homeland until the day, against his own wishes, he is to take over an assignment in Cameroon for his boss.

In Paul Plamper’s parallel audio staging of European colonial violence and its consequences, the colonial age pervades the present like a poltergeist while in the colonial past one can hear harbingers of a future reminiscent of today.