AustLit

'History sometimes shares with us unique moments when people have met in unusual circumstances. Mewei 3027 is such a story.

'Inspired from the wonderfully unique untold true story of Roland Carter, a Ngarrindjeri Digger from Raukkan community in South Australia and his experience as a POW during WW1 at Wunsdorf, Zossen and the relationship he developed with Leonhard Adam, an exceptional and kind Jewish ethnologist.

'Within this journey we find the friendship between two men of different backgrounds who ultimately experienced parallel upheavals, in a time when “nobody can be particulary proud of being civilised” written by Ngarrindjeri Wathaurong playwright Glenn Shea.'

'This playreading was developed through the Aboriginal Diggers writers in residence program based in Raukkan community.

'Based on a true story, Mewei 3027 (Soul 3027) explores the remarkable friendship between Roland Wenzel Carter, a Ngarrindjeri man, and Leonhard Adams, a German anthropologist.  Captured while fighting for the AIF on the Western Front in World War I, Roland was incarcerated in a camp for prisoners of special interest.  There Leonhard, newly graduated from the University of Berlin, was sent to interrogate these POWs about their cultural backgrounds and beliefs.  A warm comradeship sprang up between the two young men, one that was destined to last for over forty years, and go through a remarkable reversal.

'In 1933, Leonhard was stripped by the Nazis of his academic titles and positions.  As a Jew, he fled first to England, then to Australia as a “Dunera boy”.  Finally, he became a lecturer at the University of Melbourne – and a specialist in Aboriginal culture.  Mewei 3027 sweeps in themes of imperialism, oppression, war, and an unshakable longing for freedom.  And, at the heart of it all, a friendship that endured through some of the most tumultuous upheavals of the twentieth century.'  (Production summary)