Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CULTURE

Backstage drama rocks Berlin theatre scene

Berlin's world-class theatre scene is facing a tempestuous season as the cash-strapped capital debates new leadership and how much culture it can bankroll. At the centre of the drama is the renowned Volksbühne theatre.

Published: 6 April 2015 09:55 CEST
Backstage drama rocks Berlin theatre scene
Photo: DPA

The surprise announcement that the veteran artistic director of Berlin's legendary Volksbühne (People's Stage), Frank Castorf, would be bowing out in 2017 after a quarter century at the helm sent a jolt through the once-divided city.

Berlin authorities, who heavily subsidise the avant-garde theatre and Castorf's daring, politically charged productions, declined to keep the strong-willed iconoclast much beyond the end of his current contract in 2016.

Talks are underway to find a director of the theatre, which was founded in 1914 to entertain the city's working class.

The name that keeps surfacing is Chris Dercon, the current director of London's Tate Modern, an option not popular with everyone in Berlin's sometimes fractious artistic community.

The debate has exposed serious tensions between the headstrong leaders of the city's cultural institutions and the coalition government of new mayor Michael Müller, in office since December.

It is no accident that the Volksbühne has become the lightning rod in the dispute.

Rebuilt after World War II in an imposing Stalinist style using remnants of Hitler's destroyed chancellery, the Volksbühne prides itself on caustic commentary on political and capitalist hypocrisy.

Critics wonder whether the Belgium-born director of a London art museum can bring the radical sensibility and awareness of Berlin's tumultuous history that is woven into the fabric of the theatre.

Castorf, 63, was a prominent artist in communist East Germany before taking the reins of the Volksbühne in 1992, three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

His stagings are often bold, controversial and lengthy, and during his nearly 25 years at the Volksbühne, it has become one of Europe's leading theatres.

'Sad old man'

The patriarch of the Berlin theatre scene, Claus Peymann of Bertolt Brecht's renowned Berliner Ensemble, slammed Castorf's dismissal in a letter addressed to Mayor Müller, a technocrat who took over from the charismatic Klaus Wowereit after 13 years in office.

In the missive which was widely published in the German press, Peymann said that the Volksbühne risked becoming an "event venue like all the others".

Taking aim in particular at the city's new top culture official, Tim Renner, Peymann called him "the worst casting choice in a decade" and blasted his proposals including live streaming of theatre premieres and a hike in ticket prices for stage plays and opera.

Renner fired back, telling Berlin public radio that Peymann was an "old, sad man who is flailing" and said Dercon could serve as one member of an experienced management team "with deep knowledge of theatre".

Peymann, 77, has led the Berliner Ensemble since 1999 and is also set to leave his post in 2017.

Castorf has also attacked Renner, the 50-year-old former head of Universal Music in Germany, for his cultural "ignorance" and "lack of professionalism".

The dispute has shaped up as a generational conflict in a city that has struggled under massive debt since reunification in 1990.

The Volksbühne is one of Berlin's most heavily subsidised theatres, to the tune of 17 million euros ($19 million) per year, with audience numbers slipping despite relatively low picket prices.

Berlin, which has a population of 3.4 million people and public debt of nearly 62 billion euros, paid out 107 million euros ($117 million) in support to the city's theatres this year.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

SHOW COMMENTS