Manfred Wekwerth

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Manfred Wekwerth with Ruth Berghaus , 1988
Manfred Wekwerth with Gisela May rehearsing Mother Courage , 1978.
Business card from Manfred Wekwerth, 1988

Manfred Wekwerth (actually Manfred Weckwerth ; born December 3, 1929 in Köthen , Free State of Anhalt , † July 16, 2014 in Berlin ) was a German theater director . From 1977 to 1991 he directed the Berliner Ensemble . Wekwerth was President of the GDR Academy of Arts from 1982 to 1990 .

Life

After finishing school, Wekwerth trained as a new teacher in 1950/51 . As a member and leader of an amateur theater group , he was discovered by Bertolt Brecht , who was looking for “young people” for his Berlin ensemble at the time . From 1951 he worked under Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble as an assistant director and master class student. In 1953 his first own production was Brecht's Die Mutter at the New Theater in Scala Vienna .

After Brecht's death, Wekwerth was chief director at the Berliner Ensemble from 1960 to 1969. This is where productions were created with, among others, Joachim Tenschert and Peter Palitzsch .

In 1970 he received his doctorate from the Humboldt University in Berlin on the subject of “Theater and Science”. After working at the Deutsches Theater , he was the first director of the Institute for Drama Directing in Berlin from 1974 to 1977, which he founded together with Friedo Solter . There he was appointed professor . In 1977 he succeeded Ruth Berghaus as director of the Berliner Ensemble and remained so until 1991.

From 1982 to 1990 Manfred Wekwerth was President of the Academy of the Arts of the GDR , in this capacity from 1986 to 1989 also a member of the Central Committee of the SED .

In the anti-ice age committee - active since 1990, today as an alliance with the party Die Linke - he worked from the beginning.

After 1990 he directed a. a. in Meiningen , at the Burgtheater Vienna, at the new theater in Halle, at the Theater des Ostens in Berlin and at the West German Tourneetheater .

In 2001 he was elected “Honorary Fellow of the Rose Bruford College London” for his services to European theater.

Since 2005 he has been working on setting early Brecht poems to music together with the rock band "EMMA (male)".

He worked for the magazines Ossietzky and Das Argument .

Allegedly Manfred Wekwerth had been a secret informant of the MfS since 1965 under the name “Manfred” . In a report dated May 14, 1965, he is said to have written about his meeting with Günter Grass : "The position of the writer GRASS has a negative effect on the GDR ".

A Stasi -Zuarbeit was disputed by Wekwerth life vehemently.

Manfred Wekwerth was married to the documentary film director Renate Wekwerth (née Meiners) from 1953. Later with the actress Renate Richter . Their daughter is the one - the philosopher Christine Weckwerth  - hat. Manfred Wekwerth lived in Berlin-Grünau .

Productions

  • 1953: The mother at the New Theater in the Scala Vienna
  • 1959: Arturo Ui's resilient rise (with Peter Palitzsch) at the Berliner Ensemble
  • 1961: Mrs. Flinz (with Peter Palitzsch) at the BE
  • 1962: The days of the Commune (with Joachim Tenschert) at the BE
  • 1964: Coriolan (with Joachim Tenschert) at the BE
  • 1965: In the case of J. Robert Oppenheimer at the BE
  • 1971: Coriolanus at the National Theater London (with Joachim Tenschert)
  • 1972: Life and death of Richard the Third at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin
  • 1973 - 1976: Schauspielhaus Zurich : Yegor Bulytschow and the others , Richard III. , The good person from Sezuan
  • 1977: Galileo Galilei (with Joachim Tenschert) at the BE
  • 1978: Great Peace (with Joachim Tenschert) at the BE
  • 1980: Yegor Bulytschow at the BE
  • 1982: Johann Faustus (with Joachim Tenschert) at the BE
  • 1983: Wallenstein at the Burgtheater Vienna
  • 1990: The Prince of Homburg at the Schauspielhaus Zurich
  • 1989: The suicide at the BE
  • 1992: The adventures of the good soldier Schwejk on the BE
  • 1996: The good person from Sezuan at the Meininger Theater
  • 1999: Dangerous love affairs at the Theater des Ostens (Berlin)
  • 2000: Everyone at the WTT
  • 2002: Celestina at the WTT

Movies

Awards

Works

literature

Web links

Commons : Manfred Wekwerth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Theater director Manfred Wekwerth is dead. WDR Kulturnachrichten, July 17, 2014, archived from the original on July 26, 2014 ; accessed on December 2, 2016 .
  2. ^ Website of Manfred Wekwerth
    Manfred Wekwerth . Who's Who - The People Lexicon , accessed December 2, 2016.
  3. ↑ Web site antieiszeit.de
  4. ↑ Kai Schlüter: Günter Grass in the sights: the Stasi files: a documentation with comments ... 2nd edition. Ch.links Verlag, Berlin 2010, p. 184.
  5. ↑ Kai Schlüter: Günter Grass in the sights: the Stasi files: a documentation with comments ... 2nd edition. Ch.links Verlag, Berlin 2010, p. 66.
  6. ^ Christoph Funke: Obituary for Manfred Wekwerth: The Brecht-Bewahrer . Der Tagesspiegel , July 17, 2014, accessed on December 2, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Wekwerth, Manfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director and artistic director
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Koethen
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 2014
Place of death Berlin