Georg Quander

Georg Quander (2011)

Georg Quander (born November 29, 1950 in Düsseldorf ) is a German opera and film director , music journalist , author and cultural manager . From 1991 to 2002 he was director of the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin . From 2005 to 2013 he was assistant to the city of Cologne for art and culture (culture decentralized ) .

life and career

Georg Quander, born in 1950 as the son of a veterinarian Joachim Quander, studied for his school in 1970 at Dusseldorf Gorres-school theater arts , musicology , art history , art history and Ancient American Studies at the Free University of Berlin and worked since 1973 while studying as a playwright , freelance music journalist and writer for various broadcasters, newspapers and cultural institutions. From 1979 Quander was music editor at what was then SFB Radio and Television (until 1987) and worked from 1988 to 1991 as the main department head for music and entertainment at what was then RIAS Berlin.

From 1991 to 2002 he was artistic director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin at the side of the general music director Daniel Barenboim . During this time he converted the GDR State Opera into a modern opera company and reduced the number of employees from around 1,400 to 700, without any scandals. In addition to the artistic re-profiling of the house, his main concern was to return the opera house Unter den Linden to the ranks of the leading opera houses in the world, to which it had always belonged in its long history and before the Nazi era and the division of Germany. He engaged well-known directors such as Harry Kupfer , Patrice Chéreau , Dieter Dorn , Jürgen Flimm , Peter Mussbach and Peter Greenaway and regularly brought conductors such as Zubin Mehta , Claudio Abbado , Carlo Maria Giulini , Christoph von Dohnányi , Georg Solti and Michael Gielen to the house. A special focus of the work was the maintenance of the baroque and pre-classical opera repertoire, which was mostly realized in cooperation with the conductor René Jacobs and for the first time in the repertoire of a large opera house consistently on original instruments according to the knowledge of historical performance practice. In addition, Quander has repeatedly commissioned world premieres.

In 2001 the Bremen Senate appointed him professor. As an honorary professor, he taught the part-time course in music and culture management at the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen.

On April 28, 2005, on a proposal by the CDU and SPD, the City Council of Cologne elected Georg Quander, who was not part of the party , to be head of the department for art and culture for eight years. After a vacancy of around a year, he succeeded the suddenly deceased Marie Hüllenkremer after the candidacy of the Kassel theater director Christoph Nix had failed.

During his tenure, Quander campaigned, among other things, for a substantial increase in the culture budget, which was increased by around 50% in the years up to 2009 from € 99 million to € 156 million. He strengthened the budgets of the 9 municipal museums in Cologne , brought them back purchase and exhibition budgets , ensured better financial resources for the opera, drama and Gürzenich orchestra as well as increased support for the independent scene.

Under the motto cultural metropolis on the Rhine , a cultural development plan was drawn up at the end of 2008, which was then discussed and approved by the city council. Quander's term of office in Cologne also marked the opening of the Cologne Academy of the Arts and the Center for Early Music. Quander was a member of the culture committee of the German Association of Cities and from 2007 to 2013 chairman of the NRW culture secretariat .

Quander also made numerous personnel decisions that were important for Cologne's cultural life. He brought the director Karin Beier to the Schauspiel Köln , which under her leadership developed into one of the most successful German theaters, was voted Theater of the Year several times and regularly invited to the Theatertreffen in Berlin. At Quander's suggestion, she was succeeded by Stefan Bachmann in 2013 . After Christoph Damann left , he appointed Uwe Eric Laufenberg as artistic director of the Cologne Opera in 2009 , who successfully repositioned it and won the title of Opera House of the Year for his 2011/12 season . At the same time, the house was voted “Nuisance of the Year” because the city of Cologne had given notice to terminate Laufenberg (and later had to agree to an amicable cancellation of the contract). During Quander's tenure, the management of the historical archive, the city library and the city curator, as well as 6 of the 9 city museum directors, were newly appointed.

In 2009 the historical archive of Cologne collapsed as a result of the construction of the underground . Most of the valuable historical documents from the city's more than 1000-year history, which were buried under rubble, were recovered in an unprecedented rescue operation and have since been made readable and usable again in the large, newly established restoration and digitization center.

In December 2012, the City Council of Cologne spoke out against his re-election as Head of Culture. The parliamentary groups of the SPD, Greens and FDP voted against, the CDU, Left and the other council members for an extension. Numerous cultural initiatives, such as the theater conference and initiatives of the independent scene, the Cologne cultural network, the Cologne cultural council, heads of municipal cultural institutions, the Gürzenich orchestra , the sponsoring associations of Cologne's municipal museums and the staff council of the cultural administration had voted in favor of his re-election . Quander's tenure ended on May 31, 2013.

Georg Quander was with Jutta, geb. Blaznik (1954–2013), married and has two daughters.

Movies

• 1983: for ARD pictures at an exhibition based on Wassily Kandinsky and Modest Mussorgsky
• 1986: for the ARD You can waste the stars . 25 years of the Deutsche Oper Berlin , script and direction
• 1986: invitation to dance. Piano work by Carl Maria von Weber , 1986
• 1986–1988: five-part documentary film Musikstadt Berlin for ARD
• 1994: for the ARD film documentary about the production by Harry Kupfer , Hoffmann's stories
• 2015–2016: for WDR How you were! How you are! - The opera state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Four-part documentary film

World premieres and productions

• 1980 First performance at the Schwetzingen Festival Hippolyt and Aricia German text version based on Simon-Joseph Pellegrin and Jean-Philippe Rameau
• 1981 World premiere at the Berliner Festwochen Montezuma by Carl Heinrich Graun , German text version based on Friedrich II. / P. Tagliazucchi
• 1984 Book and staging The Silence of Lord Chandos based on Hugo von Hofmannsthal , music by J. Bettingham Smith , (world premiere at the Berliner Festwochen )
• 1987 Production of Belshazar by Volker David Kirchner at the Braunschweig State Theater
• 1993 production of Turandot by Giacomo Puccini at the Saarbrücken State Theater
• 1994 Production of Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck at the Saarbrücken State Theater
• 1997 and 1999 production of Solimano by Johann Adolph Hasse in Innsbruck and at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin
• 2000 Robert le diable (Robert the Devil) by Giacomo Meyerbeer at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin
• 2003 Production of Der Freischütz at the Koblenz Theater
• 2004 Production of Le nozze di Figaro at the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival

Publications (selection)

• Montezuma as a counterpart to the great Friedrich . In: Prussia. Trial of a balance sheet , Volume 4, Rowohlt Verlag, Berlin 1981, pp. 121-134.
• Venues for music. Tendencies in American music theater today , in: Hellmuth Kühn: Musiktheater heute . Mainz et al., 1982, pp. 105ff.
• Edited with Hellmut Kühn: Gustav Mahler. A reading book with pictures. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1982, ISBN 3-280-01377-1 .
• From minimum to maximum: thoughts on "Satyagraha" by Philip Glass . In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik Volume 143, 1/1982, pp. 43–46.
• From the minimum to the maximum: On the problem of musical disposition, the time structure and the levels of reality in Phil Glass' opera “Satyagraha” . In: Opera today. Studies on Valuation Research Vol. 16, Böhlau Verlag, Vienna, Graz 1985.
• The silence of Lord Chandos. A musical homage to Hugo von Hofmannsthal . In: Hofmannsthal Research Volume 8 , pp. 217–232, Hofmannsthal Society, Freiburg i. Br. 1985.
• Appolini et Musis. 250 years of the opera house Unter den Linden Propylaea, Berlin 1992
• Sound images - Portrait of the Staatskapelle Berlin. Propylaeen-Verlag, Berlin 1995
• with Walter Rösler, Manfred Haedler, Micaela von Marcard (ed.): The magic castle on Unter den Linden. The Berlin State Opera. History and stories from the beginning until today . Ed. q, 1997, ISBN 3-86124-334-2 .
• State Opera Unter den Linden (Ed.): State Opera Unter den Linden 1991–2002. Da capo al Fine , self-published, Berlin 2002.
• Opera state North Rhine-Westphalia . Wienand Verlag 2018, ISBN 978-3868324617 .

literature

• Who is who? The German Who's Who . Volume XLIII 2004/05, Federal Republic of Germany. Schmidt Römhild, Lübeck 2004, ISBN 3-7950-2038-7 , p. 1102.
• Who is Who in the Federal Republic of Germany , Volume 2. 2. Edition 1992. Compiled and edited by Ralph Huebner. Verlag für Prominentenenzyklopädien, Zug (Switzerland) 1992, ISBN 3-7290-0012-8 , p. 1188.
• Hartmut Wilmes: Cologne should produce top notes. The Department of Culture reports, looks ahead and is committed to the office and on course. In: Kölnische Rundschau . No. 126, June 2, 2007, p. 12.

Web links

Commons : Georg Quander  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Georg Quander in the catalog of the German National Library
• Portrait on the website of the city of Cologne
• Martin Oehlen: Georg Quander: “A lot of porcelain has been smashed” . Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, July 24, 2012
• Andreas Damm: Head of Cultural Affairs Quander: Re-election is uncertain . Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, November 2, 2012
• Christian Hümmeler: Cultural Department: A department head between the chairs . Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, November 6, 2012
• Andreas Damm, Martin Oehlen: Culture: parliamentary group meeting: CDU turns around in the Quander case . Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, November 28, 2012
• Hartmut Wilmes: Rundschau discussion: Quander, head of the cultural affairs department, takes stock . Kölnische Rundschau, April 25, 2013

swell

1. ^ History of the State Opera - State Opera in the Schiller Theater Berlin. (No longer available online.) In: staatsoper-berlin.de. Archived from the original on August 1, 2016 ; accessed on August 1, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Hartmut Wilmes: Interview with Georg Quander: "Cologne has made great progress" . Kölnische Rundschau, December 30, 2011
3. ↑ State Opera Unter den Linden (ed.): Da Capo al Fine, State Opera Unter den Linden 1991–2002 . Berlin 2002.
4. ^ Staatsoper Berlin: Artistic director Quander takes stock. In: www.tagesspiegel.de. Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
5. ↑ Martina Helmig: Posing for the last photo. In: www.morgenpost.de. Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
6. ↑ FOCUS Online: Opera for the people. Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
7. ↑ Names & Facts . Opera & Dance 2001/05, accessed January 2, 2015.
8. ↑ Georg Quander is the new head of the cultural department. In: www.stadt-koeln.de. Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
9. Jump up ↑ Quander, Head of Cultural Affairs: “The double for the independent scene”. Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
10. ↑ Culture Development Plan: Tip and Syringe . Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, November 25, 2008. Dorothea Marcus: 200 euros culture per capita? ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Interviewed in: akt. The Kölner Theaterzeitung 28/2011, December 2011. 
11. ↑ "Cologne attracts young people, capable people." An interview with the head of the cultural department, Georg Quander. In: www.rheinische-art.de. Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
12. ↑ Opera House of the Year is in Cologne. Retrieved September 27, 2018 . 
13. ↑ Kölnische Rundschau: Interview with Georg Quander: & # 132 Cologne has made great progress & # 148. Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
14. ↑ Quander interview: "What is gone is gone". Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
15. ↑ Kölnische Rundschau: After the city archive collapsed: First archive documents can be used again. Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
16. ↑ Head of Cultural Affairs: Quander will not be re-elected. Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
17. ↑ Open letter: Quander thanks the cultural scene . Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, December 21, 2012; Retrieved December 30, 2012
18. ↑ Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger: Head of Culture Quander: "Cologne politics has an attitude problem". Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
19. ↑ Wolfram Goertz ( Rheinische Post November 8, 2018, p. A7): In the "Opernland NRW" the error devil rages (review)