Matthias Hartmann

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Matthias Hartmann and wife Alexandra Liedtke (2010)

Matthias Hartmann (born June 27, 1963 in Osnabrück ) is a German theater director and artistic director . From 2009 to 2014 he directed the Burgtheater in Vienna. He lives with his family in Salzburg .

life and career

After attending a boarding school in Gloucester, England, from 1977 to 1981, he returned to his hometown, dropped out of school shortly before graduating from high school and traveled abroad. From there, soon returning, he attended from 1983 in Stuttgart , the drama school , got his high school diploma in 1985 gradually took on two commercial teachings, which he broke both; instead, Hartmann turned to theater work. Hartmann began his career as a theater director as an assistant director at the Schillertheater Berlin and the Theater Kiel , after which he worked as a freelance director at the houses in Kiel , Mainz and Wiesbaden . Hartmann developed his first independent production in 1989 with Tagträume at the Kiel Theater.

Theater management in Hanover, Bochum and Zurich

In 1990 he became artistic director and in-house director at the Lower Saxony State Theater in Hanover . His production of Emilia Galotti by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing from this period was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen . Since the summer of 1993 Hartmann has worked as a freelance director, who has been engaged, among other things, at the State Theater in Munich and the Burgtheater in Vienna . He received his second invitation to the Berlin Theatertreffen for his production of The Kiss of Forgetting by Botho Strauss at the Zürcher Schauspielhaus .

From summer 2000 to summer 2005 Hartmann was director of the Schauspielhaus Bochum . He took over the house from Leander Haussmann . Hartmann performed world premieres by Botho Strauss and Peter Turrini in Bochum . The two works with entertainer Harald Schmidt caused a media stir . Schmidt played the role of Lucky in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot . Under Hartmann, the playhouse broke the previous record of subscriptions sold, which had been set by Claus Peymann .

From the 2005/06 season to 2009, Hartmann was the artistic director of the Zurich theater . He took over the house from Andreas Spillmann , who was the interim director of the artistic and commercial direction in the 2004/05 season, in place of Christoph Marthaler , who left early at his own request .

Burgtheater

On June 13, 2006, the then Austrian State Secretary for Art, Franz Morak, announced that Hartmann would be the successor to Klaus Bachler as head of the Burgtheater in Vienna from 2009 , against well-known competitors such as Andrea Breth , Ulrich Khuon , Elisabeth Schweeger , Frank Baumbauer and Martin Kušej prevailed.

In a first interview for the Austrian news magazine News , he turned against the didactic theater of the sixty-eight generation and announced the main features of his concept: “The Burgtheater is a place with eroticism and charisma, where the best actors and the best directors gather , a place for all people who enjoy the theater. Everything has to take place there. It is completely wrong to try to conceptualize it by force. It must spread out in a star shape to cover all the possibilities of theatrical storytelling. It needs the great classics, and it has to be a premiere theater, with commissioned pieces for the great Austrian dramatists and with the discovery of new ones. It should be as little afraid of conventionality as it is of experimentation. "

In September 2008, Hartmann announced that he would open his management at the Burgtheater on September 4, 2009 with a production of Goethe's Faust (namely Faust I and Faust II ) that he himself had staged . At the premiere, Tobias Moretti as Faust , Gert Voss as Mephisto and Katharina Lorenz as Gretchen . The Burgtheater ensemble remained largely unchanged. Martin Wuttke and Dörte Lyssewski are new ; the celebrated Latvian director Alvis Hermanis made his debut at the castle.

Hartmann started with six premieres within a week in September 2009. The two parts of Faust were followed by the world premiere of Der goldene Drache , directed by the author Roland Schimmelpfennig , Adam Geist von Dea Loher , the avant-garde group Nature Theater of Oklahoma with Life and Times and the German version of the weird musical Shockheaded Peter . Hartmann then showed five of his own works that he brought with him from his places of work in Zurich and Bochum: Amphitryon , Waiting for Godot , Immanuel Kant by Thomas Bernhard , in 1979 by Christian Kracht and Jon Fosses Death Variations .

Johann Adam Oest and Hartmann with the Nestroy in hand, Feststiege der Burg 2010
Applause for The Last Witnesses at the guest performance at the Schauspiel Frankfurt , 2015

Andrea Breth (“Quai West” by Koltès) and Luc Bondy (world premiere of Peter Handke's adaptation of “Helena” by Euripides ) staged again in Vienna, Thomas Vinterberg brought out the continuation of The Festival called The Burial . Yasmina Reza , Franzobel , René Pollesch , Joachim Meyerhoff and Sibylle Berg contributed further world premieres . In 2010 Hartmann staged Phädra by Jean Racine (Burgtheater / Salzburg Festival) with Sunnyi Melles and Paulus Manker , Was ihr wollt by William Shakespeare , Burgtheater Vienna; The Parasite by Friedrich Schiller , Burgtheater Vienna. With Christoph Schlingensief one was talking about a new project. The Needcompany was a guest. And then there were two new discursive formats, The Reflektorium with Stefan Zweifel and the Kakanien speech cycle : Peter Turrini, who provided the idea, started.

In the 2013/14 season he made possible and designed - together with Doron Rabinovici - the contemporary witness production The Last Witnesses at the Burgtheater; the production referred to the November pogroms in 1938 , which were 75 years old in 2013, was highly valued by the public and the press and was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen 2014 in Dresden, Hamburg and Frankfurt:

“This is staged very carefully in Vienna, dispenses with a theatrical garnish, is narrative in the best sense of the word - and therefore has nothing of dutiful memory distortion with automatic concern. "The Last Witnesses" is a haunting but also fragile (theatrical) document. "

- Jury of the Berlin Theatertreffen

In the context of the financial scandal at the Burgtheater , Hartmann was sharply criticized and objected to the fact that he had signed all the annual financial statements, but had not appropriately performed the control and supervisory duties from his function as managing director. Regarding the question of non-compliance, it does not matter whether Hartmann knew about the grievances and still did nothing, or whether he did not care about the accounting at all. On January 14, 2014, Hartmann publicly clarified:

“I have used the adjusting screws that I have in hand very well. I have increased the income that I have in my hands as artistic director - this year they have risen again by 200,000 euros above the very ambitious plan - I have tried to save on the artistic staff and have stayed roughly the same with the production costs. I invented the "Junge Burg", which I consider vital to invest in the future of our audience. But I inherited a liability of 15.3 million when I started here, and that has certainly increased because the theater has a structural deficit. If I have to pay a million more wages each year but are not given them, then I miss them. And two next year. Every milkmaid can understand that. I cannot be obliged to be the director of a house that is in debt in order to exist. I think I now have a partner in Minister Josef Ostermayer who can see through these connections and look for solutions. Cultural policy must be responsible for these solutions. If you indexed the amount that Klaus Bachler received, we would now be 58.8 million euros - but I now have 46.3. "

- Matthias Hartmann in an APA interview

On March 10, 2014, Hartmann announced that he would be leaving his position as managing director on hold until the allegations were finally resolved. On March 11, 2014, he was dismissed from his office by Minister of Culture Josef Ostermayer , as two existing legal opinions assume Hartmann's joint responsibility for the financial irregularities. Hartmann wanted to take legal action against his release. On November 6, 2018, it was announced that the investigation against Hartmann had been discontinued. On November 9, 2018, the Burgtheater and Hartmann announced that the legal dispute had ended on the basis of a settlement.

ServusTV

In November 2014 it became known that Hartmann was the artistic director of the television station ServusTV , which is owned by Red Bull Media House GmbH , after he had previously worked in an advisory capacity in the field of culture for the station and had developed a theater format. On November 12th it was announced that Hartmann is working as Creative Director at Red Bull Media House

Productions (selection)

play

Opera

Occupations

Web links

Commons : Matthias Hartmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hartmann, Matthias in the Munzinger archive , accessed on November 4, 2012 ( beginning of the article freely available).
  2. ^ Ijoma Mangold : "I wanted a bourgeois life". Interview with Matthias Hartmann. In: ZEITMagazin. No. 11/2012, March 8, 2012, p. 62.
  3. ^ Philipp Oehmke : The director. In: Der Spiegel. No. 37/2009, pp. 140-143.
  4. ↑ Bruno Hitz: The history of the theater in brief. Retrieved September 16, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Berliner Festspiele ( Memento of the original from February 24, 2016 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. , accessed March 16, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.berlinerfestspiele.de
  6. ↑ The crisis of the Burgtheater. Chronicle of the affair surrounding the dismissal of the Burgtheater deputy director Silvia Stantejsky nachtkritik.de
  7. ↑ Matthias Hartmann: "I didn't look the other way" , accessed on April 21, 2020
  8. ↑ Burg boss wants to "let his function rest for the time being" Die Presse , March 10, 2014
  9. ^ Burgtheater: Minister of Culture removes Hartmann from the office of Der Standard , March 11, 2014
  10. ↑ Burgtheater: Minister of Culture removes Hartmann from office Die Presse , March 11, 2014
  11. ^ Castle director Matthias Hartmann sued against dismissal nachtkritik.de , March 11, 2014
  12. ↑ Investigations against Hartmann posted on ORF Vienna from November 6, 2018, accessed on November 6, 2018
  13. ^ Agreement in the Hartmann case
  14. ^ DerStandard.at - Ex-Burg boss Matthias Hartmann "artistic director" of Servus TV . Article dated November 23, 2014, accessed November 24, 2014.
  15. ↑ derStandard.at - Hartmann developed for Servus TV Theaterformat . Article dated September 28, 2014, accessed November 24, 2014.
  16. ↑ Hartmann: "Looking away from politics" on ORF Vienna from November 12, 2018, accessed on November 13, 2018
  17. ↑ The three Burgtheater scandals on addendum.org from November 12, 2018, accessed on November 13, 2018
  18. ↑ Andreas Fasel: “Hang up everything. Just make music ” . In: THE WORLD . August 10, 2002 ( welt.de [accessed May 10, 2020]).
  19. ↑ Metzmacher triumphs with swan song for Stalin . In: welt.de , October 27, 2009, accessed on November 26, 2010.
  20. ↑ NZZ of June 18, 2012, p. 40.
personal data
SURNAME Hartmann, Matthias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theater director and Burgtheater director
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Osnabrück