Codetermination theater
The co-determination theater is a model form for the democratic management of a theater in which the members of the ensemble and the technical staff are included in the decision-making processes as a theater collective. It was used primarily in the democratization concepts in West German theater of the early 1970s at the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer , at the Schauspiel Frankfurt and at the Frankfurt Theater am Turm .
Schaubühne on Halleschen Ufer
1970 created directors, actors and playwrights to the director Peter Stein , who after the staging of Vietnam discourse of Peter Weiss at the Munich Kammerspiele had received there banned because he wanted to gain following the performance of money for the Vietnamese Liberation Front, in the spirit of optimism of the 1968 movement a theater collective in a small theater in Berlin-Kreuzberg , the Schaubühne on Halleschen Ufer . Self-determination and artistic freedom beyond the structures of traditional city theaters were the central ideas of the group. The Schaubühne was operated as a collective on the basis of a fixed equality of rights for all employees. The re-establishment of the Schaubühne is considered to be the most important institutional and artistic consequence of the politicization of the 1960s. The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote: "Too much freedom for the theater?"
After the first staging, a joint production by Bertolt Brecht's Die Mutter by Wolfgang Schwiedrzik, Frank-Patrick Steckel and Peter Stein, the Berlin CDU demanded the cancellation of state subsidies . The CDU member Rudolf Mendel gave the reason that the Schaubühne was a “communist cell” and that “primitive agitation lessons” were given there under the pretext of art. The Berlin CDU chairman Lorenz added that the members of the theater up to and including the stage workers had to undergo "training in Marxism-Leninism " twice a week . In addition, everything is ridiculed in word and deed at the Schaubühne “that has been created in Berlin over the past 20 years”. There is “no artistic experiment, but an activity clearly directed against the existence of the city”. The excitement surrounding the “collective theater” at the Schaubühne resulted in a delay in the payment of 1.4 million marks in funding from the Senate.
The idea of replacing the bourgeois theater with a collective, however, was soon lost. The time of discussing with lighting technicians, technicians and stage designers was over, "the principle of commenting and intervening observation of the rehearsals by the actors" was lifted. Claus Peymann began to oppose the co-determination model. In 1971 he insisted on performing Peter Handke's " The Ride on Lake Constance " and threatened to leave the Schaubühne. As an argument, he cited the pressure to succeed, as the political controversy and the suspension of subsidies had drawn attention to the Schaubühne. When rumors arose that the new directors had sabotaged the “right to have a say” within the co-determination theater, Peymann called a press conference to deny it.
Part of the theater collective at the Schaubühne performed parallel to Peymann's Handke production of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Das Verhör von Habana , a work based on radio and television documents from the Cuban revolution on the Bay of Pigs invasion. With this work it was intended to continue the game plan line given by the Brecht production. Der Spiegel praised this “consistent collective production”, but Peymann's bourgeois staging was also a great success. However, Peymann had left the theater before the premiere. The production was completed by Wolfgang Wiens at the suggestion of the ensemble.
Peter Stein and the dramaturge and author Botho Strauss soon made the Schaubühne famous far beyond the borders of Berlin and Germany. In the 1970s, pioneering works by Peter Stein, Klaus Michael Grüber and Bob Wilson with a glamorous ensemble, which u. a. Bruno Ganz , Edith Clever , Jutta Lampe , Otto Sander and Peter Fitz were part of it. The Schaubühne made theater history with performances by Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1971), Kleist's Prince Friedrich von Homburg (1972) and Maxim Gorki's Summer Guests (1974) as well as with the first dramas by dramaturge Botho Strauss and the sets by Karl-Ernst Herrmann .
Critical voices soon described the Schaubühne as “ counterrevolutionary ” and, because of its supraregional success, accused it of serving only the entertainment addiction of the masses. The Schaubühne had been transformed from a student and collective theater into a renowned house and in 1981 moved to the Schaubühne on Lehniner Platz on Kurfürstendamm .
Frankfurt theater
On July 13, 1970, an "Agreement on extended participation in the artistic field of the Frankfurt am Main Municipal Theaters" was concluded between the municipal authorities of the City of Frankfurt am Main and the members of the municipal theaters . It was supposed to make the entire artistic planning “more transparent and effective” “by weighing up reciprocal suggestions and concerns” and “mobilize all artistic reserves”. An artistic advisory board was given the right to participate in all important issues, in particular program and engagements, as well as the right to give advice on “changing the theater structure, choosing the artistic director and choosing the artistic and technical board members”. On October 13th, Lord Mayor Walter Möller presented the Artistic Advisory Board in an ensemble meeting. The bodies were the general assembly, the artistic advisory board and the board of directors. After a two-year term, the first agreement was revised based on the experience gained up to then and allowed a new version with even greater powers for the ensemble.
“The general assembly consists of all those who work in the artistic field of acting under normal contract solo. The Artistic Advisory Board consists of representatives from the following groups: actors, directors, assistant directors, volunteers and interns, dramaturges and house composers, stage and costume designers as well as their assistants, stage managers and prompts. Each group within the assembly elects its representatives according to their numerical strength (up to 10 members one representative). The Artistic Advisory Board is bound by the decisions of the General Assembly and is obliged to provide information to it. The General Assembly can only express mistrust to the Artistic Advisory Board or individual members with 2/3 of its members. The new election must take place within eight days. The artistic direction of the play lies with a three-man board of directors: a director (dramaturge) and a stage designer appointed by the magistrate who are not allowed to be members of the artistic advisory board, as well as an actor to be elected from the artistic advisory board by the plenary assembly. The appointment of a new member of the board of directors by the magistrate requires the approval of the general assembly with a majority of its members. If no agreement can be reached between the magistrate and the plenary assembly on the appointment of a new member of the board of directors, a decision is made by an arbitration board, which is composed of three magistrate members and three representatives of the plenary assembly and a neutral chairman, following the example of the HPVG. The decision of this arbitration board is final. The elected member of the board of directors is bound by the resolutions of the Artistic Advisory Board, unless otherwise stipulated, and is obliged to provide information to the latter. Binding declarations by the Drama Board are only effective if they are carried by at least two of its members. "
In August 1972, the position of general manager of opera and drama was abolished, the drama was now directed by a three-man directorate: the director Peter Palitzsch , the set designer Klaus Gelhaar (both appointed by the municipal authorities after the ensemble had given their approval) and that of the ensemble -General assembly elected actor Peter Danzeisen .
Palitzsch and Neuenfels
The director Peter Palitzsch was director of the Schauspiel Frankfurt from 1972 to 1980 , where he first practiced the so-called “co-determination model”. In the board of three, he acted as primus inter pares and appointed the ensemble's plenary assembly as the decisive decision-making body. Palitzsch was one of those theater makers who drove the political upheaval of the 1968 youth revolt not only on the stage but also in administration and practiced the model of participation until it broke down in reality. In 1974 in the Frankfurter Rundschau, Peter Iden criticized the theater heavily and accused it of signs of disintegration. Despite crises, the theater critic Benjamin Henrichs wrote in the same year in the time : “And yet it is ahead of almost all other theaters that have not yet noticed their crisis, cheerfully manage their poverty.” The cultural politicians expressed the view that a continuation of the It's worth a try and so Palitzsch's contract was extended.
Various productions caused political scandals during this time, such as Medea by Euripides , staged in 1975 by Hans Neuenfels , and Days of the Commune by Bertolt Brecht (1977 in the German autumn by Palitzsch). In 1973 Klaus Michael Grüber caused a sensation with Brecht's In the Thicket of Cities and Neuenfels last offered a spectacular performance of Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris in 1979 .
The actress Elisabeth Schwarz remembers everyday life in the co-determination theater:
“The disgusting atmosphere that we often created at general meetings (how inhuman we sometimes treated each other!) - could the free, permeable, politically and creatively attractive new theater emerge from it? Or were we just acting out a revolutionary tribunal? Really, but we also made every mistake that was possible within the model. We hardly saw each other with our eyes, but only through the filter of our opinions and therefore perceived nothing. We were blind for long stretches. And that almost killed us. Nearly? Yes, almost! Because although we had prepared ourselves the toughest conditions that there can be in the theater, we managed to create beautiful productions. "
The Frankfurt experiment also became a test case as to whether collective forms of work are possible at a theater of this size (two houses with 17 premieres) and was compared with the much smaller Schaubühne on Halleschen Ufer in Berlin, which only has three to five premieres per year had to bring out.
Schaaf and Minks
In 1980, director Johannes Schaaf started a brief period as director , who, together with stage designer Wilfried Minks and actress Eos Schopohl, was the elected representative of the ensemble. Directors such as Horst Zankl and BK Tragelehn and actors such as Sepp Bierbichler , Rosemarie Fendel , Fritz Schediwy , Heinrich Giskes , Heinz Werner Kraehkamp , Friedrich-Karl Prätorius , Suzanne von Borsody , Paulus Manker , Peter Kremer and Siggi Schwientek were involved in the house during these years . The bodies were the general assembly, advisory board, coordination committee and directorate. The short time as director of Schaaf / Minks began with Georg Büchner's Dantons death in the production of Johannes Schaaf, Kleist's Penthesilea (director: Wilfried Minks) and Tartuffe von Molière with Bierbichler and Schediwy in the production by BK Tragelehn, which was one of the few artistic highlights of this time marked.
Internal disputes soon overshadowed the artistic work, and there were profound disputes between the ensemble and the management. Hilmar Hoffmann , Frankfurt head of cultural affairs from 1970 to 1990 and initiator of the co-determination model, soon had to act as a mediator in late-night discussions and numerous quarrels and said: "These are events that you don't want your worst enemy to do."
On March 21, 1981, during a performance of Goethe's tolerance drama Iphigenie on Tauris , sympathizers of the RAF demonstrated against the prison conditions of RAF prisoners and then kept the theater occupied. After the Frankfurt Mayor Walter Wallmann the domestic authority had pulled up, the house was cleared by the police in the early morning hours, with the members of the theater were included in the clearance with. The next day the ensemble protested against the "disproportionate use of force" by the police, who had used batons against the peaceful occupiers, and had a statement read out before the performances in which they expressed their solidarity with the occupiers' demands and indicated that allegedly some RAF prisoners were in mortal danger. Police officers - against the protests of the actors - secured the performances. In contrast to his co-directors Eos Schopohl and Wilfried Minks, Johannes Schaaf, who approved the evacuation, did not want to join the ensemble's protest and was criticized for it at the ensemble's general assembly and asked to self-criticize. He was then suspended from his position on the board of directors. The declaration by the Frankfurt drama ensemble read:
“On March 21, 81, a group of young people used the opportunity of a performance by the Frankfurt Theater to make a human rights demand with which we would like to show solidarity: relief of prison conditions for political prisoners who have been on hunger strike for six weeks. Some of them are now in mortal danger. The group of twenty to thirty young people behaved calmly and disciplined. They wanted to stay in the house overnight in order to inform the public about their concerns the next day and then leave the house. In the early morning hours of March 22, 1981, the theater was evacuated by the police with disproportionate use of force. Domestic rights were taken away from the theater management by the city authorities. The ensemble of the Schauspiel Frankfurt protests against the forced evacuation of the theater. "
In this crisis situation, the head of the cultural affairs department, Hilmar Hoffmann, declared that the Frankfurt population was entitled to a functioning and “good theater”, forbade the board of directors from having the ensemble's declaration of protest read out further before the performances and saw neither the three-man board nor the participation as indispensable. After discussions with the Artistic Advisory Board and the Staff Council, in which the technical director Max von Vequel and the administrative director (and later museum manager) Christoph Vitali had declined responsibility for the house under such conditions, the co-director Eos Schopohl , head of the artistic company offices, Hanspeter Egel and the director BK Tragelehn terminated without notice. The co-determination model was suspended until the end of the season and Schaaf was recalled. Hoffmann himself took third place in the management and raised the charge that the “theater people” could never have come together to form a “functional team”.
The Frankfurt co-determination model was dissolved ten years after its establishment in 1981 by the Frankfurt City Senate under Lord Mayor Walter Wallmann.
Theater am Neumarkt
In 1971 the young Austrian director Horst Zankl introduced a self-determination and co-determination system at the Theater am Neumarkt in Zurich, in which all employees and artists of the theater were allowed to vote on the program and the interests of the theater. This was revolutionary at the time and made the house known throughout the German-speaking area. Zankl opened his season with Peter Handke's ride across Lake Constance and performed pieces by Marieluise Fleisser , Franz Xaver Kroetz , Karl Valentin , Ödön von Horváth , Robert Walser and Peter Weiss . Zankl later also belonged to the codetermination theater at the Schauspiel Frankfurt.
Theater am Turm
At the Frankfurt " Theater am Turm " (TAT) , a model of participation was practiced in the early 1970s, initiated by the head of the cultural department, Hilmar Hoffmann . The actors decided on the program and new engagements, the artistic director was Hermann Treusch . In 1974 Rainer Werner Fassbinder was hired by Hilmar Hoffmann as head. However, he left the theater after eight months. The TAT was closed in the late 1970s.
New Scala Vienna
The New Theater in der Scala was a progressive Viennese theater that was founded after the Second World War by returning emigrants and committed anti-fascists as a society with a communist background. It was opened as a self-managed theater and directed by a group of lawyers led by Karl Paryla and Wolfgang Heinz . They decided together on the schedule and engagements and saw themselves as a left, revolutionary stage. The Scala was also committed to a popular education, which led the ensemble to lectures, to scenic samples from the plays and to recruit members for the public organization in the inns of the suburbs. In many ways based on Bertolt Brecht's theater and his theater on Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin, low admission prices were also programmatic.
With the concept of a co-determination theater co-managed by the actors at the Zurich Schauspielhaus during the emigration , Karl Paryla decisively shaped the style of Scala. Artists like Otto Tausig , Therese Giehse , Arnolt Bronnen , Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht contributed to the reputation of Scala. With its committed repertoire, which included works by Chekhov , Maxim Gorki , Alexander Ostrowski and Bertolt Brecht, but also plays by Shakespeare , Molière , Lessing and the classical Austrian dramas by Franz Grillparzer , Ferdinand Raimund and Johann Nestroy , Scala has made Viennese theater history .
The New Theater an der Scala was the only theater in Vienna that, against the background of the Brecht boycott, performed Brecht to the extent that it was due to its literary importance. In 1956, after the occupying powers had withdrawn and the Communist Party had stopped providing financial support, the theater had to give in to cultural and political bullying and shut down.
Vienna Volkstheater
After the Second World War, the actor and director Günther Haenel , as director of the Vienna Volkstheater, introduced a “board of directors” with which he involved members of the house in decisions and thus anticipated the participation theater. The board of directors included Haenel, Hans Thimig , who was very involved as a director in the Volkstheater, the actor Hans Frank (son of the castle actress Lotte Medelsky ) and the director Walter Firner, who had returned from America .
Dresden theater
In the early 1920s, director Berthold Viertel initiated the development of a jointly organized ensemble theater at the Dresden Schauspielhaus , in which Erich Ponto , Walter Bruno Iltz , Alice Verden and Ernst Josef Aufricht (who later became the director of the " Theater am Schiffbauerdamm " in Berlin) were involved . Viertel was thus in opposition to the established theater business in the capital Berlin, and he condemned Max Reinhardt's style of performance there as an "artistic, representative luxury style with a strong snobbery ."
literature
- Peter Iden : The Schaubühne on Halleschen Ufer 1970–1979 , Munich / Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1979
- Gert Loschütz - Horst Laube (Ed.) Was there something? Theater work and participation at the Schauspiel Frankfurt 1972–1980 . Frankfurt am Main 1980
- Carmen-Renate Köper : An unholy experiment. The new theater in the Scala (1948–1956). Vienna, Löcker (1995)
- Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey (Ed.): Political Theater after 1968: Direction, Dramatics and Organization , Frankfurt / Main 2006 ISBN 978-3-593-38008-7
Web links
- Frankfurt is building, documents on the post-war period: “Städtische Bühnen” ( Memento from December 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (reporting period 1945 to 1972, see the section on co-determination)
Footnotes
- ↑ HELMUT SCHMITZ: Crisis Director - Johannes Schaaf is suspended as co-director of the theater
- ^ Paulus Manker : The theater man Gustav Manker . Amalthea, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-85002-738-0
- ^ Paulus Manker : Walter Bruno Iltz . The exposure of a hero. Self-published, Vienna 2011