Oldenburg State Theater

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The Oldenburg State Theater is the oldest theater in Oldenburg , Lower Saxony .

Aerial view
View from the theater wall
Expansion in 1998: the small house
View of the stage
View into the auditorium

The publicly sponsored six-part theater offers performances by its own ensembles in the areas of music theater ( opera / operetta / musical ), drama, dance theater ( ballet ), concert, children's and youth theater and Low German drama in cooperation with the August Hinrichs stage , which exclusively Plays in Low German as well as numerous guest performances, readings, lectures and exhibitions.

In the main building there is the "Big House", with 540 seats and 43 standing places for operas and drama and an additional 75 seats for concerts. After a renovation in October 1998, the small house with 350 seats can also be found here . Since 2001, the playroom , a studio studio with around 80 seats, has been reactivated. In addition, since 2008 the theater has had 2 more stages, which are located in the former parade hall in Oldenburg at the horse market. These stages are primarily open to modern forms of theater and performances. The hall has a capacity of around 100 seats per stage.

The large house was renovated during the 2010/2011 season. Hall 10 of the disused air base Oldenburg was used as an alternative venue, which was converted and expanded for this purpose.

With the premiere of the Magic Flute on October 1, 2011, the “Big House” was officially reopened and the 2011/2012 season started.

Since the beginning of the 2014/15 season, Christian Firmbach has been managing the house as general manager. The newly founded division 7 removes the boundaries between the divisions and is dedicated to the exchange with the public.

history

The cultural needs of the citizens of Oldenburg have been satisfied since the middle of the 18th century through guest theater performances at constantly changing venues. In order to secure additional sources of income, the actor and opera singer Johann Christian Gerber suggested in June 1832, based on a plan that had been discussed for years, regular performances in Oldenburg in a kind of "branch establishment" of the Bremer with the ensemble of the Bremer Stadttheater he directed To organize theater. The Oldenburg writer and cabinet secretary Ludwig Starklof supported this suggestion and commissioned master carpenter Hermann Peter Wilhelm Muck to build a theater built as a wooden structure. The building stood in the immediate vicinity of today's theater and was financed from private funds. In February 1833 the “Theater in Oldenburg” was opened. A short time later, the Oldenburg-Bremen theater combination, which initially appeared to be a plausible and sensible solution, turned out to be extremely difficult in practice in terms of organization and technology and resulted in operating costs that were not economically justifiable. Starklof, who saw this connection only as a temporary solution anyway, soon made preparations for the creation of a theater independent of Bremen. When Gerber had to resign from the Bremen stage in November 1834 due to financial difficulties, Starklof was able to realize his plan. Gerber moved to Oldenburg and took over the management of the theater under the direction of Starklof, who acted as a kind of director , at which he also directed and appeared as a versatile actor.

From 1842 the theater received recognition from the monarch and was called the Grand Ducal Court Theater . On the site between the theater wall and the city moat, the court architect Gerhard Schnitger completed the Grand Ducal Residence Theater , a building in the Italian Renaissance style. However, it burned down in November 1891 by a fire, probably caused by fireworks in the interior. The theater, which was rebuilt in the neo-baroque style by the Oldenburg master builder Carl Franz Noack , was opened in 1893 and expanded with a dome and additional workshop buildings . In November 1918, the last Grand Duke abdicated and the theater was renamed the Oldenburgisches Landestheater the following year . In 1927 Hellmuth Götze was appointed director of the theater and staged expressionist , war-critical and pacifist works with great success , such as the opera Wozzeck by Alban Berg or the drama U-Boot S 4 by Günter Weisenborn, but also pieces such as the Threepenny Opera . Most of the stage designs were created by the talented Ernst Rufer. As a result, from 1931 Götze had increasing differences of opinion with the politically right-wing members of the theater committee, which ultimately led to Götze's resignation on July 31, 1932. Under his successor Rolf Roenneke and the senior theater director Gustav Rudolf Sellner , the theater became a cultural and political instrument of the National Socialists . Since the building was taken over by the State of Oldenburg as part of the financial equalization between the federal states and municipalities in 1938, it has been called the Oldenburg State Theater .

The structure was copied by the Deutsches Theater Göttingen .

Alternative district Theaterhafen (with city beach) in June 2018

Due to necessary renovation work in the Great House to improve fire protection, the last performances of the 2017/2018 season took place in a tent in the theater harbor on the former premises of the "Rheinumschlag" company on the south bank of the Hunte.

numbers

The theater employs around 450 people. The annual budget is EUR 20.5 million. The theater brings out over 30 premieres per season and recently achieved visitor numbers of well over 200,000. The ensembles play in four venues: the big house (540 seats, 43 standing places), the small house (up to 350 seats), the studio stage "Spielraum" (about 80 seats) and the parade hall at the horse market (about 100 seats).

Cooperations

  • with Klangpol (funded by the New Music Network and the Federal Cultural Foundation)
  • with the Erna Schlüter Opera Society
  • with the theater landscape northwest
  • with the University of Oldenburg

management

From 1833 to 1842 the theater was headed by Councilor Carl Christian Ludwig Starklof and director Johann Christian Gerber . They were followed by Intendant Ferdinand von Gall (1842–1846), Intendant Chamberlain Count von Bocholtz (1846–1854), Director Karl Jenke (1854–1857), Director Gustav Carl Moltke (1857–1867), Director August Becker (1867–1874) , Director Friedrich Woltereck (1874–1884), Director Otto Devrient (1884–1889), Director Gustav Fischer (1889–1893), Intendant Friedrich von Wangenheim (1893–1896) and Intendant Leon Alexander Joseph von Radetzky-Mikulicz (1896–1918 ).

During the Weimar Republic the theater directors were director Gustav Kirchner (1918–1921), general manager Renato Mordo (1921–1924), general manager Richard Gsell (1924–1927) and general manager Hellmuth Götze (1927–1932), and during the Third Reich Rolf Roennecke (1932–1936), General Manager Hans Schlenck (1936–1940) and General Manager Arthur Schmiedhammer (1940–1944).

After the Second World War, the theater was directed by Irene de Noiret and Otto Daue (both 1945/46), then by the artistic directors Albert Lippert (1946/47), Jost Dahmen (1947/48), Gerd Briese (1948–1954), Fred Schroer (1954–1957), Ernst Dietz (1957–1963) and Wilhelm List-Diehl (1963–1968), who had held the title of General Director since 1964 . For almost two decades (1968–1985) the theater was directed by General Director Harry Niemann . His successors were Hans Häckermann (1985–1993), Stephan Mettin (1993–2001) and Rainer Mennicken (2001–2006). At the beginning of the 2006/07 season, Markus A. Müller took over the management of the theater, and Christian Firmbach has been general director since summer 2014 .

Famous ensemble members

actor

Moderators

Singer

Directors

Dramaturges

literature

  • Reinhard von Dalwigk , chronicle of the old theater in Oldenburg (1833 to 1881). Festschrift for the opening of the newly built theater on October 8, 1881. Oldenburg 1881 ( digitized version ).
  • Carl Haase : Notes on the Oldenburger Theater from 1870 to 1918. In: Oldenburger Jahrbuch. 83: 167-186 (1983) ( online ).
  • Hans Heering: The Oldenburg Theater under Starklof. In: Oldenburg Yearbook. 68: 77-146 (1969) ( online ).
  • Karl-Heinz Neumann: Theater in Oldenburg. The essence and development of a north-west German stage. Oldenburg 1982, ISBN 3-87358-149-3 .
  • Heinrich Schmidt (ed.): Court theater, state theater, state theater. Contributions to the history of the Oldenburg theater 1833–1983. Oldenburg 1983, ISBN 3-87358-165-5 .
  • Christian Krüger: History of the opera at the State Theater in Oldenburg 1921–1938. A contribution to the music history of the city of Oldenburg against the background of the social and political development of this epoch. Oldenburg 1984, ISBN 3-87358-184-1 .
  • Klaus Groh : From the Schwibbogen of the Grand Ducal Theater Cellar to Uhlenhorst Castle on Friedensplatz. In: Kulturland Oldenburg. Issue 3/2014 / No. 161, pp. 15–16.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from September 5, 2010 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.staatstheater.de
  2. ^ Biography of Gerber, Johann Christian In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 230-231 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Biography of Götze, Hellmuth In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg. Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 244-245 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Oliver Schulz: State Theater puts up tent at the harbor . nwzonline. 20th January 2018
  5. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from March 15, 2014 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.staatstheater.de

Web links

Commons : Oldenburgisches Staatstheater  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 53 ° 8 ′ 21 ″  N , 8 ° 12 ′ 36 ″  E