Otto Burrmeister

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Otto Bernhard Friedrich Burrmeister (born October 14, 1899 in Hamburg , † October 19, 1966 in Recklinghausen ) was a German festival director . After a largely autodidactic training, he became administrative director of several Hamburg theaters in 1945 and, in this role, was one of the founders of the Ruhrfestspiele in Recklinghausen, which he was responsible for from 1951 to 1966.

Ruhrfestspiele: old logo

Family, education, and early career

Otto Burrmeister was born in Hamburg as the seventh of eight children. His mother Friederike Dorothea Marie, b. Buck came from Mecklenburg , his father Joachim Friedrich Albert Burrmeister from Pomerania . This was a construction worker and illiterate . Otto Burrmeister attended from 1906 to 1924, the primary school , where he was allowed to skip two classes. There he emerged with "amazing memory" and mental arithmetic skills. At the age of twelve he contributed to the family income as a junk boy in a trading company; After finishing his school days he began a commercial apprenticeship there, which he broke off. During his school days he began to acquire knowledge areas autodidactically and to read classical literature.

In 1914 he joined the “Marine Jugendwehr”, where he received pre-military training, including in signaling . In 1916 he joined the workers' youth movement, where he met Erich Ollenhauer, among others . In 1917 he was drafted to the 4th Guards Regiment on foot in Potsdam ; he fought on the March offensive at St. Quentin . He was discharged from the army in 1919 and was unemployed for two years. During this time he became a member of the USPD- affiliated "Free Proletarian Youth". He attended courses in economics at the new Hamburg University and dealt with philosophical literature. In addition to his talent for drawing, he developed a great interest in the theater. During this occupation he made early acquaintance with important theater people such as Gustaf Gründgens , Paul Kemp and Fritz Kortner in Hamburg .

In 1922 he took up commercial training for a short time at the Grone schools , until he became an authorized signatory in a friend's trading company, which went bankrupt when the Rentenmark was introduced in 1923 . He then opened a book and paper shop in Altona with the intention of obtaining the means to attend the “ art and trade school ”, but soon went bankrupt and became unemployed.

In 1927 Otto Burrmeister married Gertrud Johanna Wöhler (born November 19, 1900), their son Walter was born in 1928. In 1930 he participated in the founding of the newspaper "Echo der Woche" and later that of an unemployed newspaper. During this time Otto Burrmeister made a particular effort to provide cultural support for the unemployed, for example by organizing recitation evenings .

In 1931 he was one of the founders of the pioneering movement and, in the final phase of the Weimar Republic, head of advertising for the Hamburg SPD . In 1933 he was interned temporarily. During the Second World War he was employed as a radio teacher.

The Ruhr Festival

When, immediately after the Second World War, an administrative manager was sought for the Hamburg theaters to complement the team around the technical directors Hermann Mendt and Adolf Zotzmann , former colleagues from the trade union movement remembered Otto Burrmeister. Already at this time he had the plan for a union cultural work; he assumed that the labor movement had failed during the Weimar Republic . As head of administration, he had to take care of the “most elementary and vital needs” of the theater staff, but was also able to work in the dramaturgy to a limited extent. With the peat and wood procured from forests in the vicinity of Hamburg in the extreme cold of winter 1946/1947 , the theaters could not be heated. The First Mayor of Hamburg Max Brauer refused to supply the theaters with the fuel that was far too scarce , but arranged for the theater managers to be given two trucks to use them to procure coal from the Ruhr area . In their first trip in one night in late 1946 Burrmeister and fellow drivers as the first of the saw highway the facilities of coal mine King Louis 4/5 in Recklinghausen - Suderwich on the northern edge of the Ruhr. There they willingly received the fuel, whereby they knew how to bypass the weight controls of the British occupying forces . In total, over 300 t of coke could be procured on several trips .

Municipal hall building Recklinghausen (2006)

In return, the Hamburg theaters ( State Opera , Thalia Theater , Schauspielhaus ) gave guest performances in Recklinghausen in the summer of 1947. As early as the spring of 1947, Burrmeister developed the initiative for the continuation of the theater guest performances in the following years, sponsored by the trade unions, and this new idea met with rejection from the DGB , but from the city of Recklinghausen, interest. During the summer guest performances of 1947, Max Brauer vigorously advocated the establishment of workers' festivals , using the Bayreuth and Salzburg festivals as models. Otto Burrmeister succeeded in 1948 in winning Hans Böckler , then DGB chairman in the British zone, for his idea. In January 1949 the "Ruhr-Festspiel GmbH" was founded with the DGB and the city of Recklinghausen as shareholders.

In the first few years, guest performances by other theaters were offered under the direction of Karl Pempelfort , and the tradition of self-productions began in 1951. In the same year Otto Burrmeister, who was responsible for advertising until then, took over the management of the festival, which he held until 1966. Burrmeister found an important ideal supporter in Federal President Theodor Heuss . On his initiative, a development association was set up, in which, among other things, industrial sponsors were involved. Because the Städtische Saalbau in Recklinghausen was only inadequately suited as a venue for the performances, Burrmeister managed to build his own festival hall, which was inaugurated in 1965.

Ruhrfestspielhaus (2007)

For Burrmeister, the Ruhrfestspiele held a special position among the numerous festivals founded after the Second World War, since a completely new group of visitors was to be developed. Accordingly, he declined an exchange with the Bad Hersfeld Festival , as it does not have the "social character" of the Ruhr Festival. At first Burrmeister could not make friends with the name “Festival”, for him it was culture days, until 1956 the official name was “Ruhrfestspiele, culture days of work”. In March 1948, the board of directors stipulated the following for the schedule: "The mentality of the Ruhr buddy must be taken into account - so no artistic experiments." According to Burrmeister's request, it was not just a theater festival; Concerts, film screenings, art exhibitions, meetings of scientists, etc. were a constant addition to the performance program.

In the 1950s, difficulties arose with the board of directors, not only concerning the budget but also the programming, for example in 1957 the production of a Brecht play was prevented. From 1964 onwards, Burrmeister was partially disempowered by assigning an administrative manager with equal rights at the instigation of the DGB's deputy chairman Bernhard Tacke . At the request of the DGB, Burrmeister remained in office beyond the age limit until the end of the 1966 season.

Three months after retiring, Otto Burrmeister died on October 19, 1966 in Recklinghausen.

Concepts and Criticism

Otto Burrmeister's aim was not to organize a purely workers' festival, but saw the workers as “just one group among many among all creative people”; the “integration of workers into the general educational and cultural process” was important to him. Accordingly, he organized the festival as a joint project of the trade union federation and the city of Recklinghausen and obtained the support of financially strong organizations. In line with his conviction that "the worker only gets to the theater through the classic", he primarily focused on classical plays, but also included modern socio-critical plays in the repertoire, while rejecting the burden of ideological problems.

Burrmeister's realization of the popular theater idea also met with criticism. Gelsing criticizes his orientation towards “generally human and eternally valid principles ... instead of the concrete humanistic offer of socialism”. The Ruhrfestspiele avoided “clearly taking sides for the rights of the culturally underprivileged”. Burrmeister programming was an "escape into the classical".

Honors

In 1966 he became an honorary citizen of the city of Recklinghausen and received the culture award of the German Federation of Trade Unions .

Otto Burrmeister was the first bearer of the Ruhr Festival Ring of Honor, donated by the DGB in 1965, which is passed on by the respective bearer to a successor chosen by him at a time of his choosing; today this honor is called “Otto-Burrmeister-Ring”.

The Otto Burrmeister secondary school in Recklinghausen bears his name. Street names are Otto-Burrmeister-Allee in Recklinghausen and Otto-Burrmeister-Ring in Hamburg.

literature

  • Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's popular theater ideal as a guiding principle of cultural policy for the creation and integration process of the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen. Dissertation Bochum 1975.
  • Adelheid Limbach: The Ruhr Festival. A presentation of their history up to the opening of the new Festspielhaus in 1965. Diss. Cologne 1965.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's popular theater ideal as a guiding principle of cultural policy for the development and integration process of the Ruhr Festival Recklinghausen. Diss. Bochum 1975, pp. 40-46.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 92–94.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 97-107.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 63, 75.
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 103, 108.
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., p. 110.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 115–119, 134–135.
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 117–119.
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., p. 137.
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 137–140.
  11. ^ Adelheid Limbach: The Ruhr Festival. A presentation of their history up to the opening of the new Festspielhaus in 1965. Diss. Cologne 1965, p. 37.
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., p. 141.
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 144–153.
  14. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 154–160.
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., p. 161.
  16. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., p. 177.
  17. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 173–174.
  18. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., p. 199.
  19. ^ Adelheid Limbach: The Ruhr Festival. Pp. 21-22.
  20. ^ Adelheid Limbach: The Ruhr Festival. P. 23.
  21. ^ Adelheid Limbach: The Ruhr Festival. P. 67.
  22. ^ Adelheid Limbach: The Ruhr Festival. P. 47.
  23. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 179–183, 189–190.
  24. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 194–196.
  25. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., p. 201.
  26. ↑ a b Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., pp. 160–161.
  27. ↑ a b Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., p. 236.
  28. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., p. 244.
  29. ^ Adelheid Limbach: The Ruhr Festival . P. 68.
  30. ↑ Wolfgang Gelsing: Otto Burrmeister's Volkstheater-Ideal ..., p. 203.
  31. ^ German trade union federation: Otto-Burrmeister-Ring goes to Alois Banneyer. February 22, 2019, accessed March 18, 2019 .
  32. ^ Streets in Germany. Retrieved March 18, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Burrmeister, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burrmeister, Otto Bernhard Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German festival director
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1966
Place of death Recklinghausen