Saarbrücken Old Town Festival

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The Saarbrücken Old Town Festival 2014 on the St. Johann market

The Saarbrücken Old Town Festival has been an annual city ​​festival in Saarbrücken since 1975 with over 200,000 visitors over three days.

history

The Saarbrücken Old Town Festival emerged from a citizens' initiative. At a founding meeting, initiated by an advertisement in the Saarbrücker Zeitung , Jörn Wallacher, Hildegard Redicker and Helmut Müller got together to organize the first party. With the support of the cultural office , the old town festival was created, which was supposed to focus on the old town of Saarbrücken in need of renovation and to prepare a stage for the cabaret scene. The first event of its kind attracted numerous visitors. International greats such as Patricia Kaas as well as Saarland artists such as Gerd Dudenhöffer and Alice Hoffmann appeared in the supporting program . The response to the festival, which was initially based purely on the sale of drinks, was so good that the citizens' initiative decided to plan further events of this type. In addition one gave itself the name "Saarbrücker Bürgerforum". For the next few years you organized the festival at your own risk, until the city of Saarbrücken finally contributed to the costs.

The concept consisted of drawing attention to socio-political and urban planning issues in addition to an artistic framework program. With this in mind, there was always a panel discussion on Sundays at the St. Johann market . There were also information stands from various initiatives and organizations. If there was a problem of urban planning nature, the festival was also shifted there, for example when the reconstruction of the Saarbrücken Castle was discussed. At the instigation of the Bürgerforum, the architect Gottfried Böhm was called in instead of rebuilding in the style of Friedrich Joachim Stengel .

In 1984 there was a dispute between the city and the citizens' forum after the city rejected the motto “New Poverty”. The citizens' forum wanted to cancel the festival, but the city administration refused. The Citizens' Forum thus ended its organizational work and the Saarbrücken Cultural Office became the new organizer of the event. This put the focus more on the artistic program. Only in 2000, for the 25th anniversary, did the citizens' forum take part again. Until 2007 Walter Pitz was mainly responsible for the old town festival, in his place Norbert Küntzer, who mainly expanded the cultural program.

Alignment

Since the reorientation from 1988 and especially from 2007, the focus of the event has been on the big stages in front of and behind the Saarland State Theater , in the inner courtyard of the city gallery and on St. Johanner Markt. Pop and rock greats such as Jupiter Jones , Knorkator , Stefanie Heinzmann , Polarkreis 18 and Jan Josef Liefers could be won over for the musical framework program .

Web links

Commons : Saarbrücker Altstadtfest  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Saarbrücken Old Town Festival. (No longer available online.) Institut Français, formerly in the original ; Retrieved June 25, 2013 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.institutfrancais.de  
  2. a b c d Monika Jungfleisch: In the beginning there was the will of the people . In: Forum - The weekly magazine . No. 26 , June 21, 2013, p. 28-33 ( online [accessed June 25, 2013]).