Schaubühne on Halleschen Ufer

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Theater am Halleschen Ufer, 2002 (21 years after the Schaubühne moved out)

The Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer - since 1981 Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz - is a German theater that became the most famous German theater in the 1970s in Berlin-Kreuzberg with the artistic director Peter Stein . The Schaubühne was run as a co-determination theater and is considered the most important institutional and artistic consequence of the politicization of the 1968 movement .

With actors such as Bruno Ganz , Edith Clever , Jutta Lampe , Otto Sander and Peter Fitz and performances by Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1971), Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg (1972) and Maxim Gorkis Sommergäste (1974) as well as with the first dramas by the dramaturge Botho Strauss and the sets by Karl-Ernst Herrmann made the Schaubühne theater history.

Emergence

The beginnings of the Schaubühne on Lehniner Platz go back to the founding of the Berlin Schaubühne on Halleschen Ufer in 1962. At that time, Jürgen Schitthelm , who was a founding member and sole shareholder until 2012, founded the Schaubühne on Halleschen Ufer together with Leni Langenscheidt, Waltraut Mau, Dieter Sturm and Klaus Weiffenbach in a multi-purpose hall of the workers' welfare in Kreuzberg. In 1981 the Schaubühne ensemble moved to the renovated theater building on Lehniner Platz .

1,970 were directors, actors and playwrights to the director Peter Stein , who after the staging of Viet Nam Discourse of Peter Weiss at the Munich Kammerspiele had received banned because he wanted to gain following the performance of money for the Vietnamese Liberation Front and a theatrical scandal triggered , in the spirit of optimism of 1968 at the Schaubühne.

The Schaubühne was operated as a co-determination theater on the basis of a fixed equality of rights for all employees . The group's central objectives were self-determination and artistic freedom beyond the hierarchical structures of traditional city ​​theaters .

The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote after the first premiere in the winter of 1970, a joint production by Bertolt Brecht's Die Mutter with Therese Giehse by Wolfgang Schwiedrzik, Frank-Patrick Steckel and Peter Stein: "Too much freedom for the theater?"

Political Conflict

After this first staging, 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 Peter Lorenz added that members of the theater, including 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”. It was “not an artistic experiment, but an activity clearly directed against the existence of the city”. The excitement over the supposed political orientation of the Schaubühne resulted in a delay in the payment of 1.4 million marks in funding from the Senate.

However, the idea of ​​extensive co-determination for all employees in artistic issues soon turned out to be impracticable. While the ensemble and other artistic employees were busy in rehearsals, conceptual discussions, schedule discussions and cast discussions, the non-artistic employees of the technical departments and administration were unable to participate in the artistic work processes due to their usually simultaneous working hours. In order to keep all employees regularly informed, extensive rehearsal and meeting minutes were created. Claus Peymann was accused of opposing the co-determination model when he insisted on staging Peter Handke's Der Ritt über den Bodensee instead of his planned production of Peer Gynt in 1971 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 he had sabotaged the right to have a say, Peymann called a press conference to deny it.

At the same time as Peymann's Handke production, Hans Magnus Enzensberger's interrogation of Habanna was tried out, a work that was based on detailed research into the history of the Cuban revolution , the work of the CIA , the Bay of Pigs invasion and the strategy of "US imperialism ". With this work it was intended to counter Peymann and Handke. Der Spiegel praised this “consistent collective production”, but Peymann's bourgeois staging was also a great success. A short time later, Peymann was "adopted" by the ensemble.

In the spring of 1971, Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen and directed by Stein became a sensation that was recognized throughout Europe. The ensemble was awarded the German Critics' Prize for this (1971).

From then on, the name Schaubühne became synonymous with theater art in Germany.

Performances

Peter Stein and the dramaturge and author Botho Strauss soon made the Schaubühne famous far beyond the borders of Berlin and Germany. There pioneering works by Peter Stein, Klaus Michael Grüber and Bob Wilson emerged with a glamorous ensemble, which u. a. Bruno Ganz , Edith Clever , Jutta Lampe , Angela Winkler , Monica Bleibtreu , Otto Sander , Peter Fitz , Dieter Laser , Michael König , Heinrich Giskes , Hans Diehl , Wolf Redl , Sabine Andreas, Tina Engel , Elke Petri, Ilse Ritter , Elfriede Irrall , Katharina Tüschen , Werner Rehm, Rüdiger Hacker and Ulrich Wildgruber were members. Stein's closest collaborators were the set designer Karl-Ernst Herrmann , the costume designer Moidele Bickel , the dramaturge Dieter Sturm and the composer Peter Fischer .

Peter Stein

In close cooperation with the ensemble, Stein succeeded in finding psychological and emotional access to the various texts and eras.

Stein, who staged Peter Weiss's Viet Nam Discourse for the first time as a guest at the Schaubühne in the 1968/1969 season , brought out the first premiere of the newly signed ensemble with Bertolt Brecht's Die Mutter with Therese Giehse in October 1970 .

  • 1971 The argument by Gerhard Kelling, director: Peter Stein (venues: trade union centers, industrial companies, youth homes, vocational schools)
  • 1972 The optimistic tragedy by Vsevolod Witaljewitsch Wischnewski , with Ulrich Wildgruber
  • 1972 Prince Friedrich von Homburg by Heinrich von Kleist , with Bruno Ganz, Jutta Lampe, Otto Sander, Peter Fitz and Botho Strauss as dramaturgical collaborators
  • 1972 Purgatory in Ingolstadt by Marieluise Fleisser , with Angela Winkler
  • 1973 The piggy bank of Eugène Labiche . German arrangement by Botho Strauss.
  • 1974 Antikenprojekt I: Exercises for actors (in the exhibition grounds at the radio tower pavilion B)
  • 1974 The unreasonable die out by Peter Handke , stage: Klaus Weiffenbach, costumes: Moidele Bickel
  • In 1974 Stein's production of Maxim Gorki's Summer Guests was one of the Schaubühne's greatest successes. The performance set the standard for the theater and lifestyle of the seventies. Guest performances have taken the celebrated ensemble to numerous countries. “This is how theater should always be. This is how actors should always play, ”wrote Le Monde , while in England the Daily Telegraph headlined in relation to Peter Stein:“ Director of genius ”.
  • In 1975 Stein filmed the piece with cameraman Michael Ballhaus in a reworking by Botho Strauss, who called the production “the peak performance of what you could do with an ensemble”. The cast consisted of Edith Clever, Jutta Lampe, Ilse Ritter, Wolf Redl, Bruno Ganz, Otto Sander , Günther Lampe, Michael König, Gerd Wameling, Otto Mächtlinger, Eberhard Feik , Katharina Tüschen, Elke Petri, Werner Rehm, Sabine Andreas and Rüdiger Hacker.
  • In 1976, five years of intensive renaissance studies in dramaturgy were reflected in the work Shakespeare's Memory , conceived by Stein , a seven-hour sheet of images that contained Shakespeare's plays and his worldview on two consecutive evenings . The film was played in the Berlin CCC film studios Spandau-Haselhorst, where a suitable room for the various venues was found. This project was followed by Shakespeare's As You Like It , also in a spectacular spatial solution in which, for example, the forest scenes were set in a real forest through which the audience could wander.
  • 1978 Trilogy of reunion and big and small by Botho Strauss
  • 1980 Orestie - Agamemnon / Choephoren / Eumeniden (Ancient Project II) by Aeschylus
  • 1981 class enemy of Nigel Williams (DE) with Ernst Stötzner , Udo Samel
  • 1981 Not fish not meat by Franz Xaver Kroetz

Klaus Michael Grüber

The counterpoint to Stein's work was the productions by Klaus Michael Grüber , who became the second big star of the Schaubühne alongside the rationally clear-cut Peter Stein.

Robert Wilson

Another director at the Schaubühne was Robert Wilson , who first appeared in Germany in 1979 with Death Destruction & Detroit .

Other directors

End times and transition

Critical voices soon described the Schaubühne as “ counter-revolutionary ” and, because of its supraregional success, accused it of serving only the entertainment addiction of the masses. The Schaubühne had transformed from a student and collective theater into a renowned house. The FAZ wrote in the spring of 1972: “What remains is the big show theater, which performs compulsory exercises in matters of revolution, but otherwise differs less and less from the theater of the stars, which is just a parlor game!” It's all about sensations, superlatives 'Subsidies - were other critical voices.

The last performance of the Schaubühne on Halleschen Ufer was an eight-hour oresty by Aeschylus directed by Peter Stein.

In 1981 the ensemble moved to the Schaubühne on Lehniner Platz on Kurfürstendamm . The old playhouse was used by Theatermanufaktur Berlin from 1982 to 1992 as the “Theatermanufaktur am Halleschen Ufer”. The premise of also presenting other Berlin groups was not fulfilled.

The theater on Halleschen Ufer

At the urging of Berlin's independent theater and dance scene, a new structure was found for the house: On May 1, 1992, the "Theater am Halleschen Ufer" opened with the subtitle "Central venue for Berlin's independent groups". Hartmut Henne took over the artistic direction. Under his direction, the house became known as a place for contemporary dance, primarily through the dance dramaturge Gabriele Pestanli. Due to unenforceable demands for a production budget for the theater, Henne and the cultural administration broke up, so his contract was not extended. In May 1996, the new artistic director of the Theater am Halleschen Ufer Zebu Kluth was signed. In addition to being a stage for the Berlin independent scene, it was particularly important for dance theater . On 9 December 2000, the organized Tanzfabrik Berlin in cooperation with the Theater am Ufer Hall for the first time Tanznacht Berlin in the Academy of Arts , which gave an overview of the Berlin independent dance scene. In 2003 the Hebbel-Theater , the Theater am Halleschen Ufer and the Theater am Ufer merged to form the Hebbel am Ufer theater institution . The theater on Halleschen Ufer was now called "HEBBEL AM UFER - HAU 2".

literature

  • Peter Iden : The Schaubühne on Halleschen Ufer 1970–1979. Hanser, Munich / Vienna 1979.
  • Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey (Hrsg.): Political theater after 1968: direction, drama and organization. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-593-38008-7 .

Web links

Commons : Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The theater on Halleschen Ufer until 1996
  2. ↑ The Theater am Halleschen Ufer until 2002  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: 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.hebbel-am-ufer.de