Theater landscapes

The history of the Volksbühne began in 1890, when the "Verein freie Volksbühne" was founded as a cooperative organization against the bourgeois monopoly on education and culture.
Critical contemporary plays by Ibsen and Hauptmann provide popular education and political emancipation.
"Art for the people" is the motto.
The great goal of the association is to have its own house.
In 1914, the time had come.
The workers' association has raised over 2 million Reichsmark and the renowned architect Oskar Kaufmann is commissioned to build a theater on Bülowplatz.
It becomes the most modern of its time.
The first great era of the theater began in 1924, when Erwin Piscator became head of the Volksbühne and director.
Piscator wanted "working people's theater".
His political-documentary productions are great successes and remain influential to this day.
At the same time, the end of the Weimar Republic is ushered in with bloody street battles in front of the Volksbühne on Bülowplatz.
After the Second World War, the communists set about building a state according to their own ideas, in which a Volksbühne association no longer had a place.
The proletarian opposition theater of the past became the state theater of the GDR.

It was not until the 1970s that a new great era began under the Swiss theater man and Brecht student Benno Besson.
The Volksbühne became one of the most important theaters in the world and Besson's productions did not shy away from criticism of socialist functionaries.
But with the expatriation of Wolf Biermann in 1977, a cultural exodus began in the GDR.
Many artists followed, including Volksbühne stars such as Armin Müller Stahl and Winfried Glatzeder, and Besson's directorship ended in 1978.
The second, great era of the Volksbühne was over.
A new one was soon to begin.
But something else changes before that.
An entire country, the GDR, was going under.

After reunification, Frank Castorf began his unstoppable rise to fame and triumph at the Volksbühne in 1992.
Castorf's productions polarized audiences like no other and made the Volksbühne the most exciting stage of the 1990s.
To this day, the Volksbühne is one of Germany's style-defining theaters and, alongside Castorf, Christoph Schlingensief from the Rhineland and the Swiss Marthaler and Kresnik work here.

Esther Schweins guides us through the eventful history of the Volksbühne and, alongside Frank Castorf, Dimiter Gotscheff and the actors Winfried Glatzeder, Ursula Karusseit and Sophie Rois have their say.

First broadcast on ZDFTheaterkanal: Thu, 02.10.2008 19:00 h