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Augsburg - it brings to mind the Renaissance, the Fuggers and, of course, the puppet show.
The city is one of the oldest in Germany and in its heyday was also considered one of the richest and most magnificent in the whole country.
Less well known, however, is Augsburg as a city of theater and, hard to believe, also as a city of love.
Bertolt Brecht's relationship with his hometown cannot exactly be described as love, but rather as a kind of love-hate relationship.
Even as a grammar school pupil, he wrote critical reviews of performances there.
But anyone who sees Brecht exclusively as an "enfant terrible" fails to recognize his romantic side.
This was revealed in tender love letters to an Augsburg girl who shared the school route with him every morning, unfortunately on the other side of the street, much to Brecht's chagrin.
Although the girl, now a lady of 80, never returned his love, she kept the letters.
Something in them must have touched her - it was the young Brecht.
The theater looked different in Brecht's day: The façade was more delicate, the interior, which today exudes the charm of the 1950s economic miracle, was richly decorated.
But it had to be more monumental for Hitler.
The decor was removed from the auditorium.
The theater was completely destroyed in 1944 and could only be reopened in 1956.
Although not much has changed on the outside since then, the theater has experienced many ups and downs.
When Augsburg's fame as a textile city came to an end in the 1970s, there were even attempts to close parts of the theater completely.
Today, Juliane Votteler is the director of the historic house and consciously focuses on the interlinking of the three disciplines: music theater, drama and dance.
For this reason, you often come across rarely performed works in Augsburg.
These can of course also be found on Augsburg's most famous "stage" - the Puppenkiste.
In which other German theater do such lovable characters as Urmel, Jim Knopf & Co. dominate the action?
Nevertheless, there is no envy or competition with the "big" stage of the Stadttheater.
On the contrary, the Puppenkiste was even founded in 1948 by an actor from the Stadttheater.
There seems to be a lot of potential for Juliane Votteler's intention to create stronger links not only between the different theatrical disciplines, but also between the city as a whole.
First broadcast: November 22, 2009, 12:30 p.m., 3sat.
