Who actually decides what happens at the Berlin Volksbühne? After 25 years, Frank Castorf changed directorships three times, so you can always look for orientation. The capital’s website Berlin.de reports that René Pollesch has succeeded Chris Dercon. Interesting! One was terminated in 2018, the other came in 2021, and in between?
The left-wing culture senator Klaus Lederer had ordered the theater specialist Klaus Dörr, who arrived in April 2018 to start the big cleanup after the disastrous mismanagement of the stage. As artistic director of the Stuttgart theater, Dörr initially commuted and was later hired in Berlin as interim director until 2021. Despite the pandemic, he left the stage with more reserves than he found. His name is missing from the list on the website – it has been canceled, deleted, erased, like the whole person. What does one have to do to disappear from a page like this and from the entire cultural scene?
Klaus Dörr, born in 1961, was always a theater maker in the background. He does not stage himself, but stood above all for the reliable profitability of the houses. He worked in the independent scene for a long time, since 2006 at state theaters such as the Maxim Gorki Theater. He made the headlines for the first time a year ago when the daily newspaper taz described him as an abusive “sexist” and asked the question: Was the culture senator warned? warned. As if a criminal escaped from prison and pose a threat.
Benjamin Pritzkuleit
Klaus Dorr
Dörr rejected all allegations: It doesn’t matter, the next MeToo case was in the world
Klaus Dörr rejected all allegations. But no matter, the tone was set, the next MeToo case in the world. The director resigned three days after the taz publication and assumed responsibility. He wanted to escape the media mudslinging. This took place without him. The press soaked up the case and embellished it. The women’s magazine Brigitte put Dörr in a row with the director Dieter Wedel and the convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein, three photos, the same size next to each other under the title: “Harassed, raped, acquitted?” As if one of the three had been acquitted after a rape.
Klaus Dörr has not spoken to the press since retiring. Journalists who still include him in their MeToo reports like to replace their own research with blatant opinions. Dörr’s lawyer took legal action against a dozen publications. The posts then disappeared online or were corrected. In the Brigitte text, it’s not just the headline that has black bars.
But how abusive had the abusive “sexist” become that society had to exclude him? The first time you read the taz, which boasts of having “uncovered” the case, you are taken aback because the main accusation boils down to the alleged “staring” of women. The only nasty quote quoted (“…everybody wants to fuck you!”) fell – if at all – seven years ago after a lot of wine at a premiere party in Stuttgart. Otherwise, the taz mainly makes vague claims such as “close, intimate, physical closeness and touching, erotic comments”, bullying, abuse of power. What exactly is meant? In the memoranda of the complainants of the Volksbühne – there are seven, not ten as rumored – it reads like this: Klaus Dörr “put his hand on a woman’s shoulder”, allegedly also on one leg, it was enough “to the point of kissing the hand Greeting”. The “sexist” terms are “mouse”, “theater mouse”, “aunt”; Abuse of power probably means texting to a private cell phone after work. An actress claims to have had existential fears after a conversation with Dörr, she is 63 and cannot be fired because she has been at the house for more than 15 years.
The Volksbühne and breaking taboos on stage
So, and now let’s briefly clarify what kind of place we are in right now. On the largest stage in Berlin with a highly emancipated 270-strong ensemble, famous for productions with unabashed taboo breaks along the abysses of civilization? Or in a Stalinist reformatory where downtrodden inmates are not allowed to make noise? So scared that they can’t speak simple sentences: boss, please don’t put your hand on my shoulder! Castorf must have laughed when he read the news from his old stage. What happened when a colleague asked Dörr not to send “inappropriate text messages”? Then, the taz writes, the director apologized and didn’t send any more messages. Why couldn’t the other women do that?
Klaus Dörr’s environment is not quite as closed as his ex-boss. One hears that it was appreciated that after the lack of leadership under Dercon, a trained theater professional took over the house and provided structure. A number of employees had already given themselves enormous freedom. It is said that a complainant received her friend on stage during the performance, that there were no morning rehearsals – too early! –, some departments didn’t work at all. Klaus Dörr, an economist, a man with a sense of power and mission, had been brought in to arrange finances and draw up a game plan. Incidentally, he decided primarily for feminist topics and directors.
German theater hierarchies with commitments that can be canceled every year represent indisputable hardship for employees. Of course, you can come under pressure to adapt so as not to jeopardize your commitment. And apparently Dörr was also a boss with a clear message, a lot of attention to women. A man with a loose mouth and occasionally stupid “boy sayings”: “Oh, Mrs. K. lives big” – to a colleague with high boots. He probably never referred to the big MeToo noise.
imago/imagebroker
The Volksbühne
Every colleague can refuse sayings from men
Not every colleague has to like someone like that, but everyone can refrain from making jokes, if necessary about women’s representatives and staff councils. But the complainants from the Volksbühne tended to stick to the left-wing feminist (self-description) Sarah Waterfeld. In 2017 she occupied the Volksbühne with her collective “Dust zu Glitzer” under Dercon until the house was cleared by the police.
Dörr also rejected her artistic project at the Volksbühne. Was it a revenge plan, what now followed? Waterfeld boasts today that he spent eight months fighting for Dörr’s downfall and the end of “patriarchal tyranny”. Shares on Instagram how she got the women to complain and mobilized the press, having to use “persuasion”. Because the women absolutely did not want to name any names, not in front of the camera, which is why the television colleague jumped off. Most recently, she says, Waterfeld activated the taz, which then scandalized the silly allegations. On the day of Dörr’s resignation, she cried for half an hour – with happiness. Disappointed only because the taz simply didn’t mention her, Waterfeld’s, months of research work.
Such forces determine what happens at the head of a Berlin state theater? Not the culture senator?
Well, he listened for hours to what the women concerned had to say and had their memory records legally checked. Specialist lawyers confirmed to him that such vague, unspecific allegations were certainly not even enough for a warning. Months later, the Secretary of State for Culture confronted the director with the accusations made by the employees. But there was not a single attempt at mediation, not an attempt to resolve the conflict, nothing. After the taz article appeared, Lederer dropped the directorship and accepted his resignation three months before the end of his term. Sprawled in the culture committee, as he immediately took responsibility for the women concerned.
Doesn’t the employer’s duty of care extend to the artistic director? Yes, yes! When allegations about the rabid management style of the Gorki Theater director Shermin Langhoff came up in 2019, Lederer immediately started a mediation process. Then extended Langhoff’s contract until 2026 without telling the public, “forgot” – he claimed in the online portal Nachtkritik. Months later, Der Spiegel reported massive allegations against Langhoff (“I am the Gorki!”), far more concretely than at the Volksbühne. Langhoff stayed. Sure – she is a woman with Turkish roots, her migrant theater is successful, is appreciated by left-wing clientele. The senator has a compass for what to do.
The former director of the Volksbühne, who no longer gets a job after decades of impeccable work, is no longer even mentioned on the website. The man has kisses on his conscience! Of course, Klaus Lederer did not judge. He left this part to the radical activist and the scandalous press.
The State Ballet School and Media Pressure
Reports by journalists can ruin careers. They take over all the tasks of the police and the judiciary at the same time – investigation, prosecution, sentencing. The presumption of innocence as a high legal interest falls first. A judge who examines evidence may end up being used when it comes to alleged rape, as in the case of Dieter Wedel and cabaret artist Luke Mockridge. Murderers or church abusers, on the other hand, can legally rely on their names not appearing in any newspaper before a verdict is reached. But what are felonies against stares? A tribunal is quickly and loudly on the spot, which publicly pillories the “perpetrators” – with a photo, name, demand for their resignation.
Thomas Oberender, longtime artistic director of the Berliner Festspiele, had even started to retire, the employees who complained anonymously had long since resigned when rbb castigated the management style at the house. So the broadcaster could no longer aim for a better working atmosphere. Oberender presents many things differently, the rbb reports online afterwards – but the public judgment was made.
Just like two years ago, when rbb broadcast the first report about supposedly scandalous conditions in the state ballet school. Four women had previously written an anonymous dossier with denunciations about the school, after which the evening news broadcast a dramatic report. The witness was, of all people, a teacher who had left the school because of alcohol problems.
Under media pressure, the then education senator banned the successful school directors Ralf Stabel and Gregor Seyffert after 17 years, without the allegations having been examined at least to some extent. Again: the names immediately disappeared from the website. After that, both leaders won all labor lawsuits, which has cost taxpayers dearly to this day. But the audience got stuck after the evening show: It must have been terrible at this school.
Like at the Volksbühne, at the festival and who knows where else. What role law and order could play in the future, when informers and moralists take over the sovereignty over the truth, when the gender, sensitization and anti-discrimination mania opens up further spaces in culture and creates “victims”, is shown by the new service ordinance in the theater at the parking lot. Which says: It will irrefutable suspects that someone has been insulted or discriminated against if they insult or discriminate against themselves feels. Then follows a kind of punishment catalogue.
Irrefutable! What if such bizarre rules catch on? And not a word has yet been said about what aseptic working conditions – as sought here -, what waiting for the wrong words or gestures can mean for creativity on the stage.