In a drama in one of his books, the director Jürgen Flimm stylized himself as a lusty man of sorrows who balances an inverted pyramid on his bare forehead. This is full of “people, ideas, ideas, gossip, resentment, stench, anger, anger, sadness, and applause”, just full of contradictory influences and events that can come together in the course of a production. Although the artistic maneuver is difficult and sometimes hurts (“I sometimes have a terrible headache”), it still seemed to be pure luck for Jürgen Flimm.
He enjoyed it – with his audience – in drama as well as in the opera, as a director, actor, artistic director, sovereign with the good sense of humor for which he was known and his indestructible good mood: The harmony friend Jürgen Flimm always relied more on consensus than on confrontation and on philanthropic pedagogy instead of on ideological dogmatics.
He was born in Gießen in 1941 and grew up in Cologne, where he studied sociology, theater and literature and also developed the Rhenish cheerful nature, which allowed him to experience quite a few professional ejection seats and their official administrators as well as the greenhouse climate of various houses to cope with serenity and sportsmanship. Even as a student, he fancied the theater and gained his first experience on a tiny basement stage in Cologne.
Serene cheerfulness and sportsmanship
A small drama school was affiliated with it, where he passed his acting exam, “the only profession that I can actually prove to this day”. In 1968 he became an assistant director at the Munich Kammerspiele, producing in Mannheim, Hamburg, Cologne and even in New York. In those years, which were very turbulent in every respect, his productions were never one-dimensionally political, but mostly artistically dramaturgical and often poetically imaginative. “I was always interested in the inner view of the texts,” he said in an interview on his 80th birthday with NDR: “What can you get out of the texts, how can you take the viewers with you on such a journey?”
In 1979 Jürgen Flimm became artistic director in Cologne and managed the Thalia Theater in Hamburg from 1985 to 2000. He brought sensationally high occupancy rates and established it as the intellectual center of the city with an intelligent program and a great ensemble.
With the German premiere of Luigi Nono’s “Al gran sole carico d’amore” in Frankfurt am Main in 1978, he ventured into an opera for the first time – and right away into a key work of contemporary music theatre. He was also successful in this genre, worked over the years with conductors such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Daniel Barenboim, and in 2000, together with Guiseppe Sinopoli, brought out Richard Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” at the Bayreuth Festival.
Don’t be afraid of the opera
From 2001 to 2005 he was drama director and from 2006 artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, parallel to this from 2005 to 2008 artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale. The practicing Italy lover hardly ever came to stage, preferring to open the doors to others. He passed on his knowledge and his view of the director’s profession as a university lecturer at Harvard University, New York University and the University of Hamburg, always remaining well disposed towards his students such as Falk Richter and Nicolas Stemann.
Fortunately, despite his administrative obligations, he never became a cultural manager or cultural functionary, but always remained a highly competent, well-connected, everything-giving lover of the fine arts, which was also evident from the enthusiasm with which he has accepted his position as director of the Berlin State Opera dedicated.
Jürgen Flimm moderated the difficult renovation phase in a prudent and charming manner, during which the construction time and budget doubled, but he was not responsible for this. He accompanied the opening in 2017 and then withdrew. After that he staged freely, whether at La Scala or in Braunschweig, and wrote his autobiography, which bears the title of two cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach: “Mit Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben”. (should be published by Kiepenheuer&Witsch in 2025)
He bravely survived quite a few illnesses, including heart problems and various accidents. Now even his strength was exhausted and on Saturday, February 4th, this much-loved son of the muse died at the age of 81.