Berlin austerity drama: The Schiller killers came at night

It happened in June 1993. A call early in the morning, an invitation to a press conference a few hours later at the Europa Center. The Berlin cultural administration was based there at the time. We didn’t immediately understand what Senator Ulrich Roloff-Momin announced. The Schiller Theater and with it the state theaters will be closed, as will the Schiller Workshop and the Schlossparktheater. Seriously?

The Diepgen Senate had deliberated the night before, until dawn. The art gallery was liquidated and then it went to the theaters. At times the Gorki was on the brink, and the Volksbühne was also wobbling; The new director Frank Castorf had just started there. Ultimately, the Schiller Theater had to believe in it. The West should also make a sacrifice sometimes. It was also the largest theater company in the country, a bloated place – and for a long time only artistically flat goods.

Non-stop protests

There we sat in the senator’s room like watered people. The fact that Roloff-Momin, who was a good guy, had no choice, that he had saved all the other stages and also the up-and-coming Volksbühne, mattered little. The newspapers protested with everything they had. The fall of the West was imminent. There were wild performances, theater people raised their fists, finally something was going on again.

In the Volksbühne people made fun of the bungling. Castorf directed “Pension Schöller”, an old joke in which a waiter with a speech impediment – ​​he cannot pronounce L – really wants to become an actor. They turned the classic “I’ve got a fly in my face” into the following: “With my tenant, the Schinner Theater would never have been closed.”

From a financial perspective, the closure initially made no sense. Stage members sued for the loss of their jobs, and of course such a huge thing can’t just be closed down. All of this came at a cost. The Schiller Theater has now proven itself as an interim headquarters for the State Opera, the Comedy and the Komische Oper.

Can we learn from it? There is no talk of closures in the austerity debate – yet – and the fat life on the stages is a thing of the past. But it’s not even a real debate at the moment because nobody knows how much needs to be cut. And if you’re not careful, it could result in a gradual closure, wherever it may be.