Theater director Claus Peymann has been at the head of major German theaters since 1974 and director of the Berliner Ensemble since 1999. He turns 80 just a few weeks before leaving Bertolt Brecht's famous institution.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/P. Zinken
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Revolutionary theater director Claus Peymann turns 80
This director blazed trails for German theater of the revolutionary 1968 period and beyond. He addressed the pressing issues of the time, all while remaining down-to-earth.
Image: Monika Rittershaus
Little Klaus - the name at that time spelled with "K"
Klaus Eberhard Peymann was born on June 7, 1937, into a middle-class family in Bremen. His father was a teacher and a Nazi; his mother opposed National Socialism. Klaus, for his part, rebelled by changing the spelling of his name: "When did 'Klaus' turn into 'Claus'? I don't know! At some point, it was just easier to write in school," said Peymann.
Image: Privat
A pact with Thomas Bernhard
Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (left) was Claus Peymann's favorite author. The intellectual soulmates quickly sealed a pact to work together, premiering works for the stage. Bernhard lovingly dubbed his theater director "Grand Duke of the Mold Loft." This photo was taken in the 1970s.
Image: Privat
Hard to digest
Actresses Kirsten Dene and Maria Happel were part of Claus Peymann's theater family. Here, they are shown playing in Elfriede Jelinek's "Raststätte" in 1994. Peymann staged the works of the Austrian playwright, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004, long before others did.
Image: Oliver Herrmann
Loyal friends
Author and playwright Peter Handke (left) and Claus Peymann were likewise intellectual soulmates. They're shown here following the premiere of "Spuren der Verirrten" ("The Lost") at the Berliner Ensemble in 2007. Peymann promoted Handke from the start by premiering his works and, despite eventual broadsides, stood by him.
Image: Monika Rittershaus
The existentialist pose
This rare black-and-white photo shows Claus Peymann - called C.P. by his friends - in a typical "Existentialist" pose. "People wore black sweaters and the women had long dark hair. Then we would travel to Paris whenever we could, hanging out in dimly lit basements. Juliette Gréco was our goddess; Camus and Sartre were our prophets," Peymann once said.
Image: Privat
Theater magic
The staging of Heinrich von Kleist's "Die Hermannsschlacht" ("Hermann's Battle") in Bochum in 1982 was the production of a lifetime. People had considered it impossible to play on stage, but Peymann turned it into magic with two of his favorite actors, Kirsten Dene (right) and Gert Voss.
Image: Abisag Tüllmann
Conspiring community
A unique collaboration: playwright Thomas Bernhard (left) and Claus Peymann (second from left) worked so well together, that Bernhard wrote pieces for their favorite actors. This photo shows them along with actors Ilse Ritter, Kirsten Dene and Gert Voss, the cast of "Ritter, Dene, Voss," after its premiere in 1986.
Image: Abisag Tüllmann
Controversial political spectacle
The climax of Claus Peymann's career as director premiering works was surely "Heldenplatz" by Thomas Bernhard (middle), in 1988, shortly before the writer's death. It was a political spectacle that addressed anti-Semitism and revanchism among Austrians. It provoked outrage among audiences and critics alike.
Image: Oliver Herrmann
Performances abroad
Under Peymann's direction, the Berliner Ensemble went on many foreign tours as a "cultural ambassador troupe." His adaption of the Bertolt Brecht classic "Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder" ("Mother Courage and Her Children"), with Carmen Maja Antoni in the main role, was especially popular. This photo shows the troupe in Vahdat Hall at the Fadjr International Theater Festival in Tehran in 2008.
Image: Monika Rittershaus
Black/white/red
Achim Freyer was one of the most formative stage designers of the Peymann theater age. Once the two had met, nothing would separate them. The colors black/white/red often dominated in their works, such as this staging of Franz Kafka's "The Trial" in 2014, played by the Berliner Ensemble, with stage and costume designs by Freyer.
Image: Lucie Jansch
Having fun while talking shop
This is the image of himself Claus Peymann prefers: accessible, open-minded, and willing to debate issues. A man who loves to laugh and discuss things. He has been one of the few to invite school pupils into his theater to talk shop. Here he is shown at the Berliner Ensemble in 2009.
Image: Marcus Lieberenz
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It will not be a farewell of his own choice when Claus Peymann leaves the Berliner Ensemble at the end of the season - after 18 years of regency and 190 theater productions. Berlin politicians pushed for his abdication. "I feel like a theater monarch without an empire," said the theater director, who turned 80 on June 7. "The Berliner Ensemble is my body, my imagination, my mind. I will not go without feeling pain and despair," he said.
His life and career have been composed of a series of dramatic stations, marked by major rifts, scandals and the determined insistence that theater should be a forum for the humanistic critique of society.
The first station was his native city of Bremen. Then came student theater in Hamburg, the Theater am Turm in Frankfurt, then Stuttgart, Bochum, Vienna and finally, Berlin.
Peymann has always been well known for his outspoken radical democratic views. He has been both naïve as well as despotic in implementing his standards of theater, which he views as a moral institution.
Gert Voss and Kirsten Dene, two of Peymann's favorite actorsImage: Abisag Tüllmann
Like none other, he discovered and carefully promoted modern writers such as Peter Handke, Thomas Bernhard, Herbert Achternbusch, Botho Strauss, Elfriede Jelinek and George Tabori. He was or still is friends with most of them.
He has also maintained a loyal relationship with the leading stage designers of his generation, including Karl-Ernst Herrmann and Achim Freyer. "Theater people are my family," Peymann once said. His liaison with theater is one of life or death.
And acts of resistance are his specialty. "My victories have often resulted from the fears and cold feet other theater makers have had," he noted.
His first milestone: the staging of Peter Handke's "Publikumsbeschimpfung" ("Offending the Audience") at the Theater am Turm in Frankfurt in 1966. It was one of 46 theater premieres by Peymann, who has also staged works by Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Büchner. Resistance, intellectual freedom, revolt - all are Peymann's trademarks.
New standards for Kleist productions
Heinrich von Kleist's "Prinz Friedrich von Homburg" ("The Prince of Homburg") is the last work Peymann is staging at the Berliner Ensemble.
The theater director set standards for von Kleist productions as early as 1975 at the Staatstheater Stuttgart with "Das Käthchen von Heilbronn."
In 1982, he stirred a sensation with "Die Hermannsschlacht," as most people considered the work by von Kleist as impossible to stage. Peymann did it with finesse, with two of his favorite actors: Gert Voss and Kirsten Dene.
"The Prince of Homburg" played by the Berliner Ensemble Image: picture-alliance/dpa/P. Zinken
"Art is always resistance, contradiction… and the moment in which that no longer occurs, art runs dry," he said. He stuck to that motto as the director of Stuttgart's Staatstheater, even when he ran into conflicts between 1974 and 1979 with city politicians.
Uproar came when he supported a campaign to raise money for dental replacements for imprisoned RAF terrorist Gudrun Ensslin. For him, his support was an act of mercy.
He also set new standards at the Schauspielhaus Bochum between 1979 and 1986, primarily with works by Thomas Bernhard, such as "Der Weltverbesserer" (The Do-Gooder). He continued to stage works by Bernhard at Burgtheater Wien, which he managed between 1986 and 1999 against much resistance. Bernhard's "Heldenplatz" is considered the climax of Peymann's career - the work that addresses Austria's anti-Semitism prompting both applause and boos alike.
Not one to shy away from conflict: Claus Peymann (right) chose to stage Thomas Bernhard's (middle) critique of Austrian anti-SemitismImage: Oliver Herrmann
When he took over the Berliner Ensemble in 1999, he wanted to "become the fang in the government district," he said. Yet the theater revolutionary increasingly could not and would not keep up with the times, garnering his Berliner Ensemble the label of being a "theater museum."
A passionate theater director
Still, Peymann has grabbed attention with various pieces, including international praise when he staged Bertolt Brecht's "Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder" in 2005. He brought American theater magician Robert Wilson to the stage in the German capital, and has staged works by German theater great George Tabori.
It's been a recipe for success, with the Berliner Ensemble being booked around 90 percent of the time. He's also had the numbers counted during his reign: 3,703,647 visitors and 40,879 minutes of applause. Those are laurels that are sure to keep him going in his new career as a freelance theater director.
