13 July 2021

The Akademie der Künste presents the Fritz Marquardt Archive

Event on 15 July with Hermann Beyer, Corinna Harfouch, Thomas Heise and Wolfgang Behrens at Pariser Platz

In celebration of the presentation of the Fritz Marquardt Archive, Thomas Heise, a former colleague of Marquardt at the Berliner Ensemble, will be showing his film Lieber Fritz marking the director’s 80th birthday to an audience for the first time. Corinna Harfouch and Hermann Beyer will read from some of Marquardt’s unpublished texts. This will be followed by a conversation in which Wolfgang Behrens will ask Marquardt’s companions about their work with the theatre director.

The Fritz Marquardt Archive of the Akademie der Künste includes 5.4 linear metres and contains production materials, documents of theatre and film roles, correspondence with theatre artists such as the actor Hermann Beyer and the stage designer Matthias Stein, versions of literary works and photographs of visual artworks. The archive has been partially indexed and can be searched online in the database.

Born near Kriescht, present-day Krzeszyce, Fritz Marquardt (1928-2014) worked initially as a novice farmer in the Oderbruch region after the war before studying philosophy in the 1950s. His time as an editor at the magazine Theater der Zeit in the early 1960s brought him into contact with theatre; his first assignments as a director were at the Parchim Theatre and as a lecturer at the Babelsberg Film Academy, culminating in an engagement at the Volksbühne Berlin in Benno Besson’s ensemble in 1970. With his meticulous and poetic productions of Heiner Müller’s plays, such as Die Bauern (later The Resettled Woman), 1976, and The Construction Site, 1980, he was one of the most influential directors at the theatre. As a freelance director, Marquardt was responsible in the 1980s, among other things, for Brecht productions in Amsterdam and Lessing’s Nathan the Wise in Munich. From 1985 to 1996 he worked at the Berliner Ensemble and premiered, among other plays, Heiner Müller’s Germania Death in Berlin (first performance in East Germany) in 1989 and Villa Jugend by Georg Seidel in 1991. In 1992 Marquardt joined Heiner Müller, Peter Zadek, Peter Palitzsch and Matthias Langhoff in the collective running of the Berliner Ensemble. His last project as a director was Ibsen’s Eyolf in 1995, with Corinna Harfouch, Martin Wuttke and Margarita Broich in the cast.

As an actor, Marquardt appeared in leading and supporting roles in feature films by Siegfried Kühn and Andreas Dresen, and was also interviewed in documentaries by Thomas Heise and Volker Koepp.


Event details
Fritz Marquardt “Gutes Theater ist immer auch politisch” (“Good theatre is also always political”). Archive presentation
Thursday, 15 July 2021, 7 pm
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Admission EUR 6/4
Press tickets from presse@adk.de and Tel. 030 20057-1514
Current information and hygiene rules here


Enquiries: Sabine Zolchow, Performing Arts Archives, zolchow@adk.de, Tel. 030-20057-3217