21 June 2016

Akademie der Künste opens the Ivan Nagel Archive

Event on 28 June with academy members Angela Winkler and Norbert Miller, et al.

On 28 June the Akademie der Künste will open the archive of Ivan Nagel (1931-2012) with a special event in Berlin. During his lifetime, the theatre director, writer and drama critic made arrangements to turn over his archive to the academy. The archive reflects Nagel’s versatile creative output as both the artistic head of a theatre and as a Homme de Lettres, as well as Nagel’s own particular manner of working, which, as he said himself, oscillated between the theatre and writing.

Born in 1931 in Budapest, Ivan Nagel left Hungary in 1948 and became stateless. He successfully took up his studies in Heidelberg (after stops in Zurich and Paris), and then in Frankfurt am Main, where he became a student of Theodor W. Adorno. Later, until 1961, he worked as a critic for the German newspaper Deutsche Zeitung und Wirtschaftszeitung in Stuttgart and Cologne, became the chief dramaturge in Munich, worked with Fritz Kortner, was theatre and music critic for the Süddeutsche Zeitung for three years beginning in 1969, but then returned to the theatre as managing director of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. Towards the end of this period in Hamburg, in 1979, Nagel founded the festival “Theater der Nationen”, which still exists today under the name “Theater der Welt” (Theatre of the World). Once again Nagel switched from the field of the theatre to the practice of writing, now as a cultural correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in New York. After this he conducted research about Mozart’s operas as a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study), only then to engage himself as artistic director for drama at the Staatstheater Stuttgart, and in turn to return to Berlin as a fellow and subsequently to take up a professorship in aesthetics and history at the Universität der Künste (UdK, Berlin University of the Arts). Ivan Nagel became a member of the Akademie der Künste in 1992. He died in Berlin in 2012.

The Ivan Nagel Archive encompasses 18.2 linear metres. In addition to personal documents there are also study materials as well as author’s copies of Nagel’s journalistic work. Programmes, conceptual materials, contracts, and above all press collections, demonstrate his commitment as an artistic director, which culminated when he was theatre director during the 1998–99 season in Salzburg. His essays and lectures on music and theatre, as well as about visual arts and cultural politics, are available in various stages of work through to their printed versions. As Nagel’s annotations in the books attest, he continued to work on these writings even after they were published. However, the same can also be said of his important works on the history of the arts in the 18th century, which shed light on drama in the arts as well as the position of the intellectual and the artist. Moreover, these contributions, as well as Nagel’s work about Shakespeare’s Kaufmann von Venedig (The Merchant of Venice), published posthumously in 2012, are accompanied by an extensive collection of other materials. An impression of Ivan Nagel’s artistic and scholarly exchanges can be gleaned from his correspondence with institutions, but above all from his dialogues with colleagues and friends, including Susan Sontag, Friedrich Dieckmann, Durs Grünbein, Reinhard Koselleck, György Kurtág, Fred Licht, György Ligeti, Peter Szondi, George Tabori, Peter Wapnewski and Robert Wilson.

In a soirée on 28 June – what would have been Ivan Nagel’s 85th birthday – the Akademie der Künste, in cooperation with the Suhrkamp Verlag, will introduce Ivan Nagel’s Archive to the public. An opening address by the director of the archives, Werner Heegewaldt, will be followed by a discussion between the literary scholars Norbert Miller and Thomas Sparr, the executor of Ivan Nagel’s literary estate and the editor-at-large at Suhrkamp Verlag. Angela Winkler will read excerpts from texts by Ivan Nagel. A display case exhibition and an image and sound collage complement the special event.

Event Announcement
From Budapest around the World to Berlin
An Evening for Ivan Nagel (1931-2012)
Tuesday, 28 June 2016, 8 pm
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Admission: € 5/3
Ticket reservations: ticket@adk.de, Tel. +49 (0)30 20057-1000
Press tickets: presse@adk.de, Tel. +49 (0)30 20057-1514
Event in cooperation with Suhrkamp Verlag

Additional inquiries? Please contact:
Performing Arts Archive at the Akademie der Künste
Sabine Zolchow, Tel. +49 (0)30 20057-3217, zolchow@adk.de
Stephan Dörschel, Tel. +49 (0)30 20057-3254, doerschel@adk.de