Festival Transformation Forever: Experience the culture of the turn!

Festival Transformation Forever: Experience the culture of the turn!

The “Transformation Forever” festival is currently being celebrated in the Festival Spielhaus Hellerau in Dresden, which has been dealing with the transformation processes in Central and Eastern Europe and Eastern Germany since 1989/1990. Above all, the focus is on the search for traces, which impresses with short stage pieces, lectures and an exhibition on the history of the Festspielhaus in the 1990s. The director Carena Schlewitt is important to realize the extensive playing time using funding and cooperation. But how do you draw the balance between long -term planning and the flexible reaction to unpredictable changes?

The Festspielhaus brings both German and international productions on stage. Among other things, a special staging by Richard Wagner's “Ring der Nibelungen” is shown - Lorin Maazel has created an immersive picture space with an invisible orchestra. Furthermore, the Indian "Sandbox Collective" together with the Berlin dance group "She She Pop" with the feminist and postcolonial piece "Wait to Be Seated" will cause a stir. Another highlight is the work "Mother" from the Polish director Marta Górnicka, which gives women from Ukraine, Belarus and Poland a voice and addresses the war in Ukraine.

A look at the past

The past decades have strongly shaped the people in East Germany and all of Europe. The GDR, which has been homogeneous ethnically and culturally since the post-war period, often found itself "less than one nation". Nevertheless, many citizens were drawn to the West, which resulted in the emigration of several hundred thousand people. The construction of the wall in 1961 was supposed to contain this cause of the flight, but only fueled the longing for a life in freedom.

With the falling wall on November 9, 1989, the revolutionary call of "We are the people" shifted to "We are a people". This turning point was not only a milestone for Germany, but also a signal for mass protests in other Eastern Bloc countries. The German-German unification process quickly gained dynamics, and the GDR joined the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3, 1990. The "two-plus four-contract", which was signed on September 12, 1990, ensured the full sovereignty of Germany.

The challenges of transformation

The transformation in East Germany was and is a complex interplay of various social, economic and political factors. Privatization policy led to over 70 percent of people in East Germany lost their workplace. Large financial Transfers from the west occurred, but the economic disparities between East and West have remained until today. The East Germans had and have high expectations of the prosperity that promised through reunification and to which one is still measured today. The way to the agreement was all the more difficult because there was no organized resistance movement in the GDR by the end of the 1980s.

The past times and the cultural changes that today enable us to make such events such as the “Transformation Forever” festival possible. The director of the Festspielhaus emphasizes that despite all the difficulties and the necessary middle acquisition, some projects could be at risk if there are not enough third -party funds. Therefore, the eye always remains on financial support so that the votes of people in culture will continue to be heard in the future.

So bouncing past, present and future in Hellerau, and the festival provides an urgent piece of history that focuses on social and cultural development in the German East, while it is at the same time drawing a look into the future.