Torsten Mass

MARRANCA: We've been well aware over the years of the great number and variety of cultural events in Berlin, including those of Theatertreffen [a festival of the ten best German-language productions held in May], Festwochen [an international fall festival], and the Film and Jazz festivals. Could you begin by describing the particular activities of the Berliner Festpiele office?

MAß: It was founded in 1951. In the first ten years, the Berliner Festspiele was a product of the Cold War. With Willy Brandt [German chancellor, 1969-1974], this was completely changed in a reaching out between East and West [Ostpolitik]--"a changing through approaching." His new government wanted to make contact in an unofficial way, with the belief that good relations between the organizers and the artists of the East could change the situation a bit. That's why every year between1959 and 1997, at least one-third of the Festwochen was devoted to East/West exchanges.

The Wall came up in 1961 and the Theatertreffen was founded as a reaction to it. The first one was in 1963. Berliners had not been allowed to travel to Hamburg or Munich or other cities to see theatre, so it was brought in. Voices from time to time have asked in the last ten years what the future of this office will be because the Wall no longer exists. But, during the first ten years it was important to increase the identity of our Eastern neighbors. Their economic identity changed very rapidly, so we thought at least their cultural identity should be conserved. Now ten years after the coming down of the Wall, the period of unification is not yet finished--it will take at least one generation. We are thinking of the future; the festival has to change.

DASGUPTA: Were the offerings of these last ten years very different from what was produced in 1963 and the early years?

MAß: The early work was as political as all the products of the Cold War could be to show how powerful, superior, and glamorous Western culture was. After the period of the new politics of Willy Brandt, there was something of a more dignified approach and less showing off. It was more what the artists wanted than what the politicians wanted. The second period was a building of bridges.

DASGUPTA: Would you say this utilization of culture--the building of bridges--was in some sense responsible for what eventually happened in 1989?

MAß: Perhaps we accelerated this process.

MARRANCA: When we were in Moscow in 1988, during Gorbachev's reforms, we felt that there had been a cultural perestroika in the society before the political one. That is, artists and intellectuals had been working among themselves for the opening and changes that had yet to come to characterize the culture at large.

DASGUPTA: During 1951-61 how did the selection process for the Berliner Festwochen unfold? Only Western groups had been shown then. How did this change?

MAß: It changed in the seventies after the influence of Willy Brandt. The aim had been that all the socialist countries had to participate. The key point is that in this period there was a change in our structure. Initially, we had been dependent in part on the cultural Senate of Berlin. At this time, we became a commercial outfit and our partners in Moscow or Georgia could then go to the authorities and represent our work as purely commercial, having nothing to do with politics. Before this, our letters to Moscow came back unopened. The politics was so complicated they didn't even want to address this problem. This structural change was a turning point of coming into contact and negotiaiting with Lyubimov and the Taganka and others.

All the socialist countries in the East then participated in the festival. The only exception had been the DDR. It was only when we were...