International Women Stage Directors

Germany

Germany Ursula Neuerburg-Denzer The history of women in German theatre is necessarily linked to the developments in arts and politics as well as the shifting nature of what has been perceived as Germany or Deutschland over the course of the last millennium. Within this unstable cultural and political conglomeration, the first two women to make names for themselves were Hrosvitha von Gandersheim (ca. 935–ca. 1002) and Hildegard von Bingen (ca. 1098–1179), recognized as the earliest women playwrights in Central Europe. Among professional practitioners, Friederike Caroline Neuber (1697–1760) takes a prominent position as impresario of her own troupe and radical reformer of theatrical practice at the time. We know little about professional women in the theatre during the later eighteenth and the nineteenth century when the role of the director became more defined. However, particularly since World War II the prominence of women directors has steadily risen, and at the start of the twenty-first century, many women worked professionally and increasingly took high-ranking positions as artistic directors of the large regional, city, and federal theatres. Women’s Rights: Historical Context The role of women directors as well as the evolution of the women’s movement itself is strongly linked to the political forces that shaped the changing German state. While women began to ask publicly for access to education during the eighteenth century, this right was not equally granted among the social classes. Under Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712–1786), a strong proponent of enlightenment absolutism, a few women gained special rights to study at Prussian universities. Similarly, the laws regarding the ownership of land or inheritance of property by women did not fundamentally change until the late nineteenth century, when under growing political liberalism the women’s movement took a more distinct shape. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the position of upper-class women improved, and many women ran salons, wrote, and published, albeit often under pseudonyms . Even the literary theatre men of the enlightenment like Goethe and Schiller, who helped a number of women to get published, perpetuated the idea of women as intellectually inferior beings. Influenced by political movements in France, during the early nineteenth century a number of women’s groups linked to liberal church movements sprang up. But these movements were quickly extinguished in the conservative backlash following the failed German Revolution of 1848. Marked improvement for all women was only gained with the new German constitution of the Weimar Republic in 1919, which considered women as equals with the right to vote, to education, and to ownership of property. These new rights were diminished during the Third Reich. Hitler picked up the old slogan from the German empire, the three “K’s,” “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” (children, kitchen, church) as the proper place for women. Childbearing and rearing were of particular importance during the Third Reich, on one hand to create fodder for the expansive war machinery, and on the other as a means to enforce a sort of ethnic cleansing, by forbidding interracial (ethnic/religious) marriages and sterilization of “unfit” women and men. Ironically, that same war eventually brought more independence to German women: as their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers were drafted, women had to join the workforce, manage their households, and become altogether more independent. After World War II, East Germany adopted the communist attitude toward woman’s rights, which treated men and women as equals. The percentage of women gaining degrees in higher education skyrocketed in East Germany, while in the West it took decades for women to gain significant numbers both as students and as professors in the universities. While East Germany established free access to daycare and family planning, including abortion, West Germany had a school system with half days, thus forcing one parent—mostly mothers—to be at home in the afternoons. This pattern was continued after reunification, even though equality was granted under the law. Statistics from 2010 showed that only 14 percent of women with one child returned to work after giving birth, and only 6 percent of women with two children rejoined the workforce (Bennhold). In this climate, family planning and abortion rights remain a hotly contested issue. In the reunited Germany, women have entered the job market and higher education in increasing numbers, but only in the twenty-first century have leading positions in politics, culture, and education become more commonly available to them. Despite the fact that in 2005 Germany elected a woman chancellor, Angela...