36 Hours in Berlin: Things to Do and See
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- in Music
Tim Mohr, DJ and German Translator Who Ghostwrote Paul Stanley’s Memoir, Dies at 55
An American who had lived abroad, he sought out books by up-and-coming German writers, while ghostwriting memoirs for rock stars like Paul Stanley.Tim Mohr, an American who worked as a disc jockey and freelance writer in Berlin in the 1990s, diving deep into the city’s fervent post-Communist underground, before using his experiences to turn out sensitive, award-winning English translations of works by up-and-coming German writers, died on March 31 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 55.His wife, Erin Clarke, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.Mr. Mohr arrived in Germany in 1992 with a yearlong grant to teach English. He did not speak a word of German, so the program sent him to Berlin, a melting pot of cultures where English was often the second language.He stayed for six years. By day, he worked as a journalist for local English-language magazines, including the Berlin edition of Time Out; at night, he was a D.J. in the city’s ever-expanding club scene.He later remarked that his time spent traveling among Berlin’s many underground subcultures gave him a thorough education in a form of street German that set him up to work as a translator.One of his first major translation projects, in 2008, was “Feuchtgebiete” (“Wetlands”), a sexually explicit coming-of-age novel by Charlotte Roche packed with raunchy, idiomatic slang that only someone with Mr. Mohr’s background could render in English.“I read the book for the eventual U.S. publisher when they were considering buying the rights,” he told The Financial Times in 2012. “And I said to the editor, ‘You know, you’ll be hard pressed to find an academic translator who is as familiar with terminology related to anal sex as a former Berlin club D.J. is.’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Music
The Conductor Joana Mallwitz Mixes Intensity With Approachability
Joana Mallwitz, one of Germany’s fastest rising stars, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut in “The Marriage of Figaro” on Monday.The conductor Joana Mallwitz rehearsing at the Met.The conductor Joana Mallwitz apologized for arriving late for her interview at the Metropolitan Opera House last week, but she had needed to catch her breath after rehearsal. “Conducting is sweaty business,” she said, as she settled into a straight-backed posture on a sofa in the press lounge, her striking hands with long fingers elegantly crossed at the wrists.On Monday, Mallwitz, 39 — the music director of the Konzerthaus Berlin and one of the fastest rising classical stars in her native Germany — makes her Met debut with Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” She has been in close relationship with that opera since her first job, at 19, at Theater Heidelberg, a small house where her duties included “everything that one does as Kapellmeister,” she said: rehearsing singers, playing the continuo part on the harpsichord and, when needed, jumping in at short notice to conduct a performance.“You develop a relationship with such a work,” she said of “Figaro.” “You get to know each other.”“You develop a relationship with such a work,” Mallwitz said of “The Marriage of Figaro.” “You get to know each other.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesAt the end of that afternoon’s rehearsal she had worked with the orchestra on minute details in the overture, finessing dynamic contrasts and highlighting the shock value — “like rock music,” she told the musicians — of the loud outbursts that interrupt the garrulous bubbling fast notes. The key, she said afterward, was to “bring a certain energy into the sound that doesn’t become hard when the playing gets louder.”Working with the Met musicians, she said, was a joy because after fine-tuning a small section, “they are able to feel what my style is and transfer it” to the rest of the piece. “They’re able to pick it up because mentally, too, they are virtuosos,” she said. “It’s incredible what this orchestra is able to deliver in terms of tempo and transparency and diversity of effects. You want to draw on all of that but also achieve a combination of lightness and drama.”Lightness and drama, approachability and uncompromising seriousness in her approach to a score — these are at the heart of Mallwitz’s striking rise to prominence in a profession long dominated by men. In 2014, at 28 she became the music director of Theater Erfurt, the youngest conductor to hold such a position in Europe. In 2018, she took over the leadership of the Nuremberg State Theater, an institution that had also served as a springboard for the conductor Christian Thielemann when he was 23. In her second season there she was voted best conductor of the year by a jury of German critics. A celebrated run of Mozart’s “Cosí Fan Tutte” at Salzburg in 2020 catapulted her to international attention.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Theater
Troubled Volksbühne Theater Announces Another New Director
Matthias Lilienthal will take over running the Berlin playhouse, which has been lurching from crisis to crisis for years.Berlin city officials announced Friday that the theater maker Matthias Lilienthal would take over leadership of the Volksbühne, one of Europe’s most influential playhouses.Lilienthal is an established figure in German theater, having previously led major institutions in Berlin and Munich. He is set to take up the role in 2026, with a contract until 2031.At a news conference, Lilienthal announced plans to expand the theater’s dance offering. He also said he planned to feature a slate of works by international directors — a decision he described as “a conscious resistance” to rising nationalism in Germany.“Hopefully it is a joyful resistance,” he added.Many theater lovers are hoping that Lilienthal’s appointment marks the end of a prolonged period of turmoil at the Volksbühne, which has long been known for its formally daring and politically provocative works. But in recent years, the theater has been plagued by scandal and tragedy, as well as vicious conflicts about its creative direction that have mirrored broader debates about Berlin’s identity.Lilienthal is no stranger to the Volksbühne. He served as its chief dramaturg in the 1990s, when it was led by Frank Castorf, a towering figure in German theater. It was Castorf, the Volksbühne’s director from 1992 to 2017, who put the playhouse on the international map and established its reputation for high-minded, no-holds-barred performance.Matthias Lilienthal at a news conference at the Volksbühne on Friday.Soeren Stache/picture alliance via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Music
Can Berlin Really Afford 3 ‘Magic Flutes’ in a Single Week?
Each of the city’s opera houses is presenting a different production of the Mozart classic. With arts cuts looming, it looks like a last hurrah.Opera has always tended toward grandeur. Berlin, home to three world-class opera houses, regularly takes things to the next level.This week, for example, each of those houses is putting on a different production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” At one, larger-than-life serpents slither across the stage, spurting real fire from their nostrils. At another, animated pink elephants flying across a giant screen deliver a character to his salvation.But with cuts to the city arts budget looming, this looks increasingly like a last hurrah for a system of largess under threat.A scene from the Staatsoper’s “Magic Flute,” which reconstructs the staging of a 19th-century production.Monika RittershausNext week, Berlin’s Senate looks set to pass a 2025 budget that will slash funding to the arts scene, which relies heavily on public money. Institutions large and small have warned that these cuts put Berlin’s identity as a cultural capital on the chopping block.According to a plan released last month, culture funding, which makes up just over 2 percent of the municipal budget, will be reduced by around 13 percent, or about 130 million euros (roughly $136 million).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Music
With Stickers on Phone Cameras, Clubs Defend the Party Vibe
It’s standard practice in Berlin, and camera covering is catching on in London, Ibiza and New York as clubs seek to protect an anything-goes atmosphere.On a recent Sunday afternoon, the line outside Berghain, the Berlin techno club, stretched for hours. Hundreds of visitors, sweating in black outfits, lined the dusty path to the door, hoping to be allowed into the former power station, which is known worldwide for its tough door policy, starry D.J. lineups and hedonistic parties lasting nearly 36 hours.The club is also notorious because, despite its reputation as one of the world’s pre-eminent techno venues, its parties aren’t documented online. Clubgoers are warned at the door that photos and videos are banned: Any violation will result in expulsion. To ensure compliance, door staff place stickers on the front and back of patrons’ smartphones, covering their cameras.Although this may seem excessive to visitors, such camera policies have become standard practice in Berlin clubs as a crucial tool for maintaining an anything-goes atmosphere, and clubs elsewhere are increasingly following Berlin’s lead.Respected venues, including Fabric in London and Radion in Amsterdam have all brought in similar sticker rules in recent years. Pikes Ibiza, on the Spanish island famous for its nightlife, announced last month that all visitors must now cover their cameras, so that “what happens at Pikes stays at Pikes.”Téa Abashidze, a founder of Basement, a Brooklyn techno club that has been stickering visitors’ phones since 2019, said in an email that it was part of a “cultural shift” toward “genuine, distraction-free experiences.” The club rigorously enforced the rule, she said, sometimes throwing several rule-breakers out per night.On a recent Sunday night, people lining up to enter R.S.O. were uniformly in support of the club’s stickering policy.Gordon Welters for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Music
What Happened When an Orchestra Said Goodbye to All-Male Concerts
This season, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin experimented with programming works by female composers at every performance. Results were mixed.In 2021, Marlene Brüggen, a concert planner in Germany, was listening to an episode of the podcast “Herrengedeck” and heard about a pop music festival with gender parity woven into its programming. The next day, she looked at her own festival’s planning chart, with some 200 concerts. Women were seriously underrepresented.“We hadn’t paid attention to that at all,” Brüggen said in an interview. “It was as if the bandages had been taken off my eyes.”That year, Brüggen applied for a job as director of artistic planning with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Her job interview included questions about the music she would program if hired. With her earlier epiphany in mind, she suggested the orchestra play more music by women. She got the job.Later, when she and the orchestra’s music director, Robin Ticciati, and its managing director, Thomas Schmidt-Ott, were discussing the 2023-24 season, they decided not just to include more female artists, but also to require every orchestra concert to feature at least one work written by a woman. In the fall, the orchestra plastered Berlin’s walls with posters that read “No concert without a female composer!”“The most fascinating or innovative thing about her idea wasn’t the fact of performing female composers,” Schmidt-Ott said in an interview. “It was doing it in every concert.”I went to nine performances during the season, between November and May, and heard 11 pieces by female composers. All the works were new to me, imbuing each concert with a sense of discovery unusual for an orchestra’s subscription series.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Television
‘Babylon Berlin’ Is Back. Here’s What You Need to Know.
Season 4 of the epic crime drama has finally come to streaming in the United States, via MHz Choice. Here’s a refresher on where we left off.Over the years, the lavish German noir detective series “Babylon Berlin” has required patience from its American viewers.First, fans had to untangle dense story lines — set across the late 1920s and early 1930s — along with an abundance of compulsively watchable characters, most of them harboring secrets. Then they had to wait years for new episodes. Netflix initially carried the first three seasons, but they were removed from the platform this year. Season 4 aired in Germany and elsewhere in Europe in 2022, but these newer episodes have only now become available to stream in the United States, arriving on MHz Choice, a platform specializing in European titles, on Tuesday.This fourth season is “more music, more crime, more sex, more politics than ever before,” said Henk Handloegten, who created “Babylon Berlin” along with Achim von Borries and Tom Tykwer. It also features more Nazis.The characters, now in 1930s Germany, will have to contend with the rise of Nazism in their country.via MHz ChoiceSeason 4 opens on New Year’s Eve 1930, and German politics is kicking into a higher, scarier gear. “Suddenly, our heroes are confronted with a completely new and profoundly disturbing and menacing energy: the rise of fascism and the far-right,” Tykwer said in a joint video interview with his two colleagues.Based on a series of books by Volker Kutscher, “Babylon Berlin” sets fictional characters against a backdrop of real events, so we know that Hitler’s rise to power will end the democratic Weimar Republic. The season’s suspense lies in discovering “how these characters we’re getting to know are reacting to the upcoming Nazi period,” von Borries said. “Will they be on the right side or the wrong side?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Theater
Choreographer’s ‘Dog Poop Attack’ on a Critic Inspired This New Play
At this year’s Theatertreffen drama festival, one production explores an incident that shocked the German theater world last year.On Feb. 11, 2023, the choreographer Marco Goecke cornered a dance critic, Wiebke Hüster, during intermission of a performance at the Hanover State Opera in northern Germany. After asking her about negative reviews that she had written about his past productions, Goecke took out a bag of dog feces and smeared her face with it.That shocking incident, which generated headlines around the world, is the starting point for “The Dog Poop Attack,” a production at this year’s Theatertreffen festival in Berlin.Of the 10 shows at the event, a celebration of German-language theater, “The Dog Poop Attack” has arguably generated the most excitement, thanks to its explosive subject matter and its unlikely place of origin: Jena, a city in eastern Germany that is hardly known as a theatrical capital.After the incident, Goecke gave up his position as Hanover company’s ballet director “by mutual agreement.” He was later suspended from the Nederlands Dans Theater, the Dutch company where he was an associate choreographer. Hüster filed a criminal complaint against him; Goecke was ordered to pay 5.000 euros in damages. And while he has issued public apologies, Goecke has remained more defiant than contrite, and disturbingly equivocal: He has both admitted to overreacting and also tried to justify his behavior.“The Dog Poop Attack” mulls over the incident, the attention it generated and what it says about the state of the performing arts in Germany. The play’s premise is simple: A troupe of actors at a provincial theater hope that mounting a production has the idea of making a production about the infamous affair will help them gain wider attention. This meta-conceit recalls backstage farces like “Noises Off” and “Waiting for Guffman,” but this show, devised and written collectively by the six performers, the director Walter Bart and the dramaturg Hannah Baumann, does something so straightforward yet daring that it’s a minor miracle that it works.The production’s gambit is to dramatize the creative process itself. For the bulk of the evening, the actors — playing themselves, or thinly fictionalized versions of themselves — dramatically narrate their email exchanges about how to stage the show. The lively way they put their brainstorming, discussions and quarrels onstage, along with a healthy dose of irony, makes for provocative and absorbing theater.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
