Nazi history at the Zurich Schauspielhaus. Demolition and new construction?
history falsification
How do we remember the (Swiss) Nazi era? The controversial new building of the Zurich Schauspielhaus provides an answer and enters a hot phase
With a final advertising campaign, the directors of the theater are attempting to legitimize the demolition of the historic theater hall. But the resistance is growing. This also has to do with the Fallbuhrle in the immediate vicinity.
The press conference on the renovation of the theater on Monday was from the best of parents. In 2018 for the first time, and now again, the master builders of the future of the theater presented themselves to the press. But this time, the members of the board of directors are making every effort to moderate the displeasure of the audience in the hall: “We have listened”, we “take the resistance seriously”, it said credibly from the stage.
The agreement is that the theater should remain “a place of art, community and remembrance” in the future after the house has been renovated. (Note the order of priorities.) But. A refurbishment while retaining the old hall is an absurdity, is the tenor. And they have to be renovated, it is required by law, the last major renovation was more than 50 years ago. The heating costs of the complex, which has grown over the course of 130 years, now exceed 65 percent of the municipal specifications.
The demolition option is “best value for money,” said the architect, who has been on the board for a year. After all, she and her colleagues fine-tuned the wording to make the topic palatable to the public. Not a “new building” of the theater was called for on Monday, but a “comprehensive renovation.”
The history of the Second World War in Switzerland
In Zurich, the future of the theater has been the subject of fierce debate for almost four years. Because this, as it is planned, is from the city, canton and the top of the theater has a snag. It is realized at the expense of a past that weighs heavily: During the National Socialist era, the Zurich Schauspielhaus was the last free stage in the German language. As a place of remembrance, it is highly emotional.
According to the plans of those responsible, both the stage area and the theater hall will now be demolished and replaced by a new building. The local council will soon decide on the loan and the type of renovation, so the last opportunity for the supporters to advertise their project. Lessons have been learned from the past: When the city made the option of a total new building public for the first time, before the summer holidays, there was an outcry from the media all the way to New York.
The timing of the information event may be more ideal this time. And the well-known arguments are probably also correct: There are no side and back stages on the Pfauen, which makes the work expensive, and the lines of sight and acoustics in the auditorium are poor.
But on the part of the critics, the partly polemical, partly worried debate about the future of the theater is not about profitability, not about art, and even less about money. No matter which form of renovation the municipal council and then the sovereign approves – the minimum variant brush renovation or the maximum variant demolition – an amount in the double-digit million range can be expected. The array of arguments about structural and economic reasons, as presented on Monday, came up empty because it ignored the most controversial point.
The playhouse in the shadow of the Kunsthaus and the Bührle case
There is a morally highly complex question on the table. It reads: How does Switzerland deal with its history under National Socialism? And who is authorized to decide this and shape the memory of future generations? There is great concern that a new building will erase history. That’s also why a third way doesn’t work. Not demolition or new construction, but a compromise consisting of renewal and the preservation of the last contemporary witnesses of the painful history of Jewish theater artists is desirable. However, if memory is to remain alive, it must be continued – also structurally – into the present day.
It is logical that resistance to the core renovation has grown in recent months: right in the neighborhood, in the extension of the Kunsthaus, it is demonstrated how history-blind ownership and marketing thinking persists in a public Zurich institution. The Bührle case casts a long shadow.
The fact that the city’s defensive, obscuring communication has strengthened key points about the debacle here and there doesn’t make things any better. But it makes the need all the greater, at least in the case of the Schauspielhaus, to appeal to the attitude of the municipality: duck away, dear Zurich, no longer gilded in 2022.