Struggles of Singularised Communities in German Theatre: The Culture War Around the Berlin Volksbuhne

This chapter proposes that the battle around the Volksbuhne may offer important insights into an underlying crisis of the systemic structure of the German city theatre institution, once founded as a ‘national’ institution of and for the emerging bourgeoisie, and eventually paradigmatic for the liberal European culture of Bildung. It points out some of the key ideological and cultural antagonisms within the German public theatre system today, concerning its modes of production and aesthetic formats; its crucial symbolic function; and its relational but also exclusional mechanisms. The sociological perspective offers a compelling framework to explain the malignant force of the culture battle around the Volksbuhne. The buzz of the Volksbuhne itself eventually turned the quarter into one of the prime spots of Berlin gentrification and one of the city’s most desirable and most expensive districts. Politically doomed to fail even before its start, Chris Dercon’s brief Volksbuhne interlude of 2017–18 highlighted some decisive issues for this ongoing systemic (re)calibration