The Burgtheater confirmed a corresponding report. Benning directed the Burgtheater from 1976 to 1986 and had been an honorary member of the house since 1986. The presentation of Kurt Brazda’s documentary film “Achim Benning – Homo Politicus” planned for tomorrow will probably become a memorial event, as the director told the APA.
Benning was born on January 20, 1935, the son of an engineer in Magdeburg and spent his youth in Braunschweig. From 1955 to 1960 he studied German, history and philosophy in Munich and Vienna and at the same time completed the Max Reinhardt Seminar. In 1959 he was brought to the Burgtheater by Ernst Haeusserman as an acting student, where he soon became a member of the ensemble.
His most successful roles at the castle included Malcolm in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, the mayor in Dürrenmatt’s “Visit of the Old Lady” and the title role in Moliere’s “The Miser”.
As an ensemble representative, he also represented the actors’ interests. Benning made his directorial debut in 1972 – under the direction of Gerhard Klingenberg – also at the castle with the premiere of Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s “Mary Stuart”. This was followed by productions such as Hauptmann’s “The Red Rooster” (1974), Strindberg’s “Totentanz” (1977), Gorki’s “Summer Guests” (1979), Feydeau’s “One Must Be the Stupid” (1980), Büchner’s “Danton’s Death” (1982) , Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” (1983), Ibsen’s “John Gabriel Borkman” and Nestroy’s “Secret Money, Secret Love” (both 1985).
Benning as a “home solution”
After Klingenberg’s departure, Benning took over the management of the Burgtheater from the 1976/77 season. “Back then, we in the ensemble had drawn up a pretty thick paper in which we defined ideas about what needed to change for all areas,” Benning once recalled in the “Presse”. “A number of people were involved in this, I was just a little more active than the others in terms of the formulation and composition of this concept.”
Benning was considered a “home solution”, which was defended by the then Minister of Education and Culture Fred Sinowatz against Thomas Bernhard, who also had ambitions to manage the Burgtheater. “Sinowatz was a highly educated and self-sufficient man. He was very reliable. We owe it to him that we were able to do political theater,” Benning once told the APA, full of praise for what he considered to be the best cultural politician of the Second Republic , who also made the Kreisky years golden years of cultural policy. “We were incredibly lucky. It was like a window had opened.”
As Burgtheater director, Benning opened this window wide, especially for contemporary authors and directors as well as artists from Eastern Europe. The Czech dissidents Vaclav Havel and Pavel Kohout wrote for the Burgtheater, and actors like Pavel Landovsky, who had been banned from performing at home, became members of the ensemble. When Landovsky was refused a visa for a Moscow guest performance at the Burgtheater, Sinowatz supported the cancellation and also canceled his own trip, says Benning: “We didn’t do theater against the authorities, but with them.”
1989 to Zurich
After his departure as director, he remained loyal to the Burgtheater as a director during the era of his successor Claus Peymann. For example, he realized Nestroy’s “For Free” (1987) and Gorky’s “Children of the Sun” (1988). His Feydeau production “One Must Be Dumb” is documented in the Burgtheater DVD edition. In 1989 Benning accepted an appointment as director at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. There he premiered, among others, “The Last Guest” in 1990 and “The Envoy” by Thomas Hürlimann in 1991.
After a dispute with the Zurich city fathers about the theater’s financial resources, Benning threw in the towel in 1992, two years before the end of his contract. The specialist for Nestroy, Feydeau, Chekhov and Schnitzler then worked as a freelance director. Chekhov’s “Platonov” (1995), Nestroy’s “Talisman” (1993), Schnitzler’s “Professor Bernhardi” (1998) and “The Wide Land” (1999) as well as Ionesco’s “The Chairs” (1999) were shown at the castle and academy theater . Benning was appointed a chamber actor in 1976 and was awarded the Kainz Medal of the City of Vienna in 1981.
