Ein slacks in leather jacket; grinning seductively; with a steep frown line on his forehead that defies all the dirt in the world. So was his Volodya in “Unterwegs” by Victor Rosow: Dieter Mann’s debut in 1964 at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. A bittersweet love affair. A piece of self-discovery from the Soviet Union, spectacularly realistic for the time between euphoria and skepticism. Impetuous youth in departure and turmoil; then the hard landing on the ground of real socialist facts.
Eight years later, back in DT and again in a leather jacket, finally with “real” jeans. Because they weren’t trousers, but a setting for Edgar Wibeau in Ulrich Plenzdorf’s “The New Sorrows of Young W.” Again, as with Rosow, a piece of self-discovery, but with much less euphoria and much more skepticism. And even the pants are an affront to the Levis-free zone, with which the dropout and dropout in his alternative gazebo – a stubborn sensitive, an early green and autonomous – beat his forehead bloody and his heart sore. Dieter Mann made this Eddi a figure of identification that was deeply suspected “from above” and not only for young GDR citizens. And became the star of the Deutsches Theater.
The fact that two years later he sparked entertainment furor as a tap-dancing and all women crazy-flirting waiter Jean in the Kaiser Spolianski revue “Zwei Ties” as a carnivorous elegant in tails and top hat elevated him to a superstar – who can do almost anything.
Of course, this actor, who was already enormously confident early on, gave a damn about such brisk labels. He knew his worth. As a self-confessed perfectionist, he was one of the few who could still really speak without it appearing “spoken”. Even in the fast, brittle Berlin dialect, something artful rang through. And in the most artistic texts something of the Jedermann tone. Most important to him was comprehensibility. Precise service to the text. Mann, who was never keen on the game master’s post, likes to counter the “personal sensitivities” of many a director who prides himself on the author with Goethe: “If I’m supposed to listen to someone else’s opinion, it has to be expressed positively. I have enough problems within myself.”
Dieter Manns high art of speaking was one thing. The other is the play instinct. His agility, his charisma down to his fingertips; his almost sensational presence (not only on stage). But there was always something of calculated discipline about his art of transformation. This gave his characters a fine, often ironic detachment. Added to this was his seemingly casual insistence on the tragic point – or the tragic point – of a role. In addition to countless film and television jobs, there have been more than 60 at the DT, his declared home, in a good four decades.
Captain in a leaden sea
To celebrate the professional anniversary “40 years at the Deutsches Theater” in autumn 2004, Dieter Mann gave his Thomas Mann solo “Fülle des Wohllauts” from the “Magic Mountain”. A sparkling bravura, a precise virtuoso piece. At this great theater festival with the two Manns, well-wisher Frank Castorf bowed “in humility” to his temporary boss and deliberately quoted old-fashioned Schiller’s words about the holy serious and comforting play of art. The artistic director, then Bernd Wilms, then swore to the original head of the house, Max Reinhardt: The salvation of the theater came solely from the actor – not from the director.
Dieter Mann could have said the same thing. And this maxim also shaped his time as DT director, although: in the final phase of the GDR, up to the silent handover of this national tradition and GDR state theater to the post-reunification director Thomas Langhoff, it was less about technical finesse and more about programming (and on top of that social-psychological), i.e. about aesthetic-political fundamentals.
Dieter Mann / Photo 1977 Man, Dieter, actor. born June 20, 1941 in Berlin. – Dieter Mann in his apartment in East Berlin. – Photo, 1977.
Quelle: picture-alliance / akg-images
Dieter Mann was the last first man at the first theater in the GDR before it ended. A clever, eloquent, if necessary tough (or sly) and also irritatingly sharp-tongued captain in a rough (or even leaden) sea. A clever balancing act between ordered fidelity to the line and creative infidelity, critical closeness to the system and the same distance. Ultimately, however, he was always concerned with maximum truthfulness – and the imagination that artfully supports it. For this he brought Castorf and Heiner Müller to veterans like Friedo Solter, gave the up-and-coming Alexander Lang the air for his sarcastically profound productions, which finally made him famous.
When Rolf Winkelgrund staged Paul Claudel’s God-seeking “Mittagswende”, which Mann had previously enforced with “the authorities”, a SED theater professor who set the tone at the time delivered a programmatically intended slating. The comrade director then ostentatiously backed his director in the central organ of the East CDU, Neue Zeit, also with a programmatic intention: “We – not the theatre, but society – have underestimated the differentiated demands and needs for too long. The offer of the theater cannot be rich enough. I have something against the leveling and alignment of interests. I hate it when someone tries to make the world smaller for us,” he wrote.
At the beginning of September 1989, one of the then extremely rare public battles between the enlightened mind and the all-powerful one-party dogmatism. A remarkable advocacy of pluralism. For the freedom of art – at least for those in Dieter Mann’s area of responsibility.
So big so good
When, in the early 1990s, a shameless, inappropriate mockery about the fundamentally changed situation spread at the Planet Ex-GDR State Theater, Mann, whose artistic director had since become his friend and colleague Langhoff, reacted with his own cool, ironic composure. And shake your head. He used the opportunities of the new conditions to expand his sphere of action: played in Dresden, Hamburg, Vienna – always leading roles like Wallenstein, Nathan, Lear. Most recently even in the Berlin Volksbühne, the aesthetic counterpoint to DT: with Sophie Rois in Castorf’s absurdly messed-up production of Walter Mehring’s “Kaufmann von Berlin”.
In the meantime he has actually become the grand old gentleman of German-speaking theatre; which he found rather funny, by the way. However, he accepted the “Lord” with a wave. And he didn’t take long to ask him to do events that were rather unusual for him, for example with a countertenor, with Tchaikovsky and Pushkin. Or with Mark Twain, a sharp-thinking, sarcastically laughing brother in spirit. And with Twain’s little-known side as an enthusiastic lover, which both Twain and Mann were only too happy to put away. “You are so pure, so great, so good, so beautiful. Tell me, dear little goddess, how could I not worship you?” Let’s leave that as a nice last question.
Well, on Thursday, February 3, 2022, Dieter Mann died at the age of 80.