Dates of creation: 1960/1961 Democratic Republic of Germany, 1972 Federal Republic of Germany
c/o Theater der Nacht, Obere Strasse 1, D-37154
37154
NORTHEIM
Germany
+49 5551 908 07 79
www.facebook.com/unima.deutschland/
Presentation
Brief history
Germany was a founding member of UNIMA. German assemblies of puppeteers in Magdeburg (1927) and in Baden-Baden (1928) were the precondition for the establishment of UNIMA. When UNIMA was reborn in 1957, Germany was a participating member.
Germany hosted the 7th World Congress of UNIMA 1960 in Bochum and Brunswick, the 9th World Congress 1966 in Munich, the 14th World Congress 1984 in Dresden (East Germany) and the 18th Congress 2000 in Magdeburg. In 2018 the councillors meeting took place in Bochum.
Because of the division of Germany, there were two German centres at first. The East German UNIMA Centre was founded in 1960/1961. The West German with West-Berlin UNIMA was founded in 1972 by Ludwig Krafft and Dr. Hans Purschke and rebuilt in October 1977 under the leadership of Gisela (Heidi) Lohmann and Dr. Gerd Mensching.
After the German reunification, the East and the West German UNIMA Centres merged in 1991 to a single association titled UNIMA Germany – UNIMA Zentrum Bundesrepublik Deutschland under the chairmanship of Dieter Brunner and Dr. Gerd Taube.
Since then, UNIMA Germany was led by Dr. Gerd Taube (1994-1997), Dieter Brunner again (1997-1998), Dr. Christian Noack (1998-2003) and Stephan Schlafke (2003-2015). Since 2015 Ruth Brockhausen is the chairwoman.
UNIMA Germany has currently six working groups: amateurs, shadow theatre, puppetry in education, puppetry in therapy, science and research, next generation.
Important projects and achievements
A remarking project of the German Centre was the implementation of the Road of Puppetry in cooperation with the European Commission.
UNIMA Germany also supported the creation of new puppetry museums such as: Kolk 17 Figurentheater & Museum in Lübeck, PuK in Bad Kreuznach, Villa p. in Magdeburg and the International Shadow Theatre Centre (Internationales Schattentheaterzentrum) in Schwäbisch Gmünd.
After the outbreak of the Ukrainian war in 2022, UNIMA Germany featured the project (e)merge to support Ukrainian puppeteers.
Since 2016 always in august UNIMA Germany is co-organisator of the international Figurentheater-Konferenz with symposiums and workshops. In addition the German-English notebook with scientific contributions will be published.
Since 1990 twice a year UNIMA Germany publishes it’s own magazine Das andere Theater (DaT).
