Stefan Schmidtke becomes Managing Director of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 GmbH

Stefan Schmidtke has been Managing Director of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 GmbH since 1 December 2021.

The internationally renowned cultural manager and programme maker comes from Döbeln and has managed outstanding cultural and theatre festivals in Europe and Germany in recent years.

Until the summer, the 52-year-old was the highly successful programme director of Germany's most important international theatre event, the Theater der Welt festival in Düsseldorf.
Stefan Schmidtke is one of the German cultural managers with a wealth of international founding and working experience. His career includes the founding and management of the Theaterformen festival in Hanover and Braunschweig, the development and management of the programme department of the European Capital of Culture 2011 in Tallinn and his many years of work as a curator at the Vienna Festival, most recently as Director of Drama. From 2016 to 2018, he was responsible for developing the programme and events department at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.

Lord Mayor Sven Schulze: "Stefan Schmidtke impressed the selection committee during the interviews and we are certain that, with his decades of experience in the international cultural arena, he will organise a wonderful Capital of Culture year based on our bid book. We will all support him and his team, which will clearly take shape in the coming weeks and months, in every possible way."

Stefan Schmidtke: "I am returning to my home country. Here I can create something wonderful and unique - never in my life would I have thought that I could give back all my experiences in this way to my homeland, which has shaped me.
My cultural journey began with Frank Castorf's production of DER BAU at the Chemnitz Theatre, and now I have been invited to help shape a European Capital of Culture with the people of Chemnitz, with the residents of the region, in the Czech Republic and in Poland. I am very grateful for this."

Almut Patt, representative of the city council on the selection committee and the supervisory board of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 GmbH: "In Stefan Schmidtke, we have been able to recruit a proven cultural manager with roots in the region for Chemnitz and the European Capital of Culture and we look forward to seeing how he, together with the stakeholders from Chemnitz, the region and Europe, will make the European Capital of Culture flourish."

Micaela Schönherr, Deputy Chairwoman of the Supervisory Board: "Experts and internationally well-connected specialists are exactly what we need for a successful Capital of Culture year in Chemnitz. When this coincides with someone from the region, it's all the better. I am delighted that in Stefan Schmidtke we have found such an expert for our favourite Capital of Culture project."

In the coming weeks and months, Stefan Schmidtke will work together with the founding Managing Director of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 GmbH, Dr Christoph Dittrich, to expand and build up the team in order to be able to present a foretaste of 2025 as early as next year.

Dr Christoph Dittrich: "As a cultural manager here in Chemnitz and Saxony, I am delighted that we have been able to recruit a first-class expert for our European Capital of Culture in Stefan Schmidtke. Over the coming months, I will be assisting him on an interim basis so that we can put together a high-calibre and efficient team for the GmbH - with regional expertise and international experience as well as passion and commitment to Chemnitz and the European Capital of Culture idea."

Stefan Schmidtke - Vita

Born in 1968 in Döbeln in Saxony, Stefan Schmidtke studied directing at the Russian Theatre Academy RATI-GITIS in Moscow. From 1996, he worked in a team with Thomas Ostermeier and Jens Hillje at the Baracke at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. In 1999, he directed at the Omsk Theatre in Siberia and directed a festival of German-language drama in St. Petersburg.

Under director Luc Bondy, he was artistic director of the "forumfestwochen ff" series at the Wiener Festwochen from 2002, and in 2007 and 2008 he was the new founder and artistic director of the Theaterformen festival in Hanover and Braunschweig. From 2008 to 2010, he set up the programme department for the European Capital of Culture Tallinn 2011. From 2011 to 2014, together with Almut Wagner, he headed the dramaturgy department at the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus under General Director Staffan Valdemar Holm. In 2014, he became Head of Drama and Chief Dramaturg at the Wiener Festwochen under Artistic Director Markus Hinterhäuser.

In 2017, he curated the Rolex Arts Weekend in Berlin, the presentation platform of the Rolex Mentor and Meisterschüler Initiative. Until 2018, he was Head of Programme and Events at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, which he had built up structurally since 2016. Most recently, Stefan Schmidtke was Programme Director of the international festival Theater der Welt Düsseldorf 2021.