Admin l Monday, February 13, 2023
BERLIN – An art critic from one of Germany’s top newspapers was smeared with dog poo by a ballet director at a premiere in the state theatre of the northern city of Hanover.
The critic from the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Wiebke Hüster, told dpa she had filed a formal complaint against director Marco Goecke.
The FAZ slammed the weekend’s attack in an article on Monday: “We take the deliberate disparagement and humiliation resulting from the premeditated excrement attack very seriously,” it wrote.
The Hanover state theatre also confirmed the incident at the premiere of the ballet “Faith – Love – Hope” on Saturday and apologized. The statement said that employment law measures are now being investigated against Goecke.
“The incident sheds light, in a frighteningly real way, on what is apparently now often thought and said about criticism and critics in art circles,” the FAZ article continued.
“Goecke’s crossing of boundaries reveals the disturbed relationship of an artist to criticism,” wrote the newspaper.
Frank Rieger, regional chairman of the German Journalists’ Association (DJV) in Lower Saxony, called the incident an attack on freedom of the press.
