It's official: Stefan Schmidtke is the Managing Director of the European Capital of Culture 2025 GmbH.
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.
From 1 December 2021, he will take over the duties of the previous interim Managing Director, Dr Christoph Dittrich. In the coming weeks and months, Stefan Schmidtke will work with 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.
His central tasks will also include implementing and organising the programmatic ideas of the Bidbook. "The programme is our heart and soul. And we use it to create the structures with the Chemnitz players," says Schmidtke. "The equal representation search committee voted unanimously in his favour," emphasised Dr Micaela Schönherr, member of the Supervisory Board, at the press conference.
born in Döbeln in 1968, Stefan Schmidtke is a German cultural manager with a wealth of international start-up and work experience. His career includes founding and managing the Theaterformen festival in Hanover and Braunschweig, setting up and managing the programme department of the European Capital of Culture 2011 in Tallinn and his many years of work as a curator at the Wiener Festwochen 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.
Stefan Schmidtke: "I am returning to my home country. I can create something wonderful and unique here - 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 that."
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."
Lord Mayor Sven Schulze: "Stefan Schmidtke really 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."
