Theater der Welt in Berlin

ariner's signal flags in the Berlin streets announced the opening in June 1999 of the city's three-week Theater der Welt festival. Berlin, as the designated capital awaited the move of the federal government, was rather a stormy sea than a safe haven for theatre. The hosting of Germany's international theatre festival for the first time coincided with the final move of ministers and their armies of bureaucrats from Bonn to Berlin. Although the socalled Berlin Republic will partly be defined by its cultural aura, perhaps even invoking the status Berlin had in the 1920s, nobody dares to say if all this implies a return to the rigid centralization of cultural life of that earlier era. That Theater der Welt, a biennial or triennial festival which has moved from city to city since its inception in Hamburg in 1979, took place in the new capital is, of course, a sign of Berlin's growing importance in the life of the country.