AUTHOR Sebastian Goettling
PUBLISHED 21. FEB 2025
Prehistory
The theaters in post-war Lüdenscheid were part of a history of makeshift solutions. In the 1960s, the Lüdenscheid cultural community used the Belgian garrison’s park theater – but this was only permitted on Wednesdays, and the theater was too small and there was a constant smell of chlorine in the air due to the swimming pool, which was also in the building – or the auditorium of the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium – also too small – or the Schützenhalle am Loh – great for gala balls, less good for cultural events that require stage equipment.
The Hagen Theater was also an important stage for Lüdenscheid’s culture enthusiasts. The new building of the Municipal Gymnasium (now Bergstadt-Gymnasium) raised hopes in the 1970s, but its second construction phase – an indoor swimming pool and an auditorium suitable for a theater – was never started.
The connection to the motorway in 1968 provided the decisive impetus. Hagen could now be reached even more quickly, so Lüdenscheid’s retail and culture had to become radically more attractive so that the population was not “sucked away” by the neighboring city. This included the creation of a pedestrian zone from 1969, the infrastructural equalization of the inner city by tunneling under the town hall square in the mid-70s – and the creation of Sauerfelder Strasse, a parallel axis to the inner city, the upper part of which was to become a cultural center with museums and a cultural center.
Much of the existing building material disappeared for the building: the Concordia social center, the old Volksbank, parts of the Gerhardi company complex and its parking lot, the Klefinghaus company, a car dealership and a residential building in which the Hohage couple had run a corner shop for 30 years. During construction, an unknown air raid shelter was discovered and demolished. The rocky subsoil was so hard in places that many explosions had to be carried out. Two harsh winters caused the schedule to fall significantly behind schedule.
Construction and opening
First council resolution “Bergstadthalle”: November 1964, 17 years before opening
Architects: Planning group Gutbrod, Billing, Peters, Ruff
Start of construction: Summer 1978
Cost: 30 million DM
Opening evening: Friday, November 6, 1981
Architecture
The contract was awarded to the planning group Gutbrod, Billing, Peters, Ruff, with the latter, Nikolaus Ruff, being the architect in charge of construction. The surrounding church buildings were to remain dominant, so a high stage tower was not possible; instead, it was “sunken” at the lowest point of the site. The stage is surrounded by one- to three-story components that “create close contact with the existing building structure.” In order to take the massiveness out of the large building volume, the building sections are heavily subdivided, and the different roof pitches create the characteristic shape. This structure of the building is derived on the one hand from musical rhythm, and on the other hand from structures that represent human movements – all with contrasting forms, colors and materials (e.g. exposed concrete and wood). Bringing three aspects together harmoniously was particularly important to Ruff:
1) The mutual, democratic understanding of the needs of all those involved in the project
2) the pure usefulness of the building
3) the taking up of human needs and positive feelings.
The facade of the Berlin Philharmonic Hall was also a model. Ruff is an anthroposophist, he follows the spiritual-esoteric worldview of Rudolf Steiner, which brings together Christian mysticism with Far Eastern teachings and sees a supernatural-magical world behind the real world, which rational science cannot recognize. This worldview gave rise to Waldorf education on the one hand, and to Michael Ende’s youth literature on the other, and to anthroposophical architecture, of which the cultural center is a representative. In this style, elements of expressionism and art nouveau meet organic forms.
Originally, the building complex was supposed to be even bigger with an attached ballroom, music school and studio apartments. Instead, the city garden was created.In 1983, the building won the Concrete Architecture Prize. From the justification: “The architects of the building demonstrated above all imagination in their use of materials. The most diverse building materials, which owe their use on the one hand to their economic efficiency and practicality, but on the other hand also to their appearance, for example their lively, ‘speaking’ surface structure, create very individual tones in their interaction with the spatial compositional polyphony.”