MISS MINISTER – A solo piece by and starring Jule Torhorst

The world premiere on Friday 13 January 2023 at the Theater unterm Dach in Berlin was celebrated with three sold-out performances. This has been followed by numerous successful guest performances in Berlin, Saxony, Bavaria and Brandenburg to date.

Who knows who Germany’s first female minister was? Dr Marie Torhorst (1888–1989) served as Minister for Public Education in Thuringia for the SED from 1947 to 1950. She was Germany’s first female minister after the Second World War.

Actress Jule Torhorst now recounts the extraordinary life story of her great-great-aunt, who lived through four political systems. A fascinating piece of history that resonates with the present day.

2026: The film *Vaterland*, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski, recounts Thomas Mann’s journey from exile to post-war, divided Germany. Thomas Mann, played by Hanns Zischler, is accompanied here by his daughter, played by Sandra Hüller.

Through artistic licence, the wife Erika is replaced here by the daughter. And the first female Minister for Public Education in Thuringia, Dr Marie Torhorst, is replaced by a Soviet general.

1947. Dr Marie Torhorst is elected Minister for Education on the recommendation of the SED. Germany’s first female minister at state level – and yet she remains virtually unmentioned in the historiography of the post-Reunification era. Is historical memory, our collective memory, predominantly shaped from a Western perspective?

Whilst researching the period of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the post-reunification era, the actress Jule Torhorst comes across the biography of her great-great-aunt, Dr Marie Torhorst, and this inevitably raises many questions. How does leadership differ in the East and West? What different forms of emancipation, within two distinct systems of government and values, do we encounter?

How can leadership succeed when one has to balance career, private life and family? And: Is what we are currently experiencing in Europe the showdown of the patriarchal system?

Together with director Angela Hundsdorfer and Polish dramaturg Elzbieta Bednarska, she sets out in search of the life stories of women from East and West, and of archetypes and myths of women throughout the ages. Jule Torhorst gives them a voice and unites them into a chorus whose power is greater than that of her own life story.

A personal exploration of one of the most pressing questions facing our society.

“The masculine as the measure of all that is human simply creeps in gradually.” (Barbara Sichtermann)

Cast

• Text and performance: Jule Torhorst
• Text and direction: Angela Hundsdorfer
• Music: Tammo Messow
• Set and costume design: Jane Saks
• Puppet design: Larissa Jenne
• Consultant: Elżbieta Bednarska
• Assistant: Neïtah Janzing

An evening featuring texts by the Torhorst women, from the Stasi archives, Ödön von Horváth, Alfred Döblin, Simone de Beauvoir, Christa Wolf and Hendrik Bolz.

Tickets

You can find tickets here

Berlin Freedom Week | visitberlin.live