22-07-2025
The Gift of a New Opera House, With a Grim Family History Attached
When the Hamburg State Opera's new general director, Tobias Kratzer, explained his plans to revitalize the company earlier this year, he said his first season was all about embracing risk.
As images of models dressed in gender-bending costumes flashed across the screen at a presentation in March, Kratzer outlined a season of reinvented classics and new commissions that combined avant-garde stagings with big political themes.
The creative shift is happening alongside an even riskier development for the institution: a flashy new opera house near the city's waterfront. Sitting alongside Kratzer, Hamburg's culture minister, Carsten Brosda, unveiled the plans for the new building, which is expected to cost approximately 340 million euros, around $394 million.
In a rarity for Germany, where flagship cultural projects are usually financed with public funds, the construction will be financed by a private benefactor. The city will only need to provide the land and some infrastructure, like flood protection measures. Brosda said it was 'incredible' that someone was willing to 'donate an opera house to a city.'
Brosda didn't mention that benefactor's name: Klaus-Michael Kühne, 88, a German billionaire. Nor did Brosda mention the controversy around the source of Kühne's fortune. His family's company, Kühne + Nagel, is one of the world's largest logistics firms, and collaborated with the Nazi regime to transport goods stolen from Jews during World War II.
Unlike the leadership of most other companies implicated in the crimes of the Third Reich, Kühne has resisted calls for an investigation by independent historians into its actions during the war and publicly stated that its behavior in the Nazi era is no longer relevant.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
