2026 Konrad Wolf Prize awarded to Klaus Zehelein
26 Nov 2026, 7 pm

The jury consisted of the members of the Performing Arts Section: Nele Hertling, Mark Lammert and Dietmar Schwarz. With the award, the jury honours “one of the great figures of the post-war renewal of musical theatre, which reached an unrivalled high point in West Germany at the Städtische Oper Frankfurt from 1977 to 1987 under Michael Gielen as General Music Director and Klaus Zehelein as Chief Dramaturg, […] as an internationally recognised benchmark for musical theatre as a contemporary art form that remains valid to this day, and whose vitality and relevance to the present are rooted not least in the re-examination of the traditional repertoire. As Artistic Director of the Stuttgart State Opera from 1991 to 2006, Klaus Zehelein succeeded in renewing this new direction splendidly and sustainably, despite perhaps more challenging institutional conditions. […] His award also recognises him as a master of the art of facilitation – an art indispensable to the theatre – namely, bringing people together against the backdrop of an incorruptible quest for the truths of art and their communication and reception, fuelled by knowledge, a sense of the present and love.”

Named after the film director and long-standing president of the Akademie der Künste in East Germany, the Konrad Wolf Prize is awarded annually for outstanding artistic achievements in the fields of the performing arts or film and media arts, alternately by the Akademie’s two sections; most recently to Klaus Völker, as well as Gabriel Hageni and Debora Fiora from Berlin’s Krokodil cinema (2025), Julian Assange (2023), Achim Freyer (2022), Abderrahmane Sissako (2021) and Alexander Lang (2020).