POINT OF INTEREST

Hjemmet

Marienstraße 20, 24939 Flensburg

Marienstrasse 20 has been the home of the Danish-language “Det Lille Teater” (The Little Theatre) since 1966. “Hjemmet” (homeland) was built around 1849 and can also look back on a “Danish” past since the 1920s.

The Danish minority’s “Det Lille Teater” has performed plays for over 50 years in the building complex, which was renovated in 2011 with the support of the Danish shipping group A.P. Möller, Danfoss, a Danish fund and the Danish youth organisation SDU. A group of lay actors performs not only works of Danish authors, but also classic German plays by Dürrenmatt and Tucholski for example as well as pieces of Molière and Ionesco. Originally, a doctor lived in the building[1], which was constructed in 1840 after the demolition of Marientor. Later, the editor of the à Flensborg Avis, Jens Jessen, resided there up to 1906. After the plebiscite in Schleswig in 1920, Hjemmet was used by the Danish school Duborg-Skolen[2], which at that time was the first Danish secondary school, up to 1923. Before then and later, it was used for Danish youth work. The establishment of a theatre association in the house known as “Hjemmet” (homeland) fulfilled the wishes of dedicated lay actors to have their own fixed venue. However, the dramatic nature of life was not reflected merely in the productions that were presented – in November 1938, relatives of Alexander Wolff, the Jewish owner of à Jägerslust farm, found temporary refuge from the Nazis in “Hjemmet”. Today, about 80 percent of the visitors are Danes from the homeland and only 20 percent are members of the local ethnic minority. The theatre is now considering presenting plays in German as well in the future – to act as an intermediary between Germans and Danes[3].