“One Year, Fifty Years of fimt” serves as the guiding theme for a full year of events designed to highlight and communicate the institute’s research achievements of recent decades. The celebrations begin with a series of events centred on Richard Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival.
The anniversary year will officially open on 25 July at 11:00 a.m. with the vernissage of the student exhibition “KriegsFestSpiele. Reflections in the Bayreuth Press”. Using historical newspaper excerpts, the exhibition demonstrates how language, imagery, layout, and journalistic reporting were employed to shape the Festival as a platform for political messages and to transform its profile throughout the war years. It reveals how aesthetic choices and media strategies became intertwined with political objectives.
The exhibition was developed as an interdisciplinary project involving fimt (Prof. Dr Anno Mungen), the Institute of Franconian Regional History of the Universities of Bamberg and Bayreuth (Prof. Dr Astrid Swenson), and Bayreuth students from the Music Theatre and History programmes, in cooperation with the piano manufacturer Steingraeber & Söhne. Scenographer Valentine Koppenhöfer supported the team in the exhibition’s implementation. The exhibition can be visited from 25 July to 4 October at the Flügelhaus of Steingraeber & Söhne in Bayreuth.
The anniversary programme continues with the song recital “Revolution and Art”, focusing on the singer Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, on 26 July at Steingraeber & Söhne. On 23 August, the lecture-performance “Do You Know What It Was Like?” will take place at the Iwalewahaus, presenting findings and experiences from the historically informed performance of Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung. Further events will follow through to July 2027, including a new edition of the Thurnau Tanzboden, the conference “Women Composers for Opera?!”, and an alumni reunion. Full details of all events are available on the fimt website.
The anniversary year is supported by the City of Bayreuth as part of Festival150, the Upper Franconia Foundation (Oberfrankenstiftung), Almaviva e. V., the Thurnau Science Centre, and the Kulmbach Savings Bank Foundation (Sparkassenstiftung Kulmbach).
Admission to all events is free of charge.
