INA8

Culture

Bremen can justifiably claim to be a city of culture. Avante-garde and Old Masters, large-scale theatre and drama workshops, classical concerts and contemporary sounds, tradition and provocation, established customs and delight in experimentation are all represented here. Bremen's theatres, museums, concert halls and art collections offer an inexhaustible diversity with regard to both the artistic spectrum they cover and the cultural events they put on.

Museums

Your journey through foreign lands and continents begins in Bremen, right next to the main station - at the Überseemuseum. Once a collection of exotic items brought back from the colonies, it now invites visitors to make a sensitive approach to overseas cultures, and to encounter the realities of life outside Europe. The exhibits are presented in a fantastic ambience, ranging from Japanese gardens to African village scenes to a comprehensive trip round the world through space and time.

The oceans beckon just 60 kilometres away. They too are condensed into museum format in a way that is unparalleled throughout Germany. At the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven, the seafaring tradition is preserved with original veteran ships in their own museum harbour, and with the legacies of famous ships and seafarers. This is all compressed into a longing look back over mankind's history on the water. The Bremen Museum of Art and Cultural History deals solely with the history of Bremen - and is none the less exciting for that. Here, too, the visitor will discover highlights: the collections of crafts, for example, and the vividly told story of Bremen's emergence as an international seaport over the centuries.

Theatre

The term "Bremen Style" refers to the originality of Bremen's productions. They are usually more spectacular than elsewhere, almost always more ambitious, sometimes controversial. But they always get noticed and are often rewarded with requests for guest performances. Opera, drama, and ballet are committed to both the experimental and the classical repertoire. Shakespeare is a permanent feature of Bremen's theatre programme. The Bremer Shakespeare Company has dedicated a whole theatre to the English dramatist and created a theatre of sheer joie-de-vivre. Shakespeare at its best, presented as Elizabethan folk theatre with baroque magnificence and sensuality. The theatre has long since gained an international reputation.

Art collections

The Neues Museum Weserburg sets new standards. Outstanding contemporary works from the world's leading private collections are gathered here to form Europe's most representative display of modern art, presented in a new kind of museum. This is a highlight that has few equals. One of them is the Kunsthalle with its respected collection of German and French Impressionists. Small but beautiful are the words that describe Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, a building that houses the sculptor's legacy and enjoys a high profile as a place for superb exhibitions. And something you will find only in Bremen - the art collections in Böttcherstrasse, which include the most significant works by Paula Becker- Modersohn, Heinrich Vogeler, Bernhard Hoetger and others whose previously unrecognised work now has an international reputation.

Music

Beethoven provided the crucial impulse. In 1802, he gave his first symphony its world premiere in Bremen - other premieres followed. Musical tradition is nurtured in Bremen - by the Philharmonische Staatsorchester, for example and, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, a particularly notable ensemble that enjoys an excellent international reputation in the field of chamber music. Internationality is a seal of quality at the Bremen Music Festival. This highlight of the Bremen music season is held in autumn every year and sets the highest possible standards with concerts by the most brilliant orchestras, the most famous conductors and soloists.

Bremen - two cities, one state and a cultural centre full of things to discover.

(C) 1996 Senatskanzlei (Bremen Werbung).

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[INA8][Organizing committee][Division of Micropalaeontology][Department of Geosciences][Bremen University][City of Bremen][INA Europe][INA USA]

Copyright © 1998, most recent revision 29. August 1998
Tania Hildebrand-Habel (hiha@micropal.uni-bremen.de)