Save the date! 23.06.2026
Abstract: As a form of puppet theatre, Karagöz has survived to the present day through its rich textual, literary, iconographic, dramatic, and performative elements. Various sources, communities, cultural mediators, and practitioners made the preservation and transmission of Karagöz heritage possible. While the professional transmission of Karagöz performance remained predominantly within male circles until the twenty-first century, many of its cultural, musical, narrative, and performative layers were also shaped by women’s practices, and modes of transmission within other performative and dramatic traditions. Drawing from her own artistic and research-based experience, Nazlı M. Ümit explores a historical framework of Turkish puppetry extending from female puppeteers in the seventeenth-century Ottoman harem to women’s puppet performances in Anatolian villages, and from there to contemporary engagements with Karagöz. Within this context, she discusses how contemporary practitioners negotiate women’s roles as Karagöz puppeteers.

Bio: Nazlı M. Ümit (Dr.) is an independent researcher, Karagöz puppeteer, and theatre practitioner. Her recent research focuses on Turkish puppetry in the contexts of historiography, iconography, and under-researched repertoires. She is the founder of Sirkeci Theatre, which aims to reconstruct and stage lost or scarcely known texts through research and performance-based approaches. She studied under Alpay Ekler, a Karagöz master designated as a Living Human Treasure (UNESCO), and she is officially acknowledged by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Türkiye as a Karagöz practitioner within the scope of Intangible Cultural Heritage. She currently serves as the chair of the UNIMA International Heritage Commission.

Enes Türkoğlu M.A. übernimmt zum 01.03.2026 die Leitung unserer Abteilung für Digital Humanities.

Digital Humanities spielen als Forschungsfeld in der Theaterwissenschaftlichen Sammlung eine zentrale Rolle. Zum einen benötigt eine Sammlung dieser Größe eine differenzierte Digitalstrategie, zum anderen sind die Katalogisierung, Digitalisierung und Datensicherung von Sammlungsobjekten anhaltende und sich in ihrer Form ständig ändernde Arbeitsbereiche. Daher beschäftigt sich die TWS nicht nur mit den täglichen digitalen Prozessen der Sammlungsarbeit, sondern unterstützt und führt auch Forschungsprojekte, die das Potenzial des Digitalen erproben.

Enes Türkoğlu übernimmt diesen wechselreichen Arbeitsbereich als Leiter der Abteilung Digital Humanities. Er ist seit 2014 im Kontext verschiedener Projekte Mitarbeiter der Sammlung und lehrt u. a. am Institut für Digital Humanities der Universität zu Köln. Sein Forschungsschwerpunkt liegt in der Erfassung und Digitalisierung heterogener Objektarten sowie der digitalen Sichtbarmachung ihrer kulturhistorischen Kontexte. Seit 2022 beschäftigt er sich zudem intensiv mit der Datenkuratierung bezüglich der TWS-Bestände, um einen zentralen Zugang der Katalogdaten zu ermöglichen.

Das neueste Kooperationsprojekt aus der Abteilung ist die Teildigitalisierung der Sammlung Werner Nekes, gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Für dieses Projekt übernimmt Enes Türkoğlu die Projektkoordination, Datentransformation und Prozessleitung.

Wir wünschen ihm viel Erfolg auf der neuen Position und freuen uns auf die Zusammenarbeit!
→ Profil Enes Türkoğlu

To mark the Open Day on 2 November 2025, TWS proudly presented its newly printed annual calendar.
Alongside a visual retrospective of this event, we would also like to draw attention to our calendar here.

The collection team explored the holdings to trace and highlight the diverse contributions of women in theatre history: on stage as well as behind the scenes, for example as stage and costume designers. Look forward to enchanting costume figurines, often forgotten artists, and innovative stage designs. These selections reflect both the diversity of the TWS materials and theatre-historical anniversaries, which are contextualized in the short texts on the back of each calendar page. Gabriele Schmidt, like Erna Bergmayer—whose designs have been shown several times before—worked in the 1920s for the famous Atelier Hugo Baruch and left behind a group of charming and idiosyncratic figurines.

If you are interested in purchasing the calendar but were unfortunately unable to attend the Open Day, we would be happy to send you the 2026 calendar for €12. Please contact us by email if you would like to order a copy.

Am 2. November 2025 öffnet die TWS ab 11 Uhr das Schloss und ihre Archivräume für alle Interessierten. 
Bestaunen Sie Neuzugänge, aktuelle Projekte und ausgewählte Objekte der Sammlungen Werner Nekes (Sensationen des Sehens!) und Huber (Zauberei!). Erkunden Sie die Originale zu den Abbildungen unseres neuen Jahreskalenders, den Ihnen das Team der TWS druckfrisch präsentiert.

Um 12 Uhr, 13 Uhr und 14 Uhr bieten wir Ihnen Führungen durch unsere Archivräume, für die wir – für eine bessere Planung – um Voranmeldung mit Uhrzeit bei Frau Schorner bitten: kschorne(at)uni-koeln(dot)de
15.30 Uhr entführt ein Filmprogramm Sie in die Vergangenheit des Instituts für Medienkultur und Theater (einst: Theater, Film und Fernsehen): Zu Ehren Elmar Bucks (1945–2025), der von 1979 bis 2010 Direktor der TWS war, werden Filme gezeigt, die in der von ihm gegründeten Videoabteilung des Instituts entstanden.

Wir freuen uns auf Ihren Besuch!

On 2 November 2025, we are delighted to invite you to an open day at the Theatre Studies Collection! 
In the beautiful rooms of Wahn Castle, you will be able to admire materials from the TWS – new acquisitions, current and completed projects, and much more. 
Guided tours of the building are also on the programme, for which we ask that you register in advance.

More details will follow. For now, just save the date! 
We would be delighted if you could mark the date in your calendars, spread the word, and come along!

Today, Friday, 22 August, Hansgünther Heyme turns 90. TWS sends its warmest congratulations!
Hansgünther Heyme has had a lasting impact on cultural life in Germany during his long career as a director, actor and theatre manager. His art, which he always understood as political and as work, continued the tradition of director's theatre from the Weimar Republic – also biographically, as Heyme began his career as an assistant to Erwin Piscator, among others. 
After starting out as resident director and senior director in Wiesbaden, he moved to Cologne in 1968, where he remained until 1979. This was followed by directorships in Stuttgart, Essen, Bremen and Ludwigshafen.
His often controversial productions emphasised the political dimension of the theatre texts – such as »Hamlet« in Cologne in 1979, which he staged in a set designed by the artist Wolf Vostell as a parable on the omnipresence of the media and media surveillance: When Hamlet, played by Wolfgang Robert, loses his voice after encountering the ghost, it is replaced by Heyme's own voice – first abstractly via microphone, but eventually also by the doubling of bodies, which ultimately become a stage character.

We are very proud that Hansgünther Heyme has donated his personal archive to TWS. Numerous materials and sources allow us to understand the breadth and diversity of his artistic work. 
The book Theater! Arbeit! Heyme! (published by Theater der Zeit in 2015) provides an insight into his fascinating work.

Happy birthday, Hansgünther Heyme!

On 31 July 2025, American theatre director Robert Wilson passed away at the age of 84. Since the 1970s, Wilson had shaped international theatre life with his distinctive stage aesthetics. His name is particularly closely associated with the concept of post-dramatic theatre.
In 1984, Robert Wilson staged the CIVIL wars at the Schauspiel Köln – a broad historical panorama for which Heiner Müller wrote text elements.
In 2001, the Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung (Theatre Studies Collection) acquired a collection of 80 works by Robert Wilson, including sketches for the Cologne production. Wilson created the above logo for an exhibition of these works, supplemented by other items from the TWS collection, primarily photographs by Hermann & Clärchen Baus.

We mourn the loss of a great artist.