Nacht der Bibliotheken im TMD

In the organizer's words:

The library of the TMD Theatermuseum Hofgartenhaus Düsseldorf is taking part in the Night of Libraries 2025!

Our program for children, book rats, history buffs and cooking fans: Afternoon program for children from 5 and evening program from 7 pm.

Afternoon program for children from 5 years

4-8 p.m.: Ex-libris made by yourself
Bookplates are stamps or slips of paper glued into books to indicate ownership. They can have very different designs and often also provide information about those who mark their books in this way and their very specific relationship to their collection.

5 pm & 6 pm: The rooster is loose! - Activity with folding puppet for ages 5 and up
A rooster who set out to become a world-famous opera singer? Yes, what's going on there? The rooster of the great actress Louise Dumont takes you on an adventurous journey. He tells you how he made it from the idyllic Sonnenholz in Bavaria to the big theater stage in Düsseldorf.

Evening program

7 & 10 p.m.: Searching for traces in the library and collection
Guided tour through the permanent exhibition on the history of the Dumont-Lindemann Archive and the museum library In the exhibition, visitors can see a selection of diverse objects from the archive's collection, meet companions of the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf and browse through archival documents from its history. Together with the archive, the library of Louise Dumont and Gustav Lindemann was also handed over, which is still being expanded today as a special scientific and museum library and is open to the public.

8 pm: Theater for a better Germany: Wolfgang Langhoff - Lecture by Esther Slevogt (nachtkritik.de)
Lecture as part of the Rreihe as part of "Düsseldorf remembers - 80 years of the end of the war and liberation"
In the winter of 1945, Wolfgang Langhoff became the first post-war director of the Städtische Bühnen Düsseldorf. Even before 1933, he had been one of the most prominent actors in Düsseldorf at Louise Dumont's Schauspielhaus. As a communist, he had also worked on new, activist and free theater formats: Agitprop theater was the name of the game at the time. After the Reichstag fire in 1933, he was arrested in Düsseldorf, followed by torture and imprisonment in a concentration camp. He managed to escape to Switzerland in 1934. Langhoff returned to Düsseldorf in 1945. Here, his communist comrades-in-arms and friends from the years before 1933, who had gone through hell with him in the concentration camp, were appointed to political office by the British occupying forces. For example, the artist Hanns Kralik, who was now the communist head of cultural affairs in Düsseldorf and campaigned for Langhoff's appointment as artistic director. Now at last, they all hoped, they would be able to realize their plans for a better Germany, which had been so brutally thwarted by the Nazis. The lecture provides insights into an unknown chapter of German-German post-war history.

21:30-22:30: Ex-libris made by yourself
Bookplates are stamps or notes glued into books that identify ownership. They can have very different designs and often also provide information about those who mark their books in this way and their very specific relationship to their collection.

10 p.m.: For the Chef in a Pot - Recipes from Louise Dumont's cookbook For Two in a Pot
In 1912, Ernst Ohle's Düsseldorf publishing house published the cookbook Für Zwei in einem Topf. One of the two authors was no stranger, but the actress and founder of the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, Louise Dumont, who was in demand throughout Europe. Together with Emmy Rotth, she wrote a so-called "Kitchen philosophy and practice in six courses". The recipes were aimed at working women who needed to be able to prepare recipes pragmatically and with little effort. For the Night of Libraries, the director of the Hofgartenhaus Düsseldorf theater museum, Sascha Förster, is now taking on this cookbook and will be cooking some of the recipes in an interactive cooking show and talking about Louise Dumont in the process. The biggest challenge of the evening? The chef may be able to interpret historical sources, but recipes remain a mystery to him.

Our bar is open.