Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: Full house at the funeral service for the deceased Bordel

Last curtain for theater veteran Wolfgang Bordel: At the funeral service on Sunday, the Anklam theater was occupied to the last seat. The 71-year-old longtime director died at the end of October.

Anklam (dpa / mv) – One last time the stage on Sunday belonged to him: Wolfgang Bordel. The theater community of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania commemorated the long-time director of the Vorpommersche Landesbühne, who died at the end of October, at a moving funeral service in the Anklam theater (Vorpommern-Greifswald district).

The theatre, which holds around 350 spectators, was filled to the last seat. Among the mourners were artistic companions and students from the Western Pomeranian Theater Academy, which he founded, as well as politicians such as Head of the State Chancellery Patrick Dahlemann and State Secretary for Western Pomerania Heiko Miraß (both SPD) and District Administrator Michael Sack (CDU). Bordel is to be laid to rest at a sea burial in the Baltic Sea this Monday.

Bordel, who died at the age of 71, invented the Vineta Festival 26 years ago, wrote the stories about the legendary sunken city for a long time and staged them himself. The Vineta Festival was the first summer open air festival in a theater in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. With the summer performances on Usedom and with other open airs, Bordel had saved the theater in the small town of Anklam over the years and significantly shaped the theater landscape in Western Pomerania. In 2020 he was awarded the culture prize of the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.

Bordel had a serious accident at the end of last year. After several months of rehabilitation measures, he visited the Vineta Festival in Zinnowitz again in August. Until recently he was active at the Vorpommersche Landesbühne, where he was director from 1983 to 2019.

Culture Minister Bettina Martin (SPD) said on the anniversary of Bordel’s death: “Wolfgang Bordel was a great theater maker and a formative head of the cultural scene in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. I am very sad about the news of his death.”