Horst Johanning

Horst Johanning was born in 1942 in Herzberg am Harz, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The General-Anzeiger Bonn reported that he first studied philosophy and theatre studies at universities in Göttingen and Berlin. He then moved to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover to train in the theatre. His exact date of birth has not been published in the reports of his death.

Johanning first stood on the stage of the Contra-Kreis-Theater in Bonn as an actor in 1966. In 1980 he took over the theatre's leadership as artistic director and managing director together with his partner Katinka Hoffmann, and the two ran it together until her death in 2021. He then led it alone.

As a freelance actor and director he staged well over 200 productions at theatres in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and directed plays for touring companies and for television. He was regarded as a specialist in comedy but also directed more demanding drama, among them Peter Handke's Kaspar with the young Martin Schwab, who later became a leading member of the Vienna Burgtheater ensemble. The theatre named Nicole Heesters, Charles Regnier, Sonja Ziemann, Hans-Jürgen Bäumler, Heide Keller, Horst Janson, Jochen Busse and Christian Wolff among the stage and screen stars who worked with him, many of whom became friends. He also discovered and encouraged young talent, including Til Schweiger at the start of his career.

Johanning worked as a translator of plays and served in the presidium of the Deutscher Bühnenverein, the federal association of theatres and orchestras, where he was vice president until 2017 and spokesman for the private theatres from 2001 to 2017. He helped secure the inclusion of the German theatre and orchestra landscape in the national register of intangible cultural heritage. For more than ten years he was also involved in training acting students at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences in Alfter.

Under his direction the Contra-Kreis programme mixed boulevard comedies, society plays and light thrillers, which the General-Anzeiger described as never merely pleasing and always with depth. In 2025 the theatre was given notice on its premises and began looking for a new venue.

For decades Johanning's partner in life and work was Katinka Hoffmann, the long-serving director of the Contra-Kreis-Theater, who died in 2021 at the age of 83. The theatre described Jessica Hoffmann as the daughter of Katinka Hoffmann and Horst Johanning. He lived for the theatre, in the words of the Contra-Kreis, both for theatre in general and for the Contra-Kreis in particular.

The Contra-Kreis-Theater announced on the early evening of Tuesday 13 October 2026 that Horst Johanning had died at the age of 84. The theatre did not publish the exact date or place of his death, and no cause of death was made public. The General-Anzeiger Bonn called him a great Bonn theatre maker who shaped the city's cultural life like hardly anyone else. The theatre said performances would continue with the season he had planned, which would have been in keeping with his wishes, and that Jessica Hoffmann would take over as interim director while a new leadership structure was decided.

Johanning led the Contra-Kreis-Theater for more than 40 years and, with Katinka Hoffmann, made it a fixture of cultural life in Bonn with a reputation for sold-out comedies. The theatre itself called him a theatre legend. Beyond Bonn, his long service with the Deutscher Bühnenverein made him one of the leading voices of Germany's private theatres, work recognised in 2021 with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.