Prof. René Harder

René Harder was born in 1971 and grew up in Konstanz on Lake Constance. Since 1999, he has worked freelance at theaters in Hamburg, Görlitz, Leipzig, and Konstanz, as well as in film and television (ZDF/NDR/arte) as a director, author, and actor. He is the father of five children.

Education

1991 Abitur at the Waldorf School in Überlingen-Rengoldshausen. Studied acting and directing at the State Institute in St. Petersburg (Russia), acting course “Michael Chekhov Study Year” in Berlin, studies in applied theater studies in Gießen (with Heiner Goebbels, Jean-Marie Straub, among others). In 2000, graduated with a Diplom degree in directing from the Institute for Theatre, Music Theatre and Film at the University of Hamburg (with Jürgen Flimm, Anselm Weber, Christof Nel, Wolfgang Engel, Manfred Brauneck, among others).
 

Scholarships and awards

As a Paul Maar scholarship holder, René Harder took part in the playwrights’ workshop in Wolfenbüttel in 2002. In May 2006, he received a scholarship for the International Forum of the Berliner Festspiele at the Theatertreffen. In 2008, he received the Grenzgänger scholarship from the Robert Bosch Foundation in cooperation with the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin for research for the documentary film “The Keepers of the Tundra”.

His documentary film “Mr. Pilipenko and His Submarine,” co-directed with Jan Hinrik Drevs, won the Audience Award at the renowned film festival in Yamagata (Japan), the $5,000 “Best Documentary” award in Cleveland (USA), as well as the Intermedia-Globe Silver (Human Relations and Values) at the World Media Festival Hamburg 2007.
 

Teaching activity

In the winter semester 2004/05 and summer semester 2006, he was a visiting lecturer in theater at the Institute for Cultural Infrastructure Saxony (IKS), Görlitz/Zittau University of Applied Sciences. Since April 2008, he has been a university lecturer at Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences. In October 2008, he was appointed Professor of Acting with a focus on scene study and project development. From 2008 to 2016, he was head of the Acting Department and the Performing Arts faculty. Since 2021, Harder has been head of the performArt degree program.

After engaging with classical plays such as “Electra” by Sophocles (studio production at Zeisehallen, guest performances in Bremen, Zurich, Potsdam, Kassel) or Kleist’s “Käthchen von Heilbronn” (Kammerspiele Hamburg), René Harder increasingly came to prominence with plays that he wrote himself or developed with the ensemble. The play “Kalte Platte” (Thalia Theater Hamburg/TiK) with the homeless theater group Obdach-Fertik-Los received great acclaim from audiences and the media in 1998. 

“Children of Music. Or What It Means to Play Wieniawski” was invited to numerous festivals, including the premiere festival of the Heidelberger Stückemarkt 2006, where the first performance in Polish also took place on May 8 on the main stage. It was an official part of the Görlitz/Zgorzelec bid to become European Capital of Culture 2010 (Görlitz was ultimately nominated in second place behind Essen), as was the walk-through audio play “Geh-Hör-Gang” (72 min.), which leads through the historic old town of Görlitz to the Holy Sepulchre. The latter was selected for the international radio play competition at the Leipzig Book Fair in 2006.

Harder writes his plays, which are represented by Drei-Masken-Verlag, predominantly on commission. In 2007, he wrote “Kampfgruppe Benz” for the Konstanz Municipal Theatre. His play “All or Nothing” for Theater Görlitz premiered in 2009 on the historic “Untermarkt” marketplace and was restaged in 2010. In April 2013, “Ash Gray Iridescent. The Debut between Dream and Crisis” premiered at Theater Bonn (Werkstatt), directed by Dominik Schiefner.

On February 24, 2011, the Rudolf Steiner Express, a special cultural train, set off in Cologne. In the 150th anniversary year of the Austrian philosopher and founder of anthroposophy, it visited the most important stages of his life and work. René Harder initiated and directed the event at Cologne Central Station, which was staged for the “train christening” on the Domplatte and in the station.

In collaboration with Jan Hinrik Drevs, “Mr. Pilipenko and His Submarine” was created in 2005/06 and was invited to numerous festivals, including the Edinburgh International Film Festival (UK), The World Film Festival Montreal (Canada), and Filmfest München. It won awards at film festivals in Cleveland (USA), Yamagata (Japan), and Hamburg (see Scholarships and awards).

In 2008, his documentary “Mr. Pilipenko and the Red Carpet,” about the traces the film project left behind in the filming location of Yevhenivka (Ukraine), was shown at the Nordic Film Days.

Before that, he directed and wrote screenplays for short films (“nah dran” and “Der erste Blick”, festival participation: Nordic Film Days Lübeck 2003, among others) and corporate films (including for dm-drogeriemarkt).

From 2007 to 2012, René Harder researched and filmed the German-Norwegian co-production “The Keepers of the Tundra” (Lichtblick Film and relation04  in collaboration with ZDF/Arte), which premiered in 2013 at the Locarno International Film Festival. In 2015, the film was released in cinemas throughout Germany.