Fritzi Wartenberg (GER/AT)
Authors / Theater / Directors / Theater
is a director and playwright. She was born in Cologne and grew up in Salzburg, Austria. She studied Comparative Literature at the University of Vienna and theatre directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna.
During the 2022/23 season, Fritz Wartenberg was the in-house director at the Werkraum of the Berliner Ensemble as part of the one-year WORX residency; this was followed by productions of Ingeborg Bachmann’s *MALINA* and Max Frisch’s *BIEDERMANN AND THE ARSONISTS*.
As a co-founder of the FTZN collective, she also develops plays with a feminist focus [writing and directing].
Prizes/awards:
2025 – Kurt Hübner Directing Prize from the German Academy of Performing Arts and the City of Bensheim
2023 – Helene Weigel Theatre Prize
Selected direction projects
Turist / Force Majeure (germ.: Höhere Gewalt)
20.03.2026
Niedersächsisches Staatstheater Hannover
German-language premiere based on the film by Ruben Östlund
stage adaption by Tim Price
translated by Linda Kokkores
Directed by Fritzi Wartenberg
With dark humour, the classic image of a modern family is put to the test: Parents and children are on a skiing holiday, the idyllic atmosphere of which comes to an abrupt end when an avalanche comes rolling down whilst the family is having breakfast on the hotel terrace. Disaster is averted, but whilst the mother stands protectively in front of the children, the father instinctively makes a run for it, thereby putting his marriage to the test.
VOLKSVERNICHTUNG ODER MEINE LEBER IST SINNLOS AKADEMIETHEATER A Radical Comedy by Werner Schwab
October 18, 2025
Premiere: Burgtheater Wien
The Kurt Hübner Directing Prize, awarded by the German Academy of Performing Arts and the City of Bensheim, goes to Fritzi Wartenberg for her production of Werner Schwab’s radical comedy VOLKSVERNICHTUNG ODER MEINE LEBER IST SINNLOS at the Burgtheater in Vienna. “Fritzi Wartenberg’s directorial approach is fearless and incredibly clever,” explains jury member Almut Wagner.
ELISABETH! by Mareike Fallwickl
April 2025
World premiere: Burgtheater Wien
invited to Heidelberger Stückemarkt
JEEPS by Nora Abdel-Maksoud
February 26, 2025
Schauspiel Köln
The job center has a new assignment: with the help of an inheritance lottery, assets are expropriated and passed on to those in need, all in the name of an equal society! Here, in the overcrowded waiting room of such a job center, the long-term unemployed Maude meets Silke – and a surprising complicity begins.
With JEEPS, Nora Abdel-Maksoud addresses the topic of equal opportunities and social justice and uses humor to question a system which seemingly keeps on reproducing privileges and disadvantages.
THE ARSONISTS (dt. Biedermann und die Brandstifter) by Max Frisch
2024
Berliner Ensemble
Biedermann is outraged by the arsonists who have been starting fire everywhere – at least while he is at his local pub or on social media. But when they actually knock on his door, he politely asks them in, even though they make no attempt to hide their intentions. You have to have manners, after all. And you have to be civil: they are just two harmless peddlers. And if they aren’t, it’s better not to make an enemy of them. It would be unwise to afford that, even though you can afford (almost) everything else.
Written as a political parable, the play targets a mindset that contributes to the success of destructive forces. How does it happen? Why, what for and by who are the impulses to understand simply pushed aside?
MONTE ROSA by Teresa Dopler
May 2024
Theater Luzern, CH
Catharina Margaretha Linck was born in Gehofen, Thuringia, in 1687. At the age of 15, Linck took control of their life by breaking out of an orphanage and assuming a new identity as Anastasius Lagrantinus Rosenstengel, living life as a man from that moment on. They were subsequently drafted into the military, soon gained the reputation of a ladies’ man with the help of a “leather tool”, deserted the army, were sentenced to death, managed to escape, married young Catharina Mühlhahn, for which they ended up in court and were finally sentenced to death. Anastasius was the last person born as biologically female to be executed in Europe for fornication with another woman in 1721.
MALINA by Ingeborg Bachmann
March 2024
Berliner Ensemble
Catharina Margaretha Linck was born in Gehofen, Thuringia, in 1687. At the age of 15, Linck took control of their life by breaking out of an orphanage and assuming a new identity as Anastasius Lagrantinus Rosenstengel, living life as a man from that moment on. They were subsequently drafted into the military, soon gained the reputation of a ladies’ man with the help of a “leather tool”, deserted the army, were sentenced to death, managed to escape, married young Catharina Mühlhahn, for which they ended up in court and were finally sentenced to death. Anastasius was the last person born as biologically female to be executed in Europe for fornication with another woman in 1721.
ALIAS ANASTASIUS by Matter*Verse
2023
Berliner Ensemble
Catharina Margaretha Linck was born in Gehofen, Thuringia, in 1687. At the age of 15, Linck took control of their life by breaking out of an orphanage and assuming a new identity as Anastasius Lagrantinus Rosenstengel, living life as a man from that moment on. They were subsequently drafted into the military, soon gained the reputation of a ladies’ man with the help of a “leather tool”, deserted the army, were sentenced to death, managed to escape, married young Catharina Mühlhahn, for which they ended up in court and were finally sentenced to death. Anastasius was the last person born as biologically female to be executed in Europe for fornication with another woman in 1721.
THE WRITER by Ella Hickson
2022
Berliner Ensemble
„Director Fritzi Wartenberg, who is producing at the Berliner Ensemble as part of the “Worx” program to promote young talent, has turned the original [text] into an entertaining evening worth seeing, which in the end justifiably inspires enthusiasm in the Werkraum in the Berliner Ensemble’s new building.” – Berliner Morgenpost (quote originally in German)