Volker Hesse

Volker Hesse
Volker Hesse (left) with at the Theater Neumarkt, Zürich (1993)
Born	30 December 1944 Hunsrück, Germany
Occupation	Theatre director

Volker Hesse (born 30 December 1944) is a German Theatre producer. Between 2001 and 2006 he was the Theatrical Director at Berlin's Maxim Gorki Theater. More recently he has been working in Switzerland.

Volker Hesse was born in the Hunsrück region to the west of Frankfurt. His father was the opera director Rudolf Hesse. His time as a student at Cologne and then Vienna covered Theatre studies, German studies and Philosophy. He received his doctorate in 1972. His doctoral dissertation concerned the theatrical work of Bernhard Diebold ("Das theaterkritische Werk Bernhard Diebolds").

He took acting lessons with Will Quadflieg and then worked as an assistant to theatre directors such as Leopold Lindtberg and . His own first productions followed at the Vienna "Café Theatre", at the "Rampe" in Bern and at "Die Claque" at Baden. During the mid-1970s he was staging productions at venues such as the City Theatres in Bern and Trier, along with the Munich Kammerspiele (theatre). In 1979 Hesse became a member of the directing team at the recently opened new Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus (theatre) where his productions included Graser's "Widow burning" (1980), Lessing's "Nathan the Wise" (1983) and (1985) by Tankred Dorst. In 1985 he was invited to stage Arthur Schnitzler's Professor Bernhardi at the Berliner Theatertreffen drama festival. After 1985 there followed a period of freelance directing, taking in, among other venues, the in Munich and the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin.