Be it in a wig and women’s clothes or as a pensioner in a wheelchair: Corny Littmann has played many roles in his life. He can still clearly remember his very first stage appearance: “When I was a boy, there was always a school performance led by the religion teacher, Dr. Ruprecht. The play was Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and I was one of the forty thieves. Afterward, the teacher’s mother said, and it must have been because I looked out into the audience as I walked across the stage: ‘This kid’s got something.’”
That little bit of encouragement seems to have stuck. Today, Corny Littmann—born in 1952 in Münster—boasts a remarkably successful career not only on stage but also off it. He runs three theaters on Hamburg’s Reeperbahn: Schmidt Theater, Schmidts Tivoli, and Schmidtchen. For decades the openly gay artist and entrepreneur has been a leading figure in the gay rights movement. And as president of FC St. Pauli from 2003 to 2010, Littmann managed to rescue the beloved club from bankruptcy. On January 13, the “King of the Kiez” will celebrate 50 years on the boards.
In front of 400 people at the Fabrik without microphones
At 15, Littmann moved to Hamburg, where he completed his high school requirements and planned to study psychology during his wild student days. It was there that his love for theater blossomed. In 1976—at the age of 23—he co-founded the theater group “Brühwarm” with Hans-Georg Berger, Germany’s first openly gay theater troupe. The premiere took place on January 13, 1976, at the Fabrik. “Honestly, I have no idea how we managed to project sound at all—we didn’t have any microphones,” he recalls in hindsight.
They performed sketches, and Littmann took on several roles himself. “Among other things, this was the first time I appeared on stage in a dress, wearing a red-and-white striped gown as Gundula,” he smiles. Looking back, he would describe those early performances as “semi-professional” and “political-propagandist.” “The thrill at the start was that heterosexual students would attend the performances and witness four clearly gay men on stage for the first time. Those are people you didn’t know,” Littmann explains.
Founding of Schmidt Theater in 1988
In 1982 Littmann joined forces with cabaret artist Gunter Schmidt to found the touring theater “Familie Schmidt”—“German, upright, homosexual” was one of their programs. “That took us two years on tour—from Flensburg all the way to Switzerland,” says the theater impresario. In the second show, Ernie Reinhardt joined, who would later become known as Lilo Wanders. With the program “Sag bitte und ich sing’,” they opened Schmidt Theater on August 8, 1988, at 8:08 p.m. “We were tired of traveling,” Littmann recalls. When an old cinema on Hamburg’s Reeperbahn stood empty in 1988, they seized the moment and took over.
Their “Schmidt Midnight Show”—featuring small-arts numbers and amateur performances—became especially popular. The Schmidt family also includes besides “Herrn Schmidt” (Corny Littmann) Ernie Reinhardt (Lilo Wanders) and Jutta Wübbe (Marlene Jaschke). When Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) began airing the show on television in the early 1990s, the theater gained nationwide recognition. Littmann often stirred controversy: Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) cut away when he held up a poster from the German AIDS help organization showing two men engaging in oral sex.
Long-run favorites “Heiße Ecke” and “Die Königs vom Kiez”
After the coup with Schmidt Theater, another extraordinary opportunity presented itself in 1990: the neighboring venue “Zillertal” was seeking a new tenant. Littmann and his partner Norbert Aust moved quickly and, in 1991, launched “Schmidts Tivoli” as a second stage, attracting a broad audience with offbeat ideas and flamboyant shows. In 2015, they added the tiny Schmidtchen stage. Littmann directed musicals like “Cabaret,” pop-song revues such as “Fifty Fifty,” and the enduring crowd-pleasers “Heiße Ecke” and “Die Königs vom Kiez,” in which he also acts. “I’ve always preferred playing damaged characters—like the cranky old man in ‘Villa Sonnenschein’ or the captain in ‘Die Königs vom Kiez,’” he says.
