How much feeling, how much reflection and how many facts fit into a limited number of lines? This sober consideration has never hurt so much. Can such things never again be shared with someone with whom one could share so many things: private moments of glory and problems, frustration about the common profession and high-flying plans for alternative futures. And then come back to what you’ve learned. Because of the love for the subject and the responsibility towards the artists.
Petra Hallmayer died last Wednesday after a two and a half year battle with cancer. This clever and well-read heart person, this dream colleague, carer, most attentive listener – and with all these talents also a gifted critic and cultural journalist. The loss and sadness could not be greater.
Born on August 26, 1957, Petra Hallmayer studied sinology, was an editor for the WAZ Essen, wrote nationally for the NZZ, die Frankfurter Rundschau and occasionally for that tazin Munich for the magazines prince and applause – and for decades, since the mid-1990s, for the Southgerman newspaper. She remained loyal to this newspaper until her health no longer worked. With her incorruptible view, her immense background knowledge and this accuracy in detail.
Petra’s texts about theatre, cabaret and her great love of literature are not suitable for cutting out individual dazzling quotations from them. They are round and harmonious as a whole; always loving and devoted, without shirking judgment. That’s how she was as a person – and therefore lucky for everyone who knew her. For the culture newspaper Munich Feuilleton (MF), of which she was a founding member, for various juries from the Giesinger Kulturpreis to the Passauer Scharfrichterbeil and the Tukan Prize, for the online theater portal nightcriticism.defor which she spent the nights writing – usually until the deadline in the early morning, because she was only satisfied when she had to.
Petra was self-critical, loud, conscientious and modest to the point of self-denial and also made up her dying alone with her husband. She has therefore been missing from Munich’s cultural life and most of her friends, who did not have the courage to insist, for a long time. Now her warm, rough laugh is missing in this crumbling world.