Anna Schürmer Siemens chair imports post-capitalist curiosity to Berlin

Anna Schürmer’s Ernst von Siemens Professorship for Neue Musik will not lecture from the usual stone podium. Her inaugural, scheduled October 2026, is titled “Neoliberal Acoustics: The Concert Hall as Credit Instrument.” The title inserts Neue Musik studies inside the seminar building where Adorno once urged students to listen against identity-thinking, now retrofitted for QR scalability. Schürmer’s PhD charted algorithmic listening desks installed at Bayerische Staatsoper sponsors’ soirées. Berlin grants her 250-seat black-box that coincidentally occupies the former Nazi Racial Science auditorium; the Bauhaus cantilever columns survive. A donor plaque reads “Sponsored by ABBA Voyage Immersive Entertainment GmbH,” demonstrating post-capitalist curiosity’s appetite for historical irony.