Ballet director fired for smearing dog feces on dance critic's face in Germany

Marco Goecke, director of the Hannover State Opera, Germany, was fired Thursday from his position after smearing dog feces on the face of a press critic whose reviews had annoyed him, the ballet announced Thursday.

The attack happened on Saturday during the break of a performance at the opera house, the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported.

[They record how a young woman fights and runs away from a man who attacks her in a gym: "I would tell all women to never give up"]

According to dance critic Wiebke Hüster, the director of the ballet company verbally assaulted her and the confrontation could be motivated by a review she wrote.

Goecke was suspended after the assault.

"He rubbed dog feces all over my face, hard, and in the most brutal way

," Hüster told CNN.

“(The feces) were in an open plastic doggie bag that is normally tied in a knot,” he added.

According to the critic, he approached her and spoke to her calmly before assaulting her.

People “were paralyzed with astonishment as I screamed and cried,” Hüster said.

Marco Goecke in a file photo from April 2019. picture alliance / picture alliance via Getty Image

The theater asked Goecke to apologize and explain why he did it.

He responded in a statement that his behavior was "absolutely unacceptable" and "was a shameful act in the heat of the moment and an overreaction," but said he was suffering "nervous tension" from the two-show premiere.

"I ask for some understanding at least for the reasons why this has happened," he claimed, after assuring that Hüster wrote "often unpleasant reviews" about him, The Associated Press news agency reported.

[How Hollywood's Prejudice Towards "Different" Long Erased Actress Raquel Welch's Latina Heritage]

In an interview on Tuesday with the public channel NDR Fernsehen, Goecke assured that Hüster had been "for years throwing m-----".

The feces with which he attacked her, he clarified, were from his dachshund.

"It's not right that this happened in this opera house, in this public space, and of course, it's also a fact that the audience got scared and I'm incredibly sorry about that," he said.

Police could face up to 24 years in prison after causing the death of a child in a road accident

Feb 16, 202301:27

Belit Onay, mayor of Hannover, asserted that attacks on press freedom "have no place" in the city.

The opera's director, Laura Berman, declared that the contract with Goecke was dissolved by mutual consent.

"Marco Goecke's irresponsible actions

and seriously damaged the reputation of the Hannover Opera," she said in a statement.

The incident has been criticized as an attack on press freedom and police are investigating the case after Hüster filed a complaint, a Hannover police spokesperson confirmed to CNN.

So far no charges have been filed against Goecke.