A German newspaper critic has been subject to a literal smear campaign, having dog excrement rubbed on her face after a ballet director apparently took offence to a review she wrote.
Police have opened an investigation, with the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reporting that Marco Goecke, ballet director of the Hannover State Opera, approached its dance critic, Wiebke Huester, during the interval of a premiere of a piece on Saturday and asked what she was doing there. The newspaper said that Mr Goecke, who apparently felt provoked by a recent review she wrote of a production he staged in the Dutch seat of government, The Hague, threatened to ban her from the ballet and accused her of being responsible for people cancelling season tickets in Hannover.
