Hans Rothe (writer)

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Hans Ludwig Rothe (born August 14, 1894 in Meißen ; † December 31, 1977 in Florence ) was a German-American writer and dramaturge as well as translator of all of William Shakespeare's plays into German.

Life

Hans Rothe was the son of Edith Gericke and Karl Rothe , Senior Justice Councilor and Lord Mayor of Leipzig, he had three sisters, including Edith Rothe . Rothe was married to Irmgard Falch from 1936 and they had their son Andreas, who later worked as a restorer at the Getty Museum .

Rothe attended the humanistic St. Thomas School , without English, and studied philology in Edinburgh, Munich, Leipzig and Berlin. Rothe had come into contact with the works of William Shakespeare as a student in Edinburgh when he saw a Macbeth performance in the original language. Then in 1916, on the 300th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death, he began to translate his dramas “into a modern, playable German” - a job that he only completed at the end of his life.

Rothe became a soldier in the First World War . With interruptions he attended an acting school from 1912 and from 1921 worked as a dramaturge and director at the Leipziger Schauspielhaus . From 1926 to 1930 he was dramaturge for Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and then became chief dramaturge at the film company UFA . During this time Rothe wrote for newspapers such as Das Tage-Buch , Die Weltbühne , Die literäre Welt , Der Cross section , the Vossische Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt .

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , Rothe became a member of the Reichsschrifttumskammer . From 1934 onwards, the dispute over his Shakespeare translations, which had been preferred to the hundred-year-old and dusty Schlegel-Tieck translations on German theaters, intensified. The intrigue from the German Shakespeare Society was decided in 1936 by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in favor of the traditional version, understood as Nordic-Aryan, and the Rothean versions were banned. But even later, when they were played again, they received both criticism, even protest, and praise. Rothes radio play Blown Traces from 1935 was premiered very successfully in Rothes theatrical version under the title Die Ausländerin in the Leipziger Schauspielhaus in October 1937 and was made into a film at UFA under Veit Harlan in 1938.

Rothe left Germany in 1936 via Italy to France and, after the outbreak of war, to Spain, where he worked from 1940 to 1947. Rothe wrote in exile, also under a pseudonym, for émigré magazines such as Das Neue Tage-Buch and the Paris daily newspaper . He lived in Madrid with the support of the Religious Society of Friends and also produced theater. From 1944 he handled the German cultural institutes and German schools in Spain on behalf of the Allied Control Commission . In 1944 he was expatriated from the German Reich and became stateless . In 1952 he was granted US citizenship after emigrating to the USA in 1947. In the USA he was a professor of theater at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1947/48 and at the University of Miami from 1949 to 1953 . He made lecture tours through the USA.

From 1954 he lived in Florence and worked as a radio play author for German radio stations. His son transferred his ashes to Stratford-upon-Avon .

Works (selection)

  • None for everyone. Comedy in 3 acts . P. List, Leipzig 1928.
  • The burning stable. Comedy in 4 acts . P. List, Leipzig 1928.
  • The battle for Shakespeare. A report . P. List, Leipzig 1936.
  • The foreigner. Play in 4 acts . Stage manuscript. Franckh, Stuttgart 1937.
  • New page. Written after 11 years of emigration . Nest, Lauf near Nuremberg 1947.
  • Prove otherwise. Novel . List, Leipzig / Munich 1949.
  • Arrival at night. Novel . List, Munich 1949.
  • Shakespeare as a provocation. His life and his work, his theater and his world, his friends and his enemies . Langen / Müller, Munich 1961.
  • Madrid is silent. Novel . Langen-Müller, Munich 1975.

Film adaptations

Radio plays

author

  • 1936: Blown Traces - Director: Gerd Fricke
  • 1947: Incident at the Royal - Director: Gottfried Lange
  • 1948: Arrival at Night - Director: Fritz Benscher
  • 1950: Blown Traces (Arrival at Night) - Director: Karl Peter Biltz
  • 1951: The big network. A game from the age of Queen Elisabeth of England - Director: Gert Westphal
  • 1952: Blown Traces - Director: Gerd Fricke (also adaptation)
  • 1952: When does the heart speak? (also direction)
  • 1952: Side by side (loosely based on the folk piece of the same name by Georg Kaiser ) - Director: Wilhelm Semmelroth
  • 1953: The Stronger - Director: Ludwig Cremer
  • 1953: muskrat back after office hours. Comedy for the radio - Director: Paul Land
  • 1954: Between Earth and Heaven - Director: Cläre Schimmel
  • 1955: Tracks blown - directed by Heinz-Günter Stamm
  • 1956: Between Earth and Heaven - Director: Heinz-Günter Stamm
  • 1956: The Dream of Happiness (also director)
  • 1957: The cow on the cooler. Fairy tales from American reality (also directed)
  • 1957: Father Mignon - Director: Friedhelm Ortmann
  • 1958: Tracks blown away. Radio play based on a true story - Director: Gustav Burmester
  • 1960: The Round Trial - or: The Art of Taking Offense. Audio sequence taken from the files - Director: Fritz Schröder-Jahn
  • 1963: Muskrat back after office closes - Director: Wolfgang Spier
  • 1963: Between Heaven and Earth - Director: Alfred Erich Sistig
  • 1963: When does heart speak (also director)
  • 1965: The showcase - Director: Gert Westphal
  • 1966: At Stimming am Wannsee (radio play about the last 24 hours before the suicide of Heinrich von Kleist and Henriette Vogel ) - Director: Hans Bernd Müller
  • 1978: Distinguishing marks: nearsighted. Radio play about Georg Büchner - Director: Ulrich Lauterbach

Translation, radio play editing and / or direction

  • 1950: Honoré de Balzac : Eugénie Grandet - Director: Armas Sten Fühler (adaptation)
  • 1951: William Shakespeare : King Richard II - Director: Gert Westphal (translation)
  • 1951: Georg Kaiser : Side by side (editing and direction)
  • 1953: Georg Kaiser: Side by Side - Director: Walter Knaus (adaptation)
  • 1955: William Shakespeare: The Ballad of Prince Arthur (translation, arrangement and direction)
  • 1956: Jean Giraudoux : L'Impromptu de Paris (translation, adaptation and direction)
  • 1958: William Shakespeare: Coriolan (translation, arrangement and direction)
  • 1961: William Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida - Director: Friedhelm Ortmann (translation and adaptation)
  • 1962: Jean Giraudoux: Undine - Director: Robert Bichler (translation)
  • 1966: William Shakespeare: Coriolanus - adaptation and direction: Werner Hausmann (translation)

Radio play about Hans Rothe

In 1994 the broadcasters Sender Free Berlin and Deutschlandradio produced a 73-minute radio play about the writer by Karl Karst , who was also the director, under the title Shakespeare's Journeyman . Jürgen Hentsch spoke the role of Rothes .

literature

  • Johannes F. Evelein: Hans Rothe . In: John M. Spalek , Konrad Feilchenfeldt , Sandra H. Hawrylchak (eds.): German-language exile literature since 1933. Volume 3. USA. Part 5 . KG Saur, Bern 2005, ISBN 3-908255-42-2 , pp. 152-176 (not yet used here).
  • Karl Karst: Blown away tracks. Memory of Hans Rothe . In: Jörg Hucklenbroich, Reinhold Viehoff (Hrsg.): Writer and radio . UVK, Konstanz 2002, ISBN 3-89669-374-3 , pp. 77-98.
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Eds.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.2. Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 996 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rothe, Hans (1894–1963). Kalliope network, accessed January 10, 2018 .
  2. ↑ John F. Evelein: Hans Rothe , 2005, p 161; S. 172. Other information from HdE.
  3. ↑ How Shakespeare was turned into a German. Deutsche Welle, April 22, 2016, accessed January 10, 2018 (English).
  4. ↑ fwa: Shakespeare Provocation. Hans Rothe is seventy-five . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . August 14, 1969.
  5. ↑ Karl Karst: Verwehte Brille , 2002, p. 90. Karst quotes and interprets a letter from Rothes to the Reichsschrifttumskammer regarding outstanding membership fees in 1937. Johannes F. Evelein: Hans Rothe , 2005, p. 160, agrees with the interpretation.
  6. ↑ Shakespeare - reloaded again and again. Deutsche Welle, April 23, 2016, accessed January 10, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Rothes Errors . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44/1960 , October 26, 1960, Kultur, p. 84-87 ( spiegel.de ).
  8. ^ F [riedrich] L [uft] : Hans Rothe 70 . In: The world . August 14, 1964.
personal data
SURNAME Rothe, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rothe, Hans Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, dramaturge and translator
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Meissen
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1977
Place of death Florence