Alexander Victor Zechmeister

Alexander Victor Zechmeister , pseudonym Alexander Victor Wilhelmi ( 5. September 1817 in the oven - 8. October 1877 in Merano ) was a German theater actor and playwright .

Life

The Zechmeister were a German family based in Hungary. After losing his parents at an early age, Alexander, the son of a kk accountant, came to an educational institution (Krausesches Institut) in Vienna in 1826 at the age of nine .

He later attended the Piarist high school in Josefstadt and, after completing the Obersekunda, joined the Karl Gerold bookstore as an apprentice. From 1838 to 1842 he was an assistant in the Kilian bookstore in Pest .

But an inner urge and decisive talent finally determined him to give up his job and devote himself to the stage. So he left his commercial career at the age of 25, exchanged his family name for the stage name Wilhelmi and in 1842 went to the theater in Pressburg . In the following year he found use in Berlin, then made his artist trips with the Lobesche Gesellschaft to Liegnitz, Glatz, Neisse, appeared at the Hamburg City Theater in 1845 (inaugural role: "Elias Krumm") with his foster sister Antonie Wilhelmi and arrived with her in 1849 the court theater in Dresden, where he worked for 27 years, with a short interruption, until he retired in December 1876 due to increasing sickness. He died the following year.

He performed excellently in the field of old, gray servants, but was also employed in other more important roles.

Wilhelmi could not long enjoy the calm of old age. He hoped to find recovery in a southern climate and went to Meran in Tyrol for a winter stay, but died there after only a short stay on October 8, 1877. He was buried on October 13 in the St. Annenkirchhofe in Dresden.

He became better known, however, for his mostly one-act comedies, among which the One Must Marry , first published in 1850 , in which he alludes to the circumstances of the Brothers Grimm , without actually drawing any real pictures of them, found the most widespread use and even in English and has been translated into Danish. They appeared under the title: "Lustspiele" in four volumes collected by the Arnoldschen Buchhandlung publishing house in Dresden from 1853 to 1860 and are characterized by a skilful dialogue and funny situations. Wilhelmi had less luck with his larger pieces, e.g. B. with the four-act comedy “Zurück” (Berlin 1860).

Works

• Wait
• All are egoists Comedy in 3 acts
• Through the telescope
• An advertisement , Schwank
• One has to get married
• He's right
• Firm in decision
• A good heart , comedy in two acts
• The last triumph
• You have to howl with wolves
• A beautiful sister , comedy in 3 acts
• Too late , comedy in four recordings, based on a novella by Léon Gozlan

literature

• Heinrich Kurz : History of the latest German literature from 1830 to the present (also as the 4th volume of the history of German literature by the author) (Leipzig 1872, BG Teubner, No. 4) p. 524.
• Franz Brümmer . Lexicon of German poets and prose writers of the nineteenth century (Leipzig 1885, Reclam jun., No. 12) Vol. II, p. 489 (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek. No. 1981–1990).
• The literary traffic , 1870, April No. 4, supplement: Dresden writers .
• Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Verlag von Paul List , Leipzig 1903, p. 1126, ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Diary of the Royal Saxon Court Theater from 1877 . 61st year Dresden 1878, pp. 71–73.
• H. Uhde: The city theater in Hamburg . Stuttgart 1879, p. 185.
• Yearbook for the German theater . I. Leipzig 1879, pp. 31, 32.
• Adolf Oppenheim , Ernst Gettke (Ed.): Deutsches Theater-Lexikon Leipzig 1889, p. 852.
• Constantin von Wurzbach : Zechmeister, Alexander Victor . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 59th part. Imperial-Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1890, p. 246 ( digitized version ).
• Hermann Arthur Lier :  Wilhelmi, Alexander Victor . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 43, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, p. 230 f.