Apel (puppet player family)

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The Apel family was a well-known family of puppets from Saxony that had existed for over three generations . Founded by Friedrich Albert Apel in 1878, the family's puppet theater acquired under Friedrich Albert's son Heinrich Apel the Elder. Ä. In the years 1907 to 1911 he became famous through international tours with pieces that often took up current affairs. After the First World War, Heinrich Apel d. J. continues the family tradition. His major achievements include, above all, his intensive collaboration with the Dresden Schauspielhaus in the 1930s.

history

The glassmaker Friedrich Albert Apel (1847–1905) from Radeberg came into contact with the puppet theater for the first time in 1868 while working for the Actienglasfabriken near Herzberg in Prussia. Even before the Franco-German War, he often visited the Fischer Marionette Theater in his hometown of Radeberg, where he finally entered as a journeyman and married the owner's daughter. In 1878 FA Apel acquired the puppet theater of the late French immigrant Franz Anton Lorgie and began its own puppet shows in the Freiberg area . He found a sponsor in the Leipzig urologist Arthur Kollmann , who arranged guest performances and edited text books and in return received objects and documents from the puppet theaters for his collection, which later came to the Dresden Puppet Theater Collection. The early pieces played by Apel included Genoveva , The Princess as Miller's Daughter , Faust , Judith and Holofernes and Der Freischütz .

Friedrich Albert's son Heinrich Apel (1875–1920) joined his father's puppet business when he was still young. Unlike his father, he made the dolls he needed himself and also wrote his own pieces. In robust health and with a great thirst for action, Heinrich Apel went into business for himself as a puppet player while his father was still alive, but after his father's death he took over his father's stage and expanded it into a portable and 500-seat Apels theater salon . Heinrich Apel's repertoire also included some classical pieces such as B. Othello or Faust's Höllenfahrt , but his focus was on pieces that dealt with current and historical events, including a piece about the building of the Dresden Trompeterschlösschen , a piece about the fire brigade of Siebenlehn , which burned down houses in the village in 1906 , one about Grete Beier , who was executed in 1908 , one about the construction of the Augustus Baths in Radeberg, or one about the Serbian regicide.

The Berlin variety agent Marinelli engaged Heinrich Apel for an international tour between 1907 and 1911, which led through France, England, Finland, Turkey, Italy and Russia. The highlight of the two-hour performance was a multi-colored illuminated fountain surrounded by puppets.

Of the four sons of Heinrich Apel, the son of the same name, Heinrich Gustav Apel (1895–1975), followed in the footsteps of his father and was an integral part of the ensemble from an early age. Father and son took part in the First World War at times, but then opened a puppet theater again in the Hansa Lichtspiele in Dresden in 1918 , where they performed Kunz von Kaufungen as the first play after the war . Heinrich d. Ä. died in 1920, his son built a portable puppet theater in 1922, with which he toured in and around Dresden for ten years. With this stage he played a. a. the alum square for a year . However, the stage building was too cumbersome for extended trips, so that Heinrich Apel finally sold it again around 1932 in order to be able to undertake extended guest tours.

After 1933, Apel ran into problems when Nazi cultural policy began to interfere in his repertoire. His refusal to accept certain materials ultimately led to his discrediting and difficulties in finding suitable venues for the performances. In his need, Apel found support from school principals, who offered him space for his adult pieces. New opportunities also opened up through increasingly close contacts with the Dresden State Theater, from whose ranks actors such as Lothar Mehnert , Alfred Mayer and Alexander Wirth attended Apels performances and began to promote him. A fruitful collaboration began. Set designer Adolf Mahnke designed miniature models of real theater sets for Apel, drama students spoke the roles and vocal students sang the opera parts of the puppet theater. The bombing of Dresden on February 13, 1945, in which parts of the city center were destroyed, brought guest performances to a standstill for the time being.

In 1948, Apel resumed gaming operations in Dresden-Löbtau . In 1950, Apel converted a gymnasium on Carlstrasse into a puppet theater, where he began to use marionettes to perform various operettas such as the bird dealer or the bat, as well as demanding pieces such as Gogol's Three Nights Wake up . Soon afterwards, Apel had to give up the converted gym. Instead, he went on tours throughout the entire GDR. His successful pieces in the late years include Robinson Crusoe and two traffic educational games that he wrote with the help of the People's Police.

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literature

  • Elise Metz: Three generations of puppet players - an outline of the Apel family , in: Sächsische Heimatblätter 3/1970, pp. 132-135.
  • Bernd Rieprich: Friedrich Albert Apel - the nestor of a well-known Radeberg puppet player family ; in: Radeberger Blätter zur Stadtgeschichte Volume 12, 2014; Ed .: Large district town Radeberg in cooperation with the AG Stadtgeschichte

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