Bärenfels puppet shows

The Bärenfelser Puppet Show was a puppet theater from the Eastern Ore Mountains .

The Bärenfelser Puppet Show was founded in the early 1950s by Paul Hölzig (1911–1989), who was inspired by a GDR guest performance by the Moscow puppeteer Sergej Obraszow . The theater was named after the Saxon town of Bärenfels , where Hölzig lived and also had a permanent venue in the local Gasthof Bärenfels .

With its hand puppet and stick figure performances (the puppet carver was mostly Hellmuth Lange ), the Bärenfels puppet shows soon became known nationwide and became one of the most famous GDR puppet theaters. The first production under the title The Happy Sinner was funded by the GDR Cultural Fund.

The State Puppet Theater in Dresden grew out of the Bärenfelser Puppet Theater , but without the assistance of Hölzig, who - annoyed by time delays - had withdrawn from the management role. He continued the Bärenfels puppet shows for a while until he moved to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1956 , where he worked in other professions. For the Bärenfels puppet shows, the separation from their artistic mind inevitably meant the end.

Despite its short history, the Bärenfels puppet shows are among the legendary among historical German puppet theaters.

In the 1980s a traveling tented puppet stage (director: Roland Dworschak ) performed under the name "Bärenfelser Puppentheater" and also used the old graphics by Paul Hölzig for advertising purposes. However, this stage had nothing to do with Hölzig's legendary theater.

Today, an annual puppet show and a figure exhibition in Hölzig's former venue in Bärenfels commemorates the important puppet stage.