BK Tragelehn

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Bernhard Klaus Tragelehn (* 12. April 1936 in Dresden ) is a German theater - director , writer and translator . He was particularly committed to the work of the playwright Heiner Müller , with whom he had a long-standing friendship and intensive artistic collaboration.

Life

From 1955 to 1958, Tragelehn was a master student at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin (East) with Bertolt Brecht and Erich Engel , after which he worked mostly as a freelance writer and director in Berlin. He worked at the student stage at the University of Economics in Berlin-Karlshorst and directed the play The Correction by Heiner Müller. In September 1961, one month after the Berlin Wall was built , the staging of the world premiere of Heiner Müller's play Die Umsiedlerin or Das Leben im Lande triggered a cultural-political scandal. The play and performance were declared counter-revolutionary ; The resettler could not be listed in the GDR until 1976. Tragelehn was expelled from the SED , dismissed from the Senftenberg Theater without notice and sent to a lignite mine in Lower Lusatia for probation in production . After the intercession of Paul Dessau , he was allowed to work as a director again from 1964.

From 1967 to 1969 he taught at the acting department of the German Academy of Film Art in Potsdam-Babelsberg . The director Ruth Berghaus brought him to the Berliner Ensemble in 1972 . The dramaturge Friedrich Dieckmann recommended the set designer Einar Schleef to Tragelehn , which resulted in a fruitful collaboration. In 1972 Tragelehn (with Einar Schleef) directed Erwin Strittmatter's comedy Katzgraben . In 1974, Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening followed (also with Schleef). The performance was significant in the history of theater in the GDR because it was "the first time that the questioning, new attitude towards life of a new generation of Brecht was articulated." to freeze. An essential moment of her work was to free the theater from the mere interpretive comprehension of the text.

They implemented this concept even more decisively in 1975 in the staging of Strindberg's Fräulein Julie . Already during the rehearsal period there was an indication of the potential for cultural and political conflict, and on the day of the premiere it was not clear in the morning whether the performance would come out at all. Presumably only through personal advocacy from Paul Dessau, who as a "socialist from the very beginning" had influence on the party leaders, the premiere could take place at all. According to theater critic Christoph Müller, it was “the craziest thing that ever happened in the Berliner Ensemble.” The dramaturge Friedrich Dieckmann described the production as the presentation of a nightmare. The main stumbling block was the end of the performance: the main actress Jutta Hoffmann , supported by the audience, climbed across the rows of stalls towards the exit. “This escape image was existential, unmistakable and oppressive,” wrote the theater critic Henryk Goldberg looking back. In the “Central Organ of the SED”, the New Germany , a negative review by Rainer Kerndl appeared after the premiere , which amounted to a verdict from the highest circles of the party against the production. The simmering conflict between the Brecht heirs and Ruth Berghaus over the content of the Berlin ensemble also weakened the position of the director. The performance was canceled after only ten sold out performances. The Macbeth project, which Tragelehn and Schleef wanted to tackle after Miss Julie , never came off. The cooperation between the two directors ended when Schleef did not return to the GDR in October 1976 after preliminary talks about the planned joint staging of Schloss Wetterstein by Frank Wedekind at the Burgtheater in Vienna.

In November 1976 BK Tragelehn was one of the signatories of the petition against Wolf Biermann's expatriation .

Since 1979 Tragelehn worked in West Germany. In 1980/81 he worked at Schauspiel Frankfurt , which at that time was headed by a three-man board based on the co-determination model. In the following years he devoted himself primarily to the assertion of Heiner Müller's plays on West German stages. In 1985, the director of the picked him Staatsschauspiel Dresden , Gerhard Wolfram , and let Tragelehn The Umsiedlerin bring to reissue. This was Tragelehn's first production in the GDR since 1975.

In 1987 he became acting director in Düsseldorf , where he staged one of his most legendary productions of Maß für Maß . Tragelehn has been living in Berlin again since October 1989. Until 1998 he was the last president of the East German PEN and is a member of the PEN Center Germany . Since 1997 he has been chairman of the International Heiner Müller Society. As an author he is assigned to the Saxon Poet School . Tragelehn is a member of the Saxon Academy of the Arts . and the German Academy of Performing Arts .

Works

  • NÖSPL poems, Stroemfeld Verlag Basel and Frankfurt / Main ISBN 978-3878771685
  • Schranzler Bait Fischarping and Co. (1999)
  • New Xenia 1959-99. A supplement to the Goethe year. , Stroemfeld Verlag Basel and Frankfurt / Main, 2000, ISBN 3878778112
  • The other end of the story , Verlag UN ART IG, 2001, ISBN 3-980761-30-4
  • Red star in the clouds . Essays, speeches, poems, conversations and a play. A reader. Edited by Gerhard Ahrens. Verlag Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2006. ISBN 3-93434-465-8
  • in: Poetry of the 20th Century: My 24 Saxon Poets , Ed. Gerhard Pötzsch , 2 CDs, Militzke Verlag Leipzig 2009, ISBN 9783861899358

Editor (with Christa M. Tragelehn) and translator of a new series "Old English Theater New" on the Elizabethan Theater (so far six volumes, 15 planned)

(all at Stroemfeld Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / Basel)

Productions (selection)

Awards

Literature (selection)

  • Jan Wielgohs:  Tragelehn, Bernhard Klaus . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Heike Adamski: Past and present in the theater. BK Tragelehn's productions of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure . Teiresias Verlag, Cologne 1999. ISBN 3-934305-01-6
  • Matthias Braun: Drama about a comedy. the ensemble of SED and State Security, FDJ and Ministry of Culture against Heiner Müller's "Die Umsiedlerin or Das Leben auf dem Lande" in October 1961 , Chr. Links Verlag 1995, ISBN 3-86153-102-X
  • Theo Girshausen (Ed.) BK Tragelehn: Theater works. Shakespeare / Molière. Translations and productions. With three translations by Heiner Müller . Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-926175-56-7
  • Andrea Koschwitz: Working discussion on the production of Fräulein Julie with BK Tragelehn and F. Dieckmann . In: Dramaturgy in the GDR (1945-1990) . Edited by Helmut Kreuzer and Karl-Wilhelm Schmidt. University Press C. Winter Heidelberg 1998, ISBN 3-8253-0742-5 , Vol. II, pp. 322-329
  • Dieter Kranz: Conversation with BK Tragelehn . In: Dramaturgy in the GDR (1945-1990) . Edited by Helmut Kreuzer and Karl-Wilhelm Schmidt. Universitätsverlag C. Winter Heidelberg 1998, ISBN 3-8253-0742-5 , Vol. II, pp. 318-322
  • Heiner Müller: Writing took precedence over morals. Heiner Müller on his experiences with the GDR censorship: The resettler affair . In: Der Spiegel 25/1992
  • Marianne Streisand: Chronicle of Exclusion. The Heiner Müller case. Documents on the resettler : In: Sinn und Form 3, Berlin 1991, pp. 429–489
  • Resocism in the evening light . On the rerun of Heiner Müller's Die Umsiedlerin in Dresden 1985. BK Tragelehn in conversation with Holger Teschke . In: Staatsschauspiel Dresden. 100 years of the Schauspielhaus. Edited by Wilfried Schulz, Harald Müller and Felicitas Zürcher . Verlag Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-943881-01-1 . Pp. 254-260.
  • BK Tragelehn: The happy Sisyphus. The translator, the translation, the translating . Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-942449-16-8 .
  • BK Tragelehn: Red star in the clouds. Essays, speeches, poems, conversations and a play. A reader . Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-934344-65-5 .
  • BK Tragelehn. 13 x Heiner Müller. ed. by Carsten and Gerhard Ahrens, in collaboration with the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-95749-067-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Matthias Braun: Drama about a comedy. The ensemble of SED and State Security, FDJ and Ministry of Culture against Heiner Müller's "Die Umsiedlerin or Das Leben auf dem Lande" in October 1961. Berlin: Ch. Links 1996 ISBN 978-3-86153-102-9
  2. ↑ Christa Hasche, Traute Schölling, Joachim Fiebach: Theater in the GDR. Henschel Verlag Berlin 1994
  3. ↑ The director BK Tragelehn celebrated his 60th birthday at a book presentation in the Berliner Zeitung on April 13, 1996
  4. ↑ http://www.getidan.de/gesellschaft/leben/henryk_goldberg/8684/einar-schleef
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Behrens: Einar Schleef. Work and person. Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-934344-30-5 .
  6. ↑ Christoph Müller in Theater heute 5/1975. Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1975.
  7. ^ Friedrich Dieckmann: Discourse on Miss Julie . Sinn und Form 6/1975
  8. ↑ http://www.getidan.de/gesellschaft/leben/henryk_goldberg/8684/einar-schleef
  9. ↑ Manfred Jäger: Culture and Politics in the GDR, 1945-1990 , Edition Germany Archive Cologne 1994, p. 166
  10. ↑ http://www.sadk.de/darstellende_kunst.html
  11. ↑ http://www.darstellendekuenste.de/verbindungen-satzung.html
  12. ↑ http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/archiv/heiner-muellers--die-umsiedlerin-oder-das-leben-auf-dem-lande---die-geschichte-eines-kulturpolitischen-verbotes--das -piece-is-to-reject-without-any-restriction-, 10810590,9013754.html
personal data
SURNAME Tragelehn, BK
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tragelehn, Bernhard Klaus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theater director, writer and translator
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden