Bonesky
The Bonesky family was a dynasty of puppet players and cinema operators from Plauen . Richard Bonesky (1867–1930) founded a puppet stage, but later turned to the cinema and opened the Vogtland's first sound cinema. Son Kurt Bonesky (1894–1962) started out as a cinema operator, but then returned to marionette play. The other son Walter Bonesky (1891-1963) was a cinema operator in Schöneck. Parts of Bonesky's marionette stages are now in the State Art Collections in Dresden.
history
Richard Bonesky came from Elterlein , was a pupil of the well-known puppet player Ferdinand Listner from 1881 and was Moritz Richter's assistant in 1884 . In 1889 he founded his own marionette stage in Chemnitz , which was probably furnished by the theater painter Richard Hartmann . Its puppet theater attracted attention because of its size. The Theatrum mundi , built around 1890, was 2 × 4 meters in size and included scenes such as the Battle of Sedan with 200 moving figures. In some of the battle pictures up to 1000 figures are said to have been moved. Four to six people were required to move the figures and control the technical effects. In 1892 Bonesky married Emilie Hedwig Gottschald (1870–1898), who accompanied him on the initially regional tours around Chemnitz. The Tivoli in Plauen soon became the preferred winter playground, while Bonesky toured Saxony and Thuringia in the summer . In 1896 he settled in Plauen. After the death of his first wife, he married her sister Elise in 1902. He later entered into a third marriage with the daughter of his teacher Listner. In 1906 Bonesky set up a mobile tent cinema with 500 seats, with which he visited annual markets . In 1910 he founded the first sound film theater in the Vogtland with the film theater in Adorf , which was initially run by his son Kurt Bonesky. When Kurt Bonesky went to the First World War as a soldier , his father Richard Bonesky moved to Adorf in order to direct the film theater himself. Son Kurt suffered war injuries and after his return from the military hospital initially found accommodation in Plauen as a projectionist, married in 1918 and then helped his father in the cinema in Adorf. Meanwhile, the older son Walter Bonesky founded a cinema in Schöneck . In 1920 Kurt Bonesky founded his own puppet theater, with which he performed in Vogtland and West Saxony. At the beginning of the 1930s, the puppet theater experienced a decline as the cinema had become a competition. Kurt Bonesky ran into economic difficulties, but then profited from the National Socialists' promotion of the tradition of puppet play. From 1933 the Plauen wood mill became his regular venue. The stages belonging to the father, who died in 1930, had already been moved to the Vogtland District Museum, and were restored and repeatedly used for performances: in 1938 the Theatrum mundi and in 1941 the marionette stage. In the early 1950s, the GDR cultural authorities revoked Kurt Bonesky and other puppeteers' licenses. In 1953 he only performed a program with variety puppets. After his death in 1962, his stage stock was transferred to the puppet theater collection in the Hohenhaus in Radebeul .
The Boneskys embody different types of entrepreneurs. While father Richard Bonesky initially set standards for puppet theater with his Theatrum mundi and then, following technical developments, turned to the emerging cinema, son Kurt Bonesky went through an opposite development, from cinema operator to traditional marionette play with historical figures. The Boneskys repertoire comprised around 120 pieces, including Dr. Faust , the Schinderhannes , the Bavarian Hiesel or the Genoveva . The mixture of fairy tales, romantic plays, knight dramas, robber stories, Punch and Judy stories and classic stage works was typical of the Saxon traveling puppet theater tradition. Richard Bonesky's puppets were about three feet tall, Kurt Bonesky's figures were about two feet high. In addition, the Boneskys had vaudeville marionettes, which offered short scenes in replay after the actual play. Between the files of the pieces there were vocal interludes, which were accompanied by an assistant on the bandonion .
Parts of the Bonesky dolls and stage decorations are in the Dresden State Art Collections .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bonesky objects ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at http://skd-online-collection.skd.museum
literature
- Andreas Raithel: A puppet theater in Vogtland: the Bonesky family of puppeteers in Plauen . 1992
- Andreas Raithel: The Bonesky puppet player family from Plauen , in: Vogtländisches Jahrbuch , 11th year, Plauen 1994, pp. 135-138.
- Andreas Raithel: When the marionettes were playing at Bonesky ... Of puppeteers, comedians and showmen once in the Vogtland . Vogtländischer Heimatverlag Neupert, Plauen 1997, ISBN 3-929039-58-3
- Olaf Bernstengel : Saxon traveling puppet theater . Verlag der Kunst, 1995