Cornelia Kühn-Leitz

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Cornelia Kühn-Leitz (born November 14, 1937 in Gießen ; † December 10, 2016 in Hanover ) was a German actress and reciter .

Cornelia Kühn-Leitz was best known for her readings; these ranged from Martin Luther through the Sturm und Drang and German classical music  - Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Büchner, Heine, Fontane - to the 20th century, including Rilke, Brecht, Benn, Bachmann. They linked explanations of the work and the author, recitation and staging.

Life

Kühn-Leitz was born as the daughter of Kurt Kühn and Elsie Kühn-Leitz . She spent her childhood and youth with her siblings, Knut and Karin, in the city of Wetzlar .

After graduating from the Lottery School in Wetzlar, she moved to Berlin, where she was accepted at the Max Reinhardt School and trained as an actress by Hilde Körber . She received her first engagements at the Stadttheater Essen under Erich Schumacher , where she played under Bohumil Herlischka and Jean-Louis Barrault , among others . She also worked as an assistant director for Jean-Louis Barrault. Two years at the Regensburg City Theater followed . In 1964 she brought Erwin Piscator to the Freie Volksbühne Berlin. Piscator was her mentor and promoter until his death in 1966.

In 1966 Cornelia Kühn-Leitz met Klaus Otto Nass , an official at the European Commission , whom she married in 1967 in Wetzlar. Kühn-Leitz, now married Nass, moved to his home in Brussels, where their two children, a son and a daughter, were born in 1968 and 1972. In 1977 she returned to Germany, to Hanover, where Cornelia Kühn-Leitz lived to the end.

Over the years, Kühn-Leitz expanded her repertoire of readings, which began in Brussels. She loved German classical music, but her spectrum extended to German poetry of the 20th century - such as the poems by Hilde Domin , with whom she was also friends for years. Their appearances began in front of a German audience in Brussels, took place from the 1970s mainly in Germany and immediately after the fall of the Iron Curtain they also went on tours through Central and Eastern Europe. B. organized by the VDA or the Schillerhaus Bucharest. In the states of the former Soviet Union, she was often the first to bring the German minority living there back together with German culture. At universities she practiced German poetry and prose with German studies students. Further tours led through Central Asia and South America.

Her readings were often accompanied by music, for example with a saxophone (e.g. Bert Brecht Chansons), piano, harp, flute, percussion (e.g. Gottfried Benn lyric) or organ (e.g. Martin Luther). Her first audio books were also published in the 1990s. Her clear, nuanced voice, with which she easily switched between female and male roles, combined with sparingly used gestures and expressive facial expressions, characterized her recitation.

In addition to her appearances, Cornelia Kühn-Leitz was particularly involved in the Goethe Society in Weimar e. V . She was a member of the advisory board of the local association in Hanover from 1983 to 2016. In the 1990s she traveled annually with the Goethe Society Wetzlar to the Russian twin town of Tambow for readings .

In 2007 Cornelia Kühn-Leitz described her experiences on German stages and in foreign countries in her book “Theater - Spiel und Reality”. She died on December 10, 2016 in Hanover, Isernhagen-Süd , at the age of 79. Her grave is also located in the local cemetery on Birkenweg.

Awards and honors

In 1982 the Goethe Society Darmstadt awarded her the Johann Heinrich Merck Medal , which honors personalities “who, in word and writing, have contributed to keeping Goethe's universal world of thought alive and to spreading and increasing understanding of the life's work of the great poet In 1985, the city of Avignon presented Cornelia Kühn-Leitz with the “Médaille d'honneur” for her contribution to the German-French cultural exchange. In 2006 she received honorary membership from the Goethe Society in Hanover.

repertoire

  • The twentieth century in the poem: "And behind a thousand bars, no world"
  • Andric: "The bridge over the Drina"
  • Bachmann: "The deferred time" - Ingeborg Bachmann - a picture of the life of the Austrian poet based on selected poetry and prose
  • Benn: "The void and the drawn self" - poems and prose by Gottfried Benn, also with drums and flute
  • Brecht: "You can't see them in the dark" - poems and songs by Bertolt Brecht - also with saxophone
  • Büchner: "Peace to the huts - war to the palaces" - Georg Büchner's life and work - recitation and scenic representation
  • Fontane: "Too wide a field" - From Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane
  • Goethe
    • "New Love," New Life "- Goethe's life reflected in his poems
    • "Say, what will fate prepare for us" - Goethe and Charlotte von Stein - recitation and scenic performance
    • "The Sorrows of Young Werther" - the origins and effects of the first successful German novel
    • "That I am one and two" - Goethe and Marianne von Willemer. Contemporary documents, letters and poems from the book Suleika of the West-Eastern Divan
  • Heine: "Oh Germany, my distant love" - ​​Heinrich Heine - a picture of life in letters and poems
  • Kleist: "Fateful Hours" - The Marquise von O., The Earthquake in Chili and other prose
  • Luther: "Here I stand. God help me!" - Martin Luther in his theses, sermons, letters and songs - also with organ accompaniment
  • Rilke:
    • "Want to change" - poems, sonnets and elegies
    • "Das Marienleben" - cycle of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke - also with flute
  • Schiller: "In your chest are your destiny stars" - From Friedrichs Schiller's life and work - recitation and scenic representation
  • German poetry from three centuries: "Poems are painted window panes"
  • Childhood and adolescence: "My child, we were children" - a literary portrait with poems and prose from three centuries
  • Psalms: "I lift my eyes to the mountains" - The most beautiful psalms - also with musical accompaniment

Audio books

  • 1997 and 2000: Heinrich Heine: "Oh, Germany, my distant love"
  • 1988 and 2000: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "And yet, what luck to be loved"
  • 1999 and 2000: Theodor Fontane: "Effi Briest"
  • 2005: "Season of Life - German Poems from the Baroque to the Present"

Books

  • Cornelia Kühn-Leitz (2007): “Theater - Game and Reality”, Centaurus Verlag, Herbolzheim

Web links

Commons : Cornelia Kühn-Leitz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Meuer (ed.): "Goethe Society Hannover, 1925 - 2015" . Hanover 2016, p. 212 .
  2. ^ Johann Heinrich Merck Medal. In: goethe-gesellschaft-darmstadt.de. Retrieved January 24, 2017.
  3. ↑ Peter Meuer (ed.): "Goethe Society Hannover, 1925 - 2015" . Hanover 2016, p. 210 .
personal data
SURNAME Kühn-Leitz, Cornelia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wet, Cornelia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actress and reciter
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Giessen , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 2016
Place of death Hanover , Lower Saxony , Germany