Eberhard Kube
Eberhard Hermann Wilhelm Kube (born April 19, 1936 in Berlin ) is a German pantomime . He is familiar to the audience as “QB”, a pantomime in a striped shirt with a face painted white. He is considered the "father" of the GDR pantomime and, as a teacher and festival organizer, played a decisive role in ensuring that pantomime was present in the GDR.
Life
Eberhard Kube grew up in Berlin-Friedrichshain as the son of the operator Willi Kube and the shoe seller Margot. As a 4-year-old, evacuated with his younger sister and his mother before the bombing of an estate in rural Silesia , the family returned to the devastated Berlin four years later. His father did not survive the war.
This time had a lasting impact on him. With a strong will and imaginative, thieving energy, Kube fed the family in post-war Berlin , left the FDJ after the popular uprising in 1953 , studied history and physical education in the newly founded GDR and worked as a teacher in East Berlin in 1958 . In 1961 he was banned from working because he criticized the building of the Berlin Wall as inhuman.
A performance by the French Marcel Marceau in Berlin in 1958 changed his life. Kube became the GDR's first professional pantomime in 1962, founded and directed the pantomime studio in Berlin, from which the Prenzlauer Berg pantomime theater emerged . He taught pantomime at the Berlin Drama School , the Babelsberg Film School and the Leipzig Theater School a . a. Leander Haussmann , Henry Hübchen and Michael Gwisdek .
He took part in children's programs, e.g. B. as the magician Sassafraß in the film " The search for the wonderfully colored bird ". Marcel Marceau became a paternal friend as a half-orphan. Kube's breakthrough came in 1969 when the GDR sent him abroad as a cultural figurehead. Whether in India, Egypt or France - everyone understood his silent art. He escaped the state's arbitrariness through over 30 tours and guest performances in front of and behind the Iron Curtain . At home, as the "father" of the GDR pantomime, he made it possible for this art form, which had hardly any tradition in German-speaking countries, to exist.
He also worked for spoken theater , as a co-director in Zurich and Bonn, as a director in Erfurt and at the Berlin puppet theater. When one of his technicians stayed in the West after a guest performance in 1981, he was no longer allowed to travel to the West either. Kube then initiated and directed the “International Gestural Theater Week” in East Berlin, as an annual cultural event to “bring the West to the East”. Marcel Marceau was the first to say yes.
In 1987 Kube received the GDR Art Prize for his extraordinary services to theater culture and was allowed to travel to the West again. He used a guest appearance in Cologne to finally leave the GDR. At the beginning of November 1989 he returned to take part in the large demonstration on Alexanderplatz . He saw the fall of the Berlin Wall in Moscow.
Kube has three children and now lives with his second wife on an estate in Mecklenburg .
Filmography (selection)
- 1964: The search for the wonderfully colored bird
- 1964: Harlequin, Pantalone and Us (short film)
- 1971: Fax maker
- 1976: Mario and the Magician (Mário a kúzelník)
- 1978: Electra (short film)
- 1978: the special day
- 1982: The Horatians and the Curiatians
- 1982: The servant of two masters
honors and awards
- 1976: Badge of honor in gold for services to the friendship of peoples
- 1978: Berlin Prize for the promotion of contemporary socialist work (together with the Berlin pantomime theater from Prenzlauer Berg)
- 1987: Art Prize of the GDR
literature
- Nadja Rothenburger & Selina Senti: The development of pantomime in the former GDR , housework, 2010.
- Gerd Dietrich : Cultural history of the GDR. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-525-30192-0 , here Volume 2, p. 1876 ( online excerpt ).
- Wolf Biermann : Don't wait for better times !: The autobiography. Ullstein Buchverlage, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-8437-1425-9 , (online excerpt)
- Rainer Bratfisch: Free tones: the jazz scene in the GDR (online excerpt) , 2005.
- Gerhard Ebert: The utopian theater: From Brecht to Müller - four decades of GDR theater (online excerpt) , 2014.
- Timothy Gardon Ash : A century is voted out. From the Centers of Central Europe 1980-1990, 2nd edition. German Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-423-30328-X .
- Rainer Eckert : Resistance and Opposition in the GDR. From research on the history of National Socialism to dealing with the SED dictatorship, Version: 1.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, December 2, 2013, URL: http://docupedia.de/zg
- Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk : History of the Opposition in the GDR , in: Biographical Lexicon, Resistance and Opposition in Communism 1945-91, Federal Foundation Work-up, (online excerpt) , September 2016.
Web links
- Mime Centrum Berlin audiovisual database of the performing arts
- Federal foundation to come to terms with the SED dictatorship, “ Who was who in the GDR? ", October 2009.
- A German Marceau in: Neues Deutschland, April 19, 1996.
- Impressions from the “8. International Week of Gestural Theater Berlin 1991 ” in: Neues Deutschland, December 6, 1991
- Conversations and reviews in: Theater of Time
- Art and gentle mastiffs in the Uckermark in: Welt , March 12, 2010
- Wrechen manor
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolf Biermann: Don't wait for better times !: The autobiography. Propylaen Verlag, 2016, accessed in 2019 (German).
- ^ Gerd Dietrich: Cultural history of the GDR. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018, accessed in 2019 (German).
- ↑ Kube, Eberhard. In: http://archiv.mimecentrum.de/ . Internationales Theaterinstitut / Mime Centrum Berlin, accessed on March 15, 2019 .
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Kube, Eberhard |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kube, Eberhard Hermann Wilhelm (full name) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German pantomime |
DATE OF BIRTH | April 19, 1936 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |