Emil Thomas (actor)

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Emil Thomas around 1903 by Max Slevogt
Book cover with portrait of Emil Thomas

Emil Thomas (actually Emil Tobias ) (born November 24, 1836 in Berlin ; † September 19, 1904 in Berlin) was a German actor and theater director .

Life

Emil Thomas was the son of a dentist. He showed great interest in the theater from an early age and did an apprenticeship as a bookbinder because he believed that in this profession he could read many plays. He played his first role in 1854 at the amateur theater "Urania" , where many later professional actors had their first stage experiences. This was followed by a period of wandering to many stages across Germany, until the theater directors recognized Emil Thomas' talent as a comedian and used him effectively in this field.

After an interlude in Leipzig and further years of traveling, he got an engagement at the Kroll Theater in Berlin and was so successful there that the "house poets" wrote special roles for him, such as the lantern "lamp" in the farce . Century by Hermann Salingré and Georg Friedrich Belly and other successful roles. Chéri Maurice brought him to the Thalia Theater in Hamburg , where he worked for almost ten years from 1866. In 1875 he took over the management of the Berlin Woltersdorff Theater , in which he also appeared as an actor. In 1878 he married the soprano Betty Damhofer and took over the management of the Berlin Thalia Theater .

From 1887 to 1892 Thomas took over the Berlin Central Theater . In 1890 he bought the building and reopened the house as the Thomas Theater in September 1890. Since the theater was bad, Thomas went on tour to America in 1887, 1892 and 1893. In 1894 Thomas returned to Berlin, where he worked on various stages. His most famous role was the Saxon theater director Striese in the robbery of the Sabine women by Ernst and Paul von Schönthan .

Emil Thomas died on the night of September 19, 1904 at the age of 67 in a boarding house on Kurfürstenstrasse in Berlin , where he had stayed during an ongoing guest performance at the Luisen-Theater in Reichenberger Strasse. Had a liver disease for a long time, in the end there were additional intestinal problems. Two days before his death, the seriously ill man had been on stage. He was buried on September 22, 1904 in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Cemetery in Charlottenburg - Westend . His grave can no longer be found today.

Works

  • Hermann. Salingré: Margaretha. Parodistic joke with singing . Music arranged by A. Lang. Presented by the comedian Emil Thomas at the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater in Berlin. Bloch, Berlin 1865. ( Eduard Bloch's comic solo scenes with pianoforte music . 1)
  • 40 years of acting. Memories from my life . 2 volumes. Duncker, Berlin 1895/1897. Digitized from the Internet Archive
  • Oldest very oldest . 3rd ed. Bruno Cassirer, Berlin 1904. Digitized from the Internet Archive

literature

  • Ludwig Eisenberg: Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . List, Leipzig 1903.
  • Gotthilf Weisstein: Emil Thomas † . In: The theater. Leaves for newer endeavors of the stage . Vol. 2, (1904) Issue 2, pp. 20-23. (With a poem by Emil Thomas and three anecdotes.)
  • Gustav Kadelburg : Emil Thomas. Personal memories . In: The week . August Scherl, Berlin 1904, issue 39 of September 24, 1904, pp. 1714-1715. ("Personalalien" p. 1716 and photography, p. 1724)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Born on “24. December 1836 “after: The week . August Scherl, Berlin 1904, issue 39 of September 24, 1904, p. 1716.
  2. ^ Ludwig Eisenberg: Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century. Leipzig 1903, pp. 1036-1039; German Biographical Encyclopedia . 2nd edition. Vol. 10: Thies - Zykan. Munich 2008, p. 12; Horst Windelboth: “Small Temple of the Muses on Alte Jacobstrasse.” About the Berlin Central Theater. In: Der Bär von Berlin 6 (1956), pp. 86-107.
  3. ^ Fritz Engel: Emil Thomas † . In: Berliner Tageblatt , September 19, 1904, evening edition, pp. 1–2. The last hours of Emil Thomas . In: ibid., P. 2.
  4. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin tombs . Haude & Spener, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-7759-0476-6 , p. 216.
personal data
SURNAME Thomas, Emil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tobias, Emil (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor and theater director
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 19, 1904
Place of death Berlin