František Zelenka

František Zelenka

František Zelenka (born July 8, 1904 in Kuttenberg , Austria-Hungary ; died October 21, 1944 in Auschwitz concentration camp ) was a Czech set designer , architect , interior designer and victim of the Holocaust .

Life

Education and artistic activities

Zelenka, who came from a Jewish family of traders in Central Bohemia , studied architecture in Prague from 1923 to 1928 and also attended the Czech Technical University in Prague . Then Zelenka started working as an interior designer. In this capacity he participated in the design of theaters, shops, exhibition pavilions, villas and theater posters. Since the late 1920s, František Zelenka rose to become one of the leading theater architects in his home country. He was responsible for the designs of sets and costumes at the Czech National Theater in Prague. From 1929 to 1933 František Zelenka worked as an outfitter at the Osvobozené divadlo (Liberated Theater). Until the smashing of the rest of the Czech Republic in 1939, he was still able to design stage sets on a regular basis, after which he can only be verified as a theater man once (1941) with the artistic supervision of a Shakespeare play.

In addition, until the 1930s, Zelenka designed buildings on behalf of the state and private in Prague and his home town of Kutná Hora and was also involved in tenders for the construction of several theaters. One of the buildings realized by Zelenka is the Zadák house in the Werkbund housing estate in Prague .

Persecution, deportations and assassinations

From the end of 1939 to 1943, the Jew František Zelenka was largely isolated in Nazi-occupied Prague. On July 13, 1943, German agencies deported him to the Theresienstadt ghetto , where he set up over 20 pieces (plays, operas, cabaret pieces and revues). His most important work in the camp since September 1943 was the equipment and costumes for Hans Krása's children's opera “ Brundibár ” , which was performed 55 times in the camp. In the summer of 1944, Zelenka categorically refused to work on Kurt Gerron's propaganda camp strip " Theresienstadt - a documentary film from the Jewish settlement area " . On October 19, 1944, the Theresienstadt camp management arranged for him to be transported to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where František Zelenka was murdered in the gas chamber shortly afterwards.

literature

• Kay Less : Between the stage and the barracks. Lexicon of persecuted theater, film and music artists from 1933 to 1945 . With a foreword by Paul Spiegel . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9 , p. 376.

Web links

• Literature and other media by and about František Zelenka in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic