Franz Schönfeld (actor)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Franz Schönfeld, before 1900

Franz Julius Schönfeld (born November 6, 1851 in Karlsruhe , † June 11, 1932 in Berlin ) was a German actor and director .

Life

Franz Schönfeld was the son of the actor and director Carl Schönfeld (1819–1885) and the actress Louise Schönfeld , née Krauth (1826–1903). His grandparents were actors too.

After completing his military service as a one-year volunteer , Schönfeld initially worked as a bank clerk in Vienna . There he had an audition with Heinrich Laube , who engaged him in 1874 at the Vienna City Theater. Further theater stations followed in Zurich , 1876 the Dresden Court Theater , 1877–79 the Berlin Wallner Theater , 1879–80 the Hamburg Thalia Theater and 1880 the Mannheim Court and National Theater . Then Schönfeld went back to Berlin, where he was engaged from 1884 first at the Deutsches Theater , 1887-88 at the Royal Theater and finally from 1888 to 1904 at the Berlin Lessing Theater. Schönfeld later made a guest appearance for several years. He was firmly engaged, among other things, at the Berlin Lustspielhaus , the Berlin Trianon Theater in Georgenstrasse and most recently at the Landestheater Gotha (1922–24) when he was over 70 .

Franz Schönfeld with Jenny Groß (1863–1904), Lessingtheater 1902

Schönfeld first played hero and lover roles , then the bon vivant subject, in which he became a crowd favorite and which he still served at an advanced age. Schönfeld was regarded as "the typical bon vivant of the pre-naturalistic era". In addition, there were comical character roles in old age, such as the note in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Argan in The Imaginary Sick . His theatrical representations had "engraved themselves in the memory of his generation in such a way that his name actually referred to a whole type, indeed an entire epoch of performance in comedy," it said in an obituary.

When Schönfeld was no longer engaged due to his old age, he lived on savings and a small pension from the stage cooperative . But he lost everything during the inflationary period of 1922/23 , got into great financial hardship and was unable to survive with small and extra roles in film. Eduard von Winterstein , who tried to help him as an honorary member of the board of directors of the cooperative, described a late meeting with Schönfeld in his memoirs as follows:

“One day he was waiting in the anteroom of the cooperative while I spoke for him inside in the presidium. The cooperative has always been generous in such cases. I could go out to him and give him an order on the till. The old man, he was already over eighty, had tears running down his cheeks, suddenly - even today I am ashamed when I think about it - he kissed my hand and ran away. That was the end of such a successful career. "

Filmography

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Ludwig Eisenberg's Great Biographical Lexicon of the German Stage in the XIX. Century. List, Leipzig 1903, pp. 906-908 .
  2. ↑ a b Schönfeld, Franz Julius. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 11, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-7001-2803-7 , p. 77.
  3. ^ Biographical stage lexicon of German theaters. Vol. 1, 1892, ZDB -ID 969718-4 , p. 227.
  4. ↑ Schönfeld, Franz Julius. In: Rudolf Vierhaus (Ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia . Vol. 9: Schlumberger - Thiersch. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Saur, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-25039-2 , p. 152.
  5. ^ A b Eduard von Winterstein : My life and my time. Half a century of German theater history. 7th edition. Henschel, Berlin (East) 1967, p. 278 f.
  6. ^ Obituary by Franz Schönfeld. In: German stage yearbook. Vol. 44, 1933, ISSN  0070-4431 , p. 113.
personal data
SURNAME Schönfeld, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schönfeld, Franz Julius (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor and director
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH June 11, 1932
Place of death Berlin