Franz Mertz
Franz Mertz (* 1897 in Cologne ; † January 1966 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German painter , set designer and stage architect. His work for Gustav Rudolf Sellner in Darmstadt in the 1950s is best known . His stage design integrated the new directions of painting, sculpture and architecture.
Act
After studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy , Mertz worked from 1924 at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus with Luise Dumont and Gustav Lindemann. In 1930 he created the set for Kokoschka's Mache the door, it pulls , in which the first floating form, the specific element of the later so-called “Darmstadt style”, was created. He developed this Darmstadt style after moving to Darmstadt in 1951 with Sellner, the dramaturges Egon Vietta and Claus Bremer , and the set designer Michael Raffaeli . The collaboration with them resulted in productions such as Sophocles ' tragedy King Oedipus and Büchner's Woyzeck at the Landestheater Darmstadt . In this staging, Mertz used the parts of the room, which rise diagonally towards the rear, to create a sense of depth. After eight years he left the Landestheater Darmstadt and moved to the Frankfurter Schauspielhaus . One of his legacies that have shaped the stage is the uniform stage he developed together with the director Heinrich Koch , the so-called Koch plate .
As a set designer he had exclusive contracts a. a. with the Ruhr Festival Recklinghausen , the Schillertheater Berlin , the Bavarian State Theater in Munich and the Frankfurt Municipal Theaters . He also created equipment for television productions, a. a. of the Bavarian radio and television (1955, Die Kluge ).
Mertz had been a member of the " Darmstadt Secession " since 1957 .
In January 1966, 69-year-old Mertz died in Frankfurt from the injuries he had suffered in a traffic accident three days earlier. The photographer Vera Mercer 's his daughter.
Filmography
- 1956: Iphigenie auf Tauris (Director: Gustav Rudolf Sellner )
- 1957: Abu Kasem's slippers (Director: Gustav Rudolf Sellner)
- 1959: Der Herr Ornifle (Director: Raoul Wolfgang Schnell )
literature
- Herbert A. Frenzel , Hans Joachim Moser (ed.): Kürschner's biographical theater manual. Drama, opera, film, radio. Germany, Austria, Switzerland. De Gruyter, Berlin 1956, DNB 010075518 , pp. 485-486.
- Wilhelm Kosch (Ed.): German Theater Lexicon . Volume II: Hurka – Pallenberg. De Gruyter , Berlin et al. 2011. S. 1443. ISBN 978-3-907820-28-5 .
Web links
- Franz Mertz in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- http://www.universitaetssammlungen.de/modell/231 (model of a stage set with columns by Franz Mertz)
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.universitaetssammlungen.de/person/1506
- ↑ a b c d Franz Mertz Member of the Darmstadt Secession since 1957 . Vita. darmstaedtersezession.de
- ^ Franz Mertz member of the Darmstadt Secession since 1957 . darmstaedtersezession.de
- ^ Sellner in Stadt Lexikon Darmstadt
- ↑ Bettina Behr: Stage designers: A gender perspective on the history and practice of stage design , Transcript, 2013, ISBN 978-3837623147 , p. 112 [1]
- ↑ Wilfried Minks: Wilfried Minks. Stage builder , Suhrkamp Verlag , 2011, p. 68 [2]
- ↑ Stage technical review. 1/1966, p. 30.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mertz, Franz |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter, set designer and stage architect |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cologne |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 1966 |
| Place of death | Frankfurt am Main |