Franz Schuch the Elder

Franz Schuch the Elder (* around 1716 in Vienna ; † December 1763 in Frankfurt an der Oder ) was a German actor and leader of a traveling theater company of Austrian origin.

Live and act

Schuch broke off his school days, which he completed at a Jesuit college near Vienna, after a few years without a degree. He joined Carl Friedrich Reibehand († 1754) and his theater company (→ Deutsche Wanderbühne ). There he played u. a. together with Johann Friedrich Lorenz and Carl Friedrich Rademin .

Schuch not only appealed to the audience as an actor and marionette artist, but he was also able to achieve success again and again with his own small pieces (mostly arrangements). After a few years he left Reibehand and founded his own theater company. During this time he was married to the Austrian actress Barbara Rademin , whom he had met at his colleague Filippo Nicolini's in Braunschweig .

This marriage only lasted a short time and Schuch soon married a daughter of the school director Schleißner's in Gera . With her he had three sons Franz, Christian and Wilhelm. When his wife died in 1754, Schuch married the daughter of his colleague Köhler for the third time.

In 1742 Schuch was granted the Privilegium Privativum by the city of Breslau and from October of the following year he was allowed to perform with his troupe outside of Silesia . In Wroclaw he set up a theater, today the Polish Theater in Wroclaw is located there . Further tours took him to Bern (1747) and Strasbourg (1749), but he also performed in Germany between Regensburg (1748), Lübeck (17533) and Berlin (1754).

He then settled in Berlin and played regularly in the surrounding area for the first time. Since he had no permanent venue, he was granted the "General Privilege for Prussia" with effect from August 17, 1755. This secured his regular appearances between Berlin, Danzig , Königsberg and Stettin . On the occasion of a guest performance in Breslau, Schuch was also able to acquire citizenship for himself.

Only his son, Franz Schuch the Younger , was able to find a permanent venue for the Schuch troupe . He was able to open the Schuch'sche Theater at Behrenstrasse 55 .

Franz Schuch died in December 1763 in Frankfurt / Oder and found his final resting place there.

reception

Johann Christoph Gottsched tried to reform the German theater together with Friederike Caroline Neuber . The highlight was her public burning of a harlequin doll in 1737 , with which the image of the jester should be defeated. According to his own admission, Schuch thought very little of this “reform”. He continued to appear as a harlequin or as a Viennese Hanswurst (→ Funny Person ) and, like his colleague Josef Anton Stranitzky, had great success with the audience. Schuch is also considered to be the first in Germany to regularly incorporate ballet scenes in his performances .

As the principal of his own ensemble, he survived the Seven Years' War and was also in direct economic competition with Konrad Ernst Ackermann and Johann Friedrich Schönemann .

Karl Friedrich Flögel describes his costume and there is also a portrait of Schuch in the collection of Georg Wolfgang Panzer .

In Schuch's theater company played over the years u. a. Johann Anton Stenzel (1705–1781), Conrad Ekhof (1720–1778), Adam Gottfried Uhlich (1718–1753), Christian Gottlob Stephanie (around 1733–1798), Johann Gottfried Brückner (1730–1786), Johann Christian Brandes (1735 –1799), Karl Theophil Döbbelin (1727–1793), Friederike Sophie Seyler (around 1737–1789) and Susanne Mécour (1738–1815).

Fonts (selection)

Own works

• The cunning and strange pranks of the world-famous Cartouche .
• The birth of the harlequin from the egg .
• The wonderful incidents of a Spanish nobleman under the name "Don Gartias" with Hanns-Wurst, a ridiculous inventor of strange merrymaking .
• Scapin the gallant and curieus equestrian in love on foot .
• Arlequin, enchanted, transformed into fourteen-fold, self-murdering, and emerging from the grave again .

Edits

• Christian Fürchtegott Gellert , Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , August Wilhelm Schlegel , Adam Gottfried Uhlich
• Pierre Corneille , Carlo Goldoni , Ludvig Holberg , Molière , William Shakespeare

literature

• Christian Heinrich Schmid : Chronology of the German theater . Leipzig 1775 ( digitized version ); Reprint: Society for Theater History, Berlin 1902
• Constantin von Wurzbach : Schuch, Franz (father) . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 32nd part. Imperial and Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1876, p. 116 ( digital copy ).
• Ludwig Eisenberg : Franz Schuch , comment on Schuch-Proska, Clementine von , in: Großes Biographisches Lexikon der Deutschen Bühnen im XIX. Century . Paul List, Leipzig 1903, p. 932 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive )
• Johannes Klopfleisch:  Schuch, Franziskus . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 54, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1908, pp. 234-238.
• Valeska Valipour: La pratique théâtrale dans l'Allemagne de la seconde moitie du 18e siècle (1760–1805) . Dissertation, University of Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2011 (PDF file)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Karl F. Flögel: Flögel's "History of the Grotesque-Comical" . Harenberg, Dortmund 1978, ISBN 3-921846-24-2 (reprint of the Leipzig 1862 edition).
2. ↑ today in the holdings of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum .