Franz Sondinger

Franz Sondinger (pseudonym: Felix Dhünen ; born January 5, 1896 in Germersheim / Rheinpfalz , † December 8, 1939 in Berlin ) was a German director, actor, director and writer.

Life

Sondinger lived for a long time as a sculptor in Munich , later in Italy and in Naumburg an der Saale . In the 1920s worked as an actor and director in Berlin; in 1924 he staged Boubouroche by Georges Courteline at the Renaissance theater (world premiere on December 13, 1924). From the end of the 1920s he worked at the theater on Klosterstrasse . His productions there included Carl Zuckmayer's successful play The Merry Vineyard (500th performance on January 21, 1931), Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening (first performance on January 28, 1930; Sondinger had previously staged several plays by Wedekind) and Luigi Pirandello's Six Persons Looking For One Author (first performance on April 22, 1930). From January 1930 he was also the director of this theater. Under his aegis, the National Socialist Volksbühne , founded by Robert Rohde (1883–?) In 1927/28 , an ideological alternative to the left-wing Piscatorsche Volksbühne judged by critics like Herbert Ihering to be aesthetically unsatisfactory, moved to the theater in Klosterstrasse for a season in November 1930 .

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933, he worked as a teacher at the Max Reinhardt School . In the 1933/34 season he played and staged at the Prussian State Theater in Berlin . In 1936 he directed Gerhart Hauptmanns Michael Kramer at the theater in Saarlandstrasse with Paul Wegener in the title role.

In addition to his theater work, he was also active as a writer under the pseudonym "Felix Dhünen". He became known for his drama Uta von Naumburg (1934), which was played a lot in the 1930s , in which the battle between German paganism and that of "German peculiarity" does not correspond to the statue of Uta in Naumburg Cathedral ( extremely popular thanks to the photographs by Walter Hege ) Christianity is discussed in the 11th century. His second play Traumspiel um St. Helena (1935) deals in dream visions with the relationship between the dying Napoléon I and his son Napoléon II , the Duke of Reichstadt, who tries in vain to emulate him and then decides against his father. In the drama Die Sonne Irlands (1936) Sondinger tells the story of Tristan and Isolde .

At the XI in August 1936 in Berlin . At the Summer Olympics , Sondinger took part in the “Lyrical Works” competition. He won the Olympic gold medal with his poem The runner about the messenger who brought the message of victory ("The victory was great. Who will bring it to Athens?") After the battle of Marathon . In 1939 the poem was published as a bibliophile edition with a pen drawing by Ludwig von Hofmann .

Sondinger died at the age of 43; shortly before his death in 1939 he was in charge of rehearsals for the comedy Das goldene Dach by "Eberhard Foerster" at the reopened Schiller Theater in the Reich capital Berlin . The Berlin premiere took place on December 12, 1939, the day of Sondinger's funeral in the south-west cemetery in Stahnsdorf .

Works

All under the pseudonym "Felix Dhünen".

Dramas

• Uta from Naumburg. Play in three acts . Bloch, Berlin 1934 (first performance: 1934 in Gera).
• Dream game about St. Helena . Bloch, Berlin 1935
• The Irish sun. Drama in 5 acts . Bloch, Berlin 1936 (first performance: 1936 in Gera).
• King of Rome. Tragic comedy in a prelude and 5 acts. Publishing house of German stage writers and stage composers, Berlin 1939 (World premiere: posthumously 1940 in Kiel)

Poetry

• The runner . Hauswedell, Hamburg 1939

prose

• The Naumburg Cathedral . Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld 1930? (Special print from: Velhagen & Klasings monthly books)
• It started as a game. The story of a Munich cadet . Beck, Munich 1939.

literature

• Franz Lennartz: German writers of the 20th century in the mirror of criticism. Volume 1 . Kröner, Stuttgart 1984, p. 367, ISBN 3-520-82101-X .
• Wilhelm Kosch : German Literature Lexicon , 3rd A. Vol. 3, Bern-Munich 1971, Col. 151.
• Wilhelm Kosch, Ingrid Bigler-Marschall: German Theater Lexicon. Volume 4 . Saur, Bern 1998, ISBN 3-907820-30-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz Sondinger in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Illustration of the theater: http://andreas-praefcke.de/carthalia/germany/berlin_klosterstrasse.htm
2. ↑ See Günter Seehaus: Frank Wedekind and the Theater, 1898-1959 . Laocoon Publishing House, 1964.
3. ^ The events previously took place in the Wallner Theater , which Piscator played in 1930/31. Cf. Ruth Freydank: Theater in Berlin: From the beginnings to 1945 . Argon, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-87024-125-X , p. 426.
4. ↑ http://www.berliner-schauspielschule.de/szenenabende.htm
5. ↑ Probably after Felix Dühnen , a main character in Eduard von Keyserling's novel Fürstinnen .
6. ↑ This “emphasis on German individuality” is emphasized in the short entry on Sondinger in Waldemar Oehlke's Deutsche Literatur der Gegenwart , 1942, p. 310.
7. ↑ The poem, popular at the time, is quoted in Siegfried Lenz's novel Bread and Games (1959) .
8. ↑ "Eberhard Foerster" was a pseudonym of the actor Eberhard Keindorff ; However, the main author of the play was probably Erich Kästner, who was prohibited from publishing . Cf. Stefan Neuhaus: The secret work: Erich Kästner's collaboration on plays under a pseudonym . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-8260-1765-X , p. 132. ( GBS )
9. ^ The piece appeared in 1940 in the Nordland library of the Nordland publishing house operated by the SS WVHA .
10. ^ Reissued in 1939 by Nordland-Verlag.
11. ↑ This document was placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the German Democratic Republic . See http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-d.html