Friedrich August joke

Friedrich August Witz ( December 20, 1806 - June 19, 1880 ) was a German child actor , opera singer ( tenor ), theater actor , opera director , dance teacher and translator .

Life

Witz was the son of the actor couple Kaspar and Wilhelmine Witz, née Rabehl. His parents worked for a short time in 1810 and again from 1817 to 1823 at the Augsburg Theater. The father played character roles and comical fathers, was at times a director and theater painter. In 1823 he was paralyzed by a stroke and died in Augsburg in 1841. The mother, loved and adored by the son, played chaperones, heroines and trouser roles ; she was in Augsburg for the last time in 1829 and died there insane.

The high school near St. Anna built by Elias Holl

Witz entered Bamberg for the first time at the age of three and a half as a representative of children's roles. However, that came to an end when his parents sent him to St.Annen-Gymnasium . However, due to his father's stroke, he had to interrupt his studies to help support the family. Therefore, he made his debut on October 27, 1823 for the first time as a real actor in the role of "Victorin" in The Orphan and the Murderer by Ignaz Franz Castelli .

Since then, Witz has been a member of the Augsburg Theater with only a very brief interruption. One after the other he played nature boys, lively lovers, dudes, character roles, funny fathers, rough characters; At times he acted as stage manager and opera director, at the beginning of his career he even sang tenor buffo roles.

Outside the stage, he worked as a dance teacher and language teacher of the French language. His knowledge of French also enabled him to translate pieces into German, which were then performed in Augsburg.

On October 27, 1848 he celebrated his twenty-five year anniversary, and on October 27, 1873 his fiftieth anniversary. In these fifty years of activity he gave 7650 performances, in which he had played 5100 in 5470 roles. He had to learn about 13,320 sheets by heart, almost three bales of paper. Not counting the opera roles. During this time he experienced twelve directors and an estimated 2,240 members and 490, including very famous, guests.

In the different ages he often portrayed six to seven characters in the same play, as he did for example. B. in Tell has sixteen roles in addition to the two boys, in the Maid of Orleans thirteen roles. In these fifty years his total wages were 24,400 florins , which averaged 488 florins a year.

For his twenty-five year old he played the “Papilos”, for his fifty year old the old “Valentin Beaugrin” in exactly the same piece with which he began his career: The Orphan and the Murderer . At the latter appearance he was so touched that at the beginning he could hardly speak in tears, but in the course of the piece, due to the wondrous truth of his portrayal and its unsophisticated originality, he carried his admirers away to renewed, never-ending applause. After this performance, he was invited to a feast at which, in addition to some council members of the city of Augsburg and his family, the former opera singer Caroline Fischer-Eighth and the court actor Paul Rüthling paid him their respects. This festival was organized by one of the sons of the Fischer-Eighth, the comedian Eduard Schmidt gave a humorous lecture.

With increasing age, however, his physical complaints increased, and when the old theater closed due to the new building of the Great House , he gave his farewell performance in the old house on November 25, 1877 and withdrew from the stage entirely.

After that he lived as a private citizen with his family - his wife, an Augsburg bourgeois daughter, had died years ago, his children were all grown up - and spent most of his time playing tarot .

On June 19, 1880, a Friday evening, he was getting ready to go out to the Zum Prinzen Carl restaurant (where he had also spent his first night in Augsburg) when he suddenly and unexpectedly died. He was buried on June 21, 1880. A large crowd had gathered for his funeral. The Liedertafel, of which Witz was a long-time member, sang a slumber song.

literature

• Theodor Ent (Ed.): Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach , thirty-eighth year 1874, pp. 72–75
• Theodor Ent (Ed.): Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach , year forty -fifth , 1881, pp. 177–178