Fritz Kortner

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Fritz Kortner (1959)

Fritz Kortner (born May 12, 1892 in Vienna as Fritz Nathan Kohn , † July 22, 1970 in Munich ) was an Austrian actor , film and theater director . He experienced his breakthrough as an actor in Karlheinz Martin's production of Ernst Toller's play Die Wandlung in Berlin in 1919. Kortner was considered an exponent of expressionist theater and a "type of contemporary actor" in the Weimar Republic and Austria. Due to years of hostility from the National Socialists , Kortner left Germany a few months before the onset of the Nazi era . While emigrating to Great Britain and the United States , he worked as a screenwriter and actor in the film industry.

After his return to the Federal Republic of Germany , Kortner worked as a guest director and actor at numerous West German and Austrian theaters. Most often he directed the Münchner Kammerspiele and the Berlin Schillertheater . Kortner's productions and films repeatedly provoked controversy due to political subtexts . Kortner's elaborate staging style, which is oriented towards linguistic and gestural detail, influenced numerous directors and actors in the post-war period .

In addition to his work as a theater actor and director, Kortner appeared in around a hundred silent and sound films, directed cinema and television films and wrote scripts and plays.

Life

Apprenticeship with court actor Gregori in Vienna

Kortner's idol Josef Kainz as Franz Moor in Friedrich Schiller's Die Räuber am Burgtheater Vienna, around 1908

Fritz Kortner was born on May 12, 1892 in Vienna-Alsergrund as the son of the Jewish watchmaker and jeweler Juda Jakob Kohn (1849-1919) and his wife Helene (née Lunzer). During his school days he was impressed by "the philosophical and psychological enlightenment, with socialism and cultural criticism" and by the theater. He admired the work of the Austrian writer Karl Kraus and the kuk court actor Josef Kainz . Around 1908, as a senior high school student , Kortner attended a production of Friedrich Schiller's play Die Räuber at the Burgtheater in Vienna with the renowned actor Josef Kainz in the role of Franz. Kainz impressed as a modern stage artist with fast-paced performance, especially in classical roles. The evening at the theater had a decisive effect on Kortner: “All of a sudden I listened to the theater. Afterwards I lay in bed feverishly ill for days afterwards. ”Like his idol Kainz, Kortner wanted to become an actor from then on.

A few months later, Kortner successfully auditioned for the acting teacher Ferdinand Gregori . Gregori held a leading position as a court actor at the Vienna Academy for Music and Performing Arts , which was assigned to the Burgtheater. Gregori sponsored Kortner, who in autumn 1908 was awarded a Burgtheater scholarship after passing the entrance exam at the academy. According to Gregori, “about 150 young people came to me with the same desire, and I only took in about a tenth of them. Today I don't remember what he said to me as a test of talent, but I certainly didn't let him romp for long [...] - but immediately gave him a free position. ”Not all of the academy's instructors shared Gregori's benevolent judgment. The lecturers of the minor subjects, against whom Kortner protested, even demanded that the impetuous drama student be expelled from the academy as a "destroyer of all discipline". However, Kortner got away with a warning for insubordination.

First engagements in Mannheim and with Max Reinhardt in Berlin

Fritz Kortner during his engagement at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, around 1911
Kortner owed his commitment to the Deutsches Theater to its director Max Reinhardt (recording by Nicola Perscheid , 1911).

When Gregori was appointed artistic director of the Mannheim Court and National Theater , Kortner received his first one-season engagement there in 1910. He adopted his stage name at the latest “when he started his first engagement”. When accepting the Burgtheater scholarship, however, Kortner had to commit two years earlier to spend his first year as an actor at the Burgtheater. In order to be able to go to Mannheim instead with Gregori in 1910, Kortner had to ask the Burgtheater for a solution to this obligation. As he regretted in his autobiography in 1959, he had no idea at the time "how definitive this renunciation of the Burgtheater on me would be and that my request for a solution at that time should be valid for life" (it was not until 1964 that Kortner was to be hired as a guest director at the Burgtheater) . In Mannheim, artistic director Gregori raised great hopes when he introduced the young actor Kortner as a worthy “successor to Kainz”; Kainz had died shortly before after a serious illness.

Already in 1911 Kortner was engaged by Max Reinhardt - after he had "spoken a monologue by Franz Moor" - at the German Theater in Berlin . There he only played small to medium-sized roles. As early as the spring of 1913, Kortner gave up his engagement again and gave the reason that Reinhardt was absent from Berlin for a long period for touring reasons. The statement attributed to Reinhardt shows that a tense personal relationship between Reinhardt and Kortner could have contributed to the actor's decision: "Oh Kortner - he's always right!" For Kortner, years of wandering from stage to stage began. The director Berthold Viertel engaged him at the Vienna Volksbühne , where Viertel worked as a poet and dramaturge. At that time, the Vienna Volksbühne mainly employed young actors and played contemporary authors. Kortner's first appearance in May 1913 in Herbert Eulenberg's tragic comedy Alles um Geld , in which he played the greedy dreamer Vincent, "had a big impact."

In the same year, Victor Barnowsky brought Kortner back to the Lessing Theater in Berlin, which Kortner left after a falling out to work at Meinhardt / Bernauer's theater on Königgrätzer Strasse . However, there were no performances on either of the two stages. After the beginning of the First World War , Kortner had to appear in front of a draft commission in 1914 and was declared “fit”. As part of a further military medical examination, Kortner's "suitability for front duty" was soon to be determined. Since the doctor in charge was also a theater doctor and had seen him play, he had him admitted to the Vienna General Hospital . There, another doctor helped him in the following weeks to obtain a "military official certificate" which "exempted me from duty at the front until further notice and referred me to home care because of overcrowding in the hospitals." In view of his "military medical confirmation [n] Inability to fight ”Kortner was able to continue his acting career.

Kortner did not settle down during the war years, but the roles in the theaters became more important. He played the title role in Molnár's Liliom in October 1915 at the Albert Theater in Dresden , Franz Moor in Schiller's Die Räuber in September 1916 and King Philipp in Schiller's Don Carlos in December 1916 (both at the Volkstheater Vienna ). During the war, Kortner also found a foothold in silent films. In Vienna he starred in the films Frauenehre , Der Sonnwendhof and Der Märtyrer seine Herzens (all in 1918), in which his expressionist portrayal was shown to full advantage for the first time.

Immediately before the end of the war, Kortner received a position order by telegram in November 1918, which, however, became invalid the next day due to the unconditional surrender.

Breakthrough in Berlin and years at the Prussian State Theater

Together with his friend, director Karlheinz Martin, Kortner went to Berlin in 1919. There he experienced his breakthrough as a linguistic and expressive actor in the play Die Wandlung by Ernst Toller at the theater Die Tribüne . “His play accused, proclaimed the 'new man' against the war and the old society, born from a peaceful revolution.” The newly elected Berlin artistic director Leopold Jessner signed Kortner to the State Theater and made him his protagonist in the years that followed. At the Staatliches Schauspielhaus Kortner proved himself between 1919 and 1921 in the dramas of Schiller and Shakespeare , he played Mortimer in Maria Stuart (October 1919), Gessler in the scandalous production of Wilhelm Tell (December 1919) and the title roles in Richard III. (November 1920) and Othello (November 1921) directed by Jessners. Stylistically, however, he later interpreted Jessner's theater as a dead end and spoke of the danger of "succumbing to the surprise theater that we had basically driven."

The Prussian State Theater on Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt

Kortner claimed the credit to Leopold Jessner with an "awkwardly drawn sketch" in the Viennese production of Richard III. to have inspired his sensational “staircase” in December 1921, a stepped stage which Jessner's fame as a modern director and designer of space-free and timeless stage spaces was one of the founding elements. Jessner had triggered a theatrical scandal with this highly controversial stage element, which in its symbolic abstraction ran counter to common set design conventions, but already in his Berlin production of Wilhelm Tell in December 1919 (in which Kortner was also involved).

In the 1920s, Kortner developed into one of the great theater stars who dedicated themselves to the new expressionist theater after the First World War. He celebrated great success with the title roles of Macbeth in November 1922, in Danton's death von Büchner in February 1924, in Herodes and Mariamne von Hebbel in March 1926 and as Hamlet in December 1926 (all in Berlin). Above all was Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (first in Vienna in 1916, again in 1923 and 1924), which became Kortner's life role. When he played her again in November 1927 at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus under the direction of Jürgen Fehlings , the critic Alfred Kerr found : “Kortner is the hero of an indelible tragedy. [...] There is no spokesman in Germany who could bring out the word about the bleeding person when you stab him, so gorgeous, so simple, so haunting, so deeply experiential as this guy. ”In addition to his theater work, Kortner increased his activity in film . Here, too, expressionist works were created in which the actor celebrated success with his demonic and subtle art of representation. One of the box office hits with Kortner was the silent film Shadows from 1923, which also impressed with the effective use of light, shadow and mirrors. In 1924, Kortner played the role of villain in the Austrian silent film horror classic Orlac's hands .

In 1924 Kortner had married the actress Johanna Hofer , whom he had met four years earlier in a production of Crommelynck's Der Maskenschnitzer . Hofer accompanied him until the end of his life. Their son Peter (1924–1991) was born in the same year, followed by their daughter Marianne in 1929. Since the wedding, the artistic collaboration and community of Kortner and Hofer coincided. When it became known in September 1928 that Kortner had founded a "Kortner-Hofer-Gesellschaft mbH" with a share capital of 20,000 Reichsmarks, which was supposed to serve the "evaluation of the acting activities" of the two, the critic Herbert Ihering warned against the "money megalomania der Stars ”and the“ dangerous wrong track ”Kortner found himself on:“ His art depends on direction and ensemble and modern poetry. What he does as managing director of his talent leads straight to his own theater, to the Barnay Theater , to the uncontrolled, unregulated star stage. ”Kortner will have to weigh up the alternatives of isolated star fame and constructive ensemble work .

During the 1920s, Kortner was also politically committed to social democracy . In connection with the Reichstag election in 1928 , he made himself available for an election film. In the SPD film In the Beginning was the Word (director: Ernő Metzner ), which dealt with the difficult working conditions of the SPD press organs at the time of the Socialist Act in the Bismarck Empire, he played a worker. With the slogan "against the citizen block ", the film called for the election of the bourgeois cabinet Marx IV .

Moved to Switzerland and emigrated

The growing political instability of the Weimar Republic under the presidential cabinets and the increasing strength of the NSDAP prompted Kortner to move to Ascona in the Italian part of Switzerland in the spring of 1932 . Only a few months earlier he had presented his first directorial work for the sound film with Heinz Rühmann in the leading role with Der brave Sünder . When Adolf Hitler came to power, Kortner was on a tour of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. Kortner worried that he would not be able to create lasting professional prospects abroad. In the spring of 1933, he wrote a letter to a friend from Stockholm complaining of oppressive depression and "insane fear of life". From a distance he made the decision not to return to Germany. Since the late 1920s, Kortner had faced increased attacks by the National Socialists. The Gau newspaper of the Berlin NSDAP “ The Attack ” last made him an object of anti-Semitic hostility and the threat of vigilante justice in December 1932 : “The role [in Julius Hays Gott, Kaiser und Bauer ] was committed to the Jews Kortner-Kohn, which should have been played out in Berlin theater life long ago. He's pretty much the filthiest and nastiest Jewish guy that has ever stood on a German stage. "The Reich Commissioner in charge should immediately prohibit further performances or withdraw police protection," so that the Jewish scribblers then get on with the Berlin population, who they Dare to offer such a mess, have to deal with it yourself. "

The US columnist Dorothy Thompson, who was friends with Kortner, around 1920

Via Czechoslovakia, then via Vienna - where he appeared at Max Reinhardt's Theater in der Josefstadt - and Paris, the Kortner family emigrated to Great Britain in February 1934, where Kortner studied English intensively in order to find work in the British film industry . Due to his foreign accent, however, he was only offered exotic roles. During his work for the British film, the actor suffered severely from the loss of his mother tongue: “But to play in a foreign language, that often touches the darkest areas of madness in a frightening way.” A boycott of his films by the National Socialists soon took them away from him Income opportunity. For this reason, Kortner emigrated to New York in September 1937 , but suffered “wild gloom” there too, due to the lack of job opportunities, and at times saw himself approaching a “nervous catastrophe”. He found little in the way of the US theater: it was “without depth and without height, a theater of daily worries; a visit to the theater is a visit to friends. The metaphysical, that which goes beyond the human being, the confrontation with the non-real ”are alien to US theater. In February 1938, Kortner brought his family, who had not wanted to emigrate to the United States, to New York.

Through the joint authorship of a play, Kortner advanced to become political advisor to the influential columnist Dorothy Thompson . Thompson, who was close to the Republicans , began to rethink their political stance while working with Kortner in 1940. Following Kortner's advice, she successfully stood for the re-election of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt ( Democrat ). In the United States, Kortner wrote his first plays (the refugee drama Another Sun with Thompson, the Resistance tragedy Somewhere in France with Carl Zuckmayer and the prisoner of war play World Unseen ), which met with little response and were canceled after a few performances. In the summer of 1941, Kortner moved to Hollywood , which for years had also been affected by the international boycott of Kortner's work carried out by the Nazis. Kortner worked on scripts for the US film industry. After Hollywood began producing anti-fascist films too, Kortner was eventually offered film roles as well. Kortner's constant concern about not being able to support his family subsided. By the time he returned to Europe, he played in nine films, which, however, did not convince artistically. Kortner later assessed his professional achievements in Hollywood as "little remarkable".

Remigration and work at the Münchner Kammerspiele

Kortner with Curt Bois on the occasion of Kortner's production of Die Räuber at the Schillertheater in February 1959

Although eleven relatives from his "family had been gassed", Kortner moved back to Germany soon after the end of the war. The director of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, Wolfgang Langhoff , had invited Kortner to Berlin in 1947 “for the coming winter” so that Kortner had already asked friends “for suggestions about what to play”. Under all circumstances, Kortner wanted to help rebuild the German theater. When he arrived in Germany in December 1947 with a visa with VIP status, the US occupation authorities caused him difficulties. The hoped-for directing work at the Deutsches Theater in East Berlin was not approved: “When I arrived in Europe, I learned that I could not do what I wanted to do. Rather: as an American citizen, I would have to be active in the American sector. ”The US authorities prevented the returnees from doing practical stage work in Berlin,“ because we were still nominally in a state of war. ”In view of the fraternization ban , Kortner was initially only able to address the German theater as Approach viewers. The re-encounter with the German theater was sobering.

With the staging of his own comedy Donauwellen about the unteachable Viennese hairdresser Duffeck, who held on to his aryanization profits by all means after the end of the war, Kortner began his second career as a director at the Munich Kammerspiele in February 1949 . The “keen-sighted comedy about the sausage mentality” with Willy Reichert in the lead role saw 29 performances. The production was a success with the public, "but was forbidden by the occupying powers because of the satirical illumination of their attitude." Kortner's fourth post-war production attracted particular attention: Friedrich Schiller's Don Carlos at the Hebbel Theater in Berlin in December 1950. This led to the latent one The irritant factor that he himself represented as a Jewish remigrant: “When Posa addressed me with the words 'I came across burned human bones ...', the first unrest arose in the audience, which was divided between goodwill and hatred. It became clear to me afterwards that the protest was aroused by the fact that those words were said so slowly and so forcefully and addressed to me of all people. ”When in the fifth act a row of black armored men surrounded the Escorial and on the revolving stage there were volleys towards the audience fired, there was a commotion among the spectators. According to Kortner, however, this particularly aggressive effect was "not intended [...]." After threatening letters reached the director, after the second performance he resigned the role of King Philip, which he had played, and left Berlin.

In 1960/61, Kortner shot his television play Die Sendung der Lysistrata with Romy Schneider .
Fritz Kortner's grave

The West Berlin audience felt similarly provoked by a production three years later after the uprising of June 17 in the GDR . Here, too, Kortner's accusatory stance against militarism and the authoritarian state caused veritable irritation: In Sean O'Casey's piece Prize Cup about two war volunteers in World War I, which premiered in 1953 immediately after the events of June 17, “the warlike part of the West Berlin audience displeased the pacifist tendency, which was perceived as a provocative mockery, while Kortner demanded a clear head even in times like this and insisted on branding the war with the author as a 'mad action of an apparently incurable mental illness'. "As director Boleslaw Barlog recalled, accumulated after the premiere in front of the stage entrance of the Schillertheater a “ball of people” whose “expressions of displeasure did not suggest anything good. I accompanied Kortner to his car. He was also attacked quite angrily, but I succeeded, with good persuasion, and if it had to be, with a bit of tactfulness, to push the angry people away from him [...] some unmistakable anti-Semitic heckling hit Kortner hard. "

In the 1950s, Kortner became an iconic director of the theater of the Federal Republic of Germany, although the director, contrary to his own wishes, was never appointed manager of a theater. His artistic home was the Münchner Kammerspiele under Artistic Director Hans Schweikart and the Berlin Schillertheater under Artistic Director Boleslaw Barlog. At the Kammerspiele he staged seventeen pieces until 1967, including many Shakespeare, but also Beckett , Ibsen , Lessing , Schiller and Strindberg . A media scandal broke out in the Federal Republic of Germany when Kortner staged the television play Die Sendung der Lysistrata after Aristophanes in 1960 . In German politics at that time there was a dispute about rearmament in general and the nuclear armament of West Germany in particular. After violent disputes in the run-up, the television film was broadcast in January 1961 by almost all state broadcasters of the ARD. The Bayerische Rundfunk took the post on the other hand, referring to pacifist tendencies from the program. In the 1960s, Kortner first staged at the Burgtheater in his hometown of Vienna (Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman in November 1964 and Shakespeare’s Othello in December 1966). On April 29, 1970, three months before his death at the Vienna Theater in Josefstadt, Kortner's last directorial work came out: Emilia Galotti with Klaus Maria Brandauer and Marianne Nentwich .

On July 22, 1970, Fritz Kortner died in Munich after a long period of cancer. He was buried in the forest cemetery in Munich , Neuer Teil, in grave no. 246-W-23. Fritz Kortner's artistic estate - 60 archive boxes with a total of around 40,000 sheets - was transferred to the archive of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin by his widow in 1973 .

Theater and film history significance

Kortner as a stage actor

Fritz Kortner as Friedrich, returning from the war, in Martin's production of Die Wandlung , September 30, 1919 (Photo: Robert Neppach )

Kortner had his breakthrough as an actor in Karlheinz Martin's production of Ernst Toller's play Die Wandlung in Berlin in 1919. Kortner played the war returnees Friedrich, who changed from a war volunteer to the herald of a social rebirth and who met the mood of a war-weary audience with his evocative appeals. Since then, Kortner has been seen by many critics as an exponent of expressionist theater and a representative of a new style of acting. In view of the virtuoso portrayal of the hero in Die Wandlung , the critic Herbert Ihering praised that Kortner was an “unusually talented, imaginative, ardent actor”. Nonetheless, Ihering complained about cosmetic flaws in the promising young talent: Kortner did not play freely at the beginning and “relied on substitute notes. In the endeavor to avoid the colourfulness to which his hearing compels him, he fell for it all the more. His blood rebelled against the play and the direction. "

Kortner's later playing under Max Reinhardt, Berthold Viertel, Leopold Jessner, Ernst Legal , Ludwig Berger , Victor Barnowsky, Erich Engel , Jürgen Fehling and Erwin Piscator was characterized by the sovereign, unaffected mastery of the vocal means of expression : “As Geßler , Marquis von Keith, Richard III , Othello and Macbeth in the productions of Leopold Jessner at the State Theater, as Danton , Coriolan , Shlink in Brecht's Thicket and as Dr. In Wedekind's Lulu , directed by Erich Engel, Kortner developed into the prototype of the expressionist and republican actor, whose creative power and intensity of expression not only aroused the audience, but also ignited the actors who, playing by his side, could learn how to speak language treated, structured sentences, avoided all idyllic mood boxes and unobjective digressions in favor of strict clarity and artistic veracity. "

Matthias Brand stated that Kortner had turned away from the expressive "surprise theater" in the course of the 1920s and developed an "epic-realistic" acting style. Brand made this development process largely linked to Kortner's detachment from the “rigid Jessnerian directing concept” at the end of 1922 and the brilliant theatrical achievements of the following years under other directors. As a turning point, he particularly emphasized the works of Kortner under Erich Engel such as the Shlink in Brecht's Thicket (Deutsches Theater Berlin, October 29, 1924), through which Kortner also made "an important contribution to the development of epic-realistic theater".

As a characteristic of Kortner's acting and staging process, Ihering described the fact that Kortner made the work on the role the starting point of every theater work: “Most directors start from the fable, the plot, the structure of the drama, the comedy and thus select the roles . Kortner, however, first hears and sees each role and from there finds the way to the linguistic and gestural shaping of the whole play. ”When Kortner was more and more successful as a director in later years, his work as an actor largely faded into the background. He began to see himself as a "abdicated" actor. According to Henning Rischbieter , Kortner switched to directing "also because he has to convey the vision of a play completely and with undivided attention and urgency, but also because it is more difficult for him to learn and repeat the text."

Years after his death, Kortner's succinct acting style was still the subject of parodic alienation when the actor Heinz Bennent portrayed the famous old actor Karl Joseph in Botho Strauss ' comedy The Visitors at the Münchner Kammerspiele in October 1988. The self-loving actor Joseph imitated famous character actors such as Fritz Kortner on stage with wit and cunning and played them virtuously and with relish on the wall.

Kortner as a film actor

Between 1915 and 1968 Kortner appeared in about a hundred silent and sound films. In the years of the Weimar Republic until 1932, he was one of the great "male players" in German film , along with Heinrich George , Emil Jannings and Paul Wegener . Kortner began his career as a film actor in sensational films by Harry Piel . In the beginning he often played in Austrian love melodramas . Kortner was a popular screen actor with an expressionistic or naturalistic acting style in silent films by Leopold Jessner and Paul Leni ( back stairs ), Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau ( Satanas ) , Georg Wilhelm Pabst ( Pandora's Box ) and Reinhold Schünzel ( Catherine the Great ) . In the sound film, Kortner took on leading roles in Ewald André Dupont's German-English coproduction Atlantik , in Richard Oswald's judicial drama Dreyfus and in Fyodor Alexandrowitsch Ozep's The Murderer Dimitri Karamasoff . Kortner took over his first sound film direction in 1931 in the comedy Der brave Sünder with Max Pallenberg and Heinz Rühmann; 1932 followed again based on his own script. So a girl is not forgotten with Willi Forst and Dolly Haas .

During the years of emigration, Kortner was deprived of the opportunity to make a name for himself as a director with other films. With the dwindling popularity as a film actor, after several international guest tours, Kortner saw his opportunities for further guest appearances on stages abroad dwindle. Although he had to struggle with considerable linguistic hurdles, he tried hard to open up English and American film in the 1930s and 1940s. Kortner took roles in Berthold Viertel's Little Friend , in Walter Forde's film musical Chu-Chin-Chow (both 1934) and in Karl Green's subliminal anti-fascist feature film Abdul the Damned (1935). In the 1940s he played in several anti-fascist productions in Hollywood. After the Second World War, Kortner only appeared sporadically in films, including in Josef von Báky's Der Ruf (based on Kortner's script), in Helmut Käutner's epilogue or in Christian-Jaques Blaubart . Theater direction came to the fore in his work.

Theater, film and television directing

Despite his great success as an actor, Kortner's ambitions went beyond acting at an early age. As early as the 1910s and 1920s, as a young mime artist, he had a significant influence on the production concepts and “was de facto often a co-director.” Kortner gained his first practical experience in directing in film projects in 1918/19 and 1930/31. He first directed the theater while he was in emigration, when in February 1940 he directed the world premiere of the refugee drama Another Sun , which he co-authored with Dorothy Thompson, at the National Theater in New York. American critics complained, however, that Kortner's first film was still too strongly influenced by political reflections and not sufficiently effective on the stage. The production was canceled after eleven performances. Only after returning from emigration to Germany in 1947 did Kortner begin his second career as a theater director. As a guest director he was regularly called to Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg from the 1950s. The director Kortner was considered a "work and truth fanatic". Due to his time-consuming way of working, which earned Kortner the reputation of a "difficult" director, he only created 43 productions in total.

Unlike other directors, who had to limit themselves to a four-week rehearsal period, Kortner was “allowed three months of rehearsal time, initially with the attitude that he still had to learn.” In the opinion of his former assistant director August Everding , Kortner was “so convinced that truth be told proclaim, when he formulates opinions, so certain that the Creator is at work here, shaping the world, that the rehearsals and performances could not be long enough. If someone complained and asked if it really had to take hours and hours, he replied: 'So many good and beautiful things - don't you want more of what I invent?' [...] His conviction that he was the only one in possession of the truth caused him to formulate each statement so broadly that every listener could be informed about the state of his own ignorance and lack of education. "

The Berlin Schiller Theater, 1953

In his productions, Kortner proceeded entirely from text and language and looked for the gestures on which the words are based. As a director, he developed “in lengthy, intensive rehearsal work a realism rich in gestures and details, the highest aim of which was the revelation of truth. He got to the bottom of the texts, demanded absolute accuracy, let the smallest nuances play out (through forced gestures and diction, excessive emphasis on facial expressions); In the 50s and 60s he created a pioneering counter-model to the classicism of a Gründgens and to the representative style theater of directors such as Karl Heinz Stroux or Hans Schalla . "When a DVD documentation with recordings of Kortner's stage rehearsals from 1965 was published in 2005, “Spiegel” commented: “When he was directing, he admonished his fellow actors with grim glee to act 'even more hostile to subscribers' than usual: Fritz Kortner […] hated all routine on stage; every word, every gesture, every twitch in his face had to show spiritual truth for him. […] 'The tried and tested is not the aim of these rehearsals. But the untried. '"

As a former emigrant, Kortner did not shy away from passionate opposition to the attitudes and perceptual habits of a West German post-war society that was primarily concerned with economic consolidation. “With his insistent productions he often triggered storms of indignation, also in Berlin, where he worked three times in 1950 in the Hebbel Theater and between 1953 and 1969 ten times in the Schiller Theater. Many viewers and critics protested against his production of Don Carlos , because Kortner presented the monstrous caricature of a totalitarian state apparatus and tried to bring Schiller's dramaturgy into play in an updated manner. On the one hand, he drew figures glaring to all recognition (especially Domingo and the Grand Inquisitor), on the other hand he lent otherwise, 'heroes bloated figures rhetorical a startling naturalness (such as Posa Horst Caspar ). "The Frankfurter director Harry Buckwitz praised Kortner given its persistence and of his repeated theater scandals as "titanic heretics against the familiar - against sloppiness, mediocrity and charlatanism".

Honors and aftermath

Kortner between Klaus Kammer and Rolf Hochhuth during a ceremony for the award of the Berlin Art Prize in April 1963
Fritz Kortner, portrait by the German artist Günter Rittner , 1967

His numerous successes as a theater director brought Kortner to the same level of public recognition in the post-war period as he had experienced in the Weimar Republic and the First Republic of Austria. In 1957, Federal President Theodor Heuss presented Kortner with the Great Cross of Merit with a Star , an award that the head of state of the Federal Republic had only given to a few theater artists like Gustaf Gründgens. Since then, the homecomer Kortner, who , according to Peter Stein , had “saved the most fruitful impulses of the theater of the Weimar Republic and Expressionism over the Nazi era”, has received numerous honors in the Federal Republic and Austria. These included the Berlin Art Prize (1963), the Golden Medal of Honor of the City of Munich, the Kainz Medal of the City of Vienna (both 1967) and the Pour le mérite Order for Science and the Arts (1970).

In the post-war years, Kortner experienced the “approval of the boys” for his theater work as a special “consolation”. The Kortner style in interpretation and rehearsal work shaped a new generation of directors and influenced numerous actors. Kortner's assistant directors at the Münchner Kammerspiele included the later directors and artistic directors August Everding (assistant director 1954), Jürgen Flimm and Peter Stein (both 1968). The later general manager of the Bavarian State Theater Everding recalled that he had “learned to read from Kortner. Old texts that I thought I knew became new texts when you [that is, Kortner] read them out. It was not an original interpretation that made what was new. They discovered new relationships and found very unfamiliar characters where only clichés were known. In doing so, you reinvented the author. ”The director of the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden, Jürgen Flimm, remembered Kortner as an“ extreme ”teacher from whom he had learned to“ analyze texts meticulously. He had an unbelievable feeling for the scenic potential of a play and was able to develop a whole scene from a comma in a sentence. ” Schaubühnen director Peter Stein emphasized that in his early productions based on Kortner's model he was“ very strong with changes and Changes in the dramaturgical processes ”. He later withdrew from this practice in order to help express the historical truth guaranteed in the original text.

Between 1987 and 1999 the magazine Theater heute awarded the Fritz Kortner Prize . The prize, endowed with 10,000 marks, was awarded to German-speaking theater artists who had shown “daring, truthfulness and aesthetic curiosity”. Frank Castorf , Kurt Huebner , Einar Schleef , Kortner's former assistant Peter Stein and Peter Zadek were among the winners of the theater prize donated by the publisher Erhard Friedrich . The award of the prize was discontinued in 2000, but the Friedrich Foundation continued to make the prize money available to support projects in theater education and research. In addition, several German cities are reminiscent of Kortner in public spaces. Streets in Munich (since 1981), Osterholz-Scharmbeck (since 2004) and Berlin (since 2006) are named after him.

Filmography (selection)

Productions at the Münchner Kammerspiele (selection)

Radio plays

Director

  • 1954: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett ( BR )
  • 1968: Room Battle of Martin Walser ( DLF )

speaker

Awards

Autobiography and works

  • Every day evening. Autobiography. Droemer-Knaur, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-426-02336-9 (first edition: Kindler Verlag, Munich 1959).
  • Every day evening. Autobiography. With an afterword by Klaus Völker. Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89581-098-3 (first edition of this licensed edition with the new afterword: Berlin 1991).
  • Every day evening. Excerpts, read by Fritz Kortner. Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89581-137-8 (awarded in October 2005 on the hr2 audio book best list ).
  • Eventually. Fragments. Edited by Johanna Kortner. Kindler, Munich 1971 (posthumous autobiography).
  • Jean Baptiste Molière: Don Juan . Editing by Fritz Kortner. Desch, Munich, Vienna, Basel 1960.
  • The mission of the Lysistrata. Acting . Kindler, Munich 1961.
  • The dialogue. Acting . Kindler, Munich 1964.
  • Plays. Night and fog, Danube waves . Edited by Matthias Brand. Prometh, Cologne 1981.

literature

documentation

  • Kortner - Double DVD with two documentaries by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg from 1965 at Alexander Verlag Berlin, Berlin 2005.
  • "Kortner - passion and stubbornness" - documentary by Andreas Lewin - coproduction by Andreas Lewin Filmproduktion and SWR / RBB 2004, first screening January 18, 2005 at the Academy of Arts, Berlin

Web links

Commons : Fritz Kortner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Leopold Jessner: Writings. Theater of the twenties . Edited by Hugo Fetting. Henschel, Berlin 1979. pp. 189 f.
  2. ^ Peter Schütze: Fritz Kortner. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994. p. 15
  3. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . With an afterword by Klaus Völker. Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 25
  4. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 57
  5. ^ Ferdinand Gregori: Kortners Beginnings , quoted from: Heinz Ludwig (Ed.): Fritz Kortner . With a foreword by Alfred Kerr. Eigenbrödler, Berlin 1928. p. 34
  6. ^ Peter Schütze: Fritz Kortner. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994. p. 25
  7. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 96
  8. ^ Peter Schütze: Fritz Kortner. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994. p. 21
  9. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 100
  10. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 115
  11. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 143
  12. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 213. - However, Peter Schütze did not consider this justification to be very valid, since 1913 “was not a noticeable 'travel year' for the bustling great artist Reinhardt”. See Peter Schütze: Fritz Kortner. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994. p. 38.
  13. ↑ Quoted from: Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. p. 40. Schütze suspected that the real cause of Kortner's departure from Max Reinhardt was the mutual disappointment of both theater people. See Peter Schütze: Fritz Kortner. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994. p. 38.
  14. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 229
  15. ^ Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. p. 231
  16. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. pp. 239-243
  17. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2005, p. 203
  18. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2005, p. 213
  19. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2005, p. 216
  20. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2005, p. 217
  21. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. pp. 288-291. - Peter Schütze: Fritz Kortner. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994. pp. 45, 145
  22. ^ Matthias Brand: Fritz Kortner in the Weimar Republic . Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1981. pp. 15-22. - Fritz Kortner: Evening every day . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. pp. 297 f., 343 f.
  23. ^ Matthias Brand: Fritz Kortner in the Weimar Republic . Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1981. p. 64
  24. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. pp. 352-360
  25. ^ Fritz Kortner: In the end. Fragments. Edited by Johanna Kortner. Kindler, Munich 1971. p. 54
  26. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 53
  27. ^ Leopold Jessner: Writings. Theater of the twenties . Edited by Hugo Fetting. Henschel, Berlin 1979. p. 155
  28. ^ Matthias Brand: Fritz Kortner in the Weimar Republic . Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1981. pp. 157-168. - Fritz Kortner: Evening every day . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. pp. 377-380
  29. ^ Alfred Kerr, in: Berliner Tageblatt, November 18, 1927, quoted from: Through the Iron Curtain. Theater in divided Germany from 1945 to 1990 . Edited by Henning Rischbieter in collaboration with the Akademie der Künste. Propylaea, Berlin 1999. p. 68
  30. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. P. 365 f.
  31. ↑ Berlin night edition. The illustrated evening newspaper, September 7, 1928, quoted from: Foundation Archive of the Academy of Arts (ed.): Die Kortner-Hofer-Künstler-GmbH . Fürst & Iven, Berlin 2003. p. 4
  32. ^ Herbert Ihering, in: Berliner Börsen-Courier, September 8, 1928, quoted from: Derselbe: Theater in Aktion: Reviews from 3 decades. 1913-1933 . Edith Krull. Henschel, Berlin 1986. p. 328
  33. ↑ a b c d C. Bernd Sucher: Article Fritz Kortner , in: Derselbe (Ed.): Theaterlexikon. Authors, directors, actors, dramaturges, stage designers and critics . Second edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1999. p. 391
  34. ^ Matthias Brand: Fritz Kortner in the Weimar Republic . Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1981. p. 181
  35. ^ Peter Schütze: Fritz Kortner. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994. p. 80
  36. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 416. - His memories of the sporadic collaboration with Kortner were given a lot of space by his “preferred student” Rühmann in his autobiography: Heinz Rühmann: That was it. Memories . Ullstein, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Vienna 1982. pp. 76–85, here p. 80.
  37. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. pp. 416-418, 423-426
  38. ^ Letter from Fritz Kortner to Else Schreiber-Zhdanow, June 7, 1933, quoted from: Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. P. 122 f.
  39. ↑ Anonymous: The scandal in the 'German' theater - Schupo must protect Jewish quarreling , in: The attack, December 29, 1932, No. 272, quoted from: Matthias Brand: Fritz Kortner in the Weimar Republic . Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1981. pp. 243 f.
  40. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. P. 426 f.
  41. ^ Foundation archive of the Academy of Arts (ed.): The Kortner-Hofer-Künstler-GmbH . Fürst & Iven, Berlin 2003. p. 43
  42. ^ Letter from Fritz Kortner to Else Schreiber-Zhdanow, June 2, 1934, quoted from: Matthias Brand: Fritz Kortner in the Weimar Republic . Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1981. p. 280
  43. ^ Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. P. 126 f.
  44. ^ Letter from Fritz Kortner to Johanna Hofer-Kortner, December 13, 1937, in: Abschied und Willkommen. Letters from exile 1933–1945 . Edited by Hermann Haarmann with the assistance of Toralf Teuber. B&S Siebenhaar, Berlin 2000. P. 141 f.
  45. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 467
  46. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 437
  47. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. pp. 452, 497–499 - Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. pp. 136 f.
  48. ^ Another Sun , world premiere: February 23, 1940 at the National Theater New York; Somewhere in France , first performance: April 28, 1941 at the National Theater Washington; World Unseen , German: Night and Fog , world premiere: October 30, 1947 at Erwin Piscator's Rooftop Theater , New York
  49. ^ Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. p. 127
  50. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 550
  51. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 561
  52. ^ Letter from Erwin Piscator to Friedrich Wolf , August 4, 1947, in: Erwin Piscator: Briefe 2.3: New York (1945–1951) . Edited by Peter Diezel. B&S Siebenhaar, Berlin 2009. p. 94
  53. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 424
  54. ^ Letter from Fritz Kortner to Erwin Piscator, January 16, 1948, in: Erwin Piscator: Briefe 2.3: New York (1945–1951) . Edited by Peter Diezel. B&S Siebenhaar, Berlin 2009. p. 120
  55. ↑ About an evening in the Theater am Kurfürstendamm , Kortner wrote to his wife: “For days afterwards I lost my laughter at the run-down, dissolute, slutty, worrying comedy.” (Fritz Kortner's letter to Johanna Hofer-Kortner, around 1947/48, quoted from : Günther Rühle : Return to a devastated country. Fritz Kortner begins his second German career after emigration with Strindberg's “Der Vater” and “Don Carlos . ” In: Theater heute, issue 12, 2004, pp. 26–35, here p . 30).
  56. ^ Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. p. 210
  57. ^ Fritz Kortner: Every day evening . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 543
  58. ^ Fritz Kortner: In the end. Fragments. Edited by Johanna Kortner. Kindler, Munich 1971. p. 42
  59. ^ Peter Schütze: Fritz Kortner. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994. p. 100. - Also: Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. pp. 236-241
  60. ^ A b Foundation Archive of the Academy of Arts (ed.): The Kortner-Hofer-Künstler-GmbH . Fürst & Iven, Berlin 2003. p. 105
  61. ^ Boleslaw Barlog: Theater for life . Universitas, Munich 1981. p. 109
  62. ^ A b August Everding: He hated half measures. For Fritz Kortner (1970) , in: The same: The honor happened to me. Talking to, having a say, speaking out, speaking . Piper, Munich, Zurich 1985. p. 32
  63. ↑ Then he criticized the “work throttling” at the Burgtheater, which was “much more draconian” than in Munich: “While you can get an hour's rehearsal extension from the authorities in Munich and Berlin, the Viennese don't have any fun in it that they usually do like so much fun. ”Fritz Kortner: In the end. Fragments. Edited by Johanna Kortner. Kindler, Munich 1971. p. 59
  64. ↑ a b Herbert Ihering, in: Der Tag, October 2, 1919, quoted from: The same: Theater in Action: Reviews from 3 decades. 1913-1933 . Edith Krull. Henschel, Berlin 1986. p. 37
  65. ^ Foundation archive of the Academy of Arts (ed.): The Kortner-Hofer-Künstler-GmbH . Fürst & Iven, Berlin 2003. p. 101
  66. ^ Matthias Brand: Fritz Kortner in the Weimar Republic . Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1981. p. 126
  67. ^ Matthias Brand: Fritz Kortner in the Weimar Republic . Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1981. pp. 94-100
  68. ^ Matthias Brand: Fritz Kortner in the Weimar Republic . Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1981. p. 127
  69. ↑ a b Herbert Jhering: Fritz Kortner seventy-five. A director and actor, rightly called a difficult one , in: Die Zeit, May 12, 1967, no.19
  70. ↑ A complete overview of Kortner's roles as an actor from 1910 to 1968 can be found in: Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. pp. 17-100, 137, 345-349 (with explanatory texts). - Brand limits himself to the theater roles that Kortner played in the Weimar Republic: Matthias Brand: Fritz Kortner in the Weimar Republic. Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1981. pp. 316-326.
  71. ^ Fritz Kortner: In the end. Fragments. Edited by Johanna Kortner. Kindler, Munich 1971. p. 11
  72. ↑ Through the Iron Curtain. Theater in divided Germany from 1945 to 1990 . Edited by Henning Rischbieter et al. Propylaeen, Berlin 1999. p. 68 - In his autobiography, Kortner spoke of “text anxiety” in this context (Fritz Kortner: Aller Tage Abend . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1991. p. 231).
  73. ↑ Hellmuth Karasek: Is there life after the theater? About the Botho Strauss premiere “Visitors” in Munich . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1988, pp. 278-280 ( Online - Oct. 10, 1988 ).
  74. ↑ a b Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. p. 103
  75. ^ Günther Rühle: Return to a devastated country . In: Theater heute, issue 12, 2004, pp. 26–35, here p. 31
  76. ↑ August Everding: From the “culinary” to the “ideological” theater (1980) , in: The same: The honor happened to me. Talking to, having a say, speaking out, speaking . Piper, Munich, Zurich 1985. p. 215
  77. ↑ August Everding: From the “culinary” to the “ideological” theater (1980) , in: The same: The honor happened to me . Piper, Munich, Zurich 1985. pp. 228 f.
  78. ^ Documentary: Kortner's Legacy . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44 , 2005, pp. 145 ( Online - Oct. 31, 2005 ).
  79. ^ Letter from Harry Buckwitz to Fritz Kortner, May 12, 1967, in: "I love the one who desires the impossible". Harry Buckwitz. Actor, director, artistic director 1904–1987 . Edited by the Foundation Archive of the Academy of Arts. Parthas, Berlin 1998. p. 293
  80. ^ Peter Stein: Mein Kortner , in: Foundation Archive of the Academy of Arts (ed.): The Kortner-Hofer-Künstler-GmbH . Fürst & Iven, Berlin 2003. p. 120
  81. ^ Letter from Fritz Kortner to Henning Rischbieter, May 22, 1970, quoted from: Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. p. 409
  82. ↑ The world in a shoebox. Stefan Koslowski in conversation with Jürgen Flimm , in: Theater der Zeit, March 2004, issue No. 3, p. 22
  83. ↑ Quoted from: Peter Schütze: Fritz Kortner. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994. p. 130
  84. ↑ A complete overview of Kortner's work for the film is available from: Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. pp. 104–118, 125 f., 139–142, 203–205, of his television recordings and films: p. 321, of his radio recordings: p. 317. For Kortner's films, see also: Deutsche Kinemathek ( Ed.): Fritz Kortner . Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin 1970 (series Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin, No. 21). Several of the films in which Kortner participated were put on VHS or DVD (including Orlac's hands , 1924; Dreyfus , 1930; Danton , 1931; Der Ruf , 1948; Sarajewo - Um Thron und Liebe , 1955).
  85. ↑ A complete overview of Kortner's theater productions can be found in: Klaus Völker: Fritz Kortner, actor and director. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1987. pp. 354–399 (with explanatory texts).
  86. ↑ In addition to his work as a radio play director, Kortner was involved in other radio plays as a speaker. His comedy Donauwellen was edited in 1983 by Klaus Gmeiner for ORF .
  87. ^ BR radio play Pool - Büchner, Dantons Tod
  88. ^ Andreas Lewin: Kortner - Passion and stubbornness. In: www.alewinfilm.de. Andreas Lewin, accessed on January 9, 2020 (German, English, French).
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on January 12, 2012 in this version .
personal data
SURNAME Kortner, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kohn, Fritz Nathan (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian actor, film and theater director
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH July 22, 1970
Place of death Munich