Günther Haenel

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Günther Haenel (born May 1, 1898 in Dresden ; † March 5, 1996 in Baden / Lower Austria ) was a German and Austrian director, theater director and actor.

Beginnings

Haenel was in World War I as artillery - Lieutenant engaged and was on his return from the war, actor and director. His first engagement took him in 1921 to Adam Kuckhoff's Frankfurt Art Theater, where pioneering experimental pieces from Expressionism were performed. Further stations were then Hermannstadt , from where the German-speaking areas in Romania were played, and Würzburg . 1928–1932 he was senior director in Darmstadt , 1932–1939 he was engaged at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg .

time of the nationalsocialism

Haenel, actor and director with a communist background, decided when the National Socialists came to power in Germany to only direct: “In this role I was able to cross out sentences, have sentences played against the regime, while as an actor I was helpless to comply with the directors' orders saw delivered. " a prohibition he only escaped because he was the Iron Cross of merit 1st and 2nd class from the First world war carrier. From 1939 to 1943 Haenel was a member of the Theater in der Josefstadt with Heinz Hilpert . He then followed an engagement at the German Volkstheater in Vienna, of all places at the theater that was affiliated with the Nazi community " Kraft durch Freude ". Between 1942 and 1944, pieces were performed here that even showed a clear opposition to the regime. This was due to the internal management style of the artistic director Walter Bruno Iltz , who hired Erhard Siedel Haenel after the departure of the senior game manager Erhard Siedel . A group of women artists soon gathered around Haenel who were hostile to the regime and who were prepared to express this carefully on stage. Contemporary witnesses such as Inge Konradi , Gustav Manker and Judith Holzmeister agree that he was able to put this intention into practice.

In his oppositional productions of George Bernard Shaw's Die heilige Johanna (1943) and Ferdinand Raimund's Der Diamant des Geisterkönigs (1944), Haenel used the poet's word, the statement of the work and a critical acting art for a theater that he called "dialectical theater" . In his theater program, published shortly after the end of the war, it says: "What is the point of a work of art? To defog the heart and brain. Art is a path of knowledge: of searching as well as communication." In his productions, Haenel used the potential of the art of acting to lead a theatrical act of his own through differentiated facial expressions, gestures and movement between the text and against the text, to criticize the regime. Haenel emphasized not so much the "excellent portrayal of the English and French psyche" in "Saint Johanna", which was so valued by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels , but rather the uncompromising path of an individual in a rigid structure of power. A dispensable passage in the text about the business ability of the Jews remained in the play as a provocation, but the sentence “I would not let any Jew in Christendom live if it were up to me ” was deleted. With the reply “The Jews usually give what is worth it. I have made the experience that people who want something for free are always Christians ” , SS men left the hall at the premiere on July 18, 1943 .

Gustav Manker's stage design for Raimund's magical tale "The Diamond of the Ghost King" satirized the monumental Nazi aesthetic for the Land of Truth in the play with statues in the style of Arno Breker and paraphrased the symbol of the KdF wheel and the German imperial eagle , the costumes were based on BDM and Hitler Youth . Karl Kalwoda , the actor who played King Veritatius, even spoke in broken sentences and delivered a parody of Hitler in gestures and posture. At the end of the scene, to applause from the audience for a balloon ride, the sentence “The future is in the air! “Added.

Directorate of the Volkstheater

On July 4, 1945, Haenel took over the management of the Volkstheater instead of the previous director Rolf Jahn. He had the then (communist) City Councilor for Culture Viktor Matejka on his side. Shortly before that, Haenel's production “The Last Night” by Karl Kraus , the epilogue to the tragedy “ The Last Days of Mankind ”, which the author had intended for a “Marstheater”, was staged at the Volkstheater. The Kraus quote could be read on the theater bill : “No, the soul doesn't leave a scar. Humanity will have the bullet in one ear and out of the other. "

Portrait painting by Günther Haenel by the painter Reinhard Trinkler in the artistic director's gallery of the Vienna Volkstheater

One month later, and already under his direction, Haenel combined “The Last Night” with the one-act play “In Ewigkeit Amen” by Anton Wildgans for an evening of theater entitled “The Human Face”. Karl Skraup played the accused Anton Gschmeidler. With a “board of directors” he involved members of the house in decisions and thus anticipated the “ co-determination theater ”. Haenel ran the house as an uncomfortable and committed temporary theater; the first performance of Julius Hays haben in 1945 led to the first theater scandal of the Second Republic and a battle in the hall when the actress Dorothea Neff hid poison under a statue of the Madonna. The exhibition by the surrealist Edgar Jéné in the walkways also showed how strongly the public still thought in the categories of the Third Reich and rejected such "modern" art.

The neglected Russian drama was revived with dramas by Ostrowski , Turgenev and with Anatoli Lunatscharski's The Liberated Don Quixote with Max Paulsen , which Haenel accused of a communist tendency schedule. Albert Bassermann returned in 1946 with Heaven waits at the house and subsequently also played Ibsen's builder Solness and Ghosts . The anti-fascist American successful play Before the Decision was directed by Haenels with Attila Hörbiger , the returning Adrienne Gessner and Siegfried Breuer . Oskar Werner made his popular theater debut in Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! . Ernst Deutsch appeared again in 1948 in Der Helfer Gottes . Jean Anouilh and JB Priestley were introduced to the Viennese audience.

For the old Viennese folk comedy by Nestroy and Raimund, Gustav Manker succeeded in developing a new staging style for this genre with actors such as Karl Paryla , Inge Konradi , Karl Skraup , Theodor Grieg and Hans Putz . Since Haenel was liable as a tenant with his private fortune, he was also forced to put numerous comedies and "light fare" on the program, which were great successes with audience favorites such as Annie Rosar , Christl Mardayn or Curt Goetz ( Das Haus in Montevideo ) . Due to the unexplained leases, Haenel resigned in 1948 and founded the “ New Theater in der Scala ” , which is run as a partnership .

New theater in La Scala

In 1948 Haenel founded the " Societät des Neues Theater in der Scala " together with Karl Paryla and Wolfgang Heinz . The former vaudeville and cinema theater in the Johann Strauss Theater building at 8 Favoritenstrasse housed the theater, which was run as a partnership, of emigrants who had returned to Vienna and committed anti-fascists, many of them with a communist background. Karl Paryla , Otto Taussig , Therese Giehse , Arnolt Bronnen , Wolfgang Heinz and Bertolt Brecht contributed to the reputation of the house. Brecht personally staged his play “ The Mother ” in 1953 , in many ways the “Scala” was based on his “ Theater am Schiffbauerdamm ” in Berlin. The Scala was the only theater in Vienna that, during the Brecht boycott, performed Brecht to the extent that it was due to its literary importance.

With its committed repertoire, Scala wrote Viennese theater history. Haenel staged the world premiere of Der Bockerer by Ulrich Becher and Peter Preses on October 2, 1948, with Fritz Imhoff in the title role. Haenel left "Scala" in 1950 because of conflicts over the privileges of lawyers and then worked as a director at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin . Despite outstanding achievements, the “Scala” was sidelined for political reasons by the press and official harassment, and after 1955, when the occupying powers withdrew from Austria, it was forced to close. The house was demolished in 1959/60 in the wake of the "death of the Vienna theater".

Vienna Burgtheater

Haenel returns to the Volkstheater as a director and actor, in 1958 he received the Josef Kainz Medal in the Volkstheater for the role of Rubaschow in Sydney Kingsley's play Solar Eclipse , based on the novel by Arthur Koestler , directed by Gustav Manker . He then followed an engagement at the Vienna Burgtheater , where he played from 1958 to 1974.

family

Haenel was married to the actress Maria (Bädy) Gabler. His son Nikolaus Haenel is also an actor. In 1960, through the mediation of Helmut Qualtinger, he took on a job as a clerk in a general store in the first district of Vienna, where he discovered the archetype of Mr. Karl . Nikolaus Haenel is married to the actress Jutta Hoffmann .

Honors

On October 23, 2011, director Michael Schottenberg took a portrait of Günther Haenel by the painter Reinhard Trinkler in the director's gallery of the Volkstheater.

Filmography

Theater (direction)

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b 100 years of popular theater. Theatre. Time. History. ISBN 3-224-10713-8 .
  2. ↑ Paulus Manker : “The theater man Gustav Manker . Searching for clues. " ISBN 978-3-85002-738-0 .
  3. ↑ Neues Deutschland from November 1, 1950, p. 4
  4. ↑ Homage to Walter Bruno Iltz and Günther Haenel | Popular theater. (No longer available online.) In: alt.volkstheater.at. Archived from the original on November 1, 2016 ; accessed on November 1, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / alt.volkstheater.at
personal data
SURNAME Haenel, Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian director and actor
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1996
Place of death Baden near Vienna