Gustav Hartung

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Gustav Hartung , actually Gustav Ludwig May , (born January 30, 1887 in Bartenstein , East Prussia , † February 14, 1946 in Heidelberg ) was a German theater director and director.

Life

Gustav Hartung grave complex on the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof in the (Dept. Q).

Hartung was a son of the theater director Edmund May and his wife Luise Höpfner. Shortly after finishing school, he made his successful debut as a writer. In addition to his own literary works, Hartung also worked as a theater critic for several newspapers during this period.

He later became a drama student with Max Reinhardt . With the support of this, Hartung came to the Bremen theater in 1912 as a director and stayed there for two years. He then moved to the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt in the same position . There he was briefly married to Alice Carli. From 1920, Hartung was appointed director of the Darmstadt State Theater . In 1922 he was promoted to general manager; he held this office until 1924. In Darmstadt he married his second wife Karla, a daughter of General Karl von Unruh , and thereby became the brother-in-law of the writer Fritz von Unruh . He divorced Karla again in 1925.

Then he followed a call to Cologne, where he became director of the theater . In 1926 Hartung took part in the first Heidelberg Castle Festival and in the following year he took over the management of the Renaissance theater in Berlin, which he held until 1930. From 1931 to 1933 he took over the management of the Darmstadt State Theater as general director. His third marriage was to Elisabeth Lennartz.

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Hartung emigrated to Switzerland and worked there as an actor at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, as an actor and director at the Basel City Theater and from 1937 to 1939 as chief drama director and as an acting teacher at the Basel Conservatory .

In Basel in autumn 1943 he was sentenced to one year in prison for sexually assaulting drama students. Before this became legally binding, he was sent to a Swiss internment camp and thus escaped deportation to the German Reich. In the summer of 1945 Hartung returned to Germany and took over the management of the Heidelberger Kammerspiele .

Gustav Hartung found his final resting place in the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof . His grave is in the (Dept. Q). The white-flamed red sandstone stele by the sculptor Edzard Hobbing has an expressive figure relief that is intended to indicate the purpose of the deceased's life, the expressionist theater .

reception

Hartung is considered an important representative of Expressionist theater . Like Erwin Piscator , he also used light and shadow as an important design element. He campaigned for the works of Frank Wedekind , Carl Sternheim and Fritz von Unruhs and made a name for himself with successful staging of classics such as William Shakespeare . Thanks to him, the Darmstadt State Theater flourished again.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of the Staatstheater Darmstadt ( Memento of the original from April 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) 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 / www.staatstheater-darmstadt.de
  2. ↑ Hannes Heer et al.: Silent voices . 2011, p. 262f.
  3. ↑ L. Ruuskanen: The Heidelberg Bergfriedhof through the ages . Verlag Regionalkultur, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89735-518-7 , p. 74.
personal data
SURNAME Hartung, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theater director and director
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Bartenstein , East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1946
Place of death Heidelberg