Gustav von Wangenheim

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Gustav von Wangenheim in the silent film Shadows , 1923
Gustav von Wangenheim as Bishop Cauchon in St. Johanna by George Bernard Shaw
Age portrait
Gustav von Wangenheim with Käthe Dorsch (1946)

Ingo Clemens Gustav Adolf Freiherr von Wangenheim (born February 18, 1895 in Wiesbaden ; † August 5, 1975 in East Berlin ) was a German actor , director and dramaturge as well as a founding member of the National Committee for Free Germany (NKFD).

biography

Years of apprenticeship with Max Reinhardt and early success in theater and film

He was the son of the actor Eduard von Winterstein (actually Eduard Clemens Freiherr von Wangenheim ) and the Jewish actress Minna Mengers. After his mother had committed suicide when Gustav von Wangenheim was only four years old, his father married Hedwig Pauly, who was also a Jewish actress . From 1912 he attended Max Reinhardt's drama school . Stage engagements in Vienna, Darmstadt and Berlin followed. He made his feature film debut as early as 1916. His best-known role is that of Hutter in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's silent film classic Nosferatu, a symphony of horror from 1922. In 1917 he wrote a play about the October Revolution, “The Fyodor Man”, for which he received a “Young Germany ”got. Its publisher became Paul Cassirer . Here he came into contact with cultural politicians from the USPD, Leo Kestenberg and blackheaded workers, and in the November days of 1918 he got into the Reichstag and the “Council of Intellectual Workers”. He joined the USPD on November 11, 1918.

In addition to his diverse professional work in theater and film, in 1925 he founded a workers' traveling theater, the "Barbusse-Truppe", based on the international association of war victims. He performed his dramatization of the novel “Feuer” by Barbusse and the scenes of Herthy's camp by Andor Gabor in Berlin and many other cities in Germany. He performed this and many other pieces, skits, short scenes and choral works for the workers' theater under his pseudonym Hans Huss. His mass pantomime against the war was banned by Severing in 1924 during the dress rehearsal in the Berlin-Lichtenberg stadium. All the while he was torn between his professional life and his political-artistic activity in the labor movement. At the same time, he was filming at Ufa as a committed “star”. He played in the film roles of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Fritz Lang , Ernst Lubitsch and many others.

Founding of the troop in 1931

Between 1928 and 1933 he was the founder and leader of the troupe in 1931 , which emerged from the communist cell in the Berlin artists' colony , with Steffie Spira , Hans Meyer-Hanno and his wife Irene as pianists, with Arthur Koestler and Theodor Balk as helpful comrades edited the texts. They played his plays Mausefalle (employee problem, monopoly capitalism, question of personality), “This is where the dog is buried” (National question of Germany, mercenaries of monocapital in China), and “Who is the stupidest”? (Struggle against formalism in art). The troupe toured Germany and Switzerland with great success in 1931 . Its last premiere was on February 4, 1933 in Berlin. After the big raid in the Berlin artists' colony on March 15, 1933, the group disbanded.

Emigration to the Soviet Union

In 1933 the staunch opponent of National Socialism from Wangenheim, who had already become a KPD member in 1922, emigrated to the Soviet Union via Paris . In exile he wrote and directed, among other things, the film Fighters , which dealt with the Reichstag fire trial and Georgi Dimitrov. Shortly after its completion, the film was banned by Stalin, and countless contributors were arrested and shot. At the same time he led the theater group "Kolonne Links" together with Arthur Pieck, wrote essays and plays about Maxim Gorky, among others, and worked for the Moscow Radio , various publishers and was a member of the group of the German Writers 'Association, the Soviet Writers' Association and a union member led by Johannes R. Becher . His play "The Troublemakers" was performed in Moscow, in the "Len-Soviet" theater, in the "Gorki Theater" in Rostov-on-Don and in many theaters of the Soviet Union.

After Gustav von Wangenheim was sentenced to death in absentia by the National Socialists, he finally took on Soviet citizenship in 1940. When the war broke out, he began to work for the 7th Political Department of the Red Army. He designed leaflets and discussed panels for the front that were broadcast over loudspeakers. In 1941 he was evacuated to Tashkent for two years. In June 1943 he was able to return to Moscow and continue his work. When the NKFD was founded , Wangenheim was one of the founding members of the group of emigrants. A little later he became head of a department at the NKFD's "Free Germany" station in Moscow, before he was finally able to return to Germany in 1945 as one of the first emigrants.

In 1936, during his Moscow years, he allegedly denounced Carola Neher and her husband Anatol Becker as Trotskyists as part of the Stalinist purges . Both were arrested on July 25th that year. Anatol Becker was executed as a “Trotskyist” in 1937, and Carola Neher was sentenced to ten years in a labor camp. After five years in prison, she died of typhus in the Sol-Ilezk camp near Orenburg . Von Wangenheim's son later rejected the position based on documents published by Reinhard Müller that his father had denounced Carola Neher and her husband as Trotskyists as one-sided and inaccurate.

Director of the German Theater and late work in the GDR

After his return, von Wangenheim was the director of the German Theater Berlin, which he reopened, for a few months from September 1945 . His first productions such as Nathan the Wise , Hamlet and Judgment Day were celebrated in public in Berlin. From Wangenheim the great tradition of Max Reinhardt was resumed. At the same time, the members of the ensemble and the director fought for the release of Gustaf Gründgens from the internment camp in Jamlitz. Gründgens was accused of cooperating with the National Socialists. Above all von Wangenheim, but also Ernst Busch and many other artists campaigned for the political rehabilitation of Gründgens. On March 9, 1946, Gründgens returned to Berlin and drove straight to von Wangenheim. He became an actor again at the Deutsches Theater. Both knew each other from the Hamburg period in the 1920s.

On May 29, 1946, a Soviet play was played for the first time at the Deutsches Theater, Leonid Rachmanov's Stormy Retirement. It turned out to be a defeat for the Soviet military administration. Gustav von Wangenheim then asked to be released from his duties as director. It was an "impious lie". During his life he never understood why he was dismissed and why he was excluded from his life as an actor and director on a German stage. While von Wangenheim's appearances in films were rare in the post-war years, he continued to work as a director and screenwriter for DEFA . Under his direction the film And Again 48 was made , which deals with the March Revolution of 1848 . He was awarded the GDR National Prize for his artistic work, especially for his play You are the right one , which he wrote for the opening of the newly founded Theater der Freunda .

Gustav von Wangenheim was married to the actress and writer Inge von Wangenheim and is the father of the actor and playwright Friedel von Wangenheim and the twins Elisabeth (called "Li") and Eleonora von Wangenheim (called "Lo").

He was buried in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin.

Filmography

As an actor, unless otherwise stated:

Fonts

  • The man Fyodor . Berlin 1917.
  • The rascal Franz
  • Choir of work. Association of international publishing houses, Berlin 1924.
  • Mousetrap . Berlin 1931
  • Who is the dumbest . Berlin 1931
  • Heroes in the basement . State Publishing House of National Minorities in the USSR, Kiev 1935.
  • The peacemakers . Moscow
  • Olympic goal: narration . Meshdunarodnaja kniga, Moscow 1940.
  • Ferryman where. Novella. Moscow 1941.
  • Student Comedy: In Time We Will Cope . New life, Berlin 1958.
  • Written in battle: drama, prose, poetry . Grandstand, Berlin 1962.
  • The dog is buried there and other pieces: from the repertoire of "Truppe 31" . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1974.
  • Ferryman where to? Stories and short stories . Tribüne, Berlin 1977 (first publication: Meshdunarodnaja Kniga, Moscow 1941).

Pieces

  • You're the Right One , Comedy, Premiere: May 26th, 1950 Theater der Freunde , Berlin
  • We're already further , premier: June 29th, 1951 Theater derfreund, Berlin

literature

  • Wangenheim, Gustav von . In: Lexicon of socialist German literature. From the beginning to 1945. Monographic-biographical presentations . Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1964, pp. 518-521.
  • Helga Gallas : On the Brecht-Lukács controversy. Comments on the article by Anders / Klobusicky and on Lukács' Wangenheim criticism. In: alternative . 15th year 1972, issue 84/85, pp. 121-123.
  • Rainhard May, Hendrik Jackson (ed.): Films for the Popular Front. Erwin Piscator, Gustav von Wangenheim, Friedrich Wolf - anti-fascist filmmakers in exile in the Soviet Union. Stattkino Berlin, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-00-007540-2 .
  • Wangenheim, Gustav von . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
  • Laura von Wangenheim: In the clutches of history. Inge von Wangenheim. Photographs from Soviet exile. 1933-1945. Rotbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 3-86789-190-7 .
  • Günther Rühle: Theater in Germany 1945–1966. Its events - its people. S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-10-001461-0 .

Web links

Commons : Gustav von Wangenheim  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Müller: Human trap Moscow. Exile and Stalinist Persecution. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-930908-71-9 .
  2. ↑ Von Wangenheim's son stated that his father, himself arrested by the NKVD and accused of "monarchist plans to overthrow", merely signed a protocol after prolonged interrogation, which accused Carola Neher of being "anti-Soviet". The accusation that Neher and her husband, Anatol Becker, had planned the assassination of Stalin, were expressly rejected by von Wangenheim. Cf. Friedel von Wangenheim : My father Gustav Frhr. v. Wangenheim and the case of the actress Carola Neher. In: Wangenheim news. No. 25, from December 1998, ZDB -ID 2303658-8 .
  3. ^ Günther Rühle: Theater in Germany, 1945-1966. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-10-001461-0 , page 86.
  4. ^ Finding aid from the estate of Inge von Wangenheim, 1918 - 1993 (2002), p. 15. Thuringian State Archives Rudolstadt.
personal data
SURNAME Wangenheim, Gustav von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wangenheim, Ingo Clemens Gustav Adolf Freiherr von (full name); Hans Huss (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor and director
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiesbaden
DATE OF DEATH 5th August 1975
Place of death East Berlin