Hannes Fabig

Hannes Fabig , (born December 7, 1939 in Gottesberg (Silesia) , † December 12, 2008 in Hildesheim ) was a German set designer , actor , director and painter .

Youth, craft and artistic training

The son of a bank clerk went to school in Werdau in Saxony from 1946 after he was expelled , graduated from secondary school and became a precision mechanic . Then he attended an arts and crafts school for painting and graphics and was in Zwickau private and master class of Erik Magnus Winnertz (* 1900, † 1977), who had himself been a master student of Otto Dix .

In 1958 the family managed to move to Munich . There he did an apprenticeship with Toni Trepte and Konstantin Garneff and, after obtaining his technical college entrance qualification, studied mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic for a few semesters . This profession did not fill him, however, and he began to work as a freelance painter. Among other things, he presented his pictures in two exhibitions in Munich.

From 1960 he attended the New Munich Drama School and became a student of Hans Schweikart . Gila von Weitershausen was a classmate . Klaus Engeroff later recalls an anecdote : One day a man of a more mature age appeared in class who wanted to put the students to the test and asked how they thought one could become an actor, whereupon Fabig explained: ‹ So you are definitely too old for that. 'The man was an Oscar-winning mime and was called Maximilian Schell .

Because money was tight, Fabig financed his studies as a toolmaker, he made it to the head of the test department for thermal relays at Schaltbau AG in Munich.

Set designer and actor

The first engagements as an actor followed at the end of 1962, including at the Munich Residenztheater . For the first time as a set designer, but also as an actor, he appeared on the Lore Bronner stage, also in Munich, and played his first smaller roles in films and on television; for example in Max, the pickpocket with Heinz Rühmann . At this time he met the Swiss actress Rita Gallen (actually Rita Bünzli from Sankt Gallen, hence the artist name), whom he married in 1964.

In 1963 in Sommerhausen near Würzburg he received several piece contracts from the principal of the gate tower theater, Luigi Malipiero , and rented a former defensive tower in Segnitz am Main , which he lovingly restored and lived in for 45 years as the "Türmer von Segnitz". He then worked for two years as a set designer, actor and director at the Theater der Altstadt in Stuttgart.

Artistic success

He had made an excellent name for himself now. The premiere of Jules Verne's Journey around the Earth in 80 Days in the stage version by Pavel Kohout in Stuttgart, for example, was memorable - with the only exception Hannes Fabig:

...static. [The] performance [dragged on] with tired high-pitchedness. [...] Arcs of tension [...] collapsed. The roles were bad, [...] insecurities of speech. [...] An exception was made by Hannes Fabig, who brought the passepartout to the stage in a French-nonchalant, charming and lively manner. ( Stuttgarter Nachrichten , February 2, 1966)

1966–68 he was an actor in Hof under director Johannes Keppler and took on open-air engagements in Feuchtwangen and Wunsiedel. Until 1971 he was again at the Theater der Altstadt in Stuttgart as a set designer, actor and director.

For 16 years, until 1987, he worked with directors such as Walter Riss (Mozarteum Salzburg), Peter Baumgardt (Gärtnerplatztheater Munich), Michael Haneke (film director), Heinz W. Krückeberg (Hanover) and Jan Biczycki (Munich) as a set designer at the Hildesheim City Theater . Under the directors Walter Zibell and later Pierre Léon he worked for operas, operettas, musicals, drama and ballet. But in Hildesheim, too, he was, as always, an actor at the same time, even if his outstanding trademark was his ‹fantastically beautiful, technically perfect stage sets›.

An example of a review during this time:

‹At the premiere of Slawomir Mrozek's« Emigranten », visitors waited on hard chairs to [...] applaud Werner Trakis and Hannes Fabig for their great theatrical and physical performance. Because they had succeeded in releasing the audience from the tension in a two-hour performance without a break, if at all, then only for brief moments. [...]

Werner Trakis and Hannes Fabig create [...] an atmosphere between crying and laughing. Both known as comedians par excellence, they always keep the line between play and reality. As much as one or the other scene may tempt you to clown, they also quickly recall the desperate person behind this comical figure.

There is Werner Trakis this lousy guy who, with sadistic joy, vultures with intellectually tinged meanness, picks up the awkward XX. [...]

Hannes Fabig resists any temptation to make the illiterate XX appear simple-minded boobies ... [...] His XX is naive with mischievous shrewdness, he is talkative and faithful and is agitated by sheer existential fear. With the wisdom of the ignorant he sends himself into his helplessness and defends himself with creatural instinct against the corrosive talk of his opponent. With sleepwalking security, he leads the viewer on the fine line between sympathy and dislike [...] ›(Angelika Liebethal:‹ Premiere of Slawomir Mrozek's «Emigranten» in the studio: A festival of acting. Werner Trakis and Hannes Fabig shine in Werner Blums Production. ›- Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung, September 14, 1976.)

For three years, 1975–77, Fabig was the head of equipment at the open-air theater in Bad Segeberg under the director Harry Walther. He cleared out the so-called Kalkbergstadion thoroughly and, as a permanent merit, ensured a considerably better view for all spectators. The praise for this reached the Chilean newspaper Cóndor despite a temporary 'Indian uprising' .

Proximity to the directorship

In 1986 he became head of equipment and first deputy, later acting director of the ETA Hoffmann Theater in Bamberg.

In 1991 he went to Stendal as head of the interior design studio . In 1995, he said in retrospect to the Augsburger Allgemeine in one of his very rare interviews: ‹After the fall of the Wall, I was attracted to being confronted with things that I had nothing to do with for 30 years.› - In 1994 Peter Baumgardt had brought him to Augsburg .

Apart from his pronounced reluctance to explain anything to journalists, Fabig was always open to new ideas. For him, the quality of a set designer lay less in self-realization than in being able to conform to the conception of a house, master his craft and make the content of the play visible to the audience ”(from the aforementioned interview with the Augsburger Allgemeine ).

In 2000 he took over equipment on the grounds of the world exhibition in Hanover . It was also the year his wife died.

Last works and exhibitions of the "Türmers von Segnitz"

Since 2003 he has been approaching the beginning of his work again, painting. He used his tower for highly regarded exhibitions and was lucky enough to find a new partner in Rose Kocher, who had been a friend of the family for a long time, Boris Kubik (also a stage designer).

Then a disease he had been struggling with for decades came back powerfully. His last work - it was already difficult for him to finish it - led him back to his craft roots: The true-to-original model of a ship mill from the 18th century based on historical plans for a highly regarded exhibition in his tower.

He died on December 12, 2008 in Hildesheim. The speech at the funeral service on December 19 was given by Klaus Engeroff . The burial in the Segnitz cemetery, where his wife Rita had already found her final resting place, was on February 4, 2009.

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• Archive of the Hildesheim City Theater and Segnitz municipal archive (collections of articles and images).
• Klaus Engeroff : 'Hannes Fabig. For the funeral service on Friday, December 19, 2008, 2 pm, St.Lamberti-Friedhof. ›Hildesheim 2008 [Ms].
• Hans Michael Hensel: A touch of the theater world in the old tower on the Main. Hannes Fabig, set designer, actor, director, painter and tower keeper from Segnitz. - "Feuilleton" No. 8 November 2009. Segnitz near Würzburg: Zenos Verlag, 4–17. ISSN  1436-2120 , ISBN 3-931018-19-9 . (With a detailed list of literature, reviews and sources as well as illustrations of his stage sets).
• rb. [= Rolf Raber]: ‹He realized a piece of freedom for himself. The set designer and actor Hannes Fabig. ›- Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung 10 July 1976.
• (h) l: ‹« Michl »and« Balthasar »in one person.› - Hof: Frankenpost [local edition Wunsiedler Tageblatt] August 12, 1969, 6.
• (ans) .: ‹On several tracks. An interview with the new head of equipment, Hannes Fabig. ›- Augsburger Allgemeine June 2, 1995.25.
• ‹Hannes Fabig.› - 95/96 season. Augsburg: Städtische Bühnen 1995 [short biography].
• Norbert Bischoff: ‹Traumwelt Theater. Hannes Fabig shows stage and costume designs. Segnitz in the tower. July 2–9. September 2007. ›[Prospectus] - Segnitz 2007.
• Norbert Bischoff: ‹The Segnitzer Türmer is dead.› - Würzburg: Mainpost, December 18, 2008.