Hans Schüler (Intendant)

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Hans Ernst Wilhelm Carl Schüler (born November 18, 1897 in Berlin ; † June 23, 1963 in Mannheim ) was a German opera director and theater manager.

Life

After studying German , which he completed with a doctorate , Schüler worked as a director in Berlin in the early 1920s. In 1923 he made a guest appearance in New York as an assistant director. Engagements as senior director in Erfurt (1924-26) and Wiesbaden (1926-28) followed. In 1928 he became director of the Königsberg City Theater .

On January 6, 1933, he moved to Leipzig as the opera director, who, after being largely organizationally separated from acting, had great autonomy. There he initially worked with the general music director Gustav Brecher , who was hostile to the National Socialists for his Jewish origin and who was put on leave on March 11, 1933 at their pressure. The right-wing national wake-up call complained that the new opera director was "Brecher's pupil". On May 1, 1933, however, Schüler joined the NSDAP . According to Schüler's own account, the Mayor of Leipzig, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , had urged him to keep him after the Nazis came to power. When the theater director Detlef Sierck , who was married to a Jewish woman, had to give up his position, in 1936 Schüler was given overall management of the "Theaters of the Reichsmesse City Leipzig". From 1939 he carried the title of "general manager". In Leipzig, Schüler staged the world premieres of Adolf Vogl's Die Verdammten (1934), Hans Stieber's Der Eulenspiegel (1936) and Winfried Zillig's Die Windsbraut (1941). After the Americans marched into Leipzig in April 1945, Schüler stated that he had been initiated into the bourgeois resistance group around Goerdeler and the attempted coup of July 20, 1944 .

From 1947 he was director of the Lübeck Theater for four seasons . In 1951 he went to the National Theater in Mannheim as director . In addition to operatic classics such as Beethoven's Fidelio , Verdi's Aida , Wagner's Lohengrin , Tannhäuser , Meistersinger and Tristan and Isolde and Mozart's Don Giovanni, he also staged works such as Werner Egks Columbus . He was instrumental in building the new theater in 1957. On the occasion of Wagner and Verdi's 150th birthdays in 1963, Schüler performed a cycle of 18 works by both composers.

Since the first performance on April 14, 1957, Schüler's Parsifal production has been on the repertoire of the Mannheim National Theater on Good Friday and other major public holidays (Corpus Christi etc.). No other opera production can record so many years of performance.

In 1957 he was awarded the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Cross of Merit. The city of Mannheim named a path after him.

literature

  • Support group of historical graves in Mannheim (ed.): The cemeteries in Mannheim . Mannheim 1992
  • Gerhard Heldt: Hans Schüler and his “Parsifal” concept (Mannheim 1957) . In: Gerhard Heldt, Brigitte Heldt (Hrsg.): A life for the opera. Jean Cox on January 16, 1982 . Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 1982, ISBN 3-921518-68-7 , pp. 73-82
  • Liselotte Homering, Karin von Welck (Hrsg.): Mannheim and its national theater. People - history (s) - perspectives . Palatium-Verlag, Mannheim 1998, ISBN 3-920671-27-9
  • Herbert Meyer: The National Theater Mannheim. 1929-1979 . Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1979, ISBN 3-411-01563-2
  • Karl Otto Watzinger : Hans pupil. In: Baden-Württemberg biographies. Volume 1, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 978-3-17-012207-9 , p. 343 ( full text ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Kretzschmar: Archives and research. Lectures at the 73rd German Archive Day 2002 in Trier. Verlag Franz Schmitt, Siegburg 2003, p. 249.
  2. ^ Thomas Eicher, Barbara Panse, Henning Rischbieter: Theater in the "Third Reich". Kallmeyer, 2000.
  3. ^ Gudrun Dittmann: Opera between adaptation and integrity. To the world premieres of contemporary German operas at the Leipzig New Theater in the Nazi state. The Blue Owl, 2005, p. 60.
  4. ^ Wolfgang Chechne : Lübeck and his theater. The story of a long love . Reinbek 1996, p. 99 ISBN 3-923707-29-0
personal data
SURNAME Student, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Student, Hans Ernst Wilhelm Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera director and theater manager
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 23, 1963
Place of death Mannheim