Harry Buckwitz

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Harry Buckwitz (born March 31, 1904 in Munich , † December 27, 1987 in Zurich ) was a German actor , theater director and theater director . He became known worldwide primarily for his Brecht productions.

Life

Theater actor and hotelier

The Munich-born merchant's son Harry Buckwitz studied German , art history and theater studies , then trained as an actor and got his first engagement at the Münchner Kammerspiele . From 1925 he worked on various German theaters in Recklinghausen , Bochum , Mainz , Freiburg and Augsburg .

In 1937 Buckwitz was excluded from the Reichstheaterkammer as a " half-Jew " , which in fact amounted to a performance ban, and from then on worked in the international commercial sector. At the beginning of the Second World War he worked as a hotelier in Tanganyika , East Africa , where he was briefly interned by the Allies in 1940, but then released back home at his own request. From 1941 Buckwitz was director of the Savoy Hotel in Łódź ; In 1944 he enlisted in the Wehrmacht and remained in the military until the end of the war.

Frankfurt General Director

After the war, Buckwitz first became administrative director at the Münchner Kammerspiele from 1946 , before moving to the municipal theaters in Frankfurt am Main as general manager in 1951 , which he subsequently helped to gain a great audience. In 1952 he brought Georg Solti to the Frankfurt Opera as general music director . The twin building of the Frankfurt Opera and Drama Theater inaugurated in December 1963 at today's Willy-Brandt-Platz was conceptually based largely on his suggestions. In 1962 Buckwitz became Vice President of the German Academy of Performing Arts ; At his suggestion, the academy , which had previously been based in Hamburg , took its seat in Frankfurt (until 2004). In 1966 Buckwitz was elected its president.

During his time in Frankfurt Buckwitz devoted himself primarily to the staging of plays by Bertolt Brecht and was particularly successful with his The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1955) and Mother Courage (1958); in addition, contemporary authors such as Friedrich Dürrenmatt , Max Frisch , Rolf Hochhuth , Eugene Ionesco , Arthur Miller , Jean-Paul Sartre and Tennessee Williams were performed for the first time in Germany. With his programs he tried specifically to interest new sections of the population in the theater, and with his programs he achieved a seat occupancy of up to 90 percent; However, critics of the schedule accused him of spreading "communist propaganda". At the same time, Buckwitz also directed several television adaptations of plays by Brecht. In his last active years at the Ernst Deutsch Theater in Hamburg, for example, he directed the Caucasian Chalk Circle and The Good Man of Sezuan . In both productions he cast Angélique Duvier for the female lead.

After health problems and due to budget disputes with the city of Frankfurt, Buckwitz resigned from his position as general manager in January 1967 and left when the contract expired in August 1968.

Acting director in Zurich

From 1970 to 1977 Buckwitz was director of the Zurich theater . His appointment there led in the spring of 1970 to a heated controversy with the journalist Hans Habe , who accused him in an article for the weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag of having once been a follower of Hitler . Habe relied on quotations from the text Heimkehr: Expelled from German Land in Africa , published in 1940 by the Reichskolonialbund under Buckwitz's name. Buckwitz himself replied that parts of the manuscript he wrote in 1940 when he returned from internment in Tanganyika in a camp near Berchtesgaden had been changed without his knowledge before publication, while Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Rolf Hochhuth, among others, sided with Buckwitz. With a vote of confidence by the board of directors of the Zürcher Schauspielhaus, Buckwitz was confirmed in office, which he held until 1977.

Late years

In December 1977 Buckwitz was seen as an actor in the role of Cardinal Concha in the German television film The Death of Camilo Torres or: The Reality Can Take a Lot (Director: Eberhard Itzenplitz ). Buckwitz then worked as a freelance director until his death. At his express request, Buckwitz was not buried in his last place of residence, Zurich, but in Frankfurt am Main. His extensive written estate is now in the archive of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin .

Betsy Buckwitz's murder

On the night of June 10th to 11th, 1989, Harry Buckwitz's divorced wife Margarethe “Betsy” Buckwitz (née Sajowitz) was the victim of a robbery in her house in Königstein im Taunus ; the case attracted national attention and was also treated unsolved as a film case in February 1990 by the ZDF television investigation program Aktenzeichen XY ... The perpetrator, who in the meantime had otherwise committed a criminal offense and was therefore convicted in 2007, was convicted in August 2008 on the basis of a routine DNA analysis and sentenced to life imprisonment for murder on April 30, 2009 after a five-day circumstantial trial.

Honors

literature

  • "I love him who desires the impossible". Harry Buckwitz. Actor, director, artistic director 1904–1987 . Edited by the Foundation Archive of the Academy of Arts. Parthas, Berlin 1998.
  • Ute Kröger: Harry Buckwitz . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 1, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 288 f.
  • Harry Buckwitz: Essay in Zeit und Geist magazine . A two-month publication for art, literature and science. Progress Verlag Johann Fladung , Darmstadt 1957, no.4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Buckwitz era at the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt ( Memento from December 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Article on Buckwitz 'Frankfurter schedule.
  2. ↑ Hellmuth Karasek : Harry Buckwitz and the world on Sunday . In: Die Zeit , No. 24/1970
  3. ↑ Stranger's hand . In: Der Spiegel . No. 25 , 1970 ( online ).
  4. ↑ See Werner Birkenmeier: Eichenlaub against Goethe Medal: The Habe-Dürrenmatt-Trial in Zurich . In: Die Zeit , No. 14/1972, on Buckwitz there especially p. 3
  5. ↑ Harry Buckwitz estate inventory overview on the website of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.
  6. ↑ Murder of the director's widow apparently solved . In: FAZ , August 15, 2008.
  7. ^ The Buckwitz murder case . ( Memento from August 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: Frankfurter Rundschau , August 20, 2008.
  8. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau online: https://www.fr.de/rhein-main/lebenslang-buckwitz-moerder-11551953.html , April 30, 2009 (accessed on May 2, 2009)
  9. ↑ Ad Hoc News: Defendant in Buckwitz Trial Sentenced to Life Imprisonment , May 1, 2009 (accessed on May 2, 2009) ( Memento from July 16, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Buckwitz, Harry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director, actor and artistic director
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH December 27, 1987
Place of death Zurich