Heinz Saltenburg

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Heinz Saltenburg (born May 16, 1882 in Berlin , † September 23, 1948 in London ) was a German actor , librettist , director , artistic director , theater producer and theater entrepreneur in Berlin from 1919 to 1933.

The early years

In the Weimar Republic, Saltenburg was one of the five major theater makers and operators in Germany, alongside Max Reinhardt , Victor Barnowsky and the Rotter brothers in the Berlin of the Weimar Republic. He started his career in the first years of the 20th century as an actor in the German provinces. For example, he appeared in Heidelberg in 1905 , where he could be seen in the comedy Im bunt Rock , and in the 1907/08 season at the side of Julius Falkenstein and Carl Goetz at the Düsseldorf comedy theater. He also tried his hand at librettism; For example, in 1910 Saltenburg wrote the text for Julius Einödshofer's musical farce Ach die Kerls .

The heyday in Berlin

Saltenburg's career received a strong boost in the early post-war period, in Berlin in the early 1920s. In the 1920/21 season he was the senior director of the Wallner Theater and in November 1921 he also directed the Lustspielhaus when he premiered Gerhart Hauptmann's artist drama Peter Brauer . In 1923, under the pseudonym Florido , he provided the text for the Oscar Straus operetta The Foolish Virgin , and the following year, together with Leopold Jacobsohn, for another Straus work, the operetta Der Tanz um die Liebe .

In the autumn of 1924, Saltenburg began to build a theater conglomerate and, after taking over the management of the German Art Theater on September 25, 1924, added one theater after the other to his empire. Until 1933, Heinz Saltenburg operated central Berlin theaters, including the Lessing Theater , the Theater am Kurfürstendamm , the Lustspielhaus, the New Operetta Theater and the German Artists Theater . At the Saltenburg theaters, as was the case with Victor Barnowsky, mostly pure entertainment (revues, operettas) was played, and more rarely artistically ambitious plays.

He celebrated his first great artistic success at the end of 1925 with Carl Zuckmayer's play The Merry Vineyard . At the beginning of 1926, Saltenburg reached his preliminary professional peak when he was able to record an outstanding hit with the Lehár operetta Paganini - Berlin premiere on January 30, 1926 - with Richard Tauber in the lead role. This phase of great public success finally culminated in the 1926/27 season in close collaboration with the director Karlheinz Martin , who directed George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara for Saltenburg, among others . At this time Saltenburg was producing such successful pieces as Der Tsarevich and Chicago (both 1927), the latter based on a model by Maurine Dallas Watkins .

In those years, the late 20s, Saltenburg cooperated with a wide variety of artists. His circle of friends included Sergej Eisenstein , Klabund , Albert Bassermann and Käthe Dorsch . It was not until the beginning of the 1930s that Saltenburg's star gradually began to decline when the theater maker, not unlike the Rotter brothers, threatened to lose track of his intricate corporate network. In addition, more and more critical voices were raised about Saltenburg's business conduct. The theater maker and colleague Ernst Josef Aufricht referred to Saltenburg in his autobiography Und der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch, der Haifisch), referred to Saltenburg as the “prototype of the uneducated businessman”.

The years in exile

The seizure of power by the National Socialists in Germany ended abruptly the career of the Jews Saltsburg. In August 1933 he fled, all Berlin theaters forfeited become, according to Austria , where he worked in Vienna tried in vain in this and the following year to take over one of the empty theater and to provide a stage program on its feet. Saltenburg then left the Austrian capital at the end of May 1935 and moved to England .

While in British exile, he put his first British theater production on its feet with Little Ladyship in January 1939 - it was premiered in Edinburgh, Scotland . The young German émigré Lilli Palmer could be seen in one of the roles . In the winter of 1940/41 Saltenburg established the emigrant cabaret The Blue Danube in London's Finchley Road 153, which at the time of his death was the only German-speaking cabaret in England. In his British exile, the former theater mogul also wrote the libretto for a Liebelei operet based on notes by Oscar Straus.

Saltenburg died in London at the age of 66 after what an obituary put it, "a long and serious illness".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e according to the Kay Less theater archive
  2. ↑ not born in Hungary, as is often read
  3. ↑ http://www.karlheinz-everts.de/ImBuntenRock/buntrockheidelberg.htm
  4. ^ New Theater-Almanach 1908, theater-historical year and address book, published by the Cooperative of German Stage Members, new tenth year. P. 354
  5. ↑ Straus, Oscar Nathan, actually Oscar Nathan Strauss ( memento from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ http://www.scherbaumcon.de/promotion/richard_tauber_franz_lehar.asp
  7. ↑ Report in Pem's private reports from January 4, 1939
  8. ↑ http://www.literaturepochen.at/exil/multimedia/pdf/staudherz.pdf
  9. ↑ http://deposit.dnb.de/cgi-bin/exilframe.pl?ansicht=3&zeitung=aufbau&jahrgang=14&ausgabe=40&seite=13530013
personal data
SURNAME Saltenburg, Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Florido (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor, librettist, director, artistic director, theater producer and theater entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1948
Place of death London