Heinz Tietjen

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Heinz Tietjen (seated) with Marta Fuchs and Ivar Andresen (1936)

Heinz Tietjen (born June 24, 1881 in Tangier , Morocco ; † November 30, 1967 in Baden-Baden ) was a German director , conductor and general manager .

Career

Tietjen first completed a commercial apprenticeship in Bremen and then worked abroad for the Bremen West Africa Society before he began to turn to music and, among other things, to learn from the Hungarian conductor Arthur Nikisch , whom he was on the ship on his return trip from Cameroon met personally.

Tietjen got his first engagement as Kapellmeister and director at the Theater Trier in 1904 , was promoted to director there in 1907 and was director of the house from 1919 to 1922. In addition, Tietjen was the director of the Saarbrücken Theater. He was then appointed artistic director of the Breslau Theater, which he owed to his sponsors, the later Prussian minister of culture, Carl Heinrich Becker, and the specialist advisers of his ministry, Ludwig Seelig and Leo Kestenberg .

From 1925 Tietjen was director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and from 1926 also took over the management of the state opera houses Unter den Linden and Krolloper . In 1927 he became general director of all Prussian state theaters , which included the royal theater on Gendarmenmarkt , the Schiller Theater and the Wiesbaden and Kassel theaters , and held this post until 1944. His later confidante Winifred Wagner appointed Tietjen as artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival in 1931 , which he directed in collaboration with her from 1934 to 1944. According to Hannes Heer's interpretation , Tietjen had become the “most powerful theater director in the final phase of the Weimar Republic ” in 1931 , who owed his career “to his dual talent as an economically and artistically equally effective theater manager and as a cunning and discreet cultural politician”. Tietjen advocated the closure of the Kroll Opera House, which was attacked in 1931 by the National Socialist press as a “reddish Jewish cultural institute”.

Bayreuth Festival

Heinz Tietjen was the first director alongside the members of the Wagner family to stage several operas in Bayreuth. Apart from the family members, there was only one director before Tietjen, August Harlacher (1888: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ). Heinz Tietjen staged six of the seven opera works performed in Bayreuth (exception: Tannhäuser ). Apart from him, only Wagner's two grandchildren, Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner , achieved this width . Besides Wieland Wagner, he is the only director who staged two operas in one year of the festival (1933: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Der Ring des Nibelungen ).

From 1933 to 1941 and again in 1959 he was also a conductor in Bayreuth:

  • The Mastersingers of Nuremberg : 1933–34
  • The Ring of the Nibelung : 1934, 1936, 1938–39, 1941
  • Lohengrin : 1936-37, 1959

time of the nationalsocialism

After the National Socialists came to power , Tietjen was appointed director of the Berlin State Opera by Hermann Göring on September 11, 1936 and, in December of the same year, together with Gustaf Gründgens , appointed to the Prussian State Council. As General Director of the Prussian State Theater, Heinz Tietjen, Göring's confidante and friend of Hitler's admirer Winifred Wagner , was an important pillar of National Socialist cultural policy. On June 1, 1933, Tietjen fired 27 employees from the State Opera and the theater. In the theater he gave notice to the communist Hans Otto . Wilhelm Furtwängler , Opera Director of the State Opera, was also involved in the agreement between Tietjen and Göring .

For Hannes Heer there is no doubt about Tietjen's role as stirrup holder for the National Socialists. Evidence for this was provided by personnel files that he found in the Prussian State Archives in Dahlem and of denazification files that he found in the Berlin State Archives . After that, Tietjen did not urge Hans Hinkel to at least employ the ensemble members living in mixed marriage .

post war period

After the end of the war, denazification proceedings were initiated against Tietjen , which were closed in April 1947 with his complete discharge. The commission confirmed that he had an “opportunistic attitude”, but, based on two testimonies that were submitted, considered “active participation” in the resistance against National Socialism as given. Hannes Heer considers Tietjens' self-portrayal as patron saint of the ensemble, as a savior of the Jews or even as a resistance fighter to be embellished.

At the end of May 1945, on the orders of Colonel General Bersarin, Heinz Tietjen was appointed General Director of all Berlin theaters and was supposed to organize the development of the theater business after the war. Due to a denunciation by the conductor Leo Borchard , he was removed from this position at the end of June 1945 and continued to live in Berlin as a music teacher / musicologist until 1948.

In August 1948, Tietjen was again given the management of the Deutsche Oper by the Berlin magistrate , which he carried out this time until 1954 and where the Berlin Festival Weeks were held for the first time in 1951 under his direction . In 1954 Tietjen went to the Hamburg State Opera . From 1957 on, Tietjen worked there as artistic director before retiring in 1959 in Baden-Baden. His wife was the former ballet dancer Liselotte Tietjen.

Awards and honors

Tietjen was awarded the Great Cross of Merit in 1953 and the Star of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1956. On the occasion of his 50th stage anniversary he received the Ernst Reuter plaque from the Berlin Senate on September 26, 1954 . In 1956 he was awarded the Silver Leaf of the Dramatists Union and in 1958 the seal of honor of the City of Trier .

In February 1974, Tietjenstrasse was named after him in the Tempelhof district of Berlin .

The Heinz-Tietjen-Weg was named after him in the city center of Trier (at the theater).

Memberships

Tietjen was elected a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts in 1955 .

See also

literature

  • Heinz Tietjen: self-portrait . In: Hannes Reinhardt (editor): That's me . Piper, Munich 1970, pp. 169-205
  • Heinz Tietjen 1881–1967. Artistic director, conductor and director. Pictures from his life. Catalog for an exhibition in the Trier Theater in cooperation with the Richard Wagner Association Trier, published for the vernissage on May 10, 1992. Program booklet Theater Trier. Trier 1992, 1993.
  • Frederic Spotts: Phantom of the opera: on the remarkable career of Heinz Tietjen. London: Opera, February 2006. Pages 135–143
  • Hannes Heer, Boris von Haken: The defector Heinz Tietjen. The general director of the Prussian State Theater in the Third Reich. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , 58, 2010, no. 1, pp. 28–53.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hannes Heer, Boris Haken: The defector Heinz Tietjen. The general director of the Prussian State Theater in the Third Reich. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , 58, 2010, no. 1, p. 28.
  2. ↑ Hannes Heer, Boris von Haken: The defector Heinz Tietjen ... In: ZfG , 58, 2010, no. 1, p. 32.
  3. ↑ Hannes Heer, Boris von Haken: The defector Heinz Tietjen ... In: ZfG , 58, 2010, no. 1, pp. 40 and 43.
  4. ↑ Hannes Heer, Boris von Haken: The defector Heinz Tietjen… In: ZfG , 58, 2010, no. 1, p. 42 f.
  5. ↑ honor seal of the city of Trier
  6. ↑ Tietjenstrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
personal data
SURNAME Tietjen, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director, conductor and artistic director
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Tangier , Morocco
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1967
Place of death Baden-Baden