Hellmuth Gotze

Hellmuth Goetze (* 2 September 1886 in Leipzig , † 7. March 1942 in Berlin ) was a German stage actor and theater intendant .

Life

Götze was born the son of a Leipzig bookseller, attended secondary school in his hometown and then completed a three-year commercial apprenticeship. But then he gave up his learned profession and became an actor. In the following years he had engagements at the Stadttheater Eisenach (1906–1907), the Stadttheater Elbing (1907–1909), the Landestheater Neustrelitz (1909–1910), the Stadttheater Zittau (1910–1911) and finally the Stadttheater Breslau (1911–1910) 1913), where in the summer of 1913 he was also senior director of the natural theater of the exhibition of the century . Later in the same year he was appointed senior director at the Rostock City Theater and in 1914 at the New Theater in Königsberg . From 1914 to 1919 Götze did military service as a lieutenant in the reserve . From 1919 to 1922 he headed the Mittelrheinische Verbandsbühne based in Bad Godesberg and was then director of the city ​​theater in Trier until 1927 , where he attracted attention with his new productions , set up large festival weeks for the first time and successfully brought the theater through the difficulties caused by inflation and separatism. In 1927 Götze was finally appointed director of the State Theater in Oldenburg . In 1929 he staged the expressionist opera Wozzeck by Alban Berg , the Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill and the pacifist drama U-Boot S 4 by Günter Weisenborn with great success . Most of the stage designs were created by the talented Ernst Rufer.

From 1931 Götze had increasing differences of opinion with the politically right-wing members of the theater committee. This eventually led to Götze canceling his contract on July 31, 1932 on January 25, 1932. Under his successor Rolf Roenneke and the senior theater director Gustav Rudolf Sellner , the theater became a cultural and political instrument of the National Socialists . From 1932 Götze headed the city ​​theater in Magdeburg and was director of the theater on Nollendorfplatz in Berlin from 1934 to 1935 .

As a progressive artistic director and director , Götze tried to bring modern contemporary theater closer to the audience. This was an important and courageous concern, especially in the times of the rising National Socialism. His performance of Wozzeck - after Berlin, Prague and Leningrad , Oldenburg was only the fourth theater at which the opera was performed - prompted many other theaters to take on this work as well.

literature

• Gotze, Hellmuth. In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 244-245 ( online ).