Henriette Hendel-Schütz

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Henriette Eunike as Elfride (1794)
Henriette Rosine Hendel-Schütz (1809)

Henriette Hendel-Schütz (born February 13, 1772 in Döbeln , Saxony , † March 4, 1849 in Köslin , Pomerania Province ) was a German actress and pantomime .

Life

Johanne Henriette Rosine Hendel-Schütz was the daughter of the actor's pupil and was born in Döbeln on a trip her parents made on the way from Gotha to Breslau . She made her debut at the theater in Breslau at the age of two and received her first artistic instruction from her father. Between 1775 and 1779 Hendel-Schütz enjoyed a well-founded musical education from the musicians Georg Anton Benda and Anton Schweitzer ; She received dance lessons from Mereau in Gotha.

At the age of nine, Hendel-Schütz was hired to play children's roles in ballet at the Berlin National Theater in 1781 . In Berlin she also attended the French School . She enjoyed further lessons from the writer of the National Theater, Johann Jacob Engel , who taught her based on his work “Ideas for Mimicry”. When her contract in Berlin ended in 1785, Margrave Friedrich Heinrich brought her to his court theater in Schwedt / Oder .

In addition to various roles at the theater, she can now also be seen as a soubrette in Schwedt . There she met the singer Friedrich Eunicke , whom she married in 1788 at the age of 16. At the end of the same year she went on tour with her husband, which took her to Frankfurt am Main after engagements in Bonn and Amsterdam . There she made the acquaintance of the painter Johann Georg Pforr and in his studio she saw Friedrich Rehberg's drawings of Tableaux vivants for the first time , represented by Emma Hamilton .

Enthusiastic about this type of performance, Hendel-Schütz began to design a solo program for himself. She continued to earn her living as an actress. From 1796 to 1806 she was a member of the Berlin National Theater under the direction of August Iffland . There, in sentimental and tragic roles, she soon advanced to become a “star” with the whole of Berlin at his feet. She was particularly successful as Johanna in Friedrich Schiller's Die Jungfrau von Orleans , which she played from 1803 to 1806, or as Donna Isabella in Schiller's drama The Bride of Messina (premiered June 14, 1803). Her portrayal of Galathé in the melodrama Pygmalion by Georg Anton Benda (premiere: November 25, 1797) was also well received. Because of her enthusiasm for pantomime, she finally divorced her husband in 1797; who then also left the ensemble.

In the same year Hendel-Schütz married the doctor Meyer in Berlin, from whom they separated again in the winter of 1804/1805. In spring 1805 she married the military doctor Hendel, her third marriage in Halle , but he died within a few weeks.

In 1807 Hendel-Schütz was under contract at the Stadttheater in Halle and during this time he was instructed in ancient mythology and history by the archaeologist Karl August Böttiger . For her pantomime performances she not only created the costumes herself, but also took care of stage sets, lighting, etc. In 1810 Hendel-Schütz made her debut as a phantom mime with depictions of female figures from antiquity and was a great success from the start. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called her "... incomparably female Proteus" and for Friedrich Schiller she seemed to embody immortality. But Adam Oehlenschläger , Heinrich von Kleist and others also expressed their enthusiasm.

In Halle she married Friedrich Karl Julius Schütz in 1811, with whom she repeatedly toured between 1810 and 1817 and toured Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Russia. In between, however, she also appeared repeatedly in the theater as an actress. She impressively embodied Margarethe in Die Hagestolzen by August Iffland or Amalia in Friedrich Schiller's drama Die Räuber .

In 1815, Hendel-Schütz gave a private performance in the house of the history painter Gerhard von Kügelgen , in whose “God's Blessing House ” artists regularly met. She actually resigned from the stage in 1820, but gave a few performances for a few years. Only in 1836 she gave in Stargard in the German small-town by August von Kotzebue their final farewell.

Hendel-Schütz had also been divorced from her fourth husband in 1824 and lived with one of her sons-in-law in Köslin. As great as she was able to record professionally, she was in dire straits in her private life. Out of a total of 16 children (from four husbands) only three survived their mother. She died withdrawn and almost forgotten at the age of almost 77 years on March 4, 1849 in Köslin.

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