High German court comedians
The High German Court Comedians (also known by numerous name variants) were a traveling drama troupe in the time of the German traveling theater . The troupe developed an excellent reputation under changing names in German-speaking countries, in the Baltic States and in Scandinavia; the acting troupe is considered to be a defining pioneer in court theater in the 17th and 18th centuries. The head of the core team was initially Carl Andreas Paulsen, then the Velten couple, and finally the Spiegelbergs.
Paulsen's troop
Carl Andreas Paulsen (1620–1678), married to actress Elisabeth Paulsen since 1644, founded the traveling theater group Carlische Hochdeutsche Comödianten as a private-sector principal in the period after the devastating Thirty Years War . The role models for this and other touring theaters were the foreign acting companies mainly from Italy, France and England. In his application in 1666 for the Hamburg license (from then on also under the name Die Hamburgische Comödianten ) Paulsen listed the following cities as previous venues: Lübeck , Bremen , Rostock , Helmstadt , Jena , Wittenberg , Strasbourg , Augsburg , Bayreuth , Prague , Breslau , Cologne and Berlin . Basel , Frankfurt and, for the first time, Leipzig , where the troupe performed frequently in the following years , are documented for 1665 . With increasing popularity from the beginning of the 1670s, further appearances in Güstrow (1668), Danzig (1669), Königsberg (1670), Kiel (1671), Copenhagen and Riga (1672) and Dresden (1673) are documented. A refusal to perform is documented for Prague in March 1674, the troupe moved on to Vienna and from there back mainly to the northern German and Saxon areas: Hamburg, Husum , Lübeck and again Leipzig and Dresden in the mid to late 1670s. Paulsen already had a theater patent for Electoral Saxony , which obliged him to perform regularly, but also guaranteed him a monopoly.
As one of the first theater directors, Paulsen employed exclusively German-speaking actors, from which he derived the name of his troupe for advertising purposes to distinguish it from non-German theater groups. In addition to himself and his wife, the actors also included the daughters Catharina Elisabeth and Anna and the sons Carl and Ferdinand Egidius. The co-actors Johannes Velten and Balthasar Brambacher married his daughters around 1671 . Gottfried Salzsieder (also: Salzhueter) was also part of the troop.
The plays listed were primarily German adaptations and alienations from the English theater, such as Hamlet as “The Punished Fratricide” in 1667. Over time, plays by German-speaking authors also came into the program, namely Ibrahim by Daniel Casper von Lohenstein .
Veltensche troop
Johannes Velten, Paulsen's son-in-law since 1671, took over his group of actors after Paulsen's death in 1678 as a band of High German comedians . According to various sources, possibly as early as 1672, he had made himself independent from Paulsen and founded his own troop, but nothing further is known about the history. It was not until 1679 that Paulsen's privilege to act was transferred to him. The response from the common people was just as good as at the court: in 1684, Elector Johann Georg III. the Veltens troop, since then the troop has also operated as a gang of Chursächsischer Comoedianten . In addition to the focus on Saxony (regular appearances in Leipzig, Dresden, Torgau, among others ), there were also appearances in the rest of Germany, such as Frankfurt / Main, Nuremberg and even in the presence of Emperor Leopold I in Worms .
The approximately 20 members of the Velten troupe included the Velten couple and their daughter Catharina Lydia (later married Fromm ), the following actors: Christian Starke, Joseph Janetzky, Christian Schernitzky, Christian Paceli, Benjamin Pfenning, Elias Adler, Johann Wolfgang Rieß, Gottfried Salzsieder, David Bamberger, Sara von Boxberg, finally the Richter, Müller, Elenson and Brambacher couples and the brothers Christian and Johannes Dorsch.
The repertoire initially consisted of the mainly English pieces already performed by Paulsen, but the linguistically and literarily educated Velten expanded this to include Italian, German and French material. So he adapted ten comedies from Molière . Other authors who Velten appreciated were Andreas Gryphius , Paul Scarron , Pierre Corneille and Thomas Corneille . By taking up longer dramas as an art form, Velten deliberately stood out from other stages, which only showed entertaining antics, daring and adventure pieces. Women and girls roles were now actually played by female actors in a style-forming way.
The heir to the throne of the Electorate of Saxony (from 1691 as Johann Georg IV. ) Was no friend of popular theater and dismissed Velten as a court artist, who moved with the troupe to Berlin and Hamburg, where, under the influence of pietistic - Lutheran-Orthodox preachers, but religiously motivated hostility to theater prevailed . Johannes Velten probably died here; his wife Catharina Elisabeth took over the leadership of the troop from 1692.
For Velten, times were tough at the beginning of the 1690s: The inherited Electoral Saxon patent, which her father already held and guaranteed him a monopoly in Electoral Saxony, was no longer associated with state grants. Other actors and especially former colleagues competed. In addition to her brother Ferdinand Egidius Paulsen, this also included David Mühlstreich, Balthasar Brombacher, Johann August Ulich and Gabriel Müller. Catharina Velten commuted between the trade fairs in the Electoral Saxony area, but probably also extended the tours to Scandinavia. In addition, in 1697 she acquired the royal Polish performance privilege from August II and since then has advertised her troupe as the Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon High German court comedians , although the Electoral Saxon privilege had also been revoked in 1697. Between 1700 and 1705 her performance area covered the whole of Germany as well as the Baltic States : performances took place in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Riga , as well as in other cities that she had already toured with father and husband, including Gdansk and Königsberg.
The appearances in Scandinavia also brought stimuli for the local culture, which previously had no well-organized and professionalized theater, as Velten was able to present there. With various appearances from 1707 to 1710 in Norway, the High German Court Comedians are considered to be the first professional theater group there. Further impulses in the Swedish theater scene came from Johann August Ulich, already mentioned as a competitor to Veltens. Most recently Velten played in southern Germany, now as a Viennese court comedian .
The composition of the troop had changed significantly in the meantime; several colleagues from the ensemble had left the company and had become independent. The Spiegelbergs were now firmly among the actors in Velten; the married couple Denner and their independent company were hired regularly. When the troops in Vienna were disbanded in 1711/1712 due to Velten's state of health, but also due to their considerable debts, these colleagues reunited under new names. Catharina Velten died in the care of Elisabeth Spiegelberg (née Denner).
Successor groups
Soon after the death of Johannes Velten, several actors left Catharina Velten's troupe: the Richter and Brambacher couples founded the traveling troupe of the Merseburg court comedians (1695–1702). Andreas Elenson and his wife Maria Margarethe Elenson already had their Viennese company before their engagement with Velten , which has now been revived; Julius Franz Elenson founded the Mecklenburg Court Comedians (1706–1708), which was then continued by Julie Sophie Elenson as the Elenson-Haack-Hoffmann company (1708–1725, followed by the companies Joseph Ferdinand Müller and Johann Veuber until the 1750s) .
In 1693 Gabriel Müller also went into business for himself with his wife; until 1721 his troop were the Saxon-Weimar , Hochfürstlich- Margräflich-Brandenburgischen , Fürstlich Bayreuthischen court comedians . In 1703 Sasse, a co-actor of Catharina Velten, also founded his own troupe, which lasted until 1714.
After the death of Catharina Velten, the married couples of Johann Christian Spiegelberg and Leonhard Andreas Denner and their respective actors' troops were often linked to cooperation; they still had some members of the troop under Catharina Velten under contract. The Dennersche / Spiegelberg troop operated as the Royal British and Electoral-Brunswick-Lüneburg Court Comedians . After the death of Leonhard Andreas Denner, Spiegelberg took over the management of the troupe. Spiegelberg died while traveling through Scandinavia in 1732. His widow continued the principality until 1739 and played mainly in Scandinavia.
In the history of German literature , a family tree of Johannes Velten's comedians troupe was drawn, which leads from the Spiegelbergs through numerous ramifications, including the theaters of Conrad Ekhof , Friedrich Ludwig Schröder , Abel Seyler , Karl Theophil Döbbelin and ultimately August Wilhelm Iffland .
Individual evidence
- ^ Adolf Scherl: Paulsen, Carl Andreas (cz). In: Czech Theater Encyclopedia
- ↑ a b c MDR : biography Johann Velten
- ↑ Ursula Köhler-Lutterbeck; Monika Siedentopf: Lexicon of 1000 women , Bonn 2000, p. 374. ISBN 3-8012-0276-3
- ^ Katy Schlegel: Velten (Velthen, Veltheim), Johannes . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
- ↑ It has not been definitively clarified whether two theater groups that are occupied in Sweden in the 1690s were actually the Velten Company: The Chur-Saxon High Teutschen comedians appeared in Ystad in 1690 and in Stockholm in 1696 and 1697; in Güstrow, Sweden, in 1697, the Nordic Commoedians in High German .
- ^ Katy Schlegel: Velten (Velthen, Velthemin, Veltheim), Catharina Elisabeth . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
- ^ HJ Huitfeldt: Christiania Theaterhistorie , Copenhagen 1876. Digitized
- ^ Friedrich Vogt, Max Koch: History of German literature. 2nd volume. Family tree of the Johannes Veltenschen Komödiantentruppe , p. 92. Digitized