Horst Koegler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Horst Koegler (born March 22, 1927 in Neuruppin ; † May 11, 2012 in Stuttgart ) was a German dance critic, journalist and writer . He was the editor and author of books on the ballet scene in Germany as well as the author of articles in magazines and introductions to illustrated books. As a reviewer of German and English language books, he built a bridge between American and German dance studies .

Life

Koegler studied musicology, German literature and art history in Kiel from 1945 to 1946 and directing, dramaturgy and acting from 1947 to 1949 at the newly founded State University for Theater and Music Halle in Halle an der Saale. Afterwards he was engaged for three years at the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater in Görlitz as a dramaturgy and assistant director. Since moving to West Berlin in 1951, he has worked as a freelance journalist and writer, increasingly also for English-language magazines. 1964 followed a stay of several months in the USA. He first got access to his later focus on dance as a reporter for opera performances in Berlin. From 1957 to 1959 he was a critic of Die Welt . In 1959 he moved from Berlin to Cologne and in 1977 from Cologne to Stuttgart. There he wrote about the Stuttgart Ballet and from 1977 to 1992, as a music editor, shaped the dance reviews of the Stuttgarter Zeitung . However, he did not only follow his task as a critic in the dance sector, but also remained active as a music and opera critic. From 1965 onwards he published an annual chronicle of the ballet year and published several ballet dictionaries. During his lifetime he donated his dance-related document collection to the German Dance Archive in Cologne as the Horst Koegler Archive. From 2001 until his death he ran his blog, the koeglerjournal, on the internet dance portal tanznetz.de. In this he published reviews and thoughts on events in the dance world, detached from the press.

Koegler's importance for dance

With his writing about and for ballet in particular, "Horst Koegler [...] made dance journalism a serious matter again." And he was considered one of the most important dance critics of his time in Germany. Koegler "paved the way for choreographer Hans van Manen in writing" and wrote in Stuttgart "with an always nimble, often shimmering and always witty pen from close quarters of the Stuttgart ballet miracle under Cranko ". For Koegler, the future of dance lay in ballet and his credo "I believe in beauty as the true virtue of classical ballet" was associated with a negative attitude towards dance theater that was developing in the late 1960s. As a result, "an artificially imposed schism between ballet and dance theater [...] grew out of this, as nowhere else has it been pursued as doggedly as in this country."

Awards

Works (selection)

Lexicons

  • The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet . Second edition (Updated, 1987), Oxford University Press, Oxford | New York.
  • Little dictionary of dance . Reclam, Stuttgart 1999 (with Klaus Kieser: 2nd, revised edition 2006, 3rd, thoroughly and updated edition 2009 as a dictionary of dance).
  • Dizionario Gremese della Danza e del Balletto . Ed. ital. a cura di Alberto Testa. Gremese, Roma 1995.
  • Reclam's ballet dictionary . With Helmuth Günther . Stuttgart, 1984. ISBN 3-15-010328-2
  • The concise Oxford dictionary of ballet . Oxford, Oxford University Press 1977. (1982, 1987).
  • Friedrich's Ballet Lexicon . Friedrich Verlag 1972

Chronicles

  • Ballet 1965: Chronicle and balance sheet of the ballet year . 1965 Friedrich Verlag
  • also chronicles of the following years

Monographs

  • Heinz Spoerli , world citizen of ballet . (With contributions by Claude Conyers and others) Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2012.
  • John Neumeier - Pictures of a Life . Hamburg, 2010.
  • Stuttgart Ballet . Photos by Leslie E. Spatt. London, 1978.
  • Ballet in Stuttgart: workshop talk with John Cranko. A chronicle since 1960 . Photos by Madeline Winkler-Betzendahl . Stuttgart, 1964.
  • Balanchine and the modern ballet . Hanover, 1964.
  • Yvonne Georgi . Series theater today. Hanover, 1963.
  • Ballet international. Attempt to take stock . Rembrandt, Berlin 1960.

Secondary literature

  • Festschrift Deutscher Tanzpreis 1992 Horst Koegler . Edited by German professional association for dance education. Essen 1992.
  • Horst Koegler on his sixtieth birthday. Articles and contributions by his friends and co-workers , compiled by Laszlo Molnar and Horst Vollmer. Stuttgart 1987.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See also Koegler's report on his visit to the German Dance Archive Cologne on May 21, 2003
  2. ↑ Götz Thieme quotes Jochen Schmidt , Stuttgarter Zeitung, Crankos Schatten , March 1, 2004
  3. ↑ Götz Thieme, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Crankos Schatten , March 1, 2004
  4. ↑ welt-online , accessed on May 23, 2011.
  5. ↑ Mirko Weber quotes Koegler in: And always also a beauty apostle , Stuttgarter Zeitung, March 22, 2007
  6. ^ Eva Elisabeth Fischer, Münchner Süddeutsche, June 21, 1992
personal data
SURNAME Koegler, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dance critic, journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuruppin
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 2012
Place of death Stuttgart