Ita Maximowna

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Ita Maximowna (1926)

Ita Maximowna , actually Margarita Maximowna Schnakenburg (* October 18 jul. / 31 October  1901 greg. In Pskov , † 8. April 1988 in Berlin ) was a Russian-German set designer , costume designer and illustrator . It is the stage name of one of the first and most important stage and costume designers in Germany. Her creative creative period spanned the 40s to 70s of the 20th century.

Life

Margarita Maximowna Schnakenburg was the daughter of the dentist Elisabeth Natalie Ernestine Schnakenburg, b. von Roth (1878–1966) and the dentist Max Karl Heinrich Schnakenburg (1875–1919). The first child of the family and older brother was Heinrich Ludwig Nicolai Schnakenburg. Margarita Maximovna had a fulfilled and happy childhood and youth in Pskov. After the premature death of her father in 1919 due to tuberculosis and driven by the turmoil of the Russian October Revolution, the mother and her two children fled to relatives in Davos , Switzerland. In 1920 the family emigrated to Germany, where Margarita's brother Heinrich went to Leipzig to do an apprenticeship at the "Technikum für Buchdrucker" founded by Heinrich Julius Mäser , while Margarita and her mother moved to Berlin .

Margarita Maximowna Schnakenburg went to Paris as a Russian teacher in 1920 , where she met the graphic artist and set designer Marie Laurencin . There she studied graphics and painting with her until the mid-twenties. Ita then deepened her training with the Berlin painter Erwin Freytag (1901–1940) and the painter, graphic artist and type designer Johannes Boehland (1903–1964) at the Academy of Arts in Berlin . At the beginning of the 1930s Ita Maximowna married Carl Fredrik Baumann, former director and syndic of Maizena -Werke Hamburg, in Berlin . In the 30s and 40s she designed packaging and advertising graphics for Maizena products and also illustrated numerous books, including a very successful and repeatedly published book on stylish women's clothing (see works). The marriage was annulled at the end of the Second World War .

In the mid-1940s Ita Maximowna met her future partner Karlheinz Martin , who after 1945 did a great job in rebuilding Berlin's theater life. Karlheinz Martin opened the fantastic world of stage design to Ita Maximowna as the director of the Berlin Hebbel Theater at the time. From now on she began to use her stage name "Ita Maximowna" as a shortening of her first name and her father's name . For many years she worked for the stages of the Hebbel Theater, Renaissance Theater , Schiller Theater and Schlosspark Theater in Berlin, as well as internationally for opera houses in London , Paris , Milan , Vancouver , Buenos Aires and New York City . She worked with well-known directors and conductors like the aforementioned Karlheinz Martin, but also with OE Hasse , Karl-Heinz Stroux , Leo Blech and Herbert von Karajan . With Günther Rennert in particular , she performed countless productions around the world. In the years that followed, Ita Maximowna worked closely with her good friend and assistant Martin Rupprecht , who later became professor of stage design and costume at the Berlin University of the Arts .

After her intensive creative phase as a set and costume designer for theaters and opera houses, Ita Maximowna also designed buildings and costumes for film projects in the 1960s and 1970s. At the end of her career, she devoted herself more and more to painting, leaving behind a variety of graphics and paintings.

Grave of Ita Maximowna in the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin-Westend

During her lifetime as an artist, she did not give any specific figures at the time of her birth, which is why a variety of different information appears in various sources. October 31, 1901 as her exact date of birth is based on documents from the estate.

Ita Maximowna died of heart failure in Berlin in April 1988. She rests in the honorary grave of her partner, the artistic director and director Karlheinz Martin (1886–1948), in the state-owned cemetery Heerstrasse in Berlin-Westend (grave location: II-Erb.-31).

The largest part of her artistic estate is now in the “Ita Maximowna Archive” of the “Archive for Performing Arts” of the Berlin Academy of the Arts and can be viewed there.

Awards

Stage and costume designs

Ita Maximowna has furnished a total of around 400 productions for opera or theater with stage and costume designs. A small selection of important national and international performances is listed here:

Ita Maximowna (around 1950)

  • Costume design Donalbain, Shakespeare - Macbeth , Hebbel-Theater Berlin (1945)

  • Costume design Don Carlos , opening of the theater of the city of Bonn (1950)

  • Draft stage set for Das kleine Teehaus , Renaissance-Theater Berlin (1954)

  • Stage design for Le nozze di Figaro , Vienna State Opera (1958)

  • Stage design for The Barber of Seville , Berlin Opera House (1957)

  • Costume design Don Giovanni , Teatro Colon Buenos Aires (1963)

  • Costume design for Georgette Il tabarro , Puccini, Munich State Opera (1973)

Works

Ita Maximowna has provided the books of numerous authors with graphics and illustrations. Finally, in 1982, she published her own book about her many years of work as a set and costume designer at Ernst Wasmuth Verlag Tübingen.

  • Anton Krapf: "Thoughtful women's clothing - a beauty primer" with 110 drawings by Ita Baumann, Heinz Schnakenburg Verlag, Berlin 1934 (1st edition).
  • Samuil Marschak : The twelve months. A fairy tale game . Illustrated by Ita Maximowna, Verlag Bruno Henschel und Sohn, Berlin 1947.
  • Ewan MacColl : Olive Branch Company. Comedy, figurines by Ita Maximowna, Verlag Bruno Henschel and Son, Berlin 1948.
  • Nikolai Lesskov : The left-handed. Illustrated by Ita Maximowna, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1949.
  • Annedore Leber : Who is traveling with you? Drawings by Ita Maximowna, Mosaik-Verlag GmbH, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main 1952.
  • Annedore Leber : We play: Small people - Small citizens . Card game, illustrations by Ita Maximowna, Mosaik-Verlag GmbH, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main 1953.
  • Ita Maximowna: set book - drafts, photos of scenes and figurines. Ernst Wasmuth Verlag Tübingen 1982, ISBN 3-8030-3027-7 .

literature

  • Karla Höcker : Conversations with Berlin artists. Stapp Verlag, Berlin 1964.
  • Karla Höcker: Description of a year. Berlin Notes 1945. Arani Verlag, Berlin 1984. ISBN 3-7605-8577-9

Web links

Commons : Ita Maximowna  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography of Ita Maximowna from the program for performance from October 29, 1955 The little tea house of John Patrick at Berlin's Hebbel Theater .
  2. ↑ Short biography of Martin Rupprecht, Theater am Kurfürstendamm, Berlin Archive link ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.komoedie-berlin.de
  3. ↑ Ita Maximowna at filmportal.de
  4. ↑ Radio address in the program “The Voice of Criticism” on April 17, 1988, 11:45 am, author: Friedrich Luft .
  5. ↑ Der Spiegel 16/1988 - Ita Maximowna; [1]
  6. ^ "Berlin honors personalities" appeared in August 2000 in the series "Gedächtnis Berlin" [2]
  7. ↑ Set designer Maximowna dead. Always serving the total work of art . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . Monday April 11, 1988. p. 10. Retrieved November 17, 2019.
  8. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 491. Franz Reichert: Through my glasses. Theater in an eventful time (1925–1950) . Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1986, ISBN 978-3-215-06062-5 . P. 232.
  9. ↑ List of new acquisitions and additions to holdings in 2009, Annual Press Conference 2010 of the Academy of the Arts Berlin, January 14, 2010. ( PDF )
  10. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 39, No. 146, Page 10553, from August 11, 1987.
  11. ↑ Long day's journey into night, play by Eugene O'Neill; [3]
personal data
SURNAME Maximowna, Ita
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schnakenburg, Margarita Maximowna (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-German set designer, costume designer and illustrator
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Pleskau
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 1988
Place of death Berlin