Josef Saier

Josef Saier (also Joseph Saier , born February 25, 1874 in Kirchzarten ; † February 7, 1955 in Ötigheim ) was a German pastor and founder of the Ötigheim folk theater . He also wrote a passion play, which is still regularly performed today, for the Ötigheim open-air theater.

Life

After primary school in Kirchzarten, Saier attended the Berthold-Gymnasium in Freiburg from 1886 . After graduating from high school in 1894, he studied Catholic theology in Freiburg and St. Peter. There he was ordained a priest on July 5, 1898 and then took up vicar positions in Rastatt and Karlsruhe . In 1905 he took up his first and only pastoral position in Ötigheim in Baden. There he quickly found a new home and identified with the village. Concerned for the local youth, who threatened to alienate themselves from village life through increasing industrial work, Saier looked for leisure activities that would give the youth meaning and support and prevent them from loitering in inns.

With many volunteers, he founded the Ötigheim open-air theater, which was first performed in 1906. As early as 1913, the outdoor games initiated by Saier had become so popular that the stage attracted 100,000 visitors in one summer.

For many years Saier kept the direction of the Volksschauspiele in his hands, even if in 1939 he had to relinquish artistic direction at the insistence of the National Socialist rulers, but still remained the leading force in the background:

“As a stage manager I can only recognize an expert who is a member of the Reichstheaterkammer , Fachschaft Bühnen, Fachgruppe 1. I can never grant a clergyman, whose profession assigns him completely different tasks, which leave him no time for such a sideline, responsibility for the artistic. "

- Letter from the Reich Chamber of Culture from 1939 to Josef Saier

Saier kept the leadership of the folk plays in his hands until 1953 even after the Second World War, and in 1954 handed it over to Pastor Hähner. Until today, according to the statutes, the respective local pastor is also the chairman of the Volksschauspiele Ötigheim e. V.

The artistic claim and Christian orientation of Saier have been preserved to this day for the Ötigheimer Volksschauspiele, as the operator association of the open-air theater is called. Since 1950, the Passion Play, written by Saier and premiered in 1948, has been shown at the beginning of a decade. This Passion Play, the previous version of which had already been performed in 1925 and 1926, is a five-hour production and attracted 65,000 spectators to the Ötigheim stage in its premiere season. In 1950, the Baden-Baden Ethos Film GmbH directed a documentary about Saier's work under the direction of Ernst Martin, which was only shown successfully in cinemas in the Rastatt - Karlsruhe region . The film premiered on February 16, 1951.

Saier's Passion was also adapted and performed on other stages, for example in the 1950s and 1960s on the Gräfinthal natural stage .

Quote

Saier's motivation for his work was always based on a Christian-artistic claim that has an almost missionary effect. His saying "The stage is an extended pulpit, this is not a theater, this is a church service" became a household word in Ötigheim.

Honors

In 1910 Saier became an honorary member of the Union of Catholic Scientific Student Associations . On July 5, 1923, Josef Saier was named an honorary citizen of Ötigheim, and in 1948 he received the title of Honorary Senator of the University of Freiburg . In his home village Kirchzarten, Josef-Saier-Straße was named after the pastor, just like a street in Ötigheim bears his name. In 1953, in the year of his retirement, he received the title of papal secret chamberlain and was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. On February 21, 1954 he was made an honorary citizen of Kirchzarten. In December 1956, almost two years after Saier's death, the Josef Saier Foundation was set up in Ötigheim . The former Baden-Württemberg Minister of the Environment, Erwin Vetter , was the chairman of the foundation until 2010 ; his successor is District Administrator Jürgen Bäuerle.

literature

• Peter Hank: Pastor Josef Saier and his theater village Ötigheim. Idea and beginnings of the Ötigheimer Volksschauspiele . Regional culture publishing house, 2009, ISBN 978-3-89735-564-4
• Martin Walter: 100 years of Volksschauspiele Ötigheim - the people play for the people . ISBN 3-89735-432-2

Web link

• Literature by and about Josef Saier in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Archives Ötigheim, 1939
2. ↑ Saier's Passion  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at kino.de  
3. ^ Archives of the Gräfinthal nature theater
4. ↑ Archbishop Zollitsch on Josef Saier  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 7.9 MB), accessed on September 17, 2012  
5. ↑ Msgr. Saier, honorary member of the UV, died . In: Unitas Association (ed.): Unitas member magazine of the Association of Scientific Catholic Student Associations (UV) . No. 3 . Cologne March 1955, p. 15 ( unitas.org [PDF]).
6. ↑ ^{a b} Saier at leo-bw.de , accessed on September 17, 2012
7. ↑ Website of the Joseph Saier Foundation ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed September 17, 2012