Joseph Gregor

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Joseph Oskar Gregor (born October 26, 1888 in Chernivtsi , † October 12, 1960 in Vienna ) was an Austrian theater scholar and writer. He was director of the Austrian National Library and wrote three opera texts for Richard Strauss .

life and work

Born in Czernowitz , Austria at the time , Gregor studied musicology, German literature and philosophy at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate in 1911 . He worked under Max Reinhardt as an assistant director and from 1912-14 as a music lecturer at the Franz Joseph University in Chernivtsi . From 1918 he was employed at the Austrian National Library in Vienna, which he eventually led as director. There he founded the theater collection in 1922, into which he also included the cinema from 1929. He also taught at the Max Reinhardt Seminar from 1932–38 and 1943–45 . In 1953 he left the service of the national library and retired into private life.

Gregor is considered one of the leading theater scholars of his time. He wrote several standard works, u. a. an actor who was later revised by Margret Dietrich and Wolfgang Greisenegger . He also wrote highly acclaimed biographies on Alexander the Great , William Shakespeare and Richard Strauss .

Gregor is controversial because of his role in the Nazi era , because he managed to include library holdings of politically persecuted people in the theater collection of the Austrian National Library, which he directed. Some see this as an attempt to save these important holdings from destruction in the interests of their previous owners, while others see Gregor as a collaborator and beneficiary of the National Socialist regime. This applies e.g. B. for the “donation” of parts of Stefan Zweig's autograph collection in 1937: According to Oskar Pausch , this donation was linked to Joseph Gregor's obligation to protect this collection even after a regime change that actually took place in 1938, and in fact, Joseph Gregor is said to have run into existential danger under the National Socialist regime because of his acquisition policy and his large Jewish circle of friends. Others see it more critically. The same applies to the acquisition of the theater collection from Fritz Brukner or Helene Richter (1861–1942) for the Austrian National Library. When Gregor found out from the newspaper in 1940 that Heinrich Schnitzler's library , with whom Gregor was friends, was confiscated , he campaigned for it to come under his care. Others believe that Gregory played a crucial role in the robbery of this library. In 1943 Gregor dedicated his book Das Theater des Volkes in der Ostmark to the Viennese Gauleiter and Reich Governor Baldur von Schirach , which some consider to be a further indication that Gregor was a beneficiary and apologist of the Nazi regime.

Simmering fire hall - Joseph Gregor's grave

His grave is in the arcade courtyard of the Simmering fire hall (Department ARI, No. 7) in Vienna. It is one of the grave sites of the city of Vienna that are dedicated or taken into custody on account of honor.

Collaboration with Richard Strauss

One year after the seizure of power by the National Socialists in Germany emigrated Stefan Zweig to London . Richard Strauss was therefore looking for a new librettist. Zweig suggested Joseph Gregor as his successor. Strauss, who valued Gregor's theoretical works very much, accepted the choice and so it came to a long-term, albeit never harmonious collaboration. The operas Peace Day (based on a scenario by Stefan Zweig), Daphne and Die Liebe der Danae (based on a design by Hugo von Hofmannsthal ) were created.

After completing the Danae score, in 1940 - at the suggestion of Heinz Drewes and Hans Joachim Moser - together with Joseph Gregor , Strauss planned a revision of the opera Jessonda (music: Louis Spohr , libretto: Eduard Heinrich Gehe ). When Gregor then offered to create a new text for the opera Die Schweigsame Frau , which could replace Stefan Zweig's, Strauss turned it down and also dropped the Jessonda project.

Works

Theoretical texts

  • The American theater and cinema. Two treatises on cultural history . Amalthea, Leipzig 1931 (together with René Fülöp Miller )
  • Librarian tasks on film . In: Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen , vol. 48, 1931, pp. 382–394.
  • World history of the theater. Phaidon, Zurich 1933
  • Shakespeare . Phaidon, Vienna 1935
  • Pericles. Greece's greatness and tragedy . Munich 1938
  • Richard Strauss. The master of the opera . Piper, Munich 1939
  • Alexander the Great. The world domination of an idea . Piper, Munich 1940
  • Cultural history of the opera. Your connection with life, works, spirit and politics . Gallus, Vienna 1941
  • The theater of the people of the Ostmark . German publishing house for youth and people, Vienna 1943
  • Cultural history of ballet. Its shaping and effectiveness in history and among the arts . Gallus, Vienna 1944
  • World history of the theater . Volume 1: From the origins to the end of the baroque theater . Piper, Munich 1944, again 1960
  • History of the Austrian Theater . Danube, Vienna 1948
  • Gerhart Hauptmann The Work and Our Time, Diana Verlag Vienna 1951
  • Richard Wagner in our time. Speech on the occasion of the re-establishment of the Richard Wagner Association . Publishing house Die Mitte, Saarbrücken 1958
  • The actor leader. ISSN  0342-4553

Libretti

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Roessler, Günter Einbrodt, Susanne Gföller (eds.) The forgotten years. 75 years of the Max Reinhardt Seminar . Vienna 2004
  2. ^ Oskar Pausch: Richard Strauss, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Gregor and the year 1938, Studies on Musicology (Society for the Publication of Monuments to Music in Austria) Volume 47 (1999), pp. 395–400. See http://www.jstor.org/stable/41467122
  3. ↑ Peter Malina: From books and people. New publications on the Nazi history of libraries . In: Mitteilungen der VÖB 60 (2007), No. 1, p. 56
  4. ↑ Christiane Hoff Rath: Widmungsexemplare from the library of Elise and Helene Richter . In: Stefan Alker, Christina Köstner, Markus Stumpf (eds.): Libraries in the Nazi era. Provenance research and library history . Göttingen 2008. p. 118
  5. ↑ http://www.jmberlin.de/raub-und-restitution/de/schnitzler_galerie.php?page=6
  6. ↑ Evelyn Adunka : The robbery of the books. On the disappearance and destruction of libraries during the Nazi era and their restitution after 1945 . Vienna 2000. pp. 196–111
  7. ↑ www.friedhoefewien.at - Graves dedicated to honor in the fire hall Simmering cemetery (PDF 2016), accessed on March 7, 2018
  8. ↑ Kurt Wilhelm : "I need help for the word". The birth of the opera “ Capriccio ” . Munich 1988, p. 225
  9. ↑ 829 pages. - Partly Rework see 1944
  10. ↑ completely revised. New edition - no more of it appeared. 481 pp.
personal data
SURNAME Gregor, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gregor, Joseph Oskar (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian theater scholar and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Chernivtsi
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1960
Place of death Vienna