Julius Mühling

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Julius Mühling (actually: Jüdel Markus Jüdel ; born March 15, 1793 in Peine ; † February 7, 1874 in Berlin ) was a German actor, director and theater director. He is not to be confused with the composer Julius Mühling (1810–1880), son of the organist August Mühling (1786–1847), with whom there are also no family ties.

Career

Julius Mühling was born under the name Jüdel Markus Jüdel as the son of the merchant Mordechei Jüdel Segal and Sara Itzig and, through his brother Salomon, was also the uncle of the industrialist Max Jüdel . At least since the beginning of his artistic career, he adopted the name Julius Mühling.

In keeping with family tradition, Jüdel / Mühling began commercial training and initially entered the ducal service as a mountain factor . Although he married at the age of 21 and had four children with his wife in the next few years, he took the risk of switching to singing and acting. He received his first arrangement in 1819 at the Hofbühne in Braunschweig, but very soon he joined various traveling groups . He worked with them in Aachen, Düsseldorf and Magdeburg, among others. The theater directors became aware of him and Mühling was then appointed theater director at the Aachen Theater from 1832 to 1835 , where he hired Minona Frieb-Blumauer as a Rossini interpreter and from 1835 to 1837 at the Cologne Theater.

In 1836, Friedrich Ludwig Schmidt, theater director of the Hamburg City Theater , made him the offer to take over the post of co-director for the resigning Karl August Lebrun from March 1837 . Mühling accepted this offer and moved with his family to Hamburg. After Schmidt had left the theater, the tenor Julius Cornet was given Schmidt's role as co-director of Mühling on March 31, 1841 , with Cornet taking over the management of the opera and Mühling devoting himself to acting. After a two-week break as a result of a theater fire in May 1842, incorrect planning and poor preparation led to a qualitative and programmatic decline in performance. Due to declining audience numbers and competition from newly built theaters such as the Thalia Theater , Mühling and his ensemble were no longer financially secure. Thereupon Mühling and his co-director Cornet terminated his contract with effect from March 28, 1847 and took a year off from work.

In 1848 Leonhard Meck brought him to the theater in Frankfurt am Main as co-director. As a result of the September Revolution of 1848 , however, there were also losses in theater life and both decided to hand over the management of the theater to the previous theater director of Prague, Johann Hoffmann, as early as 1852. Mühling now served as artistic director under this, but after Hoffmann was only able to hold out for barely two years and the theater was temporarily closed due to extensive renovations, he finally withdrew from theater life.

Mühling moved to Berlin, where he celebrated his golden wedding anniversary and was awarded the Prussian Order of the Crown at this event .

Act

As a young actor, Mühling primarily embodied bon vivants and cavaliers thanks to his pronounced humor and quick-wittedness . This had an impact on his productions, which to a large extent from farces and vaudeville passed. He also had a penchant for ballet and hired important dancers of the time such as Marie Taglioni and Therese Elßler .

His commercial background and training gave him for a long time the reputation of a busy and agile businessman who was always open to the needs of other artists. Among other things, he introduced the regular payment of stage poets and also granted them success fees.

It was only in the course of the political unrest in the 1840s, which also had an impact on the composition and demands of the audience, that he did not always make the right decisions to successfully bring the theater scene through this period. Although the audience had been more inclined to want to see serious dramas and the classical repertoire, Mühling brought a large number of modern drama pieces to performance at ever shorter intervals, as a result of which the quality suffered and the success did not want to set in. This was one of the main reasons for the economic problems at the Hamburg Theater for which Mühling was responsible. But he also acted in the same way in Frankfurt and tried to convince with quantity instead of class. Mühling was convinced that after many rich and diplomats had moved away from the city, the simple people could only be attracted to the theater with simple plays that changed at short intervals. Mühling was certainly not solely responsible and his respective co-directors were involved in these decisions, but they too had to share the consequences.

Literature and Sources

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mention of Julius Mühling on page 2 of the Max Jüdel biography
personal data
SURNAME Mühling, Julius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jüdel, Jüdel Markus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor, director and theater director
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1793
PLACE OF BIRTH Torment
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 1874
Place of death Berlin