Roderich Benedix

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Roderich Benedix (copper engraving by R. Maurer, 1868)

Julius Roderich Benedix (born January 21, 1811 in Leipzig ; † September 26, 1873 there ) was a German comedy poet , actor and theater director .

Life

Table in Specks Hof in Leipzig (2018)
Grave plaque for Roderich Benedix, Alter Johannisfriedhof Leipzig (2011)

Roderich Benedix was born in Leipzig in a previous building of Specks Hof on Reichsstraße. He attended the Thomasschule in Leipzig , but followed his inclination for the theater and became an actor in 1831. For two years he played with Heinrich Eduard Bethmann in Dessau , Bernburg, Köthen, Meiningen and Rudolstadt. He found an engagement in Westphalia and the Rhineland and performed in Minden, Paderborn, Kleve, Krefeld, Mainz and Wiesbaden until he came to Wesel on the Lower Rhine in 1838 .

The first play written by him, The Mossy Head , was performed on November 23, 1840 at the theater of the royal capital and residence of Königsberg ; it was played with great applause on almost all stages in Germany. His second piece, Doctor Wasp, was no less successful .

Benedix then took over the editing of the people's magazine Der Sprecher in Wesel , but in 1842 he moved to Cologne, where he found himself doing well-attended lectures on Faust. A tragedy. introduced. In 1844 he took over the technical direction of the Elberfeld Theater for a year . From 1847 he worked in the same capacity at the Cologne theater under Gerlach's direction. At the same time, he gave lectures to a select audience on Germany's youngest poets and dramatists.

When the Rheinische Musikschule was organized in Cologne , Benedix also got a teaching position there. In 1855 he became director of the Stadttheater Frankfurt am Main , but resigned this office in 1859 and returned to Cologne. He later lived in Leipzig, always mentally active, but suffering physically in the last few years, where he died on September 26, 1873.

He was married to Leontine Paulmann , his in-laws with it Julius Paulmann and Hulda Emilie Klotz . His sister-in-law was Therese Paulmann . His son Hugo Benedix (1836-1917), theater actor, and Ottilie Benedix, who was married to the actor Heinrich Behr , come from a previous marriage .

plant

As a dramatic poet, Benedix had successes like hardly any comedy poet since August von Kotzebue . Most of his comedies became favorite pieces of German folk theater.

Benedix's pieces were recognized even beyond Germany's borders. His main strength as an author, however, lay neither in the characteristics, which seldom rose above the photographic reproduction of comfortable and somewhat confident average people, nor in a poetic basic view of the world, but in the abundance of situations, a scene animated in colorful, entertaining change in cheerful combinations of chance, entanglements and mix-ups, in the exact knowledge of the theater environment and its traditional, but nevertheless effective effects. In addition - from the point of view of the time - there was a fresh and agile dialogue, whose homely boldness, however, coincided with the same quality of the characters, a joke that was not brilliant or rich, but still gritty and a certain moralizing direction.

His play The Prison , premiered in 1851, came into the hands of the librettists Meilhac and Halévy , who created the play La Réveillon from it , which eventually became the basis for the libretto of Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss .

Benedix also tried himself as a folk writer and storyteller. In the polemical book Die Shakespearomanie , published posthumously , he condemns an uncritical Shakespeare enthusiasm.

The memory of a Masurian shows how popular his pieces were with the Königsberg student associations :

“If the old, splendid, so lifelike student play The Mossy Head was given by Benedix, it was a standard custom that we color students went on stage in the relevant act, in which a proper Kommers is held, in colored decorations to participate in the Kommers and to sing along with the Gaudeamus, to which the fellow students who stayed on the ground floor joined in vigorously. For the rest of the audience, of course, it was always an extra treat, especially when we pseudo-actors up there were making all sorts of jokes that the author of the play had by no means prescribed. A special effect made z. For example, the following: Woltersdorff's stinginess, known and mocked throughout the German theater world , was expressed, among other things, in the fact that the actors, when they were supposed to drink wine or beer in any scene, never received glasses, but always opaque mugs or mugs where there was no trace of fabric. When the apparently full jugs were handed to us in that Kommers scene, we turned them over before we put them to our mouths, whereby of course not a drop spilled out, to the greatest delight of the audience. "

- Otto Vigouroux (1905)

Works

Dramas

  • The misogynist. Comedy in 1 act, ca.1846.
  • The mossy head
  • Doctor Wasp
  • The profile
  • The old master
  • The cousin
  • Stubbornness. Comedy in 1 act
  • The process
  • The honeymoon
  • The jealous
  • The prison
  • The affectionate relatives
  • The love letter
  • The guilty
  • Cinderella
  • The lying
  • The liar . Comedy in 1 act
  • A comedy
  • The Sunday hunters. Comedy in 1 act
  • One hour at the Charles School . Historical genre picture in 1 act
  • The foundation festival
  • Mathilde
  • The Pasquillanten , 1860
  • The engagement , 1862
  • The servants , ca.1865

Most of his stage pieces are contained in his collected dramatic works (Leipzig 1846–74, 27 volumes); In addition, a selection of the larger comedies appeared in 20 volumes ( Volkstheater , das. 1882) and a collection of the smaller pieces under the title: Hausheater (8th edition, Leipzig 1880).

Others

  • German folk tales , 6 volumes, Wesel 1839–41, new edition 1851
  • Niederrheinischer Volkskalender , 1836–42
  • Memorial book for life , Wesel 1841
  • Pictures from the life of an actor , 2nd edition, Wesel 1851
  • The tramps , novel 1867
  • The oral lecture , 3 volumes, 3rd edition Leipzig 1871
  • The essence of German rhythm , Leipzig 1862
  • Catechism of German Verskunst , 2nd edition Leipzig 1879
  • Catechism of Oratory , 3rd edition Leipzig 1881
  • The Shakespeare romance. For defense , posthumously, Stuttgart 1873

literature

Web links

Commons : Roderich Benedix  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Roderich Benedix  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Verlag von Paul List , Leipzig 1903, p. 755, ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  2. ^ Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Verlag von Paul List , Leipzig 1903, p. 79, ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Otto Vigouroux: From my golden time 1857-60. In: Festschrift for the 75th Foundation Festival of the Corps Masovia. Königsberg 1905. - Vigouroux (1837–1907) was a teacher and head of the Reformed church in Hamburg.
  4. ↑ The engagement: drama in three acts / by Roderich Benedix - digitized at uni-muenster.de
  5. ↑ digitized version ( DjVu )
personal data
SURNAME Benedix, Roderich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Benedix, Julius Roderich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German comedy poet, actor and theater director
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH September 26, 1873
Place of death Leipzig