Max Christian Feiler

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Max Christian Feiler, ca.1965

Max Christian Feiler (born September 8, 1904 in Traunstein , † December 11, 1973 in Munich ) was a German musician, writer, theater musician, playwright and theater critic.

Life

education

Max Christian Feiler was born as the second son of the railway official Paul Feiler and his wife Margarete in Traunstein. He spent his primary and secondary school days in Munich. He broke off commercial training and began studying at the Academy of Music in Munich in 1925 , which he completed in 1927 with the final exam in the piano master class and in 1929 with the final exam for conducting.

Professional career until 1945

From 1929 to 1930 he was concert pianist and musical director at the Munich “Theater School Professor Willi Wirk”. From 1930 to 1935 he worked as a theater band master and choir director at the Landestheater Coburg . The varied program included choral works, operas, operettas, oratorios and concerts. He was a permanent employee of the local theater newspaper. After his contract at the Landestheater had not been renewed for political reasons in 1935 (two years of monitoring letters), he moved to Berlin, where he lived from concert accompaniment, piano lessons and accompaniment. It was there that he met his wife. From 1936 to 1941 he was artistic director of the Berliner Musikfreunde Orchestra .

From 1937 he worked as a teacher at the Berlin Conservatory in opera and Kapellmeister classes. At the same time Feiler had started to work as a freelance writer for theater and film. He married Elisabeth Lilly von Andreae in 1939 and had a daughter in 1942. From 1940 he had a contractual relationship with film companies such as UFA , Terra Film and Bavaria Film . When this activity became more and more extensive in 1940, he gave up teaching at the conservatory at his own request and gave fewer concerts in order to devote himself entirely to writing. With his two pieces “The Sixth Woman” (first performance in 1939) and “Cleopatra II” (premiered in 1940), he had great success until the Nazi rulers in March 1941 banned further performances.

In 1944 Feiler was drafted into military service, first as a radio operator in Berlin, then as a ground crew for the aviators in Stendal and Munich until the end of the war.

Career after 1945

From 1946 he worked again as a freelance writer and worked on plays and film scripts, e.g. For example, on the Rühmann film Der Herr vom Andere Stern with Werner Illing , as well as on essays, glosses , articles for Die Neue Zeitung - requested by Erich Kästner - and for Münchner Merkur . From 1948 Feiler was a feature editor and theater critic at Münchner Merkur.

In 1958 he resigned his permanent position at the Münchner Merkur at the end of the season in order to write freely and independently on his own material again, but above all on an extensive collection of dramaturgy issues. As a passionate theater-goer, he continued to regularly attend theater premieres and concerts.

From 1967 he began to write more and more articles, essays and glosses (including for Epoca , Münchner Merkur, Theater Rundschau) as well as lectures and articles for the German School of Journalism in Munich. In 1969 he designed two one-act plays with music by Jacques Offenbach (for his 150th birthday): The Classical Widow and A Woman of Today . Both in collaboration with Bernhard Thieme and Bert Grund .

Serious illness

In 1970, Feiler was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a severe, progressive paralysis that first forced him into a wheelchair, then made him speechless, but until the end - albeit very laboriously - made him use his right hand. Under these conditions he wrote TV and record reviews as well as reviews. His last was the one on the Verdi Requiem in the Toscanini Edition.

Above all, however, the completion and completion of his dramaturgy was important to him , which put him under great pressure with his self-critical need for filing - a race against time. The book The Logic of Theater (Bruckmann Verlag 1974) was created in a constant effort to reduce and condense it : 350 aphoristic mini- essays on the inherent laws of theater, seemingly thrown with a light hand . Armin Eichholz wrote about the book on Feiler's 80th birthday in the Münchner Merkur in 1984: "Anyone who reads it today must be surprised that it has not become compulsory for aspiring theater people."

Feiler still got the proofs , but did not live to see the book published. He died on December 11, 1973 and is buried in the Bogenhausen cemetery in Munich.

Works

In 1939 the premiere of his comedy The Sixth Woman took place in Düsseldorf, in 1940 that of his comedy Cleopatra II (based on Cesare Meano) in Berlin.

The sixth woman - a deposed Hitler parody

The sixth woman was a comedy about Henry VIII , a cleverly camouflaged, encrypted Hitler parody with speech in front of a mock parliament, torture scene, etc. Walter Kiaulehn speaks of Berlin's fate of a cosmopolitan city as the only piece of resistance against National Socialism. The sixth woman was played with great success in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Prague, Vienna and Berlin, and some of the audience probably recognized it as an open mockery of Hitler. In the program booklet in Vienna and Berlin were z. B. to read among other thoughts of Feiler about comedy writing:

  • Comedy writers are brave trainers: armed only with a smile, they play with beasts.
  • Comedies are written to catch tragedy by the throat, not to avoid it.
  • In drama you get overwhelmed by the problems, in comedy you play with them.

All performances were sold out until the play was finally banned and discontinued by Joseph Goebbels in March 1941 : Erich Kästner assumed that Ribbentrop's influence had been decisive and noted in his diary in February 1941: Feiler's sixth wife had to be deposed Operate Ribbentrops. It should only be played in toothless form until the replacement piece is performed.

Goebbels writes about this in his diary with entries from March 9th and 11th, 1941:

“I'll have the play The Sixth Woman by Feiler canceled. It only creates strife and is a feast for the eyes and ears of public enemies. ”And:“ There are again a lot of complaints about Feiler's 'sixth wife'. The spook is over on Saturday. "

This was followed by a subpoena to the Department of Opposing Worldview of the Propaganda Ministry . The theater director of the “Little Comedy” in Berlin, Hanns Horak , was deprived of his stage. Filming of the play was also banned and the publisher was asked not to say where the ban came from. Even Cleopatra II was undesirable from then on and the screenplays for the film companies were rejected by the censors.

Successes after 1945

The sixth woman and Cleopatra II were played again with great success after the war. In Munich z. B. In 1946 Gerhard Metzner opened the Kleine Komödie am Max II with Cleopatra II (over 100 performances). In 1949, Axel von Ambesser directed The Sixth Woman at the Kammerspiele.

In 1960, his comedy Mandragola (based on Niccolo Machiavelli ) premiered in Zurich, and in 1965 speculations about Salome and a reworking of Cleopatra II .

World premieres

book

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the representation of life is based on the obituaries: Armin Eichholz: A life for the theater . In: Münchner Merkur, December 12, 1973, p. 11; Karl Schumann: Max Christian Feiler died . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 12, 1973, p. 29; Georg Salmoni: Max Christian Feiler . In: Abendzeitung, December 12, 1973
  2. ↑ Armin Eichholz: The playwright's thing - to be understandable to the audience. In: Münchner Merkur, September 8, 1984
  3. ↑ billiongraves.de: Max-Christian-Feiler
  4. ^ A b Walter Kiaulehn: Berlin . Biederstein Verlag 1958, page 475 f.
  5. ↑ Erich Kästner: The Blue Book - Secret War Diary . Atrium Verlag Zürich 2018, ISBN 3937384200 , page 316
  6. ↑ Joseph Goebbels: The diaries . KGSaur Munich 1998, Volume 9, p. 178 u. 181.
personal data
SURNAME Feiler, Max Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musician, writer, theater musician, playwright and theater critic
DATE OF BIRTH September 8, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Traunstein
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1973
Place of death Munich