Max Hofpauer

Max Hofpauer

Max Hofpauer (born July 11, 1845 in Munich , Kingdom of Bavaria ; † November 14, 1920 there ) was a Bavarian-German stage actor , theater director and theater director .

Live and act

The son of a Munich magistrate wanted to go to the theater at an early age and therefore joined a traveling artist troupe in 1861. The 16-year-old made his first appearance in the city of Weißenburg. Hofpauer's other early theater stations were Landshut, Augsburg and Schwerin. In these cities he was cast in the role of adolescent lover. In 1869 he succeeded in jumping to the Hamburg City Theater, where Max Hofpauer was able to appear on a more important stage for the first time. He soon found that his talent lay in the field of comedy, and he specialized in relevant stage roles. After a stopover in Frankfurt am Main, Hofpauer returned home to Munich in the fall of 1870 to perform at the local theater on Gärtnerplatz . Hofpauer then belonged to the ensemble of the Munich Volkstheater and was appointed royal court actor because of his performance. Singspiele, antics and folk plays now became his preferred field of work. Many of these plays (including Doktor und Friseur, Die both Reichenmüller, Salontiroler, Der Talisman ) lived from a simple joke and are not necessarily part of the classical German theater culture.

After the great audience success with his dialect comedy, Max Hofpauer decided to set up his own touring stage with a few colleagues. With her he traveled to Berlin, where the Bavarian humor was also well received. Thereupon Hofpauer placed himself at the head of this ensemble of Munich folk actors, which called itself “Die Münchner”. The audience success was certain for the small troupe, and inquiries followed from other cities in Germany, but also from the Netherlands, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Switzerland and finally even the United States, where Hofpauer and his colleagues embarked in 1890. These theater tours did not end until 1892, and Hofpauer returned to Berlin. At the Theater des Westens he now devoted himself to classical drama, where he also directed and ultimately also took over the management of this stage, whose program included drama, opera and ballet. Shortly after the turn of the century, Max Hofpauer began to appear again. From then on he no longer tied himself to a permanent ensemble. Hofpauer has also made a name for himself as a reciter .

literature

• Heinrich Hagemann (Ed.): Specialized lexicon of the German stage members . Pallas and Hagemanns Bühnen-Verlag, Berlin 1906, p. 54.
• Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Verlag von Paul List , Leipzig 1903, p. 444, ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).