Michael beans

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Michael Bohnen as director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, 1945
Michael Bohnen (left) with Elisabeth Rethberg and Lauritz Melchior on their way to New York, 1932

Franz Michael Bohnen (born May 2, 1887 in Cologne , † April 26, 1965 in West Berlin ) was a German opera singer (bass baritone) and actor .

Life

Michael Bohnen trained as an opera singer ( bass baritone ) at the Cologne Conservatory and through private lessons , made his debut at the Stadttheater Düsseldorf in 1910 and performed at the Hoftheater Wiesbaden in 1912. Since 1912 he was a member of the Hofoper Berlin and since 1914 has been a regular at the Bayreuth Festival ; In 1916 he was recalled from military service to the Berlin Court Opera. In 1925 he played Baron Ochs von Lerchenau in the film adaptation of the opera Der Rosenkavalier .

Bohnen performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1922 to 1933, and from 1933 to 1934 he made guest appearances in Buenos Aires .

In Germany he also gained great popularity as an actor. His muscular strength became legendary. His colleague Lil Dagover describes in her autobiography how, among other things, he fought a live bull or in August the Strong held a boy out of the window with outstretched arms.

In 1934 Bohnen returned to Berlin, initially sang again at the State Opera, and from 1935 to 1945 at the Deutsche Oper . After the end of the Second World War he was director of this house until 1947 , where he sang until 1951, as well as president of the Chamber of Artists . As a result of the denazification process, he had to give up the post of artistic director of the Berlin City Opera because of a deliberate false testimony from his student, the tenor Hans Beirer . As a result, rehabilitation (despite the fact that the tenor's lie was soon proven) took place only hesitantly, so that Michael Bohnen, only provided with a small salary from the city of Berlin, lived in complete poverty at the time of his death.

Grave of Michael Bohnen in the Heerstraße cemetery in Berlin-Westend

Michael Bohnen died of acute cardiac insufficiency in his Berlin apartment on April 26, 1965, a week before his 78th birthday. His grave is in the state-owned cemetery Heerstraße in Berlin-Westend (grave location: 18-B-9). In 1984, the Berlin Senate decided to dedicate Michael Bohnen's final resting place as the grave of honor for the State of Berlin for twenty years . After this deadline, the Senate decided in November 2005 not to extend the dedication.

Beans are said to have had an affair with La Jana . The long correspondence in which both stood is confirmed by his granddaughter.

Filmography (selection)

Honors

  • 1913 Royal Prussian Chamber Singer (appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm II )
  • 1937 Kammersänger (Awarded by Adolf Hitler , who awarded numerous musicians with titles on his birthday in 1937)
  • 1952 Goethe Prize of the City of Berlin
  • 1957 Big Federal Cross of Merit by Theodor Heuss
  • 1964 Honorary Pensioner of the Metropolitan Opera New York
  • 1965 honor grave at the cemetery Heerstraße (field 18-B-9); Honorary grave status revoked in 2005
  • 1976 Appreciation with the dedication of a street in the Berlin- Neukölln high-deck settlement : "Michael-Bohnen-Ring"
  • 2002 Memorial plaque on the long-term house in Berlin, Kurfürstendamm 50
  • Honorary member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
  • Bust in the foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
  • Permanent exhibition of his family coat of arms in the foyer of the Metropolitan Opera New York
  • Memorial plaque on the birthplace in Cologne, Friesenwall 102 a
  • Memorial plaque at the site of the old Art Nouveau Opera in Cologne, Habsburgerring 13

Others

Bohnen was an avid fan of carom billiards . He was one of the guests of honor at the German Three Cushion Championship in Berlin in 1957 . He was also given the honor of presenting the winner August Tiedtke with the trophy he had donated himself. He did this with the words:

“This Venus is headless, this Venus is cold,
try to win it and you will soon find out!
The competition for this Venus is "ambition" of many.
It is now a triumph prize for three-cushion players.
And who wants to reward the best with this symbol?
The three-band singer Michael Bohnen. "

- Michael Bohnen : Deutsche Billard-Zeitung, March 1957

His Italian friend and colleague Benjamin Gigli had got him the statue .

literature

  • KJ Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singer lexicon . Unchanged edition. KG Saur, Bern 1993, first volume A – L, Sp. 301 f., ISBN 3-907820-70-3 .
  • Michael Bohnen: Between Backdrops and Continents <manuscript, 1950s>
  • James Dennis: Michael Beans . In: The record collector , Volume 27, pp. 195-239. Ipswich, Suffolk 1983 (biography, performance directories and discography in English)
  • Hans Borgelt: That was the spring of Berlin or the golden years of hunger: a Berlin chronicle . Schneekluth, Munich 1980.
  • Beans, Michael . In: KJ Kutsch, Leo Riemens: Large singer lexicon . Third expanded edition. Volume 1. KG Saur, Bern / Munich 1997, ISBN 3-598-11250-5 , p. 365 ff.
  • Josef Kley, Christa Matthes: Michael Bohnen, the Mastersinger from Cologne . Self-published, Cologne 2011.
  • Harry Waibel : Servant of many masters. Former Nazi functionaries in the Soviet Zone / GDR. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-63542-1 .

Web links

Commons : Michael Bohnen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Bohnen died in Berlin . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . Monday, April 26, 1965. p. 7.
  2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin tombs . Haude & Spener, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-7759-0476-6 , p. 194.
  3. ^ Template - for information - honorary graves of the State of Berlin . Berlin House of Representatives, printed matter 15/4601 of December 27, 2005, pp. 4–5. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
  4. ^ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 . 3. CD-ROM version 2005, p. 3092
  5. ↑ vettensjournal.de
  6. ↑ Michael Bean Ring. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  7. ↑ berlin.de
  8. ↑ museenkoeln.de
  9. ^ A b Karlheinz Krienen: German Billard Newspaper . Ed .: DBB. 34th year, no. 9 . Cologne March 1957, p. 4-7 .
  10. ↑ Kürschner's German Musicians Calendar 1954 . de Gruyter, Berlin 1954, p. 114.
personal data
SURNAME Beans, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beans, Franz Michael (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera singer (bass baritone) and actor
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1965
Place of death Berlin