Michael Kehlmann

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Michael Kehlmann (born September 21, 1927 in Vienna ; † December 1, 2005 there ) was an Austrian director and actor . His son is the writer Daniel Kehlmann .

Life

Michael Kehlmann was the son of the Viennese civil servant and writer Eduard Kehlmann . Both his father and mother were baptized Jews. By forging documents - original documents were destroyed in an archive fire, which meant that new documents had to be issued - Michael Kehlmann's parents declared themselves " half-Jews " in order to better survive the Nazi era. Nevertheless, Kehlmann, who was also baptized, was refused access to a grammar school after the annexation of Austria as a “half-Jew”. Instead, he was forced to do an apprenticeship in an industrial company.

He frequented circles of the Austrian resistance and was arrested at an evening meeting in 1944 and taken to a sub-camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp , the Maria Lanzendorf camp, which he was only able to leave shortly before the end of the war with the help of bribery. He graduated from high school in 1945 and then studied German and philosophy at the University of Vienna . In 1950 he began, together with Helmut Qualtinger and Carl Merz , to play cabaret in the small theater in the Konzerthaus, which he directed . This gave rise to the cabaret group known today as the Nameless Ensemble , to which Gerhard Bronner , Peter Wehle , Georg Kreisler , Louise Martini and many other, frequently changing members later joined. He played in the programs Blitzlichter and Brettl vor'm Kopf as well as the parody Reigen 51 on Schnitzlers Reigen . Kehlmann left Vienna in 1953 and went to NDR as a television director .

He also made a name for himself as a theater director . Kehlmann worked several times as a director at the Burgtheater ; In 1975, alongside Thomas Bernhard, he was one of the candidates to succeed Gerhard Klingenberg as director of the Burgtheater. He last directed Carl Zuckmayer's Der Hauptmann von Köpenick in 1985 with Heinz Reincke in the title role.

His son Daniel Kehlmann explains, interviewed by Klaus Nüchtern in 2009:

[...] I also experienced the relativity of the phenomenon of fame in my father, who was one of the most famous Austrian directors in the sixties, seventies and up to the beginning of the eighties, but then couldn't work at all in this country for various reasons.
Why?
Because he was no longer in demand as a "true to work" director at the theater and the type of literary film adaptation he stood for was no longer made by television. [...]
... your father should have become theater director himself, in Josefstadt .
He [...] had a signed contract, which is why we moved from Munich to Vienna. However, that was thwarted by Helmut Zilk, who has now been canonized .

From 1987 until his retirement in 1990 he was head of the television game department at ORF .

Kehlmann was married to the actress Dagmar Mettler . He was buried at the Mauer cemetery in Vienna.

Filmography (selection)

plant

  • The Qualtinger . 1995

Award

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Philipp Engel: How Jewish am I? In: Cicero , December 2009, interview with Daniel Kehlmann
  2. ↑ Adam Sobczynski: Help, I'll be portrayed! In: Die Zeit , No. 42/2008. Portrait of Daniel Kehlmann.
  3. ^ Maria Fialik : The Conservative Anarchist - Thomas Bernhard and the State Theater, Löcker Verlag 1991, p. 122.
  4. ↑ "Everyone looks when picking their nose!" Daniel Kehlmann is Austria's most successful writer. A conversation about fame - and “fame” , Interview: Klaus Nüchtern. In: Falter , No. 3/09 of 14 January 2009, p. 24 f.
personal data
SURNAME Kehlmann, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian director and actor
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 2005
Place of death Vienna