Oskar Barthold

Oskar Barthold (born April 26, 1904 in Halle , † 1980 in Gernsbach ; also: Oka Barthold ) was a German puppeteer , painter and graphic artist .

life and work

Barthold's activity as a full-time puppeteer can be traced back to before 1933. Portraits from this early period show him as a young puppets - and Kasper player . Later he also used the marionette and with it became one of the best puppeteers of his time.

In 1933 Barthold became a member of the NSDAP, but after years of working as a freelance puppeteer, he was supposed to take care of the troops. There he should play what was prescribed to him, what he didn't like. As a result, he was banned from working and was forced to be employed as a puppeteer.

After the war he published the handout Puppet Show Care in the Province of Saxony , which contained a proposal to set up a state agency for puppet shows in the mentioned province. He built the model puppet stage, which started in Halle in July 1947 as a marionette theater with a staff of 25, where his daughter also worked.

In addition to his work as a puppeteer, he worked as a set designer at the Landestheater Halle / Saale and as a painter and graphic artist. He illustrated several books and created numerous postcards of his hometown Halle as ink drawings .

In 1951 he went to the West, worked as an artist and set up a decoration design company for Sparkassenverlag. Later he settled in Gernsbach in the northern Black Forest and worked as a freelance artist. Among other things, he experimented with theater puppets and ran an art gallery in the old office courtyard, which is a listed building, where he lived with his wife until his death.

Fonts

• Oskar Barthold: Kasper primer . Halle / Saale 1941
• Oskar Barthold (together with Peter Fischer): make-up, powder and wig. Instructions for making the stage mask for amateur performers . Halle / Saale 1950
• Oskar Barthold (together with Peter Fischer): The stage design . Halle / Saale 1951
• Oka Barthold: Guest in Gernsbach - A city guide. Gernsbach 1975

literature

• Olaf Bernstengel and Lars Rebehn: Volkstheater on threads. From mass medium to museum object - Saxon puppet theater in the 20th century . Halle / Saale 2007

swell

• Family archive of the daughter, Waltraude Stehwien (née Barthold)
• Oskar Barthold files in the Dresden State Puppet Theater Collection
• Archive of the Piccolo puppet shows ( Gerd J. Pohl Collection )