Oskar Walterlin

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Oskar Wältin (right) with Max Frisch at the rehearsals for Biedermann and the Arsonists and The Great Fury of Philipp Hotz 1958

Oskar Wältin (born August 30, 1895 in Basel , † April 4, 1961 in Hamburg ) was a Swiss theater director , theater director and theater manager .

Live and act

After graduating from high school, the son of an insurance specialist attended the University of Basel , where he studied German and theater studies from 1914 to 1918. With the dissertation Schiller and the audience he was awarded a Dr. phil. PhD. In addition to his studies, he took speech technology lessons. From 1919 onwards he worked as a dramaturge, theater and opera director and actor at the Stadttheater Basel , where he had already worked as a student in the extras series.

In 1925 he became a senior director with the powers of a director, and in 1926 he was officially given the title of director. In 1932 Walterlin - u. a. because of his homosexuality - forced to resign. In 1933 he was appointed senior director of the Frankfurt Opera to the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt am Main , where he a. a. 1937 staged the world premiere of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana .

In 1938 he took over the management of the Zurich theater , which he headed until his death. Together with his chief dramaturge Kurt Hirschfeld , he made the Zürcher Schauspielhaus into the most important base for German-speaking theater outside the National Socialist sphere of influence during the Second World War . Initially oriented towards classical world theater, he increasingly advocated the authors who were banned and persecuted by National Socialism. Bertolt Brecht's dramas Mother Courage and Her Children (1941), The Good Man of Sezuan (1943), Life of Galilei (1943) and Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti (1948) premiered in Zurich.

Important contemporary foreign plays were premiered here in German, Wälterlin himself staged Our Little City (1939, premiered under the title Eine kleine Stadt in a translation by Wilfried Scheitlin, Waeler's life partner) and We came again from it (1944) by Thornton Wilder as well The family celebration (1945) by TS Eliot . He has also directed numerous plays by William Shakespeare , including Molière's The School of Women (1938), Sophocles ' King Oedipus (1938), Lessing's Nathan the Wise (1939) and Goethe's Egmont (1944).

Maria Becker , Walter Felsenstein , Therese Giehse , Ernst Ginsberg , Wolfgang Heinz , Karl Paryla , Wolfgang Langhoff , Leonard Steckel , Kurt Horwitz , Erwin Kalser and the set designer Teo Otto belonged to Wälterlin's emigrant ensemble . After the war, various American, French and other stage works found their German-language premieres or world premieres in Zurich, including The Gifted Fear ( Premiere 1951) by Georges Bernanos . The Swiss authors Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt achieved their breakthrough with Waelderlin's productions . In 1953 Don Juan or The Love of Geometry premiered, 1956 The Old Lady's Visit , 1958 Biedermann and the Arsonists and 1959 Frank the Fifth . Up until his sudden death in 1961, Wolderlin staged 125 plays in Zurich. He is buried in the Fluntern cemetery in Zurich .

Individual evidence

  1. Photos from 1926. Oskar Wältin and other members of the Basel City Theater. Retrieved June 5, 2020 .
  2. Wolderlin is also considered to be the patron of the actor and writer Alexander Ziegler .

literature

Web links