Otto Kirchner (General Manager)

Otto Kirchner (born January 22, 1890 in Elberfeld , † 1950 ) was a German actor , director and theater director .

Live and act

After finishing school, Kirchner began training as an actor with Ferdinand Gregori . Before the First World War , he got his first jobs at various theaters, including as a set designer . From 1919 Kirchner was hired as an actor and director at theaters in Hirschberg, Düsseldorf, Berlin and Stettin. He then held the office of theater director, first from 1921 to 1924 at the Volksbühne des Nordens in Berlin-Pankow and from 1924 to 1925 at the same time at both the Schlosspark Theater in Berlin-Steglitz and the Berlin Thalia Theater. Although he appointed director Erhard Siedel and actor Alfred Braun to the board of directors of the Schlosspark Theater in addition to his former teacher Gregori, the stage association refused to give him the necessary support to hire a permanent ensemble. He then left both theaters on May 30, 1925 and founded the Landesjugendtheater in Berlin, which he directed until 1928 as well as the theater of the higher schools there until 1929, where he qualified unemployed actors for future employment on behalf of the magistrate .

After a short episode as a theater director at the Theater in Hanover, Kirchner made guest appearances with an acting troupe at home and abroad, including in May 1930 with Lucie Höflich at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf . From 1933 he was director of the newly founded “Deutsche Musikbühne”, a “non-profit association for the care of German art” of the Hereditary Prince Heinrich XLV. Reuss , which acted as a touring theater based in Berlin. Reuss had recommended Kirchner to the special commissioner for cultural personalities in the German Reich , Hans Hinkel , as extremely conscientious and with great experience in the field of traveling theater, to which one only had to “provide a person of trust from the party”.

Two years later Kirchner got the position of artistic director at the city theater in Elbing , East Prussia , which was also responsible for the theater in Braunsberg . During this time Kirchner was able to engage Gustaf Gründgens with the guest performance of Emilia Galotti in the original cast of the Berlin State Theater . Finally, in 1939, he accepted the call to the Aachen Theater , where he took over the management initially until 1944 and again in 1949 until his death in 1950. In Aachen, Kirchner was among other things the editor of a new edition of the "Blätter des Stadttheater", after these had previously only appeared in 1924 and 1925. In the spring of 1942 Kirchner was one of the initiators, together with the city administration of Aachen, who, due to protracted quarrels with the incumbent music director Herbert von Karajan, signed a successor in Paul van Kempen without his knowledge and at the same time released Karajan from his duties. Karajan himself says that he did not find the time when he should have broken up and that Kirchner had basically thrown him out.

literature

• Beatrice Vierneisel: The castle park ensemble in Steglitz 1880–1949 . In: Before After. Contributions to the history of National Socialism and the post-war period in Steglitz and Zehlendorf . Ed. Kulturamt Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin 2008, pp. 11–33 ( pdf )
• Hurka-Pallenberg: Deutsches Theater-Lexikon, biographical and bibliographical manual , volume 2; Walter de Gruyter 1960; P. 999; ( digitized )
• Klaus Schulte & Peter Sardoc: From Ringelhardt to Mundorf , artists and personalities of the Aachen City Theater , Verlag Josef Stippak, Aachen, 1977

Individual evidence

1. ↑ History of the Aachen City Theater