Otto Tausig

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Otto Tausig ( Nestroy Theater Prize 2009 )

Otto Heinz Tausig (born February 13, 1922 in Vienna ; † October 10, 2011 there ) was an Austrian actor , screenwriter and director .

Live and act

Otto Tausig was born in his parents' apartment on Favoritenstrasse in Vienna. He had his very first stage experience, as he recalls in his autobiography Kasperl, Kummerl, Jud - Eine Lebensgeschichte (2003), when his parents went with him to the Johann Strauss Theater , where Josephine Baker performed. At every performance she brought a man on stage and that evening her choice fell on Otto ("I didn't know what she wanted from me and I started to cry terribly. People laughed. It was horrible.") . When he was 13, he secretly applied to drama school, but was turned away with advice to try again at 16.

In 1938, after the " connection " of Austria by the Nazi German Reich , his parents sent him because of the Jewish because of his background to be feared persecution with a Kindertransport to Britain, where he worked as agricultural and factory workers. His mother Franziska Tausig (1895–1989) fled to Shanghai and was able to buy her husband, who had already been deported to a concentration camp, and bring him home. He died of tuberculosis while emigrating . She published her memories of this time in 1987 under the title Shanghai Passage. Escape and exile of a Viennese woman. Otto Tausig was interned as an " Enemy Alien ". During the two years he spent in several camps, he got to know the poet Kurt Schwitters , among others . After his release from internment, he went to London, where he worked as a locksmith during the day and participated in satirical stage programs at the Austrian Center of the Free Austrian Movement in the evening ; Among other things, Jura Soyfers Vineta was also made there. The sunken city listed.

After the end of the Second World War , Otto Tausig returned to his homeland in 1946 , now married and after the experiences of the previous years as a staunch communist . He began studying at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. Just two years later, in 1948, Tausig began working as an actor, director and chief dramaturge at the New Theater in der Scala . The ensemble was communist-oriented, which meant that after the theater was closed in 1956, the anti-communist mood in Vienna at that time (cf. Wiener Brecht boycott ) made it difficult for the actors to find accommodation at other theaters. Tausig recalled: “Either you signed that you would turn away from communism in any form, or you didn't get any more engagement. So I emigrated a second time. ” He went to the Deutsches Theater and the Volksbühne in East Berlin . Here he worked as a screenwriter and director on satirical short films by DEFA , the so-called " Stingeltier " productions. In those years, before the construction of the Berlin Wall , there was still freedom of movement, but the "spies of the GDR authorities" began to get on his nerves . He later turned away from the Communist Party and took part in demonstrations against the stationing of missiles in East Berlin and on the Mutlanger Heide .

In 1960, Tausig moved to the Schauspielhaus Zurich before working as a freelance actor and director throughout Germany. In 1970 he was engaged by Gerhard Klingenberg , an ensemble member and director at the Vienna Burgtheater , where he worked until 1983. During this time he founded an Amnesty International group to support politically persecuted actors and artists, with which he campaigned for Václav Havel , among others .

After this engagement he worked again as a freelance artist in the entire German-speaking area. In addition to his theater career, he also worked as a film actor and director for film and television productions and as a professor at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. He ended his stage career in 1999 with the role of the lawyer Schnoferl in Nestroy's Das Mädl aus der Vorstadt at the Vienna Volkstheater .

Vienna Central Cemetery - honorary grave of Otto Tausig

From the outset, Tausig's acting was particularly focused on comedic roles, often with tragic undertones, which he played in numerous Nestroy performances, as Truffaldino in Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters , as Lope de Vegas Knight of the Miracle or as Cyrano de Bergerac embodied. His repertoire also included roles in, among others, Hugo von Hofmannsthal's The Difficult , de Beaumarchais ' The Great Day or Figaro's Wedding , Peter Handke's Der Ritt über dem Bodensee , Jehoschua Sobol's Ghetto (production: Peter Zadek ), Jean-Paul Sartre's Kean or Disorder and Genie , Molières Tartuffe and Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein . As a screenwriter and director, he has worked on around 70 productions. In 2009 he was honored with the Nestroy Theater Prize for his life's work. His last film was "The Man with the Bassoon" - the two-parter that tells the family story of Udo Jürgens.

For many years, Tausig devoted himself to development cooperation projects as part of the Development Aid Initiative of the Artists of the Development Aid Club . Since the end of the 1980s he donated all of his income from engagements and appearances to this aid project ("That is the only purpose of my appearances"), and he lived from his pension as a Burgtheater actor. With the initiative, he supported Indian children who could be freed from child labor in carpet factories or stone quarries or refugee children without parents in Austria who stayed in the Laura Gatner Home in Hirtenberg , which was named after his grandmother who was murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp .

Otto Tausig died on October 10, 2011 after a long illness with his family in Vienna and was buried in an honorary grave (group 40, number 181) after cremation in the Simmering fire hall at the Vienna Central Cemetery. In 2013, Tausigplatz in Vienna- Wieden (4th district) was named after him and his mother Franziska Tausig. Tausig was married for the second time and from the previous marriage has a son named Wolfgang (* 1950) and a grandson.

Filmography

Radio plays

Awards

Otto Tausig and David Larible ( Nestroy Theater Prize 2009 )

literature

  • Otto Tausig: Kasperl, Kummerl, Jud. A life story. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-85476-149-X .
  • F.-B. Habel , Volker Wachter : The great lexicon of the GDR stars. The actors from film and television. Extended new edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89602-391-8 .
  • Johann Caspar Glenzdorf: Glenzdorf's international film lexicon. Biographical manual for the entire film industry. Volume 3: Peit – Zz. Prominent-Filmverlag, Bad Münder 1961, DNB 451560752 , p. 1714.

Web links

Commons : Otto Tausig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Actor Otto Tausig died. orf.at, October 10, 2011
  2. ↑ I no longer believe that I can change the world in my lifetime…. An interview with Otto Tausig. In: GEDENKDIENST 4. (2003), Vienna 2003, pp. 3–4. Article online , PDF
  3. ↑ a b c Elisabeth Scharang / FM4 -Double room special: The standing man. ( Memento of the original from August 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. December 8, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / fm4.orf.at
  4. ↑ a b Comrade Kasperl . In: Falter 14/2005 of April 6, 2005 ( Memento of January 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ a b c Ö1 : Otto Tausig in conversation. The world is really that bad. February 8, 2007.
  6. ↑ Otto Tausig and his initiative “Development Aid for Artists” ( Memento of the original from July 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eh-klub.at
  7. ^ Kurier : Actor Otto Tausig died ( Memento from October 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Bruno Kreisky Prize for Services to Human Rights, 9th award, January 22, 1997
personal data
SURNAME Tausig, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tausig, Otto Heinz (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian actor, director and dramaturge
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 2011
Place of death Vienna , Austria