P. Walter Jacob

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Paul Walter Jacob , pseudonym Paul Walter (born January 26, 1905 in Duisburg , † July 20, 1977 in Schwäbisch Hall ) was a German-Argentine actor , radio play speaker , dramaturge and director .

Life

Father Walter Jacob was the only child of Max Jacob and his wife Fanny. In the year of the birth, the family moved to Cologne and three years later to Mainz. There the father ran a trade credit business . The parents' house was very musical, and the mother was particularly influential. Father Walter Jacob had the desire to take up a musical profession from an early age, but the father, who came from a Jewish merchant family, planned a commercial training for his son. During his high school in Mainz, Fr. Walter Jacob attended the conservatory at the same time.

After graduating from high school in 1923, he broke with his parents' house and studied at the University of Mainz and at the Berlin School of Music . At the same time he learned the profession of actor and director at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Berlin. After working as an assistant director at the State Opera Unter den Linden in Berlin, he joined the Koblenz Theater in 1929 as director, dramaturge and actor . He then took on engagements at the municipal theaters of Lübeck and Wuppertal .

In January 1932, Father Walter Jacob officially resigned from the church, and in the same year he began working as a director for operas and operettas in Essen . After attacks from the National Socialist press, he was released on March 29, 1933. On April 1, 1933, Father Walter Jacob fled to Amsterdam from imminent arrest; in July he moved on to Paris. He initially worked as a music critic for German-language newspapers under the pseudonym Paul Walter , before he found work again in autumn 1934 as an actor at the guest theater Die Komödie in Luxembourg. He was also the director of the Echternach Festival and an employee of Radio Luxemburg . From 1936 he was under contract at the Teplitz-Schönau City Theater in Czechoslovakia. In April 1938, the National Socialists revoked his German citizenship and had to flee again.

Grave of P. Walter Jacob ,
Ohlsdorf cemetery

He first traveled to South Africa, but went to Buenos Aires in January 1939 with his partner Liselott Reger, who was an Argentine citizen . There he immediately began to publish in the Argentinisches Tageblatt , which would become his main publication organ in the following years. On March 4, 1939, he married Liselott Reger, which ultimately enabled him to take on the Argentine citizenship on August 26, 1941. On April 20, 1940, he opened the Free German Stage in Buenos Aires, and remained its director until his return to Germany. Immediately after the end of the war and the liberation from fascism, to which almost his entire family had fallen victim, he tried to return to Germany, which, however, only succeeded in December 1949.

On March 7, 1950, he was elected artistic director of Dortmund's municipal theaters and, in 1957, appointed general manager. He celebrated great success there, including the world premiere of Nelly Sachs' Eli on March 14, 1962. However, his contract as artistic director was not renewed by the city of Dortmund in the same year. Father Walter Jacob found this an untenable criticism of his artistic work and reacted bitter and hurt. Applications for directorships in other cities were unsuccessful and so he worked as a freelance actor, speaker and director, but kept his residence in Dortmund. As a radio play speaker he was active in two of the famous Paul Temple radio plays , namely in 1959 in Paul Temple and the Spencer case (directed by Eduard Hermann ) and in 1967 in Paul Temple and the Alex case (directed by Otto Düben ).

P. Walter Jacob died in 1977 of a heart attack. He found his final resting place in the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, grid square Q 10 (south of Chapel 1).

Filmography (selection)

Works

As director of the Free German Stage in Buenos Aires, Father Walter Jacob was the editor of the Theater Yearbook . Almanac of the Free German Stage and other books on exile theater in Argentina. He translated many Dutch, French and Spanish stage works into German, including Maurits Dekkers Die Welt has no waiting room .

Other works:

  • P. Walter Jacob: In the limelight: essays and reviews from 5 decades . Ed .: Uwe Naumann. Kabel, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-921909-83-X .
  • P. Walter Jacob: Musica prohibida - forbidden music. A lecture in exile . In: Fritz Pohle (Ed.): Series of publications from the P. Walter Jacob Archive . No. 3 . Hamburg Office for German Exile Literature, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-9802151-1-3 .
  • P. Walter Jacob: Jacques Offenbach with testimonials and photo documents . In: Rowohlt's monographs . No. 155 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1969.
  • P. Walter Jacob: The arduous way of Peter Cornelius to Liszt and Wagner . In: Small Mainzer Library . tape 8 . Krach, Mainz 1974, ISBN 3-87439-028-4 .

Honors

literature

  • Karin Vivian Wolfgang: Paul Walter Jacob and the Free German Stage in Argentina . University of Vienna, Vienna July 2, 1980 (dissertation).
  • Biographical lexicon of theater artists . In: Frithjof Trapp u. a. (Ed.): Handbook of the German-speaking Exile Theater 1933–1945 . tape 2 . Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11373-0 .
  • Musical pamphlets: P. Walter Jacobs music journalism 1933–1949 . In: Andreas Löhrer, Vera Balzano (Hrsg.): Series of publications from the P. Walter Jacob Archive . tape 11 . Walter A. Berendsohn Research Center for German Exile Literature, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-9808388-0-3 .
  • Uwe Naumann (Ed.): A theater man in exile: P. Walter Jacob . Kabel, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-921909-88-0 (exhibition catalog).
  • Walther Huder (Ed.): Theater in Exile . Akademie der Künste, Berlin 1973 (exhibition catalog).
  • Frithjof Trapp, Walter A. Berendsohn Research Center for German Exile Literature (Ed.): Between Schönberg and Wagner - Musicians' exile 1933–1949. The example of P. Walter Jacob . Henschel, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-89487-510-0 (on the exhibition in the Carl von Ossietzky State and University Library ).
  • Gert Eisenbürger, Gaby Küppers: It was about German theater. The actor and director Jacques Arndt . In: ila - Information Center Latin America e. V. (Ed.): ILA-Info. Journal of the Latin America Observatory . No. 224 , April 1999, ISSN  0946-5057 , p. 40 ff . ( ila-web.de [accessed on August 4, 2015]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Lauschke: Jacob, Paul Walter . In: Hans Bohrmann (Ed.): Biographies of important Dortmunders. People in, from and for Dortmund . tape 2 . Klartext, Essen 1998, ISBN 3-88474-677-4 , p. 70 ff .
  2. Celebrity Graves