Paul Devrient

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Paul Devrient , actually Walter Stieber , also Paul Stieber-Walter (born November 17, 1890 in Wandsbek near Hamburg ; † November 5, 1973 in Ruhpolding ) was a German opera singer ( tenor ) and director . He was considered a well-known Verdi and Mozart interpreter. He also gained fame as a voice trainer and speaking teacher for Adolf Hitler in 1932.

Life

Stieber's great-grandmother was the Berlin court actress Friederike Komitsch, b. Schaffner, whose first marriage was to the famous actor Ludwig Devrient . His grandfather Wilhelm Stieber , lawyer and criminalist, acted as head of the Central News Bureau at the Prussian Ministry of the Interior in Berlin. Walter Stieber was born in 1890 as one of four sons of the lawyer Paul Stieber (1856–1944) and his wife Elsbeth (Else) (1861–1940), b. Biermann, born in Wandsbek near Hamburg . His older brother Hans Stieber (1886–1969) became a conductor, composer and violinist. Stieber attended high school in Halle an der Saale, where his father last worked as the first director of the North German Knappschafts pension fund.

He studied at the universities of Leipzig and Berlin. During his studies in 1909 he became a member of the Leipzig University Choir of St. Pauli . He also took singing lessons from 1912 to 1915 with the tenor Hanns Nietan in Dessau and in 1918 with the American baritone Harry de Garmo in Wiesbaden.

Under the names Paul Stieber-Walter and Paul Devrient he was an opera singer from 1915 to 1918 at the Stadttheater Mainz , then at the Stadttheater Chemnitz (1918–1921). In 1921 he took part in the premiere of his brother's opera Der Sonnenstürmer in Chemnitz . In 1921/22 he moved to the Landestheater Darmstadt . From 1922 to 1929 he was an opera singer at the Hanover Opera House . There he premiered the opera Herr Dürer's Picture by Joseph Gustav Mraczek in 1927 . He also had a guest performance contract at the Prussian State Opera Berlin from 1924 to 1928 (1924–1928). Further guest appearances took him to the Cologne Opera House in 1925 and to the Dresden State Opera in 1927 .

After 1929 he devoted himself increasingly to the operetta at the Theater des Westens and at the Metropol-Theater in Berlin. From 1936 to 1939 he was a singer and director at the Stadttheater Frankfurt (Oder). In the same position he was engaged at the theaters in Liegnitz (1939–1941) and Görlitz (1941/42). He also appeared as a concert and oratorio singer as well as a song interpreter, often accompanied by his brother on the piano. In 1934 he took part in the Sopot Festival .

His repertoire included "Belmonte" from Abduction from the Seraglio (Mozart), "Nureddin" from The Barber of Baghdad (Cornelius), "Fritz" from Der ferne Klang (Schreker), "Alviano" from Die Gezeichen (Schreker) , “Mephisto” from Doctor Faust (Busoni), “Herzog” from Rigoletto (Verdi), “Alfredo” from La Traviata and “Klas” from Enoch Arden (Gerster). Records were released on the Odeon label .

Stieber, a Protestant, was married to Marta Geigenberger and had two children. From 1943 he lived in Marktl am Inn .

Devrient as Hitler's voice trainer

According to Devrient's diary, published posthumously in 1975, Paul Devrient was supposed to remedy the situation after Hitler was diagnosed with impending vocal cord paralysis as a result of overexertion. For a fee, Devrient accompanied Hitler on his propaganda trips across Germany from April to November 1932. Devrient not only trained Hitler's voice and speaking technique, but also improved his presence as a political speaker in front of a large audience through acting and rhetoric lessons. In order not to undermine Hitler's credibility or even publicly expose him to the ridicule of his opponents, Devrient had to work in the utmost secrecy. Exact details were only known after his death, when his diary passed into the hands of his son Hans Stieber (* 1917). He left the notes to Werner Maser , who finally published them in 1975.

Jens Dobler suspects that this diary and the entire Devrient-Hitler legend could be an invention of Hans Stieber, whom he also believes to be the alleged author of the forged memoirs of his great-grandfather Wilhelm Stieber , published in 1978 .

Devrient's cooperation with Hitler provided material for several plays and films. Bertolt Brecht delivered a first parody with the play Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (1941). In his farce Mein Kampf (1987), George Tabori turned the instructor into a Jew who became his pupil's first victim. In the movie comedy Mein Führer - The Truly Truth About Adolf Hitler (2006), the director and author Dani Levy has the German dictator instructed by a Jewish concentration camp inmate.

Filmography

  • 1956: The old forester's house
  • 1959: country that speaks my language
  • 1960: Shadow of the Heroes
  • 1960/61: Hamlet
  • 1963: Lady Lobster's groom
  • 1963/64: The curtain
  • 1964: The criminals
  • 1966: portrait of a hero
  • 1968/69: The Lena Christ case

diary

  • Werner Maser (Editing / Editing): My pupil Hitler. The diary of his teacher Paul Devrient . Ilmgau Verlag, Pfaffenhofen 1975, ISBN 3-7787-1022-2 .
  • Werner Maser (Ed.): Paul Devrient. My student Adolf Hitler. His teacher's diary . Universitas, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-8004-1450-3 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hugo Thielen : Stieber, Hans . In: Klaus Mlynek , Waldemar R. Röhrbein (Hrsg.): Stadtlexikon Hannover. From the beginning to the present . Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 605.
  2. ↑ Paul Stieber , glass-portal.privat.t-online.de, accessed on March 11, 2019.
  3. ↑ Paul Meißner (Ed.): Alt-Herren-Directory of the German Singers. Leipzig 1934, p. 85.
  4. ↑ Jens Dobler: Wilhelm Stieber, the first apologist of the police persecution of homosexuals. A biographical sketch . In: The Transformation of the Political . Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-320-02105-4 , p. 111, footnote 1.
personal data
SURNAME Devrient, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stieber, Walter (real name); Stieber-Walter, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera singer (tenor)
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Wandsbek near Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH 5th November 1973
Place of death Ruhpolding