Paul Günther (actor)

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Paul Günther (born January 20, 1887 ; † August 8, 1962 ) was a German actor , theater director and acting teacher.

Life

Günther received his artistic training at the Seebach School of the Royal Theater Berlin until 1908 . In the same year he began his stage work, initially in the role of the adolescent lover at the Märkisches Wandertheater. Before the First World War, he was committed to the prestigious Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus under the direction of Louise Dumont . After an engagement at the Albert Theater during the war, Günther followed a call to the German Theater in Berlin in the last year of the war in 1918 . There he played under the direction of Max Reinhardt and Felix Hollaender until 1925 and celebrated his first major successes as a stage mime. At that time he was also seen at the Volksbühne Berlin , where he played Hamlet under his own direction in 1924 , and at the Neues Volkstheater, where he had the world premiere of Barlach's “The Dead Day” the year before. Other productions included classic plays by Friedrich Schiller , including Kabale und Liebe (in Bochum), Don Karlos , The Fiesco Conspiracy to Genoa and Wallenstein , but also Goethe's Egmont , Kleist's The Prince of Homburg and the Shakespeare plays The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado about nothing - all performed at the Theater der Jugend.

In 1925, Günther temporarily left the capital of the Reich and was brought in as senior director at Cologne's municipal theaters. There he only stayed one season, in which he u. a. Schiller's Die Räuber , again brought Prince von Homburg and Georg Kaisers from morning to midnight on the stage, and returned to Berlin in 1926. In the next ten years Paul Günther staged and acted at various venues in the capital, including the German Art Theater Heinz Saltenburg , the Berlin Theater , again the German Theater and finally the Prussian Theater of Youth (in the Schiller Theater ). From 1936 to 1942, Paul Günther ran his own drama school in the capital, and from 1942 to 1945 he headed the youth department of Bavaria Film in Munich. In the early post-war years, from 1946 to 1949, Günther worked as director of the municipal drama school in Munich, from 1949 to 1951 he worked as an actor at Berlin's Hebbel Theater and at the same time took over the management of its drama school. Günther then worked as a freelancer and from 1951 also worked for radio ( Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk , Sender Freies Berlin ).

During his first period in Berlin (from 1920 to 1925) Günther also frequently appeared in front of the film camera. He played both leading roles and supporting roles; Most memorable are his Krogstadt junior in Berthold Viertel's production of Nora and his Egeus in Hans Neumann's controversial (because it is modernist) Midsummer Night's Dream implementation . In the early talkies, during his second phase in Berlin, Günther played solemn rulers several times, including 1931 Napoleon Bonaparte in Carl Froelich's Luise, Queen of Prussia and, the following year, his hapless Prussian opponent King Friedrich Wilhelm III. in Rudolf Meinert's remake The eleven Schill officers . In the Third Reich, Günther remained largely filminaktiv, but returned shortly after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany back in front of the camera. Up until his 70th birthday, he was seen in a number of minor cinema and television films.

Paul Günther was married to the actress Irmtraut Körner.

Filmography

literature

  • Johann Caspar Glenzdorf: Glenzdorf's international film lexicon. Biographical manual for the entire film industry. Volume 1: A-Heck. Prominent-Filmverlag, Bad Münder 1960, DNB 451560736 , p. 562.
  • Herbert A. Frenzel , Hans Joachim Moser (ed.): Kürschner's biographical theater manual. Drama, opera, film, radio. Germany, Austria, Switzerland. De Gruyter, Berlin 1956, DNB 010075518 , p. 236.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Günther, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1887
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 1962