Peter Lotar

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Peter Lotar

Peter Lotar ; actually Lothar Chitz (born February 12, 1910 in Prague , Kingdom of Bohemia , Austria-Hungary ; † July 12, 1986 in Ennetbaden , Aargau , Switzerland ) was a writer , translator, actor and director as well as discoverer and promoter of Fritz Hochwälder , Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch .

Life

Peter Lotar grew up bilingual in Prague. After passing the Matura examination in 1928, he studied cultural history and also acting at Max Reinhardt's "Drama School of the German Theater" in Berlin (1928–30). Engagements in Berlin (with Max Reinhardt, Erwin Piscator ) and Breslau followed before he returned to Prague in 1933. Until 1939 he worked there as an actor and director, played at the Prague National Theater and at the Czech Municipal Theaters. At the same time he was involved in anti-fascist activities . After the German occupation in 1939, he managed to escape to Switzerland. From 1939 to 1946 he worked as an actor and director a. a. worked at the Biel Solothurn Theater, which at that time was still called the Biel Solothurn City Theater .

From 1946 to 1949 he worked as editor-in-chief and dramaturge at Reiss-Bühnenverlag Basel, where he discovered and supervised the early plays by Fritz Hochwälder , Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch . In 1947 his artist name Peter Lotar was officially recognized, and in 1949 he acquired Swiss citizenship in Solothurn . From 1950 he was exclusively a freelance writer. He wrote numerous radio plays, plays and novels as well as some cultural-historical and philosophical works. He received several literary awards.

His novels A Crow Was With Me and The Land I Show You are strongly autobiographical. A crow was with me illuminated the downfall of the German-Czech-Jewish cultural world through the entry of the National Socialists into Prague. In The Land I Show You , the author describes his work as an actor and director, the cities of Biel and Solothurn , in which he lived, as well as the theaters in the surrounding Swiss Plateau where the theater ensemble plays in great detail and with a sharp pen . In addition to an intimate glimpse into the oldest municipal theater in Switzerland (the Solothurn City Theater ), there is the political and social debate about the time: For the exile, the war years were shaped by the National Socialist ideology , which also had friends in Switzerland. Again and again he is threatened with expulsion and with it certain death. “The country that I will show you” describes an explosive piece of Swiss history in an impressive and touching way.

He also wrote the German stage version for three plays by James Matthew Barries : Johannisnacht (Dear Brutus), Mary Rose and Back to Nature (The Admirable Crichton).

Peter Lotar died on July 12, 1986 in Ennetbaden (Canton Aargau, Switzerland) as a result of a traffic accident. He had lived there in their own house with his wife Eva and their two children since 1967.

Works

Plays

  • Truth wins , world premiere in London in 1943, then Biel-Solothurn City Theater in 1945
  • The Image of Man , first performance at the Berliner Festwochen 1954
  • The death of the president , first performance in Göttingen and Karlsruhe 1966
  • In addition, more than 30 radio and television plays

Publications on cultural history

  • History of the Czech Theater . Oxford 1946, Zurich 1970
  • About the meaning of life. Conversations with Albert Schweitzer . Munich 1950
  • Friedrich Schiller. Life and work . Bern 1955
  • Caesar, Lincoln, Kennedy. Analysis of Political Murder . Karlsruhe 1966
  • Spirit makes history . Zurich 1968
  • Prague Spring and Autumn in the Testimony of Poets. Czech poetry from “Literární Listy” 1968 , translated by Peter Lotar. Candelabra, Bern 1970 ( DNB 574909230 ).

Novels

  • A crow was with me . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-421-01835-9 , in Czech under the title: … domov můj ( Meine Heimat ) in the Exilverlag Index, Cologne 1981 ( DNB 830040218 ).
  • The land that I will show you . Pendo, Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-85842-105-7 , in Czech under the title: Země, kterou ukáži tobě , translated by Zdenka Neumannová, illustrated by Lucie Radová , Index, Cologne 1989; Kanzelsberg, Praha 1991, ISBN 80-900095-9-X .

Radio plays

  • Friedrich Schiller's Life and Work (Parts 1–6) (1955) for the NWDR Director: Wilhelm Semmelroth
    • Pegasus in the yoke
    • Joy of beautiful gods spark
    • Human dignity
    • To the work we are seriously preparing
    • The world loves to blacken the bright
    • The heart created you, you will live immortally

Awards

  • Gerhart Hauptmann Prize, Berlin, 1954
  • Welti Prize for The President's Death , 1967
  • Drama Prize of the Swiss Schiller Foundation , 1967
  • Narrator award from the Bonn Cultural Council and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, 1974
  • Culture Prize of the Canton of Solothurn
  • Honorary gift from the Canton of Zurich
  • Swiss anniversary award. Bank Corporation, 1978
  • Honorary gift from the Baden Cultural Foundation, 1984
  • Eichendorff Literature Prize , Wangen i. A., 1986
  • Work Prize of the Canton of Solothurn, 1986

literature

  • Peter Lotar and Albert Schweitzer. Documents from an estate . In: Badener Neujahrsblätter 1989, pp. 61–74.
  • Reto Caluori: Peter Lotar . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 2, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 1132 f.
  • Urs Heftrich, Michael Špirit (Ed.): Caves deep in the dictionary. Czech poetry from the last decades. Afterword by Urs Heftrich. Czech library. DVA, Munich 2006.
  • Michaela Kuklová: Peter Lotar (1910–1986) cultural practice and autobiographical writing, Cologne: Böhlau 2019 (intellectual Prague in the 19th and 20th centuries; 14), ISBN 978-3-412-51547-8 .
  • Peter Lotar: A Window for Spring Day: Nobel Prize for Literature; on December 12th, Jaroslav Seifert will be … . In: Bayernkurier , December 8, 1984, p. 16.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lothar Chitz, theater name Peter Lotar
  2. ↑ vvb.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.vvb.de  
  3. ↑ http://www.ennetbaden.ch/uploads/tx_userpdflist/EP_2011.02_def_Web.pdf
  4. ↑ radio play version of the ORF from 1959; Director: Alfred Hartner
  5. ↑ Aimed at Kennedy? In: Die Zeit , No. 52/1966. Manuscript in the university library of the Technical University of Darmstadt .
  6. ↑ dieterleitner.de
  7. ↑ PDF  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / 212.101.26.250  
  8. ↑ literaturkritik.de
  9. ↑ bib-bvb.de ( Memento from October 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Lotar, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chitz, Lothar (real name); Petr Lotar (Czech)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Writer, actor, director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague , Kingdom of Bohemia, Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH July 12, 1986
Place of death Ennetbaden , Aargau, Switzerland