Peter Zadek

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Peter Zadek (born May 19, 1926 in Berlin ; † July 30, 2009 in Hamburg ) was a German director and theater manager at the Schauspielhaus Bochum (1972 to 1979) and the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg (1985 to 1989). In addition, he directed all major German-speaking theaters. In particular, his unconventional productions of Shakespeare made theater history , who, along with Chekhov and Ibsen , was elevated to the title of “theater god” by him.

Life

Berlin memorial plaque on Offenbacher Strasse 24 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

Peter Zadek was born in Berlin to a middle-class , reformed Jewish family, his father was a merchant and his mother came from a “rich, middle-class banking family”. Since his mother would have liked to stay in Berlin, her husband lured her to London in 1933 with the excuse of spending their holidays there together. After the bombing war began , they went to quieter Oxford . During his teacher training, he came into contact with an amateur theater company , which made him want to become a director. He began directing training in London and at the age of 21 his first production of Oscar Wilde's Salome premiered in London. After completing his studies, he began to direct in numerous theaters in the British provinces. In Swansea and Pontypridd , Welsh , he worked as a director with the obligation to bring out a new production every week. In 1958 he received an invitation from the Theater am Dom in Cologne and returned to Germany for the first time after his emigration. There he met the German director and theater director Kurt Huebner , who brought him to the Ulm Theater and later caused a sensation with him at the Bremen Theater in the 1960s with the so-called " Bremen Style ", which was mainly due to Zadek's wild productions and the stage designs of the painter Wilfried Minks were shaped. Zadek has worked with Minks since his time in Ulm.

His first production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice caused a sensation in Ulm , as the Jew Zadek was accused of anti-Semitism due to the negative portrayal of the Jew Shylock . Zadek countered the allegations: "As long as the Germans do not express the bad sides of Jews, they have not started to deal with their anti-Semitism."

The outstanding works under Kurt Huebner in Bremen were his productions Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind and Die Räuber by Friedrich Schiller , which anticipated the spirit and revolutionary atmosphere of 1968. In addition to Peter Zadek, the young Peter Stein also worked as a director in Bremen, making this theater one of the most important theaters of its time in Germany.

The success in Bremen led to his first artistic directorship at the Schauspielhaus Bochum from 1972 to 1979. This was where his fruitful collaboration with the protagonist of his most spectacular productions began: Ulrich Wildgruber . Wildgruber was seen in all major Shakespeare roles under Zadek's direction until his death. It also became apparent, however, that Zadek was overwhelmed with running a theater and the associated bureaucratic activities, and it was only after many years as a freelance director that he returned to the adventure of an artistic director (from December 18, 1984) at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg , where he had staged Shakespeare's Othello in a controversial performance a few years earlier , a play that Zadek felt as a rejection of the cultural theater.

In 1972 he started working together for almost twenty years with his friend, the artist, director and author Götz Loepelmann , who was initially responsible for advertising for The Merchant of Venice that year . In 1973 Loepelmann realized the set and the equipment for Die Möwe , in 1974 also the set and equipment for Tankred Dorst's Ice Age . In 1977 Götz Loepelmann was responsible for setting up Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler . 1983 Set design and equipment for master builder Solness , also by Ibsen. 1991 finally the stage for When We Dead Awake (Ibsen).

In 1979 he began his long-term collaboration with the artist Johannes Grützke , who made the stage and prospectus designs for his Berlin production in the Schiller Theater of the Revue Everyone dies for himself after Hans Fallada. In 1983 Grützke designed the set and costumes for Zadek's staging of the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the Württemberg State Theater in Stuttgart. In 1985 Grützke finally became Peter Zadek's artistic advisor at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, an activity that he carried out until 1988.

In 1987, Zadek caused a tangible scandal with the staging of the musical Andi : He engaged the Einstürzende Neubauten from Berlin as a musician , who uncompromisingly drowned out all the action on the stage, so that the theater decided to distribute earmuffs and accept liability for damage to health to be rejected from the outset.

With the premiere of Lulu von Wedekind, first performed in the original version , he achieved his greatest success there in 1988 and received the Fritz Kortner Prize (also choice for the performance of the year , as well as Susanne Lothar actress and Ulrich Wildgruber actor of the year). The following year he left the house in disagreement.

In Bochum in 1973 he brought out his second interpretation of The Merchant of Venice , which was followed by a third at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1988 - Zadek's debut at this theater - and created a new form of theater revue in Germany. Since 1990 Peter Zadek has worked as a freelance director on all major German-speaking theaters. His productions repeatedly met with almost cult-like approval and fervent rejection. In his productions, Zadek repeatedly violated social and theater conventions. He often worked experimentally and was therefore always surprising. One focus, however, was the psychology of the characters, for which he demanded a lot from the actors. He was last examined at the Berliner Ensemble with his view of Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (2004). In 2005 he founded the theater production company my way Production with Tom Stromberg . First production should be William Shakespeare's What You Want .

Outside of his theater work, he dared to make movies twice: 1969 I am an elephant, Madame and 1983 The Wild Fifties based on the novel Hurray, We Still Live by Johannes Mario Simmel .

In October 2012, the Peter Zadek archive, comprising around 35 meters of shelf space , was made accessible to the public in the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Honors

Zadek has received numerous awards and honors and has been voted director of the year several times by the critics of Theater heute .

In 2002 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

With 21 invitations to the Berlin Theatertreffen , he is the director who received the most invitations to this most important theater festival in Germany.

In 2006 he received the Medal for Art and Science from the City of Hamburg .

Together with the Canadian director Robert Lepage , Zadek was to receive the European Theater Prize in 2007 . However, Zadek canceled his participation in the award ceremony at short notice due to rehearsals and illness. The jury then decided to hand over the prize and prize money of 60,000 euros in full to Robert Lepage. The prize money should go to the my way production of Was ihr wollt . When Zadek was admitted to a Berlin hospital shortly after the withdrawal of the prize money was announced, the company filed for bankruptcy . The piece was originally supposed to have its premiere at the Wiener Festwochen and later shown at the RuhrTriennale in Bochum .

In 2008 he was awarded the Nestroy for Lifetime Achievement at the Nestroy Awards.

After his death, the actor Gert Voss paid tribute to him :

"He freed an actor from pretending and got him to reveal himself."

In a letter of condolence to his long-term partner Elisabeth Plessen , Chancellor Angela Merkel paid tribute to the deceased as follows: “With tireless creative energy, Peter Zadek has enriched and shaped the theater in the German-speaking area in particular through his productions over the decades. He always managed to touch his audience deeply. "

In 2010 a square in Bremen was named after Peter Zadek.

In Berlin-Wilmersdorf a memorial plaque on the house where he was born in Offenbacher Strasse commemorates him.

Private life

In the 1960s, Peter Zadek was in a relationship with actress Judy Winter . The writer and translator Elisabeth Plessen has been his partner since 1980 , who among other things contributed new translations to his Shakespeare productions, which were given a new freshness and made a significant contribution to the success of the productions.

Peter Zadek is the father of two children, but he did not take part in their upbringing because he did not see himself able to reconcile this with his profession in the theater. Zadek saw his actors, a small solid base of around 15 to 20 actors, including Eva Mattes , Angela Winkler , Jutta Hoffmann and Susanne Lothar as well as Ulrich Wildgruber , Gert Voss , Ulrich Tukur , Uwe Bohm , Paulus Manker , Hermann Lause and Knut Koch belonged to his real family, which he said he knew better than his relatives. Peter Zadek discovered a. a. Rosel Zech , who later was one of the most important actresses in German-language film. Even Herbert Grönemeyer called Zadek also as the one who had discovered a talent in him.

He once said of himself: if you ask him who he is, all he can say is that he is a Jew, because nothing else occurs to him; maybe Peter Zadek.

Productions

Filmography (selection)

Fonts

literature

Documentation

  • Peter Zadek - My Life. Documentary portrait, Germany, 2007, 45 min., Script and director: Jean Boué , production: Macroscope Film, ZDF , arte , summary by arte
  • Peter Zadek directs Peer Gynt. Germany, 2006, 90 min., Written and directed by Alexander Nanau
  • I am an emigrant, madame. Documentation, Germany, 2001, script and direction: Klaus Dermutz and Benedikt Gondolf, production: ZDFtheaterkanal , first broadcast: May 19, 2001, review
  • Witnesses of the Century. Peter Zadek. Germany, conversation, 1998, 70 min., With Benedikt Gondolf, production: ZDF

Web links

Commons : Peter Zadek  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Peter Zadek  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schauspielhaus Bochum: History ( Memento of the original from February 13, 2017 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. . Last accessed on February 12, 2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.schauspielhausbochum.de
  2. ↑ Ingolf Bossenz: The soul of the place. In: Neues Deutschland , July 7, 2012 (interview with Christian Stückl ).
  3. ↑ a b Klaus Dermutz : I'm a stray, nowhere at home. In: Die Zeit , No. 2/1995 (interview).
  4. ^ Elisabeth Plessen: Peter Zadek and his stage designers. In: FAZ. January 18, 2013, accessed January 12, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Willy Theobald: Anyone who bakes becomes floury! . In: Der Spiegel , March 2, 1987.
  6. ↑ Stephan Dörschel: The extensive archive is presented with the book presentation "Peter Zadek and his stage designers". In: Akademie der Künste , September 24, 2012, accessed October 3, 2012.
  7. ^ Voices on the death of Peter Zadek. In: Der Tagesspiegel , July 30, 2009.
  8. ↑ Ulrich Seidler: The King of Lusitania. In: Berliner Zeitung , July 31, 2009.
  9. ↑ Bremen now has a "Peter-Zadek-Platz". In: Free Hanseatic City of Bremen , Senate Press Office. June 22, 2010. Retrieved June 22, 2010 .
  10. ↑ Memorial plaque for Peter Zadek unveiled
  11. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co8-4LUQKk4
  12. ↑ See WDR 3 of July 30, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Zadek, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director and theater manager
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Wilmersdorf
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 2009
Place of death Hamburg