Römerberg Festival
The Römerberg Festival was a theater festival in Frankfurt am Main . From 1932 to 1939, around 50 performances were held in the open air on the Römerberg every summer . The Römerberg Festival was founded in the Goethe year 1932 by Alwin Kronacher , the artistic director of the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt , and Max Michel , the head of culture for the city of Frankfurt, and opened on June 18, 1932 with a performance of Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen in the original version from 1771. Gerhard Ritter played the leading roles as Götz and Mathilde Einzig as Elisabeth, other well-known actors were Hans Jungbauer , Ellen Daub , Toni Impekoven , Lothar Rewalt , Paul Verhoeven and Karl Luley . In later performances, including during the Goethe Week in August 1932, Heinrich George played den Götz with legendary success. The audience experienced a three and a half hour production with numerous crowd scenes in which over 500 extras and extras took part, including 20 mounted men.
The provisional stage was in front of the Römer . On the Römerberg, grandstands for 1500 paying spectators were built in a semicircle around the stage. The well trough of the justice well was built over; the figure of Justitia remained standing and was surrounded by benches. More than 1000 other spectators followed the action from the windows of the surrounding houses and from the roof gallery of the Nikolaikirche .
The second production followed on July 20, 1932, Egmont with Paul Wagner in the title role. In addition to him, Robert Taube played as Alba and Ellen Daub as Margarete von Parma, in other roles Mathilde Einzig, Toni Impekoven, Karl Luley and Paul Verhoeven.
The approximately 50 performances in the Goethe year made the Römerberg Festival a great success, which was recognized in the national press. More than 70,000 spectators attended the performances. After the festival ended, there were numerous voices calling for a resumption the following year, such as the Frankfurter Zeitung on August 14, 1932.
1933 to 1939
The National Socialist seizure of power took place in Frankfurt on March 12, 1933, the day of the last local elections . Associations of the SA and SS under the command of Gauleiter Jakob Sprenger expelled Mayor Ludwig Landmann and the other freely elected politicians from their office and appointed the National Socialist Friedrich Krebs as the new Mayor the next day .
On March 28th, Krebs dismissed the management of the municipal theaters , including acting director Kronacher. In June 1933 he appointed Hans Meissner as the new general manager of the municipal theaters. This made him responsible for the opera house , the playhouse, the new theater and the Römerberg Festival. Meissner recognized the importance of the festival. They should definitely be continued, since the National Socialist cultural policy was urgently dependent on success. Due to the persecution and expulsion of the Jewish bourgeoisie, the municipal theaters suddenly lost around 50 percent of their subscribers. The new rulers sacked all Jewish actors, including Mathilde Einzig and Lothar Rewalt.
Meissner planned to develop the Römerberg Festival into a Bayreuth of German classical music . They were intended to serve as "popular education" and to become "sources of genuinely ethnic feeling" for visitors from home and abroad.
The festival summer of 1933 began with the resumption of the two productions from 1932, Urgötz and Egmont . The initiators Kronacher and Michel were both already expelled and were not mentioned in the program. Meissner added Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans , staged by Jacob Geis , and Schwänke by Hans Sachs , staged by Toni Impekoven and Rudolf Meyer.
For 1934, in addition to the revival of the Maid of Orleans, Meissner put a new production of the Wallenstein trilogy on the program, which he himself produced. Meissner and Krebs advertised that Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels should designate the Römerberg Festival as a Reich Festival , but they only succeeded in achieving the title of imperial importance . The Heidelberg Castle Festival , which was revived in 1934, was declared a Reich Festival . Despite tight financial resources, the Römerberg Festival developed into a success that attracted many tourists every summer. In 1935 Meissner directed Faust. A tragedy. In addition, Wallenstein, Jungfrau von Orleans and Urgötz were played as revivals. In 1936 a new production of Fiesco replaced the Urgötz. In 1937 Meissner first staged a play for the festival with Florian Geyer von Gerhart Hauptmann that did not come from the Weimar Classic. There was also another new production: Robert George brought Shakespeare's King Henry IV onto the stage, and Faust I and Fiesco were re-enacted. In 1938 Meissner staged another Shakespeare tragedy with Hamlet , and all four productions from the previous year were also played. He directed Friedrich Hebbel's Die Nibelungen for the summer of 1939 . After the last performance on August 26, 1939, the festival was canceled due to the impending war with Poland and the stage on the Römerberg was dismantled.
In 1943/44 the air raids on Frankfurt am Main destroyed the historic Römerberg. Even after the rubble had been removed and rebuilt in the early 1950s, there was no revival of the Römerberg Festival.
literature
- Albert Richard Mohr (Ed.): The Römerberg Festival Frankfurt am Main 1932–1939. A contribution to the history of theater in pictures and contemporary reports. Waldemar Kramer publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1968.
Individual evidence
- ^ Opening of the 1st Römerberg Festival in Frankfurt am Main, June 18, 1932. Contemporary history in Hesse (as of March 26, 2018). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on June 18, 2018 .
- ↑ Sabine Hock : George, Heinrich in the Frankfurter Personenlexikon (article as of December 30, 2016). Query date: June 18, 2018.
- ↑ Janine Burnicki, Jürgen Steen: The seizure of power in the Roman. In: Frankfurt1933–1945.de. Institute for Urban History , December 21, 2005, accessed on May 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Janine Burnicki, Jürgen Steen: The seizure of power at opera and drama. In: Frankfurt1933–1945.de. Institute for Urban History, October 21, 2014, accessed on May 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Janine Burnicki, Jürgen Steen: Visitors crisis of the Municipal Theater. In: Frankfurt1933–1945.de. Institute for Urban History, December 8, 2005, accessed on May 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Janine Burnicki, Jürgen Steen: The "cleansing" of the urban stages. In: Frankfurt1933–1945.de. Institute for Urban History, October 21, 2014, accessed on May 22, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c Heike Drummer, Jutta Zwilling: "Bayreuth of German Classics"? Frankfurt and the Römerberg Festival. In: Frankfurt1933–1945.de. Institute for Urban History, October 26, 2015, accessed on May 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Hans Riebsamen, About Götz the Count Zeppelin. From 1932–1939 large theater on the Römerberg , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung No. 85 of April 10, 2000, p. 61.