Richard Metzl

Richard Metzl ( April 20, 1870 in Prague , Austria-Hungary - October 31, 1941 in Paris ) was an Austrian actor , director and longtime secretary of the management of Max Reinhardt . After the annexation of Austria by Hitler's Germany, he was forced to emigrate .

life and work

Richard Metzl was the younger of two children of the merchant Moriz (Moses) Metzl (1814) and his wife Louise b. Wiener (1832). His sister Ottilie was born in 1868. The Jewish family was formerly called Metzeles and moved from Prague to Vienna in the early 1880s . The father died in 1896 and was buried in the Israelite section of the Vienna Central Cemetery . The mother then lived alternately in Salzburg and Karlsbad , where Richard Metzl was engaged as an actor. She died on September 10, 1909 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Aigen near Salzburg .

For a while, Metzl was engaged in the roles of hero, lover and bon vivant in the ensemble of Paul Blasel , who had directed the Salzburg City Theater since October 1899. He mostly played leading roles, for example Schiller's Wilhelm Tell , the farmer Huber vom Gelben Hof in Anzengruber's Kreuzelschreiber , the Duke of Choiseul-d'Amboise in the tragedy Narciß by Albert Emil Brachvogel or the Freiherr Botho in the comedy On the Sunny Side by Oscar Blumenthal and Gustav Kadelburg .

In 1902 he resigned from the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde in Vienna. In 1910 he was baptized in the Evangelical Reformed Church ( HB ). He was living in Berlin at the time and married a Eugenie. The couple had two children, Ljuba and Peter, both born in Berlin. He worked as an actor and director at Max Reinhardt's Berlin theaters, and from the founding of the Salzburg Festival in 1920 also as Reinhardt's secretary at Leopoldskron Palace . Between 1930 and 1932 he also appeared as an actor at the Festival, always as a substitute for Eduard von Winterstein . He embodied the debt servant in Jedermann , the Brighella in the servant of two masters and the steward in Goethe's Stella . Although Metzl acted all his life in the shadow of the great director Reinhardt, his achievements were at least noticed by the Austrian Federal President Wilhelm Miklas , who awarded him a high medal in 1936. He was friends with Stefan Zweig , a recording shows Metzl with the writer during a rehearsal for the Salzburg Faust in the Felsenreitschule in the summer of 1933. He was in Vienna during the annexation of Austria by Hitler's Germany. He remained there until August 26, 1938 - with the deregistration note "Salzburg". No registration appears in the registry of the city of Salzburg, only a note dead “31. X. 1941 Paris ".

family

The fate of his wife Eugenie and the children Ljuba and Peter is unclear.

Ottilie Melzl , the sister, worked as an actress at the Burg and Raimund theaters . In 1902 she married the writer Felix Salten , Arthur Schnitzler and Siegfried Trebitsch were the best witnesses . The couple had two children, Paul Salten (1903–1937) and Anna Katharina Salten (1904–1977). The family fled to Zurich in 1938 . The sister died there in 1942, the brother-in-law in 1945.

Award

• 1936: Knight's Cross of the Austrian Order of Merit

Commemoration

Stumbling block for Richard Metzl

There are two stumbling blocks in front of Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg , one in memory of Richard Metzl and one for Max Reinhardt. They were relocated on April 19, 2013 by Gunter Demnig .

source

• RICHARD METZL , on the Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg website, accessed on June 21, 2020