Richard Rosenheim

Richard Rosenheim (* 1883 in Frankfurt am Main ; † February 18, 1964 in New York ) was a German theater director . In times when it was not possible to work in the theater, he was also a journalist , non-fiction author and university professor .

Life

Rosenheim attended grammar school in Prague and studied philology and philosophy there and at the University of Vienna . Having been introduced to all branches of theater practice from his youth through his father, a proven stage manager, Rosenheim began his own stage career after several years of journalistic activity in 1910 as deputy director and director at Hans Gregor's Komischer Oper in Berlin's Friedrichstrasse . He then worked in the same functions alongside Leopold Jessner at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, and finally, at Jessner's suggestion, took up the post of drama director at the East Prussian State Theater in Königsberg in 1916 . With world premieres , extensive cyclical events such as the “Gerhart Hauptmann Week”, the “Wedekind Week” or the “Month of the Living” and his own sensational productions of classics and modern pieces, he took the house to the top within a very short time Reputation, so that even abroad it was said that the Königsberg stage had “become an exemplary site of real ensemble art under Rosenheim's leadership, whose reputation has gained unanimous recognition in Germany and beyond its borders”.

So it was not difficult for the board of directors of Zürcher Schauspielhaus AG to choose him from the crowd of applicants for the advertised position as director. At the end of the 1925/26 season, in which he also appeared in Berlin at the Lessing Theater with Paul Wegener as Götz von Berlichingen , he left Königsberg for Zurich. In 1934 he stopped working there and went to Rehovot in Palestine , where he initially worked as a carpenter for two years.

At the beginning of 1936 he founded the Theatron Ivri (Hebrew Theater) in Haifa together with Benno Fraenkel, who had already set up the Palestine Chamber Opera in Tel Aviv . While the opera troupe enjoyed some demand and was able to keep afloat economically, the theater ensemble, consisting mainly of immigrants from Germany, the so-called Jeckes , who were not free of accents , came to a ruinous end quickly. Rosenheim left the country and traveled to Prague, where he was active as editor of the German-language newspaper Bohemia , for which he had previously written, and as a lecturer at the university.

In August 1939 he emigrated to the United States. About six months later he found a job at The New Theater Studio of Drama and Music in New York and in 1952 he presented a fundamental world history of drama, which was published in English and in 1958 in German.

Fonts

• The history of the German theaters in Prague. 1883-1918. With a review 1783–1883. Mercy, Prague 1938.
• The Eternal Drama. A Comprehensive Treatise on the Syngenetic History of Humanity Dramatics, and Theater. Philosophical Library, New York 1952.
• The eternal drama. 6000 years of drama and theater as a reflection of the development of mankind and people. Novalis-Verlag, Freiburg i.Br. 1958 (back translation of the American original edition by the author).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Local. Playhouse . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . February 28, 1926.
2. ^ Richard Rosenheim , in: Frithjof Trapp: Handbuch des deutschsprachigen Exiltheater 1933–1945 , Volumes 1–2, Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11375-7 , p. 800
3. ↑ Richard Rosenheim: The poet-initiated . In: Federation of Free Waldorf Schools in Germany (Ed.): Waldorf Education . Monthly publication on Rudolf Steiner's pedagogy. Vol. XXVIII, issue 5. Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart May 1964, p. 141 ( erziehungskunst.de [PDF; 1 kB ; retrieved on August 11, 2017] Introductory text to the printed quotation from Rosenheim).
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Tom Lewy: Nationality, passport, home. (No longer available online.) In: irgun-jeckes.org. The Association of Israelis of Central European Origin (NPO) - National Organization / Association of Israelis of Central European Origin, 2011, formerly in the original ; accessed on August 11, 2017 (translation by Helene Seidler).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
5. ^ ^{A b} Sophie Fetthauer: Benno D. Frank. In: Lexicon of persecuted musicians from the Nazi era. Claudia Maurer Zenck, Peter Petersen, 2012, accessed on August 11, 2017 . 
6. ↑ Horst Weber (ed.): Sources for the history of emigrated musicians. Sources Relating to the History of Emigré Musicians 1933–1950 . tape 2 : New York. Saur Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-598-23747-8 , Richard Rosenheim, p. 260 .