Robert Pfeiffer

Robert Pfeiffer (born November 2, 1925 in Munich ; † September 9, 2017 in Neusäß ) was a German director, theater and film actor.

Robert Pfeiffer (2012)

Live and act

Pfeiffer attended Oberrealschule III on Klenzestrasse in Munich. His classmates included the later book, film and television author Leopold Ahlsen and the later theater critic Carl Schumann. The fifteen-year-old became an extra and small actor at the Bavarian State Theater ( Prinzregententheater and old Residenztheater ) under the director Alexander Golling . At seventeen he successfully passed the aptitude test for acting at the Reichstheaterkammer . This was followed by the secondary school leaving certificate and in May 1943 the Reich Labor Service , followed by training and war deployment with the Parachute Panzer Division 1 Hermann Göring . In August 1945 he was released from British captivity. His father (severely disabled from World War I ), who was charged with degrading military strength in early 1945, was liberated from the Flossenbürg concentration camp by American troops and died shortly afterwards as a result of the abuse suffered during the Nazi era. Robert Pfeiffer was an employee of the Civil Censorship Division in Munich until May 1947.

After the war he had acting lessons with Lilly Ackermann , as well as in the evening school of the Bavarian Theater Union under the direction of Lisa Ney and attended courses at the adult education center under Franz Nowotny according to the Stanislawski method . In August 1947 he got his first engagement as a youthful hero at the Metropoltheater / Oberpfälzische Landesbühne Weiden. In mid-1949 he became unemployed due to the closure of many theaters. There was little prospect of a favorable turn. After participating in the World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin in 1951 , he received an offer from the Stadttheater Köthen , which he accepted. This started an almost 40-year acting career in the GDR. Engagements in Nordhausen , Wismar , Zeitz , Meißen and at the Landestheater Altenburg as the first director followed. In 1960 he moved to the city of Erfurt .

After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, Pfeiffer planned to flee the GDR, but it failed. He was sentenced to twenty months imprisonment for a passport offense (StEG.§21 Abs. 2 - popularly: escape from the republic ). His wife was sentenced to fourteen months and his sister to thirty months (according to Section 39 (1) and (2) StEG). Pfeiffer spent most of the prison sentence in the Bautzen II prison .

After his parole, he started a new beginning in Zwickau with a ban on directing and a beginner's fee. His classical repertoire included roles such as Ferdinand , Karl Moor , Weislingen , Leicester , Tellheim , through to Faust and Othello . The captain Plume in Bertolt Brecht's timpani and trumpets , the unlucky fellow in Alexander Ostrowski's forest , Konrad in Der poor Konrad by Friedrich Wolf , the role of Thomas Culmann in Lion Feuchtwanger's Wahn or Der Teufel in Boston as well as the Beaumarchais in Friedrich Wolf's Beaumarchais should be emphasized . Nikolai Gogol's The Auditor , William Shakespeare's What You Want , Günther Weisenborn's Two Angels Get Out and Berta Waterstradt's Marriage Deal Lorenz are among the selection of many productions .

In 1964 he received a call at Hanns Anselm Pertens Volkstheater Rostock . There he played leading roles in classical music, national and international contemporary drama, world premieres and GDR premieres. At the world premiere, Das Glück der Konkubinen, as "Kommissar Ma", he met the writer Günther Weisenborn personally.

After ten years in Rostock, he asked to terminate his contract. The theater in Leipzig under the direction of Karl Kayser was the next stop. There he was a busy actor with demanding roles. For example, he played the doctor "Rodion Nikolajewitsch" in the GDR premiere of the two - person play Altmodische Komödie by Alexei Arbusow in 1976. His partner was Christa Gottschalk, GDR national prize winner and recipient of the Federal Cross of Merit. In 1975 he made a tour to Italy with the Leipzig Ensemble. Was played Antonio Buero Vallejos dream of reason . Between 1976 and 1987 there were guest appearances in several cities of the former FRG with Friedrich Schiller's Wilhelm Tell and Die Räuber , including in Karlsruhe , Wiesbaden , Bochum and Dortmund .

Pfeiffer taught at the Rostock State Drama School, as well as at the Drama Studio of the Leipzig Theater School . The actress Christine Harbort , whom he supervised in Rostock during her student days (1969 to 1972), played the role of "Lotte Lindenthal" in Istvan Szabo's Mephisto in 1980 .

The early retirement helped Pfeiffer to leave the GDR in May 1988.

Radio plays

Radio plays on the Leipzig transmitter

• 1976: death of a dancer (director)
• 1976: The extermination of the 2 interns (Ober)
• 1977: Hit of the Month (Davis)
• 1980: The gold maker (Austrian officer)
• 1980: Fingerlang (Oscar)
• 1980: Günter Spranger : The rope you will hang on (Viktor) - Director: Klaus Zippel (crime radio play - Broadcasting of the GDR)
• 1981: The Missing Lily (Narrator)

Filmography

• 1964: Angels in purgatory
• 1978: I make you live
• 1979: Laughing pigeons don't cry
• 1988: With body and soul

TV films in the Ostseestudio Rostock

• 1965: A starting day
• 1965: Pacific marine casualty
• 1967: right of asylum
• 1969: The Stranger
• 1969: When the animals were still talking
• 1971: The black dog
• 1974: The midwife

TV theater Halle / Saale

• Do you like Hecht (1975) Konrad

TV theater recordings Leipzig

• The Concerto at St. Ovid (1979) starring
• Don Carlos (1979) Count of Lerma
• Wilhelm Tell (1982) Walter Fürst
• In the Robert J. Oppenheimer case (1987) Prof. Bethe

literature

• Rolf Richter (Hrsg.): DEFA feature film directors their critics . Henschel Verlag Berlin 1983, p. 251.
• Günter Schulz, Doris Hackbarth: DEFA feature films . Film Archive 4., State Film Archive of the GDR Berlin 1989, p. 342.

Web links

• Robert Pfeiffer in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Günther Weisenborn: Theater , Verlag Desch, 1967, page 314
2. ↑ GDR first performance November 12, 1976 ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2014 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. 
3. ^ Theater of Time . Volume 33, Association of Theater Professionals of the GDR - Verlag Theater der Zeit 1978, p. 75.
4. ↑ Hans-Dieter Mück: Schiller's Dramas, 1945-1984 . German Schiller Society 1984, p. 499.
5. ↑ Wh. May 11, 1981 Deutscher Fernsehfunk II
6. ↑ fernsehenderddr.de: November 27, 1983 II. PR. First broadcast , accessed November 29, 2012