Robert Volkner

Robert Volkner as General Director of the United City Theater Leipzig

Robert Volkner in the role of Nathan

Robert Nicolai Volkner (born March 12, 1871 in Riga , † May 12, 1950 in Rottach ) was a German theater actor , director and theater manager .

Life

The son of the Riga merchant Hugo Hermann Volkner and his wife Sophie, née Pentzien, attended high school in his hometown. He then received acting lessons from the senior director Leopold Adler . From 1890 onwards he worked as a youthful hero actor at the theaters in Burg and Rudolstadt , at the combined theaters of Göttingen and Eisenach , at the city theaters of Augsburg , Mainz and Zurich and from 1896 to 1902 at the Royal Court Theater in Kassel .

From 1902 to 1905 he was engaged as an actor in the hero field under Max Staegemann at the United City Theaters in Leipzig .

On June 14, 1904, in Leipzig, he married the painter Änny Polz, daughter of the book printer owner and publisher of the Leipziger Tageblatt Woldemar Polz, and his wife Anna, née Klemm.

In 1905 Volkner was appointed director of the municipal theater . After the death of General Manager Max Staegemann, he and Arthur Nikisch succeeded him. From April 1, 1906, Robert Volkner was the sole director of the United City Theater of Leipzig. Under his leadership, the Leipzig Opera in particular developed into one of the leading music theaters in Germany.

1912 joined Robert Volkner as director of the Opera in Frankfurt . Here he increasingly performed modern opera repertoire , including Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang and Das Spielwerk und die Princess as premieres.

From 1919 to 1921 he succeeded Arthur von Gerlachs as director of the United City Theaters in Barmen and Elberfeld and from 1921 to 1926 he was appointed to the same function at the Badisches Landestheater Karlsruhe .

After a stopover as director of the Neue Bühne in Vienna , Volkner switched to the Deutsches Theater in Prague as director in 1927 . Here he also directed . Volkner tried to mediate between the German and Czech population with his productions . As the outgoing director, in an interview for the Neue Wiener Journal on September 20, 1933, he again emphasized his view of the special cultural-political task of this German minority theater : (...) In addition to the general artistic tasks, our stage has a special, particularly difficult and sensitive: to cultivate and promote the culture of our German minority and to bring it closer to the Czechs. In my opinion, this is a fruitful policy of national culture and supranational understanding and harmony that our time so desperately needs (...).

Memberships

• Schlaraffia
• Leipzig stalactites
• Leonids

Awards

• Knight's Cross of the House Order of the White Falcon
• 1909 Order of Albrecht

Reviews

About his time as an actor at the Royal Court Theater in Kassel 1896–1902:

"V. is an artist full of passion, strength and strength, and supported by a pleasing stage appearance and sympathetic external means, he has already been declared in a short time, especially in the classical piece, as one of the most popular members of that stage. "

- Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Published by Paul List , Leipzig 1903, p. 1073

literature

• Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Verlag von Paul List , Leipzig 1903, p. 1073, ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Herrmann AL Degener: Our contemporaries: who is it? , 5th edition, Leipzig 1911
• Dieter Wedel: The Frankfurter Schauspielhaus in the years 1912 to 1929 , dissertation FU Berlin, Berlin 1965
• Fritz Hennenberg : 300 years of the Leipzig Opera. Past and present , Munich 1993
• Pamela Tancsik: The Prague opera is called Zemlinsky. Theater history of the New German Theater Prague in the Zemlinsky era from 1911 to 1927 , Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2000
• Ursula Stamberg: The nationality conflict in the cultural area of ​​the Czechoslovak Republic. The gradual change of the German-language theater from the stage of the ruling nation to the democratic minority theater , in: Horst Fassel , Paul S. Ulrich, Otto G. Schindler (eds.): German Theater abroad from the 17th to the 20th century , Berlin 2007, p 160ff

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See: Fritz Hennenberg: 300 Years of the Leipzig Opera , p. 91
2. ↑ Quoted from: Stamberg, p. 166
3. ^ Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Verlag von Paul List , Leipzig 1903, p. 1073, ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive )