Rudolf Cerf

Karl Rudolf Cerf (born June 22, 1811 , † February 15, 1873 in Berlin ) was a German theater entrepreneur.

Cerf was the son of Karl Friedrich Cerf , who founded and directed the Königsstädtische Theater Berlin. He had inherited the license for the theater name from his father and was able to transfer it to other buildings after the theater was closed in 1851. This is how he called the former building of the Renz Circus on Charlottenstrasse, after he had acquired it in 1852, the Neues Königsstädtisches Theater , and since 1855 a theater on Blumenstrasse, the Königsstädtisches Vaudeville-Theater (later the Wallner Theater ). Furthermore, he led a summer theater from 1853 called Theater in Villa Colonna .

He became famous as the builder and director of the Victoria Theater in 1859, which as a combined winter and summer theater was an architectural sensation and one of the largest theaters in Berlin. Cerf was a colorful figure in Berlin's social life, controversial for his financing practices and also an object of anti-Semitic attacks and caricatures.

The theater writer Frank Wedekind took him as a model for the main character in his drama The Marquis of Keith (1901).

literature

• Gustav Rasch : The Victoriatheater and the intrigues of the theater entrepreneur Cerf , Berlin: Bosselmann 1860. Google Books
• Rudolf Cerf: Handling of Gustav Rasch , Berlin: Carl Nöhring 1860.
• Eberhard Dellé: Rudolf Cerf in the picture , in: Theater im alten Berlin (= Small Writings of the Society for Theater History, issue 12), Berlin 1954, p. 24f.