Rudolf Sellner

Gustav Rudolf Sellner (born May 25, 1905 in Traunstein ; † May 8, 1990 in Königsfeld-Burgberg ) was a German actor , dramaturge , director and theater manager. He emerged in the 1950s as a representative of a formally radical modernized, "instrumental theater".

Life

From actor to director

Gustav Rudolf Sellner began his career as an actor, dramaturge and theater director at theaters in Mannheim under Francesco Sioli (1925–1927), in Gotha (1928/29) and Coburg (1929–1931). During this time he was strongly influenced by the work of the directors Otto Falckenberg , Leopold Jessner and Erwin Piscator . Between 1932 and 1937 he worked as director, dramaturge and actor at the Landestheater Oldenburg .

After Sellner had emerged through several productions in the spirit of National Socialist cultural policy, he was appointed drama director at the State Theater in Oldenburg in 1937. Three years later he moved to the Göttingen City Theater as artistic director (1940–1943). Sellner was then director of the Hanover Municipal Theaters (1943/44).

From December 1943, Sellner also headed the Hanover Theater School in Hanover, which was re-established under the umbrella of the Hanover State Music School. In April 1944 Sellner was appointed general manager of the Hanover Municipal Theaters by Adolf Hitler . In October 1944, Sellner was drafted into the Wehrmacht as a driver after many years of exemption from military service.

After the end of World War II , Sellner became a prisoner of war in the United States and was interned in two prison camps until 1947. During the denazification in 1949 he was classified as a "fellow traveler" by a German panel and "exonerated" during the 1950 revision. From 1948 to 1951 he worked as a director in Kiel , Essen and Hamburg . In Kiel he staged Die Perser in 1948 and Bernarda Albas Haus in 1950 , the latter also in Darmstadt in 1961 .

Intendant in Darmstadt and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin

From 1951 to 1961 Sellner was the artistic director of the Darmstadt State Theater . Here he premiered Ernst Barlach's Der Graf von Ratzeburg in 1951 . Sellner initially ran a small theater school in Darmstadt as well. When the state stopped subsidies in 1954 due to the lack of success in placing graduates, the theater school had to be closed. In 1954 Sellner directed Troilus and Cressida at the Staatliche Schauspielbühne Berlin and in 1959 at the Ruhr Festival in Der Sturm . In Darmstadt he premiered Ionesco's Murderer for free in 1958 , and at the Burgtheater he staged Sophocles' cycle of antiquities with King Oedipus (1960), Antigone (1961) and Elektra (1963).

Sellner was considered a representative classic director at the time. In the early 1960s he turned to directing operas. From 1961 to 1972 he was general manager and chief director of the Deutsche Oper in West Berlin . In 1964 he was honored with a bronze bust by the sculptor Heinz Spilker .

He directed Boris Godunow (1971, Berlin), the world premiere of Aribert Reimann's Melusine (1971, at the Schwetzingen Festival ), Wozzeck (1971, Salzburg Festival ), Idomeneo (1973, Salzburg Festival), Gottfried von Einem's visit to the old lady (1975, National Theater Munich ) and Die Jagdgesellschaft (1974, Theater Basel ).

Occasionally Sellner also worked for television and for film. Sellner took the title role in Maximilian Schell's production The Pedestrian , while Schell played his late son.

Sellner's first marriage was to actress Manuela Bruhn from 1940, and from 1951 to Ilse Sellner's second marriage. The first marriage had two children.

Works

• Gustav Rudolf Sellner: New German Drama . Coburg 1929.
• Gustav Rudolf Sellner, Werner Vienna: Theatrical landscape . Bremen 1962.

Filmography

• 1955: Die Kluge (TV, director)
• 1958: Die Bernauerin (TV, director)
• 1957: Abu Kasem's slippers (TV, director)
• 1961: The Rhinos (TV, director)
• 1965: The Silk Shoe (TV series, director)
• 1968: The Young Lord (Director)
• 1973: The Pedestrian (Actor)
• 1975: Views of a Clown (Actor)
• 1979: David (actor)
• 1979: Fantastics (television, actor)
• 1980: Yesterday's Man (TV, Actor)

Awards

• 1967: Berlin Art Prize
• 1965: Goethe plaque from the state of Hesse
• 1965: Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
• 1972: Large Federal Cross of Merit with a star
• 1974: Gold film tape for The Pedestrian

Exhibitions

1996: Gustav Rudolf Sellner. Director and Artistic Director , Theatermuseum Düsseldorf (an exhibition of the theater studies collection of the University of Cologne )

literature

• Hugo Thielen : Sellner, Gustav Rudolf. In: Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 332.
• German Biographical Encyclopedia , Vol. 9, p. 280
• Deutsches Theater-Lexikon , Vol. 3, pp. 2172f.
• Elmar Buck, Joachim Geil, Gerald Köhler (eds.): Gustav Rudolf Sellner, director and artistic director, 1905-1990: An exhibition of the theater studies collection of the University of Cologne . Cologne 1996.
• Gerald Köhler: The Instrumental Theater of Gustav Rudolf Sellner . Cologne 2002.
• Ralph-Günther Patocka:  Sellner, Gustav Rudolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 224 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Rudolf Sellner in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Christian Wolf: Gustav Rudolf Sellner's theater work before 1948. Berlin 2011

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hugo Thielen: Sellner, Gustav Rudolf. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon , p. 332
2. ^ Günther Rühle : Theater in Germany 1946–1966. Its events - its people . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 2014