Scala Vienna

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The Johann Strauss Theater around 1909

The New Theater in der Scala , also Scala Wien , was a Viennese theater that was opened after the Second World War by returned emigrants and committed anti-fascists , often communists , as a partnership with a co-determination model and as a progressive spoken theater.

Co-determination model

The New Theater in der Scala was opened after the Second World War in the building of the former Johann Strauss Theater in the 4th district of Vienna at 8 Favoritenstrasse . It had more than 1200 seats.

After negotiations with the Soviets , in whose sector the theater was located, the Communist Party of Austria and the Vienna Cultural Office , it was able to open its doors as a self-governing theater. After a successful performance of the play The Russian Question by Konstantin Simonow in Vienna in 1948, Wolfgang Heinz had received from the Soviet High Commissioner Colonel General Vladimir Wassiljewitsch Kurassow the approval of the former large cinema Scala as a theater, and the mayor had given him the license to play. The theater was run by a group of lawyers, they decided together on the program and engagements and saw themselves as a left, revolutionary stage. A demanding theater was planned in which the folk play was played as well as 'classics' and contemporary dramas.

The Scala was also committed to a popular education claim, which led the ensemble to lectures, to scenic samples from the plays and to recruitment of members for the public organization in the inns of the suburbs in order to relieve the workers of the fear of the threshold. Although large parts of the bourgeois theater audience avoided the “communist stage”, the theater was popular. "We have the people invited to come to the theater - and they did it: In the beginning we were empty at the end of stock." . In many ways based on Bertolt Brecht's theater and his theater on Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin, low admission prices were also programmatic.

The actor Karl Paryla took over the management together with Wolfgang Heinz, who held the theater license, together with the actors and directors Günther Haenel , Friedrich Neubauer and Emil Stöhr .

game schedule

The opening premiere of the New Theater in the Scala was on September 16, 1948 with Johann Nestroy's fear of hell . The staging of this political farce , which was created shortly after the failure of the revolution of 1848 , was intended to set a programmatic accent in several ways: With Nestroy, a classic of the Viennese folk theater was added to the program, which in the following years - alongside Shakespeare - was one of the most played authors belonged to Scala; The excavation of Hell's Fear , which had not been played since 1849, was suitable for commenting on the post-war situation in Vienna in 1948. The classic Austrian dramatic literature by Franz Grillparzer and folk plays by Nestroy and Ferdinand Raimund subsequently took up a large space. On October 2, 1948, the tragic farce Der Bockerer by Ulrich Becher and Peter Preses premiered at La Scala (director: Günther Haenel , set design: Teo Otto , title role: Fritz Imhoff , Alois Seichgruber: Karl Paryla )

The program also included plays by Shakespeare , Molière , Lessing and GB Shaw , Russian dramatists such as Anton Chekhov , Leo Tolstoy , Maxim Gorky , Nikolai Gogol and Alexander Ostrowski , many of which were not played during the Nazi era. Therese Giehse played in 1948 the old woman Mamouret in your 106th Birthday of Jean Sarment (German premiere). For performance also reached propaganda pieces such as Ernst Fischer against Josip Broz Tito directed drama The Great Betrayal .

The Scala was also the only theater in Vienna that, against the background of the Brecht boycott (1953–1963), performed Bertolt Brecht to the extent that it was his literary importance. On December 2nd, 1948, " Mother Courage and Her Children " with Therese Giehse in the title role was performed under the direction of Leopold Lindtberg . In 1953 Manfred Wekwerths staged his own play Die Mutter with Helene Weigel , Ernst Busch and Otto Tausig under the artistic direction of Brecht , a new production of the production by the Berliner Ensemble from January 1951. Shortly before the premiere, the Theaterfreunde, the audience organization of Scala, Another Brecht evening at which the choir from Brown-Boveri, a Soviet-administered company, sang songs composed by Hanns Eisler . Karl Paryla played the title role in Brecht's Life of Galileo in the last Brecht performance at La Scala in 1956 .

The composer Hanns Eisler wrote five original compositions for the Scala: Höllenangst (1948) and Eulenspiegel (1953) both by Nestroy , Volpone by Ben Jonson (1953), Lysistrata by Aristophanes (1953) and Hamlet by Shakespeare (1954). Three more previously composed plays by Eisler, which were also used at La Scala, were the interludes to Bertolt Brecht's mother Courage and Her Children (1948) as well as the music to Die Mutter (1953) and Leben des Galilei (1956).

With its committed repertoire, Scala has made Viennese theater history.

ensemble

The Scala Wien ensemble included Karl Paryla, Otto Tausig, Therese Giehse and Wolfgang Heinz. Arnolt Bronnen (who became deputy director and dramaturge in 1951) and Bertolt Brecht worked as authors for the theater.

With the concept of a co- determination theater co-managed by the actors at the Zurich Schauspielhaus during the emigration , Karl Paryla decisively shaped the style of Scala. He played Hamlet and Othello , Wilhelm Tell and Liliom , delighted the audience in numerous Raimund and Nestroy roles and staged, among other things, Tolstoy's Resurrection , Grillparzer's Der Traum ein Leben and Gogol's Der Revisor . In Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer , his son Nikolaus Paryla made his debut as a child.

“The actors really liked it here, ” reports Wolfgang Heinz, “because working together we quickly became a permanent collective. Although most of them were not communists, they did not find it a burden that La Scala was considered a communist theater. " (Renate Waack, Wolfgang Heinz, Berlin 1980)

closure

Despite hostility from the Viennese city government (e.g. the repeated withdrawal of subsidies and tax breaks) and the conservative and social democratic press, which was a thorn in the side of the artistically successful theater supported by the Soviet occupying power , Scala was largely able to realize these resolutions . Despite the wide range of offers, journalists such as Friedrich Torberg and Hans Weigel publicly agitated against La Scala and in particular against Karl Paryla, against whom they were even able to obtain a professional ban at the Salzburg Festival, and accused the theater of performing allegedly “communist tendencies”.

In 1956, after the occupation forces had withdrawn and the Communist Party stopped providing financial support, the theater had to close. The last performance took place on June 30, 1956. Part of the ensemble found a new place of work in East Berlin . Karl Paryla, his wife Hortense Raky, the Scala director Wolfgang Heinz and Erika Pelikowsky found a new artistic home at Brechts Theater, the Berliner Ensemble ; there were no more engagements for them in Austria.

The theater was torn down in 1959/60 and thus became the first victim of the death of the Viennese theater , which also fell victim to the Viennese Bürgerertheater and Wiener Stadttheater .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Tausig : Kasperl, Kummerl, Jud. , Vienna 2005
  2. ↑ Manfred Mugrauer, Ernst Busch in Vienna (PDF; 637 kB)
  3. ↑ quoted from: Michael Hansel: "... to create a lackluster drool". In: Marcel Atze , Marcus G. Patka (eds.): The dangers of "versatility". Friedrich Torberg 1908–1979. Holzhausen, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85493-156-0 , p. 121 ( Viennese personalities 6).

Coordinates: 48 ° 11 ′ 43.4 "  N , 16 ° 22 ′ 6.6"  E