Moscow State Jewish Theater

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The State Jewish Theater in Moscow , actually Moscow State Jewish Theater (Russian Московский гос ударственный е врейский E button еатр , abbreviated ГОСЕТ / GOSET , Yiddish התיאטרון היהודי הממלכתי ) was a jiddischsprachiges Theater in Moscow from 1920 to 1949. The GOSET should not be confused with the Theater Habima (Russian: Gabima ), also founded in Moscow at the time of the October Revolution , whose ensemble, despite Stanislavski's protection, emigrated to Palestine in 1927 almost completely.

history

It emerged from a Jewish theater studio that Alexander Granowski had founded in Petrograd in 1918 , initially under the name of the Yiddish Chamber Theater . With the move to Moscow in 1920, the name changed first to State Jewish (!) Chamber Theater ( GOSKET ), from 1924 to State Jewish Theater Moscow ( GOSET ). For a short time it was also known as the State Academic Jewish Theater . In contemporary reviews it was also called Moscow Yiddish (!) Academic Theater or Moscow Jewish (!) Academic (Chamber) Theater.

In Moscow, the first venue was at Tschernyschewskij Gasse 12 (Tschernyschewskij pereulok 12 / Чернышевский переулок 12). Alexander Granowski became the first artistic director. He was also the director of all plays until 1928. The main actor was Solomon Michoels . The first program was an evening based on texts by Sholem Alejchem . Marc Chagall designed the interior of the theater as well as the sets and costumes for the first performances. In April 1922 the theater moved to Malaya Bronnaya 2.

The repertoire of the theater mainly included pieces by Yiddish authors such as Scholem Alejchem ( Masl Tow ), Schalom Asch , Abraham Goldfaden , but also by Karl Gutzkow ( Uriel Acosta ). Played exclusively in Yiddish. Although not all viewers understood the language, the response in Moscow was good. The Soviet newspapers reported in some cases critically, but overall they reported positively. Until 1926 there was a certain rivalry with the Jewish Habimah theater , which was supported by Stanislavsky and Vakhtangow .

The GOSET made guest appearances in Belarus and the Ukraine, and in 1926 for the first time in Leningrad, where it originally worked . In 1928 there was a tour to Western Europe. The theater was enthusiastically received in Vienna , Berlin , Paris and other places. Bertolt Brecht , Max Reinhardt , Sigmund Freud and Lion Feuchtwanger were among the visitors . A trip to the USA was prepared. However, Granovsky was to return to the Soviet Union with the theater. He refused and stayed abroad. The ensemble returned to Moscow.

Solomon Michoels became the new director . The theater now increasingly played plays by contemporary Yiddish authors such as David Bergelson . The response from the public and the press continued to be good. Big successes were Tevye the milkman by Sholem Alejchem (1941) and King Lear by W. Shakespeare (1935).

In 1941, when the German-Soviet War began , the theater was evacuated to Tashkent and played in the local Jewish theater. It was able to return in 1943. In January 1948 Michoels died in a staged traffic accident. Benjamin Suskin became the new director . The theater was accused of cosmopolitanism in the following years, audiences were checked before the events. Suskin was arrested in December 1948. The last performance took place on November 16, 1949. After that, the theater was closed due to "lack of audience response". Suskin was executed on August 12, 1952 in the " Night of the Murdered Poets " together with twelve other Jewish intellectuals and JAFC members in the Lubyanka .

Today the building houses the Moscow Dramatic Theater on Malaya Bronnaya.

literature

  • Jeffrey Veidlinger: GosET. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 2: Co-Ha. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02502-9 , pp. 469-474.
  • Иванов Владислав, ГОСЕТ: политика и искусство. 1919-1928 . Moscow 2007 online
  • Thimo Butzmann: The Moscow Jewish Theater. Guest at the Theater des Westens, Berlin, 1928 . In: The Fourth Wall. Organ of the TheaterMuseum Berlin initiative . Edition 009. Berlin, 2019, pp. 44–47 ( Online in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brigitte Dalinger (HG): Source edition on the history of the Jewish theater in Vienna, Tübingen 2003, p. 236 (Conditio Judaica 42, studies and sources on German-Jewish literary history, edited by Hans Otto Horch, in conjunction with Alfred Bodenheimer, Mark H. Gelber and Jakob Hessing)
  2. ↑ ibid.