Theater in the Center (Vienna)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Theater in the center

The theater in the center in Vienna's 1st district, Innere Stadt, is the second venue for the Theater der Jugend next to the Renaissance theater . It offers 230 seats. The technical equipment allows both spoken theater and music productions.

history

In 1913 the theater in the center at Liliengasse 3 was founded as a Grand Gala , the architect of the hall was Eduard Prandl . In a newspaper advertisement, the operators announce an "international dance and song program".

During the First World War, the restaurant was used as an afternoon home for convalescent soldiers. As of April 1920 at the latest, the hall took over the name "Moulin Rouge" from an establishment that had been in the neighboring building before the war. The new Moulin Rouge was initially a pure dance hall, dancers like Willy Fränzl performed. Over time, in addition to public dancing and a wide variety of dance performances, elements from the variety show such as acrobatic interludes and comedy numbers increased.

From 1929 onwards, the hall was gradually redesigned by Carl Witzmann , the hall staircase that had previously shaped the hall was torn down and the auditorium was raised by a good two meters. The originally two-storey hall (hall on the ground floor and gallery) took on its present appearance. At the same time, the entrance was moved from Weihburggasse 9 to Liliengasse 3. The financially troubled director Arthur Glück brought the brothers Philipp and Edmund Hamber on board as partners - the latter was accused of participating in the "night club" when he was expelled from the SPÖ in 1932. In the last part of its existence, the Moulin Rouge focused on chamber revues under the artistic direction of Fritz Grünbaum and Franz Engel . Karl Farkas , Ernö Verebes and Olly Holzmann appeared, among others . In June 1934 the Moulin Rouge had to file for bankruptcy. Glück and Edmund Hamber were arrested in 1935 for embezzlement.

After Austria was annexed to the Third Reich , the actor Adolf Müller-Reitzner founded a cabaret stage in Liliengasse 3 with the approval of the Reich Propaganda Office in Vienna. Müller-Reitzner took over his (politically and racially) portable ensemble largely from the forcibly closed literature on the Naschmarkt , where he had played for two years. From 1939 to 1944 Wiener Werkel produced ten programs that did not want to shake the foundations of Nazi ideology. Rather, mostly "small inadequacies were brought to the stage in a funny way [...]." In the play Dream of His Lordship , for example, an English lord dreams of a victory for the Allies and a Vienna that was divided into 26 individual states that were divided At the end of the middle section, they reconcile and celebrate Austrian unity. In the middle section, The Chinese Wonder from the second program, the German invasion of Austria is presented as a Japanese-Chinese parable. While the Chinese are played in the Viennese dialect in the piece, the Japanese appear in Prussian style and an overemphasized uniform. When the frightened clerk Po-Ma-Li asks what is going to happen in "Chinareich", his superior Councilor Pe-cha-tschek replies: "Nothing at all, dear Po-Ma-li, sans just not nervous - I wore it ' scho demoralize. " While around half of the ensemble were NSDAP members and Müller-Reitzner himself was a candidate for membership, the pieces were without exception written by left-wing liberal authors - racially persecuted authors such as Fritz Eckhardt or Kurt Nachmann were covered by the names of other authors. In March 1941, on a visit to Vienna , Joseph Goebbels summoned Müller-Reitzner and threatened both the director and the ensemble with internment in a concentration camp if the anti-German taunts did not stop.

In 1945 Rudolf Weys received the concession, the theater had to name itself literature in the Moulin Rouge by decree of the occupying powers - the name Wiener Werkel was banned. Müller-Reitzner's widow Christl Räntz ran the hall. After 1945 it was operated as an Intimate Theater by Gerhard Bronner . In the 1950s it became the Viennese cabaret (e.g. "new Wiener Werkel" ) until it was taken over by the Theater der Jugend in 1964.

Web links

Commons : Theater im Zentrum (Vienna)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Opening of the Grand Gala. In:  Deutsches Volksblatt / Deutsches Volksblatt. Radical medium-sized organ / telegraph. Radical Mittelstandsorgan / Deutsches Volksblatt. Daily newspaper for Christian German politics , October 12, 1913, p. 10 (online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / dvb
  2. ↑ a b Markus Felkel: From the Grand Gala establishment to the theater in the center - a theater-archaeological search for traces in Vienna . 2015 ( univie.ac.at [PDF] diploma thesis).
  3. ↑ Grand Gala . (Newspaper advertisement). In: Neues Wiener Tagblatt . March 11, 1914, p. 23 ( onb.ac.at ).
  4. ↑ http://www.tdj.at/das-theater/technik/theater-im-zentrum/allgemeines/
  5. ^ Werner Michael Schwarz: Cinema and cinemas in Vienna. A development history up to 1934, p. 4
  6. ↑ Today: Moulin Rouge premiere "Sun in the Heart". In:  Neues Wiener Journal , May 18, 1934, p. 11 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nwj
  7. ↑ The collapse of the Moulin Rouge. In:  Oesterreichische Kronen-Zeitung. Illustrirtes Tagblatt / Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung / Wiener Kronen-Zeitung , May 4, 1935, p. 7 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / short
  8. ^ Daniela Loibl: Cabaret of his time. (Liter) Aryan cabaret in the "Wiener Werkel" from 1939 - 1944 . University of Vienna, 2003, p. 148 .
  9. ↑ Anita Wolfartsberger: The "middle piece" in the 'Wiener Werkel' . Vienna 2004 ( univie.ac.at [PDF] diploma thesis).
  10. ↑ Weys: Cabaret and Cabaret in Vienna , p. 64 f.

Coordinates: 48 ° 12 '26 "  N , 16 ° 22' 23"  E