Utz Elsässer

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Utz Elsässer, also Utz Elsäßer, born as Ulrich Elsässer (* 1927 in Pforzheim ), is a German film architect , stage designer , television set designer and puppeteer who was active until 1992 .

Live and act

The son of the painter and teacher Oskar Elsässer has been making marionettes since he was 16. The Pforzheimer made his first contact with classical singing and spoken theater through the puppet theater and trained as a set designer. Elsässer made his debut at the Stadttheater Konstanz and moved to the theater in his home town of Pforzheim in 1953, where he initially worked as an outfitter under his birth name Ulrich Elsässer. Between 1954 and 1958, he and his wife Angela, who died in 2014, became the parents of three daughters.

Before the family moved to Bavaria in 1961, Utz Elsässer began working for television. At the beginning of the 1960s, Elsässer regularly designed the decorations for TV productions, initially for music shows such as Hotel Victoria . In 1960 he also cooperated with show specialist Michael Pflegehar . Most of Elsässer's early set designs were created in the Bavaria studios, but he also designed several times for the SDR and WDR . Until 1967 these were mostly television games. With several parts for the popular early evening series The Strange Methods of Franz Josef Wanninger , drafts for series television were added for the first time in the same year.

As a film architect for the big screen, Elsässer appeared only three times: In 1976 he designed the buildings for the last two film productions by Alfred Vohrer , Anita Drögemöller and the rest on the Ruhr and Das Schweigen im Walde , in 1977 the decorations for Franz Seitzen's valentine, Die Jugendstreich des Boy Karl . In his last intensive creative period for television, from 1983 to 1985, Elsässer appeared exclusively as a production designer for series television and designed the buildings for Derrick , The Old One and Our Most Beautiful Years . In 1993 he was once again proven to be the production designer for the television adaptations of folk plays of the Chiemgau Volkstheater Bernd Helfrichs broadcast on Sat.1 .

From 1978 onwards, Elsässer lived with his wife in Neubeuert near Rosenheim until the end . There he and his wife, who was almost the same age, ran a small puppet theater in their own house for 22 years until shortly before her death. The plays listed included The Bartered Bride , Hoffmann's Stories , L'Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi , Der Freischütz , Carl Orff's Die Kluge , Die Lustigen Frauen von Windsor , Undine, Die Zauberflöte and Die Entführung aus dem Serail .

Filmography (selection)

when watching TV, unless otherwise stated

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Alsatian, Utz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Elsäßer, Utz; Elsässer, Ulrich (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German film architect and production designer for television
DATE OF BIRTH 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Pforzheim