Walter Thomas

This article deals with the theater maker Walter Thomas. For the jazz musician, see Walter Foots Thomas .

Walter Thomas , pseudonym Hans Peter Dorn; W. Th. Anderman , (born July 17, 1908 in Siegen ; † June 2, 1970 in Bochum ) was a German dramaturge, theater director and author who, through the sequel by Felix Krull, Was I really an impostor? got known. In the Third Reich , Thomas was a cultural functionary in Vienna.

Life

Walter Thomas attended the secondary school in Siegen (today: Gymnasium am Löhrtor) and then began an apprenticeship as a bookseller. He then worked as a bookseller in Dortmund until 1931 and then worked as a theater critic and features editor for the Westfälische Landeszeitung . From 1935 to 1940 Thomas worked under the direction of Saladin Schmitt as chief dramaturge, deputy director and director of the Stadttheater Bochum .

After the " Anschluss of Austria " he was general cultural advisor to the Reichsstatthalter Baldur von Schirach in Vienna from 1938 . In the same year he wrote the essay On Drama of Our Time , which stated, among other things: “Tragedy must be hard and inexorable. Her highest demand on the poet is not cruelty, but inner indifference to the tragic fate. In this case, pity is weakness, sentimentality, lack of talent ”. From 1940 to 1943 he was head of the general department for the Vienna State Theaters; from February 1 to April 19, 1941 he was also director of the Vienna State Opera . In 1942 he became head of the cultural department at the Reich Propaganda Office in Vienna. In 1943/44 he worked as deputy director and director at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and at the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna.

After the end of World War II, Thomas' The Drama of Our Time in the Soviet Occupation Zone was placed on the list of literature to be discarded.

In 1946/47 he was general secretary of the German Shakespeare Society . In 1948/49 he returned to Bochum as a game director and deputy director, but was dismissed there after public protests because of his work during the Nazi era . Thereafter, Thomas became senior director at the Landestheater Detmold and took over this function from 1951 at the Stadttheater in Bremen .

Partial bequests are to be found in the Dortmund City and State Library and in the Westphalian Manuscript Archive.

Works

Independent publications

(The pseudonyms he used are in round brackets)

• The crooked one . Novel. 1932.
• From the drama of our time . Max Beck, Leipzig 1938.
• Until the curtain fell. Reported from records from 1940 to 1945 . Schwalvenberg, Dortmund 1947 (W. Th. Andermann)
• European encounters . Volume 1. Schwalvenberg, Dortmund 194? (W. Th. Andermann)
• I am Hamlet . Narrative. Schwalvenberg, Dortmund 194? (W. Th. Andermann)
• Reading . Without place and publisher 1950.
• Shareholders of Heaven . Folk piece. 1953
• Morals . A comedy in five acts. Frankfurt / M. 1958.
• Was I really an impostor ? Novel. Herbig, Berlin 1958
  2nd edition Non Stop-Bücherei, Berlin 1962 (Hans Peter Dorn)
• Open the umbrellas. Ocean trip . In: Hans Bender : Junge Lyrik 1960. P. 14–15 1960 (Hans Peter Dorn)
• Richard Strauss and his contemporaries . Langen-Müller, Munich 1964.
• Wilhelm Oechelhaeuser, founder of the German Shakespeare Society . A presentation. City administration of Siegen, Siegen 1964.
• Shakespeare in Germany: 1864–1964 . With illustrations by K. Brinkmann. German Shakespeare Society West eV, Bochum 1964.

As editor

• Kleist's legacy. Festschrift for the Kleist Week 1936 . Organized by the city of Bochum and the Kleist Society in conjunction with the Nazi cultural community . Text and image design Walter Thomas. Beck, Leipzig 1936.
• Festschrift for the German Shakespeare Week . Edited by the city of Bochum in collaboration with the German Shakespeare Society. Text and image design: Walter Thomas. Bochum 1937.
• Hebbel in our time. A commemorative publication . Edited on behalf of the city of Bochum in cooperation with the Hebbel community and with co-editing by Dr. Butcher on the occasion of the Friedrich Hebbel Week. Beck, Leipzig, Beck 1939.
• Yearbook of the Bochum stage 1939/40 . The draft schedule for the 1939/40 season. Bochum, City of Bochum 1939.
• WA Mozart . Edited for the Mozart Week of the German Reich in cooperation with the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and the Reich Governor in Vienna by Walter Thomas. Publishing house Die Pause, Wien u. a. 1941
• Friedrich Hebbel. Life and work in individual representations . Edited for the Vienna Hebbel Week on behalf of the Reich Governor in Vienna. Publishing house Die Pause, Wien u. a. 1942.
• Memorandum for the resumption of their activities in the British occupation zone of Germany German Shakespeare Society (German Shakespeare Society). Founded in Weimar in 1864 . Edited by Walter Thomas, Otto Zur Nedden . German Shakespeare Society, Freienohl i. W. 1946
• The game year 1956/57 . Oldenburg State Theater. Artistic director Fred Schroer. Hugo Prull, Oldenburg 1958
• 100 years of the German Shakespeare Society . 1964

literature

• Walter Thomas died. Saladin Schmitt's employee. Professional ban. In: Ruhr news. June 6, 1970.
• Degener. 12th edition. 1955.
• Kürschner: Theater Handbook 1956.
• Kosch: German Literature Lexicon. Volume 4. 2nd edition. 1958.
• Kürschner: Nekrolog 1936–1970.
• New German biography. Archive. NF Fiche 1304, col. 411-414.
• Walter Wenzel: From the writers to the generals. The span of restorative memoir literature. (To Erich von Manstein : "Lost victories" and Walter Thomas: "Until the curtain fell"). In: Spirit and Time. Bimonthly journal for art, literature and science. 1, H. 1, 1956, pp. 131-137.
• Ernst Stein: We don't want to confuse Kafka with Mann. A trickery where you have to be careful. In: The time . Vol. 13, No. 51, December 19, 1958, p. 9.
• Hans Rudolf Vaget : Thomas Mann and Richard Strauss: contemporaneity without brotherhood. In: Thomas Mann Yearbook. Volume 3. Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISSN  0935-6983 , pp. 50-85.

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Thomas in the catalog of the German National Library
• Walter Thomas in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
• Walter Thomas' estate in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
• The directors of the Vienna State Opera

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 613.
2. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Kulturlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 613.
3. ↑ ^{a b} see web links
4. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-t.html