Walther R. Volbach

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Walther R. Volbach (born December 24, 1897 in Mainz ; died August 5, 1996 in Amherst ) was a German-American theater director, theater educator and theater scholar.

Life

Richard Walter Volbach was a son of the musician Fritz Volbach . His mother Käthe Dernburg was a sister of the politician Friedrich Dernburg . His brother Wolfgang Fritz Volbach (1892–1988) became an art historian and museum director in Mainz after the war. From 1933 to 1945 he was in exile at the Vatican .

Volbach studied philology in Tübingen, Munich and Münster and received his doctorate in Münster in 1920 with a dissertation on theater history in Germany. In the theater season 1923/24 he was senior director of the operetta at the Stadttheater Mönchengladbach . In 1924 he was employed in the same position at the Bamberg City Theater , 1925 in Zurich , 1927 at the City Theater Danzig , from 1929 to 1932 at the City Theater Hagen and in 1932/33 at the United City Theater Kiel . In 1929 he staged Iphigenie auf Tauris by Christoph Willibald Gluck at the Kroll Opera in Berlin. He wrote reviews and feature articles for the Berliner Morgen-Zeitung . Volbach belonged to the Catholic Center Party , which played an important role in the Weimar Republic , whose members of the Reichstag approved the Enabling Act in 1933 .

In 1924, Volbach married the Viennese actress Claire Neufeld (1895–1993), who was of Jewish origin. This and the fact that his mother was also of Jewish origin was reproached for him after the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933. Volbach and his wife then had to emigrate to Austria, where he received directorships at the Volkstheater and the Volksoper . In 1936 he emigrated to Great Britain and in 1937 with the support of Catholic refugee aid organizations to the USA, where in 1939 he first found a job as an assistant professor of theater studies at the Jesuit Marquette University in Milwaukee . In the following years he continued to have varied occupations and directorial orders, in 1944 he worked for the Office of Strategic Services . From 1946 Volbach had a permanent job as a professor of theater studies at the Texas Christian University in Fort Worth . In 1965 he went to the University of Massachusetts Amherst as a professor of theater history and finally in 1971 to the University of California, Santa Barbara .

Fonts (selection)

  • The development towards realism on the German stage of modern times. From the traveling stage to the Meiningers . Münster, Univ., Diss., 1920.
  • Problems of Opera Production . Drawings John R. Rothgeb. Archon Books, 1967.
  • Adolphe Appia. Prophet of the Modern Theater: A Profile . Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1968.
  • Memoirs of Max Reinhardt's' Theaters, 1920-1922 . Theater survey. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg, 1972-1973.

literature

  • Volbach, Walther R. in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , pp. 1195f.
  • Volbach, Walther R. in: Frithjof Trapp , Bärbel Schrader, Dieter Wenk, Ingrid Maaß: Handbook of the German-speaking Exile Theater 1933–1945. Volume 2. Biographical Lexicon of Theater Artists . Munich: Saur, 1999, ISBN 3-598-11375-7 , p. 972.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Neufeld, Claire in: Frithjof Trapp , Bärbel Schrader, Dieter Wenk, Ingrid Maaß: Handbook of the German-speaking Exile Theater 1933–1945. Volume 2. Biographical Lexicon of Theater Artists . Munich: Saur, 1999, ISBN 3-598-11375-7 , pp. 698f.
personal data
SURNAME Volbach, Walther R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Volbach, Walther Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American theater director, theater pedagogue and theater scholar
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH 5th August 1996
Place of death Amherst, Massachusetts