Wilfried Minks
Wilfried Minks (born February 21, 1930 in Binai , Czechoslovakia ; † February 13, 2018 in Berlin ) was a German set designer and theater director.
Life
Minks grew up in Bohemia and, at the age of fifteen, left what was then Czechoslovakia with his parents after the Second World War . The family came to Wurzen in Saxony . The talented painter later trained at the arts and crafts school in Leipzig . After one and a half semesters, he switched to the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts , where he studied from 1955 to 1957.
Before the Wall was built in 1961, it was still possible for him to accept an engagement in 1959 at the Stadttheater Ulm , where Kurt Hübner was artistic director and Peter Zadek and Peter Palitzsch directed. The encounter with Zadek was the decisive one in his career. From then on he was the closest collaborator to the enfant terrible of German theater directors.
In 1962, artistic director Hübner moved to Theater Bremen , and Minks followed him, as did Peter Zadek. And here, too, his sets shaped the productions so that, according to the critics, they themselves represented part of the direction. People spoke of the " Bremen style " and meant the most innovative era of German post-war theater.
For Minks, “the set included a large part of dramaturgical thinking”, so that “the set designer is almost also a director”. In the early 1970s, Minks began a career as a director . In 1972 he staged yet in Bremen Maria Stuart by Friedrich Schiller and from 1973 at all major venues in Germany. In 1979/80 he made the historical film Birth of the Witch with his then wife Ulla Berkéwicz (in the film as Ulla Berkévicz ) in the lead role. In 1980/81 Minks was, together with the director Johannes Schaaf, for a short time the director of the board of directors of the co-determination model at the Schauspiel Frankfurt and then worked as a freelance director.
In the course of his career, Minks worked with all the great directors of his time, including Luc Bondy , Dieter Dorn and Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Klaus Michael Grüber and Claus Peymann , as well as Johannes Schaaf and Peter Stein . His activity also took him to the Salzburg Festival (1975 Leonce and Lena von Georg Büchner , directed by Schaaf; with Klaus Maria Brandauer and others) and to the Vienna Burgtheater (stage design debut in 1988 with The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare , directed by Zadek, later also Director at the Akademietheater , including the world premiere by Fernando Krapp wrote me a letter from Tankred Dorst , 1992).
Wilfried Minks had been a member of the Free Academy of the Arts Hamburg since 1973 and of the Berlin Academy of the Arts since 1994 . From 1967 to 1995 he taught as a professor at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts .
Important stage sets in the Bremen style
- 1964 Held Henry - director: Peter Zadek - the only detail on the empty stage is a plaque with portraits of English rulers.
- 1965 - Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind - Director: Peter Zadek
- 1966 - Die Räuber by Friedrich Schiller - director: Peter Zadek - both productions were equipped with a comic picture by the pop art artist Roy Lichtenstein .
- 1967 - Maß für Maß by William Shakespeare - director: Peter Zadek - empty stage with brightly colored light bulbs.
- 1969 - Torquato Tasso by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Director: Peter Stein - Plastic film in the background with a bright green pile carpet.
- 1980 Design of the BMW Museum in Munich together with the Munich composer Eberhard Schoener
Awards
- 1970 Adolf Grimme Prize with Gold 1970, together with Peter Zadeck and Tankred Dorst , for the program Rotmord
- 1981 nomination for the Max Ophüls Prize for the birth of the witch
- 1982 Fantasporto nomination for the birth of the witch
- 2010 German Theater Prize Der Faust for his life's work
- 2012 Bremen Town Musicians Prize ("Culture" section)
Web links
- Wilfried Minks in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Literature by and about Wilfried Minks in the catalog of the German National Library
- Wilfried Minks: 30 stage designers. Website of the Goethe Institute
- Stage design by Minks zu Penthesilea (1970). Digitized decorative folders of the Württemberg State Theater in Stuttgart in the Baden-Württemberg State Archives
- Interview with the digital arts section Kulturvollzug
- Wilfried Minks Archive in the Archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin
Individual evidence
- ^ Jeanine Meerapfel: Akademie der Künste mourns Wilfried Minks. Akademie der Künste Berlin, February 13, 2018, accessed on February 13, 2018 .
- ↑ Eberhard Schoener. Retrieved September 3, 2019 (German).
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Minks, Wilfried |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German stage designer and theater director |
DATE OF BIRTH | February 21, 1930 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Binai , Czechoslovakia |
DATE OF DEATH | February 13, 2018 |
Place of death | Berlin |