Wilhelm Alfred Imperatori

Wilhelm Alfred Imperatori (pseudonym: Alfred Gospert ; born May 9, 1878 in Eupen ; † March 23, 1940 in Corsier-sur-Vevey ) was a German-born industrial leader and writer, of Swiss nationality.

Live and act

Imperatori's birthplace in Eupen, seat of the Eupen City Museum

Manoir de Ban

Wilhelm Anton Imperatori's grandparents came from Pollegio in Ticino and emigrated to Würselen near Aachen before 1850 . Imperatori's father and his wife, who came from Raeren , settled in Eupen, Germany, as a glazier and silver mirror maker.

During his studies, Imperatori traveled to various European countries and the USA. Around 1899 he worked as a businessman for several decades in leading positions at the paint and pharmaceutical manufacturer Cassella Farbwerke Mainkur , including in Berlin. In 1909 he married the soprano Claire Dux from Gniezno , who was referred to as a prima donna at the Berlin State Opera and was later in a relationship with the actor Hans Albers . The couple lived in Berlin during the First World War .

In the post-war period, when Casella Farbwerke merged with IG Farben , Imperatori became general director of one of the factories and in 1928 a member of the board of directors of Terra Film , which he had taken over from IG Farben , for which he worked in Cologne and Dresden. After separating from Dux, he married Marianne Neuwirth for the second time and the sculptor Edith Vetter for the third time in 1931. In 1930 he resigned his offices at IG Farben and settled as a privateer in the Swiss canton of Thurgau , where he lived at Weinfelden Castle until 1935 . During this time he wrote the comedy Fireworks , which he wrote as a publisher's manuscript under the name Alfred Gospert (Gospert is the name of the street where the house where he was born is). He then lived for a short time in the South Tyrolean Seis am Schlern , later in Basel. In autumn 1939 he bought the Villa Manoir de Ban in Corsier-sur-Vevey on Lake Geneva in the vineyards , where he unexpectedly died on March 27, 1940 at the age of 62. During the Second World War Edith Imperatori housed refugees in the spacious property. In 1946 she sold it to a diplomat, and in 1952 the Manoir de Ban came into the possession of the English actor Charly Chaplin .

Imperatori worked as a writer at an early age and wrote several dramas, poems, short stories and novels. In 1911 he published his first play, betrayed people . The first performance at the Grand Ducal Court Theater in Weimar was Das Spiel um der Grace , a one-act play that deals with Savonarola's work, and Count Fabian's Conscience in 1918 under the direction of General Manager Carl von Schirach . This was followed by Lebens Mittag (1924), Die Ewige Melodie , premiered in November 1935 at the Städtebundtheater Biel-Solothurn and between 1935 and 1937 at the Stadttheater Winterthur, the Stadttheater St. Gallen, in Graz and in various German cities such as Leipzig, Schleswig, Greifswald and constancy given. Other stage works are Kredit und Glaube (premiered in 1939, also under the title Venus and Mercury ), Felian (premiered in 1939), Arbeit und Alltälichkeit . The composer Erich Anders set several of Imperatori's poems to music.

swell

1. ↑ Hans-Christoph Blumenberg: Spiegel online, As true as I am the dear God ... Hans Albers a German star.
2. ↑ Grenzecho magazine Alfred Gospert a little-known playwright from Eupen
3. ^ Reto Caluori: Wilhelm Alfred Imperatori . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 2, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 902.