Erwin Axer

Erwin Axer ( born January 1, 1917 in Vienna, † August 5, 2012 in Warsaw) was a Polish theater director.

Life

Born in Vienna, was his first language, German. His parents left Vienna and went to Lviv, where he spent his childhood and youth. End of the 1930s he studied in Warsaw directed by Leon Schiller under at the State Theatre Institute ( PIST ). 1938 and 1939 he created his first directorial work here. At the beginning of the Second World War, he was back in Lviv, where he worked at the theater. He took in August 1944 part in the Warsaw uprising and then fell into German captivity, which he was deported to Germany.

After the war he began work at the intimate theater in Łódź. The ensemble of the theater moved with him as a director in 1948 to Warsaw, where he took over the Modern Theatre ( Teatr Współczesny ). He remained until 1980 the director of this theater. Between 1954 and 1958 he was also director of the Polish National Theatre in Warsaw. From 1962 he traveled abroad to stage on European stages. His German productions were regularly invited to the Berlin Theatre Meeting. Above all, his work at the Burgtheater in his native city of Vienna and the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus became famous.

In addition to his work as a director Professor at the Warsaw Theatre Academy, he wrote numerous theater theoretical essays and later prose.

He was one of the outstanding personalities of Polish theater. During his long directorship at the Teatr Współczesny he staged Polish premieres of authors such as Samuel Beckett and Bertolt Brecht as well as by American authors. It debuted here directors like Conrad Swinarski, and authors such as Sławomir Mrozek presented here before her first pieces. The pieces of Mrozek he brought also the first on the German stage.

Erwin Axer about his work as a director: " I stage for my pleasure, because directors are a job and not a profession or a profession. "

Important productions

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