Wolfgang Langhoff

Wolfgang Langhoff ( born October 6, 1901 in Berlin, † August 25 1966 in East Berlin ) was a German actor and director. From 1946 to 1963 he headed the German Theatre in Berlin. He is the father of Thomas and Matthias Langhoff and grandfather of author Anna Langhoff, the actor Tobias Langhoff and director Lukas Langhoff.

2.1 Full list of roles, performances and recitations
2.2 Important Roles 2.2.1 Schauspielhaus Zurich
2.2.2 Deutsches Theater Berlin

Life

Youth

Langhoff was born in Berlin in 1901 as one of four children of businessman Gustav Langhoff, but grew up in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he attended high school. From 1915 to 1917 he went as a sailor at sea, sought a career as an officer in the merchant marine to. After the end of World War I he had a first engagement as an extra at Königsberg theater; where he played soon first supporting roles - to have completed a training as an actor without ever.

Political commitment, emigration

1923 made Langhoff station at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg and Wiesbaden. In 1926 he married actress Renata Edwina Malacrida. From this marriage the sons Thomas (1938-2012) and Matthias went bold (* 1941). From 1928 to 1932 he played at the Schauspielhaus Dusseldorf with Louise Dumont and Gustav Lindemann, from September 1932 to February 28, 1933 at the Municipal Theatre, Dusseldorf under Bruno Walter Iltz. Langhoff became involved in this time -intensive for the Communist Party and was the artistic director, founded in 1930 agitprop troupe " Northwest ran" that occurred inter alia on trade union activities.

On February 28, 1933 Langhoff was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned first in the Düsseldorf police prison where he was subjected to severe torture by the SA. A few days later he was transferred to the Dusseldorf prison " Ulmer height". In July 1933 he was transferred to the concentration camp Börgermoor in Emsland. There he revised in August 1933 a text by Johann Esser to the world- famous later Moorsoldaten song. The melody was composed by fellow prisoner Rudi Goguel. After laying the Lichtenburg concentration camp was 1934, the dismissal Langhoffs under the so- called Easter amnesty. Overall, Langhoff was 13 months in prison and concentration camps. Three months later - in June of the same year - he fled to Switzerland, just before closure of the border. At the Schauspielhaus Zurich he found accommodation and work as a director and actor. In 1935, the autobiographical Report The Peat Bog Soldiers. 13 months concentration camp released the world's attention was into English after translation by Lilo left as one of the first eyewitness accounts of brutality in the Nazi concentration camps. Langhoff was a founding member of the Movement for a Free Germany in Switzerland.

After his return to the Soviet occupation zone Langhoff was a member of the 2nd German People's Council for the Cultural Alliance.

Directorship

In 1945 Langhoff back to Germany, was general director of the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus. In 1946 he took over the German theater in East Berlin by Gustav von Wangenheim, where he also celebrated success as a director. He also played an important role in the cultural politics of the GDR, was also a member of the Academy of Arts. In 1956 he became president of the GDR Centre of the International Theatre Institute of UNESCO. But soon it came to the first confrontation with the Cultural Commission of the Central Committee of the SED. He was accused of lack of implementation of socialist realism, criticized his game plans. In 1963, he resigned in connection with the dispute over the staging of his play The worry and the power of Peter Hacks, Wolfgang Heinz became his successor. However, Langhoff was the German theater until his death connected and led there continue directing. In 1965 he was made an honorary member of the theater, 1966, he died at the age of 65 from cancer. In 1991, his son Thomas Langhoff the post of director.

Work

Full list of roles, performances and recitations

Winrich Meiszies (ed. ), Wolfgang Langhoff - Theater for a good Germany. Dusseldorf - Zurich - Berlin 1901-1966. Dusseldorf 1992, p 176-195.

Important roles

Schauspielhaus Zurich

Title role in Ibsen's Peer Gynt, directed by Leopold Lindtberg (1936 )
Hector in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, directed by Oskar Wälterlin (1938 )
Franz Moor in Schiller's The Robbers, Director: Leopold Lindtberg (1939 )

Deutsches Theater Berlin

Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust, directed by Wolfgang Langhoff (1949 and 1954)
Vershinin in Chekhov's Three Sisters, directed by Heinz Hilpert (1958 )
Octavio Piccolomini in Schiller's Wallenstein, Director: Karl Paryla (1959 )

Langhoff as a director

Langhoff's classic productions at the Deutsches Theater established his fame as a director: "The text was for him always at the center, he felt the original obligation. His work here was based heavily on the theory of Stanislavski, only in later years he developed a certain distance from the staged pieces of him, approached - in moderation, of course - to Brecht. "

Milestones in his career include Faust (1949 and 1954), Egmont (1951 ), Don Carlos ( 1952), King Lear (1957 ) and Minna von Barn-helm ( 1960). The latter staging with Kathe Reichel in the lead role has important are probably from today's perspective as Langhoffs, they influenced many young directors.

Langhoff as director

Not only classics were on the board of the Deutsches Theater, Langhoff promoted quite well contemporary drama, played Soviet pieces such as The Russian Question by Konstantin Simonov - the staging of this piece led in 1947 to the final cleavage of the Berlin theater scene in East and West, it poses the American press before the manipulation of public opinion. In the sixties, Langhoff increasingly protested against one-sided propaganda, refused to put many pieces on the game board. However, an open confrontation with the ZK- Cultural Commission he evaded repeated, were only too often by: Approximately in the case of an invitation Heinz Hilpert in the GDR, which he dared not express my own personal.

Chief dramaturge Langhoff was for many years Heinar Kipphardt, 1960 Peter Hacks with support Kipphardt dramaturge at Langhoff (up to the scandal of the play " The worry and the power " 1963). The ensemble of the Deutsches Theater consisted of Ernst Busch, Horst Drinda, Mathilde Danegger, Rudolf Wessely, Karl Paryla, Käthe Reichel, Inge Keller.

After the return from exile Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel worked with her ensemble initially at Langhoff's house before they could move in 1954 to the theater on Schiffbauerdamm.

Filmography

Bibliography

Winrich Meiszies (ed.): Wolfgang Langhoff - Theater for a good Germany. Dusseldorf - Zurich - Berlin 1901-1966. Dusseldorf 1992, p 196-202.

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