Archive of Individuals

Introducing Students of the Deutsches Theater

Fig. 1: Director Berthold Held at his desk with a picture of Max Reinhardt, HfS-Archiv F752

by Loghan Hawkes

The latest project from the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch archive makes a collection of photographs and written materials from the years when the acting school was connected to the Deutsches Theater (1905 to 1951) available for public research. These primary sources offer a unique perspective of German theater history before, during, and after the world wars.

Although HfS Ernst Busch has only existed as a university since 1981, the school's history dates back to the early 20th century. In October 1905, well-known theater director Max Reinhardt opened an acting school for the Deutsches Theater, which had become part of his theater company earlier that year. At the time, Reinhardt's network consisted of eleven Berlin theaters; this only changed upon the seizure and subsequent dissolution of the company by National Socialists in 1933. However, the drama school made it through the following years of dictatorship, war, and aftermath, until it was renamed in 1951, becoming the Staatliche Schauspielschule Berlin under the government of the GDR. Another thirty years passed before the school was granted official university status along with its current name, which pays tribute to belovéd East German actor Ernst Busch. While each period of the school’s history has its own unique reasons for intrigue, it is in the earliest era that this article takes primary interest, from the school’s creation through its establishment as a respected educational institution in the German theater world.

Max Reinhardt’s acting school, which became known as the Schauspielschule des Deutschen Theaters zu Berlin, saw its headmaster in one Berthold Held, a friend of Reinhardt’s who was dedicated to the education of young theater artists, and whom students continually wrote to even decades after he first took the job. Held cared deeply about the school until the very last, remaining in his position until he took ill in 1931. Five months later in his final letter to Reinhardt, he articulated his worries about the longevity of the school, which faced financial threats that were exacerbated in his absence. Although he did not live to see it, he would be glad to know that his fears were never realized; not only did the school persist, but its history did as well. Each photo, signature, and written sentiment found in our archive is connected to people without whom this school would not be what it is today. It is our job and the aim of this project to not only bring these records back to life, but to keep them alive by making them accessible to the public.

Fig. 2: Photo with letter to Berthold Held by Annemarie Jürgens, HfS-Archiv F584

Fig. 3: Pages from the Golden Book from the class of 1922/23, HfS-Archiv D9

The collection, comprising of the “Golden Book” of the Deutsches Theater along with hundreds of papers and photographs, was discovered by the archival team in 2023. For years, it had been stored in a disorganized fashion, acquiring only dust and damage after it had all but completely disappeared from modern memory. The first step of the revitalization process involved finding everything that had been lost and removing it from the basement, quite literally shedding light on materials that hadn’t been examined for decades. The Golden Book (German: Goldenes Buch) was an essential find, containing the signatures of about 500 students who graduated from the acting school between the years of 1905 and 1965. Alongside their names, many students also wrote down their thoughts and included photographs from the time of their graduation. Further materials from the collection include about 600 photographs of students, teachers, and acting lessons, often printed on signed postcards, as well as over 350 pages of program sheets, correspondence, and congratulations from the school between 1915 and 1948. Once the materials were recovered, they were cleaned, deacidified, and packaged. The Golden Book was sent to Katharina Lußky for restoration, and the photographs were cleaned by Krystian Koziol, a member of our team. After this, they could be digitized, analyzed, repackaged, and properly organized.

The digitization process is as important today as the Gutenberg press was for Europe; this is what allows collections to be made widely available, not just within one’s own institution, but also for academic researchers, citizen archivists, inquisitive descendents, and theater fans around the world. We sent the files to the company Bibliocopy, part of the Staatsbibliothek, to be digitized, and as soon as the process was complete, we set to work transcribing signatures and handwritten texts to identify individuals from the Golden Book and accompanying photographs. Because much of the material was written in Kurrent or Sütterlin, two archaic German cursive styles, deciphering the writing was difficult—but ultimately worth it, as we were able to identify and catalogue hundreds of former students and teachers. This includes a number of Jewish students, such as cabaret artists Alice Droller (Alice Dorell) and Otto Maximilian Wasserzug (Otto Wallburg) who were murdered in Auschwitz, as well as Gertrud Kanitz, Martin Kosleck, Isser Katsch (Kurt Katch), and Fritz Feld, all of whom emigrated to the US and the latter of which were successful in Hollywood. We also found Rose Mönnig (Rose Oehmichen), who was known for creating the Augsburg Puppetchest, Iranian director Ali Daryabegi, who we now know studied at the school in 1934, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s first wife Lotte Geißler (Lotti Geissler) who was a student from 1939 to 1940.

Fig. 4: Signatures of Ali Daryabegi and Lotte Geißler in the Golden Book, HfS-Archiv D9

Along with names and images of former students and teachers, we searched for and added their life information to the German database museum-digital, which promotes ease of access and interconnectedness in its collections. We are also in the practice of updating and creating related Wikipedia articles in order to encourage external engagement with our materials and the people they represent. While we do put in effort to research every individual, we are especially interested in preserving and disseminating the stories of people who have consistently faced erasure from historical narratives. For instance, in our Wikipedia Workshop we learned about the WikiProject Women in Red (“Frauen in Rot”), which strives to turn the names of women across Wikipedia from red links, which lead nowhere, to blue ones, which connect to open, biographical pages. Annemarie Jürgens, a Argentine-born German actress who graduated from our school in 1928, was one such red link, now turned blue in both English and German thanks to our archive. More people for whom we have created Wiki pages include former students Willem van Korlaar jr., Ilse Baerwald, Ellen Neustädter, Arnold Neuweiler and Lulu Basler as well as teachers Ellen Neustädter, Carl Heine, Gyda Christensen, and Berthold Held.

Fig. 5: Photo of Arnold Neuweiler in his study, F644

I was an intern on this project, coming here from the state of Pennsylvania in the United States of America where I study museum studies. Given my position as a foreigner, one of my goals for the collection was to provide a relationship to the English-speaking world that may not have been prioritized in my absence. I believe that this has already been accomplished in a small way, through creating data records on museum-digital in English, my own editing of English Wikipedia pages for some of the alumni of the Schauspielschule des Deutschen Theaters zu Berlin, whose lives were either partially or entirely unrecorded there. I am also hoping to link this HfS collection to an English database to further the potential for connection. With archival work, I feel strongly that projects which uplift and contextualize individual histories are the most important to cultivate, especially for those who have been systematically ignored or dismissed. The project I have worked on here does exactly that, and goes one step further by giving new relevance to a collection previously buried in the basement.

If you are interested in the holdings of the HfS Archive, would like to get involved in archival work or contribute to Wikipedia entries, please contact:

archiv@hfs-berlin.de

+49(0)30 75 54 17-234