The Theater Duke

This summer, Prof. Rudolf Denk's cultural tour* took his followers to Gotha and included two theater performances. The first stop on the trip was Meiningen, where in 1866, Duke Georg II took over the artistic direction of his court theater after ascending to the throne of Saxe-Meiningen.
*These tours are always a highlight

Georg's primary interest was in theater, especially the plays of Shakespeare, Schiller, Kleist, Molière, Goethe, and Lessing. He was dissatisfied with the performances of these plays on German stages at the time, which were not authentic. The duke sought to reform this practice since he combined his love of theater with a great artistic talent. He also had the necessary financial and political resources to bring his ideas to life, thanks to the help of a talented theater ensemble. 

He himself designed historically accurate costumes, stage sets, and props, and followed his artistic ideal of presenting theater in a historically accurate, stylish, and simply perfect manner. This included absolute fidelity to the original text and the formation of an ensemble. Georg's activities were initially ridiculed, but his successes caught the attention of the theater world, and he was soon referred to, sometimes appreciatively, sometimes mockingly, as the "Theater Duke."

The success gave rise to the idea of a guest performance in Berlin, where on May 1, 1874, the ensemble of the Meiningen Court Theater performed Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

Wikipedia notes: This was followed by an unprecedented 16-year tour, featuring 81 guest performances in 38 European cities, including London, Vienna, Stockholm, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Amsterdam, with a total of 2,591 performances. Soon, the newspapers and the theater world referred to the court theater ensemble simply as "the Meiningers."

 

The Meiningers in St. Petersburg (©Wikipedia)

On their travels, the Meiningers took not only the costumes with them but also the complete stage sets, featuring "historically accurate" designs, which created an almost perfect illusion of reality on stage.

These historic stage sets are on display at Meiningen in the theater museum "Zauberwelt der Kulisse (Magic World of the Stage)."

Wallenstein's camp outside the city of Pilsen

Here, our museum guide explains the historic stage set of Friedrich Schillers Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein's Camp).

In the evening

During the night

The upcoming morning

Theater was extremely popular. 
The wealthy residents of Neustadt paid eight guilders for a box seat,
while those less well-off paid 20 kreuzers for standing in the third upper circle.

The stage set served at the municipal theater in Wiener Neustadt on September 21, 1883.

The Meininger next played Vienna at the Carltheater on October 13, 1883.

Here is the master in a 19th-century bronze plaster copy by Johann Heinrich Dannheisser.

Here are two more stage sets that hang on the side walls of the auditorium.

Landscape on the Nile based on an original design by George II for the play "Das verschleierte Bild zu Sais (The Veiled Picture at Sais)" by Paul Heyse.

Stage set by Werner Tübkefor Carl-Maria von Weber's opera Der Freischütz at the Theater Bonn in 1993.

When I got on the bus to leave for Gotha, I noticed a sticker. How kind of our driver to transport people like me who depend on a cane.

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