Kurt Horwitz – Wikipedia

Kurt Horwitz (Born December 21, 1897 in Neuruppin, † February 14, 1974 in Munich) was a German actor, theater director and theater director.

He grew up in Düsseldorf and received acting lessons from Ferdinand Gregori in Berlin from 1919. In the same year he moved to Otto Falckenberg to the Munich chamber games in Munich, where he belonged to the ensemble until 1933.

In Falckenberg productions, he played light in among other things The brochure jug (1922), Terits in Troilus and crressida (1925), Claudius Hamlet (1930, with Ewald Balser in the title role), St. Just in Dantons tod (1926), General Möllendorf in Neidhardt von Gneisenau (1926, after Wolfgang Goetz), Dr. Beautiful in Lulu (1928), cuckoo in Currentline (1930), Ricaut in Minna von Barnhelm (1931) Mephisto in Urfaust (1931) and Mechelke in The rats (1932). He was also in the premieres of the Brecht pieces Drumming in the night (1922) and Live Eduard’s second of England (1924).

Directed by Hans Schweikart, he embodied Mackie Messer in Brecht/Weills in 1929 The Threepenny Opera , he also offered his own productions and made a guest appearance at the Berlin Volksbühne. After the National Socialists seized power in 1933, Horwitz emigrated to Switzerland.

From 1933 to 1938 and again from 1940 to 1946 he was an actor and director at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, in between he worked at the Basel Theater from 1938 to 1940. In Switzerland, Horwitz was seen as the title character of Professor Mamlock (1934), Julius Caesar and King Johann (both 1941), Wallenstein (1943) as well as a helmer in Nora or a doll home and Jupiter in The flies (both 1944). In 1945 he staged the premiere of Max Frischs Now they sing again .

In 1946 he became director of the Stadttheater Basel, in 1950 he returned to Zurich as an actor and director for three years. In 1947 he brought Friedrich Dürrenmatt in Zurich It is written for premiere. In addition to numerous other productions, he particularly directed Molière’s pieces, in which his friend Ernst Ginsberg always embodied the main character.

At the end of 1952, Horwitz was appointed director of the Bavarian State Theater in Munich. In 1953 Horwitz called Hans-Reinhard Müller to his personal employee and in 1954 as deputy director. Until August 1958, Horwitz held this position and made Fritz Kortner his head director under whom he was in 1956 the title character in Heinrich VI. played. Then he remained as an actor and director without a firm bond in Munich. In 1959 he received for his staging of The misanthropist The Kainz medal. In 1962 he brought Dürrenmatt for the first time in Zurich The physicists on the stage. On May 9, 1961, he received the Bavarian Order of Merit. In 1975 he was awarded the Honorary Award of the Schwabinger Art Award. ^[first]

On film and television, Horwitz was only seen in comparatively little significant roles.

He was buried in the Munich north cemetery.

• Anna Beck, Thomas Blubacher: Kurt Horwitz . In: Andreas Kotte (ed.): Theater lexicon of Switzerland. Volume 2, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9, p. 874 f.
• C. Bernd Sucher (ed.): Theater lexicon. Authors, directors, actors, dramaturge, stage designer, critics. By Christine Dössel and Marietta Piekenbrock with the participation of Jean-Claude Kuner and C. Bernd Sucher . 1995, 2nd edition, German Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-423-03322-3, p. 323.
• Kay less: ‘There is more to you in life than given …’. Lexicon of the filmmakers emigrated from Germany and Austria from 1933 to 1945. An overall overview. P. 251 f., ACabus-Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8

1. ↑ Schwabinger Art Prize on Munich.de (accessed on August 5, 2011)