Karl Heinz Stroux (25 February 1908 – 2 August 1985) was a German actor, film and

theatre director A theatre director or stage director is a professional in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production such as a play, opera, dance, drama, musical theatre performance, etc. by unifying various endeavors a ...

, and

theatre manager Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

. As the director of the

Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus The is a theatre building and company in Düsseldorf. The present building with two major auditoria was designed by the architect and built between 1965 and 1969. It opened in 1970. History The theatre dates back to 1747 when during the ...

from 1955 to 1972 he opened the new building in 1970.(12 August 1985
Gestorben / Karl Heinz Stroux
''

Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

Career

Born Karl-Heinz Stroux, the son of a physician, in Hamborn (now a district in the city of

Duisburg Duisburg () is a city in the Ruhr metropolitan area of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Lying on the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr rivers in the center of the Rhine-Ruhr Region, Duisburg is the 5th largest city in Nor ...

), he studied in Berlin, history and philosophy until 1930. Parallel, he studied acting at the ' of the theatre. From 1928 to 1930 he worked as an assistant to stage directors

Karlheinz Martin Karlheinz Martin (May 6, 1886 – January 13, 1948) was a German stage and film director, best known for his expressionist productions. After enjoying success with experimental productions in Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg, Martin went to Berlin, ...

and

Jürgen Fehling Jürgen or Jurgen is a popular masculine given name in Germany, Estonia, Belgium and the Netherlands. It is cognate with George. Notable people named Jürgen include: A * Jürgen Ahrend (born 1930), German organ builder *Jürgen Alzen (born 1 ...

, and as an actor. From 1930 to 1934 he worked at several Berlin theatres including Deutsches Theater and the where he staged

Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...

's ' as a studio production. By the late 1940s he had been a senior director at several German theatres including ones in

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

(

Hebbel-Theater The Hebbel-Theater (Hebbel Theatre) is a historic theatre building for plays in Berlin-Kreuzberg, Germany. It has been a venue of the company Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) from 2003. The theatre, with approximately 800 seats, was built by Oskar Kaufmann i ...

) and

Wiesbaden Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...

. From 1951 to 1955 he was the senior director at Berlin's

Schiller Theater The Schiller Theater is a theatre building in Berlin, Germany. It is located in the central Charlottenburg district at Bismarckstraße 110, near Ernst-Reuter-Platz. Opened in 1907, the building served as a second venue for the Prussian State ...

and Schlosspark Theater. At the Schlosspark, he directed the German premiere of

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...

's '' Waiting for Godot'' in 1953 with the author in the audience.Craig, George; Fehsenfeld, Martha Dow; Overbeck, Lois More (eds.) (2011)
''The Letters of Samuel Beckett:, Volume 2; Volumes 1941–1956''
p. 718. Cambridge University Press Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus

In 1955 he succeeded

Gustaf Gründgens Gustaf Gründgens (; 22 December 1899 – 7 October 1963), born Gustav Heinrich Arnold Gründgens, was one of Germany's most famous and influential actors of the 20th century, and artistic director of theatres in Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Hamburg ...

as ' of the . He staged the premiere in German of Beckett's ''

Happy Days ''Happy Days'' is an American television sitcom that aired first-run on the ABC network from January 15, 1974, to July 19, 1984, with a total of 255 half-hour episodes spanning 11 seasons. Created by Garry Marshall, it was one of the most succ ...

'' in Düsseldorf in 1961. He also worked closely with the playwrights

Eugène Ionesco Eugène Ionesco (; born Eugen Ionescu, ; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century. Ionesco inst ...

and

Heinrich Böll Heinrich Theodor Böll (; 21 December 1917 – 16 July 1985) was a German writer. Considered one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers, Böll is a recipient of the Georg Büchner Prize (1967) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1972). ...

. His actors included

Bernhard Minetti Bernhard Theodor Henry Minetti (26 January 1905 – 12 October 1998) was a German actor. He appeared in 50 films between 1931 and 1996 but is mostly known for his distinguished stage career. Selected filmography *''The Murderer Dimitri Kara ...

and Ernst Schröder,

Elisabeth Bergner Elisabeth Bergner (22 August 1897 – 12 May 1986) was an Austrian-British actress. Primarily a stage actress, her career flourished in Berlin and Paris before she moved to London to work in films. Her signature role was Gemma Jones in '' Esca ...

Elisabeth Flickenschildt Elisabeth Ida Marie Flickenschildt (16 March 1905 – 26 October 1977) was a German actress, producer and author. She appeared in dozens of German language films and television productions between 1935–1976. Flickenschildt was born in Hamburg ...

Paula Wessely Paula Anna Maria Wessely (20 January 1907 – 11 May 2000) was an Austrian theatre and film actress. ''Die Wessely'' (literally "The Wessely"), as she was affectionately called by her admirers and fans, was Austria's foremost popular postwar actr ...

Ernst Deutsch Ernst Deutsch, also known as Ernest Dorian (16 September 1890 – 22 March 1969), was a Jewish Austrian actor. In 1916, his performance as the protagonist in the world première of Walter Hasenclever's Expressionist play '' The Son'' in Dresde ...

and

Fritz Kortner Fritz Kortner (born Fritz Nathan Kohn; 12 May 1892 – 22 July 1970) was an Austrian stage and film actor and theatre director. Life and career Kortner was born in Vienna as Fritz Nathan Kohn into a Jewish family. He studied at the Vienna A ...

. His production of Ionesco's ' was performed in the first ''

Berliner Theatertreffen The Berliner Theatertreffen (''Theatertreffen'' : neologism literally meaning "theatre encounter" or "theatre meeting" ) is a two-week long theatre festival occurring yearly in May in Berlin, Germany. It is a product of the Berliner Festspiele ...

'' (Berlin theatre meeting) in 1964. He also staged works by

Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are '' All My Sons'' (1947), ''Death of a Salesman'' ( ...

and

Sławomir Mrożek Sławomir Mrożek (29 June 1930 – 15 August 2013) was a Polish dramatist, writer and cartoonist. Mrożek joined the Polish United Workers' Party during the reign of Stalinism in the People's Republic of Poland, and made a living as a politica ...

.(31 July 2008
''Karl Heinz Stroux zum 100. Geburtstag''
musenblaetter.de During his era, a new building of the was built that he opened in 1970. Occasionally he still acted, for example as narrator in Shakespeare's

Perikles Pericles (; grc-gre, Περικλῆς; c. 495 – 429 BC) was a Greek politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Pelop ...

at age 77. Stroux died in Düsseldorf. His sons pursued similar careers: (born 1943) is also a theatre director,APA (5 June 2007)
"Thomas Stroux erhält Goldenes Verdienstzeichen der Republik Österreich"
Retrieved 8 July 2013 and (born 1945) is also an artist, theatre director and an actor.
/ref> On the occasion of his centenary in 2008, Düsseldorf arranged an exhibition of his 50 years of work for the theatre.

Filmography

* * * * * * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stroux, Karl Heinze 20th-century German male actors German theatre managers and producers German theatre directors 1908 births 1985 deaths Knights Commander of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany