Karlheinz Martin
Encyclopedia
Karlheinz Martin 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, where he premiered Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller was a left-wing German playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays and serving as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, for six days.- Biography :...

's anti-war drama, Transfiguration (Die Wandlung) on September 30, 1919. Performed in a hall seating fewer than 300 spectators, the production used the intimacy of the space to drive home the horrors of Toller's script. The sets were jagged flats
Flats (theatre)
Flats, short for Scenery Flats, are flat pieces of theatrical scenery which are painted and positioned on stage so as to give the appearance of buildings or other background. They are also called backdrops or backcloths....

 placed against blackness, and lit with harsh white spotlights. Scenes ended in blackouts not, as was customary at the time, with the curtain falling. Fritz Kortner
Fritz Kortner
Fritz Kortner was an Austrian-born stage and film actor and theatre director.Kortner was born in Vienna as Fritz Nathan Kohn. He studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. After graduating, he joined Max Reinhardt in Berlin in 1911 and then Leopold Jessner in 1916. Also in that year...

 became famous for his intense portrayal of the young hero.

Martin turned to film in 1920, when he directed a cinematic adaptation of one of the most celebrated expressionist dramas, Georg Kaiser
Georg Kaiser
Friedrich Carl Georg Kaiser, called Georg Kaiser, was a German dramatist.-Biography:Kaiser was born at Magdeburg....

's From Morn to Midnight (Von morgens bis mitternachts) with actor Ernst Deutsch
Ernst Deutsch
Ernst Deutsch aka Ernest Dorian was an Austrian actor. In 1916 he played the protagonist in the world première of Walter Hasenclever's Expressionist play The Son in Dresden to great acclaim...

 as the Cashier who embezzles money from a bank and goes on a desperate search for meaning in his life in a nightmarish metropolis.

After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, Martin revived Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

's The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...

in Berlin, and
premiered Georg Kaiser
Georg Kaiser
Friedrich Carl Georg Kaiser, called Georg Kaiser, was a German dramatist.-Biography:Kaiser was born at Magdeburg....

's pacifist drama, The Soldier Tanaka (Der Soldat Tanaka).

Further reading

  • Michael Patterson. The Revolution in German Theatre: 1900-1933. (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).
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