Ivan Nagel

Ivan Nagel (born June 28, 1931 in Budapest) is a German theater scientist, critic and former theater director of Hungarian origin.

Life

Iven Nagel came from a Jewish family who had to disappear because of the Second World War and so survived the Holocaust. After the war, he want to study in Budapest. This would be refused to him by the communist rulers since he belonged to the citizens. He fled to Switzerland in 1948. Nagel lived and studied in the 1950s as a refugee first at Paris and Zurich then in Frankfurt am Main. In Frankfort he studied Philosophy under Theodor W. Adorno who later helped him to prevent the threatening deportation as an "undesirable asylant." After his studies, he worked as a theater critic in Munich and would become the chief drama director of the Munich Kammerspiele. In 1972, he would be named the intendant of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus (German Play House) in Hamburg and stay there until 1979. In his time, he collected numerous renowned producers around him. He would bacome famous from this time before all the productions of Peter Zadek who became himself the intendant of this stage in the 1980s. Nagel went to New York in 1981 and lived there until 1983. He went back to Germany with the idea of a theater festival which would give an overview about theater development of different culutres around the world. The festival, Theater des Welt (Theater of the World), takes place to this day in varying German cities and gave the German pulik the opportunity to see prominent theater productions like that of Peter Brook and Ariane Mnouchkine. Besides that, he was intendant of the Play house in Stuttgart and from 1989 to 1996 Professor of History and Aesthetics at the Berlin University of the Arts.

Besides that, he has become famous his theatre theory writings and portraits of theater directors like Fritz Kortner, Peter Stein and Peter Zadek. His book about Mozart's Opera "Autonomy and Mercy" has been translated into English, French and Japanese.

Achievements

Ivan Nagel received the 2000 Moses Mendelssohn Prize and the 2002 Verdienstorden des Landes Berlin (Order of Merit of the Land of Berlin). In 2003, he became honored with the Bundesverdienstkreuz and the Ernst Bloch Prize.

External links

* [http://www.berlin.de/landespressestelle/archiv/2003/08/11/14152/index.html Literature on and about Ivan Nagel] in the Catalog of the German National Library
* [http://www.planet-schule.de/ta/begleit/ta030706.htm Lecture about "Historical Paintings and Drama" in the Tele-academy of the Southwest Broadcast] (German)
* [http://www.berlin.de/landespressestelle/archiv/2003/08/11/14152/index.html Pressemeldung des Landes Berlin] (Press Announcement of the Land Berlin) to award the 2003 Bundesverdienstkreuz (German)
* [http://www.berlin.de/rbmskzl/rathausaktuell/archiv/2003/08/14/14335/index.html Ivan Nagel: Wowereit überreichte Bundesverdienstkreuz] (Ivan Nagel: Wowereit presents Bundesverdienstkreuz) (German)