Alexander Lang

Alexander Lang
Born	(1941-09-24)24 September 1941 Erfurt, Gau Thuringia, Germany
Died	31 May 2024(2024-05-31) (aged 82) Berlin, Germany
Education	National Theatre School
Occupations	Actor Theatre director
Spouse	Annette Reber
Children	3

Alexander Lang (24 September 1941 – 31 May 2024) was a German actor and stage director.

Early life

Lang was born in Erfurt a couple of years after the outbreak of the Second World War. His father was an architect. He attended the Humboldt School in the city before embarking, in 1961–62 on an apprenticeship as a sign and poster designer. Erfurt was then part of the German Democratic Republic. From 1962 Lang workes as a stage technician at the Theater Erfurt. He then studied at the National Theatre School in the Niederschöneweide quarter of East Berlin from 1964.

Acting

During his final year of study, Lang worked on the play Der Schuhu und die fliegende Prinzessin by Peter Hacks. He went to work for Wolfram Krempel at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, moved to the Berliner Ensemble in 1967, and to the Deutsches Theater in 1969, where he built his reputation as an actor. His first major role there was Ferdinand in Schiller's Kabale und Liebe in 1972, followed by Paul Bauch in Volker Braun's Die Kipper in 1973, Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest in 1974, the title role in Kleist's Der Prinz von Homburg in 1975 and the title role in Heiner Müller's Philoktet in 1977. He appeared in the monumental production of Faust part II staged in 1983 by Friedo Solter.

Lang's film and television appearances were relatively infrequent, including a prominent roles in Konrad Wolf's Solo Sunny and the title role in Peter Vogel's television adaptation of Stephan Hermlin's short story Der Leutnant Yorck von Wartenburg in 1981.

Directing

Lang began directing drama productions at Deutsches Theater in the late 1970s, starting with his own, Das Biest des Monsieur Racine oder Das Wunder der Phantasie (1977 - based on a "Bande dessinée" comic-strip story by Tomi Ungerer). H directed Horribilicribrifax by Andreas Gryphius in 1978 and Ernst Toller's Der entfesselte Wotan in 1979.

The city of Berlin awarded its Goethe Prize to Lang in 1981. In 1985 he received the National Prize of East Germany, and in 1986 he became a member of the Academy of Arts. In May 1986, he announced that he was taking a three-year break from the Deutsches Theater and started a stint as a guest director at the Münchner Kammerspiele. Here, in 1987, he staged a double programme of Racine's Phèdre and Kleist's Penthesilea. His next planned production was a presentation of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Berlin State Opera, but this production was indefinitely postponed. In 1987 Lang returned to Munich and played in was directed by Bernard-Marie Koltès in Koltès' In der Einsamkeit der Baumwollfelder.

In February 1988, Lang was recruited by Jürgen Flimm to the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, where he became the resident theatre director in succession to Jürgen Gosch. His first production there was Goethe's Clavigo in 1988. His next Hamburg productions were of Rückkehr in die Wüste by Bernard-Marie Koltès and Der Hofmeister by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. In addition, in 1989, he worked at theNederlands Toneel as a guest producer of Chekhov's Three Sisters.

Eight months before protesters breached the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Lang had been able to cross to West Berlin where he took a job as senior director at the Schiller Theater. At the same time, together with Alfred Kirchner, Volkmar Clauß und Vera Sturm, he was a co-director of the National Drama Theatre in the eastern half of the still divided city. In 1990 at the Schiller Theatre he staged (with Bernhard Minetti) Themes from the Grimm Brothers, as well as Schiller's The Robbers. The next year, with the city now reunified, he presented a new production of Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris and another of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid.

In 1993, the Schiiler Theatre company was closed down for financial reasons: shortly before this happened, in April, Lang returned to Deutsches Theater. During the next few years, his productions here included Karate-Billi kehrt zurück (1992) by Klaus Pohl, Oedipus Rex (1996) by Sophocles, Goethe's Torquato Tasso (1996) and Voltaire Rousseau (2000 - in which Lang himself took the lead role) by Jean-François Prévands.

Subsequently, Lang worked as a guest director with the Comédie-Française in Paris (Kleist's Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, 1994, Lessing's Nathan the Wise, 1999, Goethe's Faust I, 1999). He also did work with the Munich Kammerspiele Theatre where in 1996 he directed Herbert Achternbusch's Der letzte Gast, and at the Bregenzer Festspiele. At the Munich Residenz Theatre he directed Tankred Dorst's comedy, Wegen Reichtum geschlossen (1998), at the Leipzig Playhouse Hebbel's Die Nibelungen (2000), and at the National Theatre in Weimar, Hamlet (2001). Under Volker Hesse at Berlin's Maxim Gorki Theater, Lang staged several more productions: Gorki's The Lower Depths (2003), Ewers' Das Wundermärchen von Berlin (2005) and Kleist's The Broken Jug (2006).

Lang also appeared again as an actor at the Maxim Gorki Theater, in 2005, in Volker Hesse's production of Vor Sonnenuntergang (Before sunset).

Death

Lang died in Berlin on 31 May 2024, at the age of 82.

External links

• Alexander Lang discography at Discogs
• Alexander Lang at IMDb