Theater creator Paulus Manker is 65 years old

The son of theater director Gustav Manker and actress Hilda Sokor, who died in 2017, who reportedly gave the “killer robbery” his first career choice when he was six and was sometimes called “little Manker” even when he was 30. – the year-old, she studied at the Max Reinhardt Seminar and soon acted at the Action Center on the stage. He acted in Hans Holmann’s production for the Wiener Festwochen “The Last Days of Mankind” as well as at the Burgtheater in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich.

Collaboration with Peter Zadek and Joshua Sobol

He has worked repeatedly with director Peter Sadek, who Manker, according to his own statement, had also played Sarsour. Among other things, in such productions as “Lulu”, “The Merchant of Venice” or “Hamlet”. Manker also worked with Israeli author Joshua Sobol for many years, making his debut with himself in a leading role at the Vienna Volkstaeter and filming it.

In 1995 he staged the play Der Vater, written by Sobol and Niklas Frank, at the Wiener Festwochen in Vienna. The following year, Sobol’s “Alma – A Show Biz ans Ende” premiered. The success portrayed by Manker, he saw 140 sold-out shows at Berkersdorf by 2001 and has already toured to locations in Venice, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Berlin, Jerusalem and Semmering.

Burgtheater, Ronacher and movie roles

Manker’s Burgtheater productions of “Liliom” (1993) and “The Threepenny Opera” (1996) were huge hits with audiences. With “F @ lco – A Cyber ​​Show”, he also tried his hand at musical theater in 2000 at the Ronacher in Vienna. The piercing actor’s debut was in Haneke’s Lemminge (1979), other films followed with Haneke, the first His directed by Schmutz, which premiered in Cannes in 1985.

In 2006, Manker slipped into Michael Gloger’s Slumming as a homeless man who is taken from Vienna to the East by two boys while he’s asleep and left there. In Elisabeth Scharang’s Unterweger “Jack”, he is seen as a prison psychologist. Last fall, he played a former Nazi officer in Thomas Roth’s thriller Schächten.

Conflicts in the “Alma” group and the civil process

A number of events were added to the biography, which were reflected in the media more on the chronicle pages. In scenes from “Alma” there were many casualties on set, and audiences weren’t always safe from Manker’s grip. He was, in fact, “a kind-hearted, tender and lovable person, every mother-in-law’s dream”, as he once asserted. “But no one should be determined to provoke me.”

In 2016, Manker had to answer in court allegations of unauthorized commissioning of a locomotive, property damage, and bodily harm, but was eventually acquitted. It doesn’t always seem easy with colleagues either. In 2017, Manker was fired the day before the premiere at the Bad Hersfeld Festival after coaching criticism led to an “irreparable quarrel” with artistic director Dieter Wedel.

On the other hand, his great theatrical visions will soon be admired again: From June 23rd, Manker’s long-running ballad “Alma” can be experienced at the recently renovated Südbahnhotel am Semmering.