Döring, Theodor

(Theodor Häring, 1801-1878)

   Actor. Döring was a warehouse clerk in Berlin before he began working with the Urania theater club and later joined a troupe of strolling players in the early 1820s. By 1825 he was working regularly at a theater in Bamberg, where he used the name Döring for the first time. The next year saw him in Breslau, and from there he had successive engagements as a young character actor in Mainz, Mannheim, Hamburg, Stuttgart, and Hannover. In 1846, Berlin Royal Theater director Karl Theodor Küstner saw Döring's performances and hired him to a lifetime contract. Döring remained in Berlin for the rest of his career, praised for his remarkably supple movement, versatile voice, and gift for comic portrayals. He was Berlin's greatest Falstaff in the 1850s and 1860s, though he also played Orgon in Tartuffe, as well as numerous comic parts in plays by Roderich Benedix, Louis Angely, and Eduard von Bauernfeld. In 1872 Döring received the Iffland Ring, and three years later he became the first German actor to be awarded the Order of the Red Eagle from the German emperor.