Impekoven, Anton Toni

(1881-1947)

   Playwright, actor, director, manager. Impekoven was among the most often performed playwrights in the Weimar Republic, though he frequently wrote with Carl Mathern. Their Die drei Zwillinge (The Three Twins) was the most frequently performed play of the 1919-1920 season, and their Luderchen (The Tart) the following season nearly equaled it. Impekoven began his career in 1900 as an actor in Berlin, where he worked with Franz Arnold and Ernst Bach until the outbreak of World War I. In 1914 he began working at the Frankfurt am Main City Theater. There he met Mathern, and both began to imitate the methods of Arnold and Bach. Their first success was Junggesellendämmerung (Twilight of the Bachelors) in 1918. Impekoven began directing in 1930, though his playwriting output had by then become meager. He remained in Frankfurt am Main for the rest of his life and became intendant of the Frankfurt am Main City Theaters shortly before his death.