Koch, Heinrich Gottfried

(1703-1775)

   Actor, designer, manager. Koch was a reformer strongly influenced by Caroline Neu-ber; many consider him a forerunner of August Wilhelm Iffland. He was one of the most versatile German performers in the 18th century, with talents in several areas and a strong desire to transform the German theater into an art form—a sometimes formidable task even after the reforms of the 1730s were in place. Koch began acting in 1728 with the Neuber troupe, and with them he began playwriting and designing costumes. Indeed, much of his contribution to reform the German theater came from his determination to design and build costumes suitable for the individual plays the actors performed; before Koch, Neuber's and most other troupes had employed stock costumes of French style and derivation. Koch also designed and built scenery for Neuber, and he was reported to have been her best actor in the title role of Molière's The Miser. Koch formed his own troupe in 1749, and with this troupe he did several Gotthold Ephraim Lessing productions in the later 1750s that Lessing himself praised. He dissolved the troupe in the early 1760s and joined Konrad Ekhof with the remnants of the Johann Friedrich Schönemann troupe in Hamburg; when Ekhof departed, Koch assumed leadership of the troupe and took it to Leipzig, where he opened the new Schauspielhaus with Johann Elias Schlegel's patriotic play about the Teutons, Hermann. Johann Wolfgang Goethe saw the production when Koch was on tour with it and praised the artistry Koch devoted to it, "despite his advanced years." Koch spent his remaining time in Berlin, where he purchased the Theater in der Behrenstrasse in 1771; there he continued his efforts to mount detailed productions, which many Berliners recalled 25 years later when Iffland was in his Berlin heyday. Koch's last production at the Theater in der Behrenstrasse was Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen.