Matkowsky, Adalbert

(1858-1909)

   Actor. Matkowsky was in many ways a throwback to the acting of earlier days in the German theater, in particular to the time of Ludwig Devrient, with whom he was frequently compared. Matkowsky began his career at the Court Theater of Dresden at age 19, and his stunning good looks, deeply resonant voice, and athleticism marked him as a Dresden audience favorite in several heroic roles. He became a kind of celebrity in Dresden, playing Sigismund in Calderon de la Barca's Life Is a Dream, the title roles in Friedrich Schiller's Don Carlos and Heinrich von Kleist's Prinz Friedrich von Homburg (The Prince of Homburg), and William Shakespeare's Romeo and Prince Hal, among many others. Critics usually hailed Matkowsky's superb physique in such roles, while others found his flamboyance irresistible. His fiery presence in tradition-laden Dresden had by the mid-1880s become an irritation to the theater's aristocratic managers, however, and they fired him in 1886.

   Matkowsky soon found work in Hamburg and remained there for two years, but his greatest acclaim awaited him in Berlin, where the Royal Theater hired him in 1889. For the next two decades, Matkowsky maintained near-iconic status as Macbeth, Othello, Karl von Moor, Marc Antony, Coriolanus, and other "mature" heroic roles. Matkowsky's acting ran counter to the demands—becoming insistent by the end of the 19th century—for more "naturalistic" acting, but he was not a neo-Romantic. As he grew older, his physique became more stout and solid, counteracting his former reliance on depicting a hero's "suffering." He instead sought to reveal traits that redeemed the character; when playing Macbeth, for example, he emphasized the Scottish lord's bravery in battle. When playing Karl von Moor, he emphasized the "gruesome calm" of that "magnificent scoundrel."

   At no time did Matkowsky depart from preplanned patterns of artificiality in his performances, but his riveting stage presence conveyed to many audience members a kind of solitary force ready to take on the entire world. He seemed at times, in the great classical roles, ready to emerge victorious over the forces of fate and destiny. That kind of unpredictability, characteristic of his Berlin years, made his performances appear somehow improvised, yet they were carefully calculated to evoke a considerable empathic response. Most witnesses agreed that his effect on audiences was peculiarly stirring, like "a Vesuvius, on whose body flow downwards the blood-stained tears of Christ" (Carl Hagemann, Deutsche Bühnenkünstler um die Jahrhundertwende [Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1940], 119). Matkowsky's enormous popularity in Berlin, especially among Royal Theater audiences, was due in large part to his success at personifying the Wilhelmine ideal of manliness and valor; in many ways, he depicted a truly heroic and resolute nature, unsullied by modernist distractions like self-doubt or neurotic preoccupations. When he died at age 51 in Berlin, many lamented his passing, echoing, "Here was a Caesar—when comes such another?"