Mitterwurzer, Friedrich

(1844-1897)

   Actor. Mitterwurzer was among the most idiosyncratic of German actors in the 19th century, usually eschewing grand gestures and grandiloquence of speech while concentrating on a character's "inner life." He appeared in many of the German-speaking world's best theaters, becoming most widely known at Vienna's Burgtheater. But unlike most other great stars, Mitterwurzer made a name for himself in smaller roles, in which he invested an unusual amount of individuation. Mitterwurzer played Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, for example, without the impe-riousness common among actors of his generation; Mitterwurzer's Caesar was a man "deeply unsure of himself, crippled by superstition and paranoia" (Simon Williams, German Actors ofthe 18th and 19th Centuries [Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985], 134). Mitterwurzer's first Burgtheater engagement came in 1867 as a guest performer. In 1871 Franz von Dingelstedt made him a member of the company. There he remained for nine years, specializing in plays by Adolf Wilbrandt, Karl Töpfer, Salomon Mosenthal, and Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer. He left the Burg in 1880 but remained in Vienna, working in various commercial venues. In 1886 Mitterwurzer began his numerous tours throughout Germany and in the United States, where in New York he alternated "great" roles (Richard III, Franz von Moor, Hamlet, and Faust) with lesser-known roles in farces. His most successful of the latter was the preposterous theater director Immanuel Striese in Franz von Schönthan's Der Raub der Sabinerinnen (The Rape ofthe Sabine Women), which played to standing-room-only audiences on Broadway for three consecutive weeks.