Schmitt, Saladin

(1883-1951)

   Director. Schmitt is closely associated with the Bochum Schauspielhaus, which he ran from 1919 to 1949 as a kind of temple dedicated to the classics. He presented various cycles of plays by William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Heinrich von Kleist, usually in a format he called "Festival Weeks," which allowed audiences to see one play after another by a specific author. Schmitt's productions were usually done up in a somewhat pompous style, though they were always characterized by exactitude in delivery of dialogue. In some ways, Schmitt was a neo-Weimar Classicist, because his approach in many ways resembled Goethe's in Weimar.