Thimig, Hugo

(1854-1944)

   Actor. In a long and illustrious career closely associated with Vienna's Burgtheater, Thimig played nearly every production the theater presented. His range was extraordinary, playing more than 200 roles in his years at the Burg and appearing in thousands of performances. Thimig began his career in Dresden and Breslau, but by age 30 he was a permanent member of the Burg company. In 1881 he was named "court actor," granting him ceremonial privileges accorded few others, and in 1897 he began directing plays at the Burg—not because he possessed any specific talent for staging plays but because his acting had become so closely identified with the "Burg style." Thimig ran the Burgtheater from 1914 to 1918. He was most popular in comic roles, especially in productions of Carlo Goldoni, William Shakespeare, Johann Nepomuk Nestroy, and farces by Franz von Schönthan and Otto Ernst. His serious roles in plays by Calderon de la Barca, Henrik Ibsen, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Arthur Schnitzler were also crowd pleasers. Some critics complained that Thimig's work was out of date by the time he retired in the 1930s, but other cherished him as an embodiment of Viennese theater tradition. He was the father of Helene Thimig.