Benedix, Roderich

(1811-1873)

   Playwright, actor. Benedix enjoyed extraordinary popularity as a comic playwright during the 1840s with plays such as Das bemooste Haupt (The Man with Moss Growing on His Head, 1841). Benedix began his career as an actor in his native Leipzig soon after graduating from school, spending a decade performing in several small provincial theaters. He gave up acting in favor of playwriting, though he continued working in theaters as a technical director, and he was much in demand as a public lecturer. By 1855 he became general director of the Frankfurt am Main City Theater, and he later held similar posts in Cologne and Leipzig. Benedix wrote more than 100 comedies, many of which remained in the repertoires of theaters throughout the 19th century. Among the most popular of them were Dr. Wespe (1843), Das Gefängnis (The Jail, 1859), Aschenbrödel (Cinderella, 1868), and perhaps funniest of them all, Die zärtlichen Verwandten (The Tenderhearted Relatives, 1866).