Boleslaw Barlog

Boleslaw Barlog
Barlog in 1946
Born	Boleslaw Stanislaus Barlog (1906-03-28)28 March 1906 Breslau
Died	17 March 1999(1999-03-17) (aged 92) Berlin
Nationality	German
Occupation	Stage and film director

Boleslaw Stanislaus Barlog (28 March 1906 – 17 March 1999) was a German stage, film, and opera director primarily known for his work in reviving the theatrical life of Berlin after World War II. From 1951 until 1972 he served as the intendant of the Staatliche Schauspielbühnen Berlin, the municipal theatre company of West Berlin that at its height employed over 80 actors and operated three theatrical venues—Schiller Theater, Schiller Theater Werkstatt, and Schlosspark Theater.

Barlog was born in Breslau (then a city in the German Empire and now the Polish city of Wrocław). He was the son of a lawyer who later relocated the family to Berlin where Barlog received his secondary school education and initially worked as bookseller. He then began working as an assistant director to Karlheinz Martin and Heinz Hilpert at the Volksbühne theatre in Berlin. He lost his job there in 1933 after the Nazi Party took control of Germany, and worked in casual jobs for several years before obtaining a position as an assistant director for the German film company Universum Film AG. By the 1940s, he was directing his own films at Universum and at Terra Film.

After World War II ended, Barlog returned to stage direction and worked to re-build the once-vibrant theatrical life of Berlin, actively lobbying, along with many other artists, to minimize the impact of Cold War tensions on the theatres, opera houses, and concert halls in the now-divided city. Most of Berlin's main theatres had been badly damaged or destroyed during the war and many of the first post-war performances were given in old cinemas or in the small, relatively unscathed, Schlosspark Theater on the outskirts of West Berlin. Barlog became the manager of the Schlosspark Theatre in 1945 and re-opened it with his production of Curt Goetz's Hokuspokus. Other plays which he directed there in the immediate post-war period were Romain Rolland's Le Jeu de l'amour et de la mort (1945), Shakespeare's As You Like It (1946) and The Taming of the Shrew (1947), Holm and Abbott's Three Men on a Horse (1946), Gogol's Marriage (1947) and Zuckmayer's Des Teufels General (1948).