Wanderbühne
When this was not the case, the Prinzipal would take responsibility for these matters in addition to his usual tasks such as: assigning roles, leading rehearsals and overseeing the theatrical business.
Furthermore, a training in singing was also part of the actor’s skill-set, as they were required to perform a form of German musical theatre known as Singspiele (comparable to early opera).
Troupes that did not receive performance rights had to spread out to new areas, which led to the Wanderbühne reaching far into Russia and into Baltic regions where parts of the population spoke German.
The private travelling theatrical troupes oriented their programme of productions almost exclusively towards an often uneducated public who were seeking humorous entertainment; these Wanderbühne were dependent upon the donations and entrance fees paid by such audiences.
Following the style of the famous Italian wanderers such as those of the Girolamo Bon, German operatic groups arose, working as entrepreneurial businesses.
[1] The theatrical landscape of the German-speaking regions in the middle-ages and the Renaissance period was characterised by religiously motivated spiritual performances, which were originally directed or led by clergy, and later also used as representations of civic service in the Middle Ages.
The purpose of Mystery and Passion Play, Fastnachtspiele, or the Jesuit and the Protestant school of scholarship lay above all in the conversion, the instruction and the moral education of society.
The German amateur-theatres enjoyed great popularity and remained long after the end of their prominence, even though they lost importance with the emergence of the first foreign travelling theatrical groups.
The Commedia dell'arte performances of the Italian theatre groups developed into a sort of pantomime whose comic action was mediated by masks and exaggerated gestures and movement.
By the end of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the English comedians of the Elizabethan Theatre moved across Denmark and the Netherlands into the German-speaking areas.
As a result, there was a struggle between these and the Italian theatre groups for the attention of the German public, which was complicated by the arrival of French troupes in the 18th century.
This development began with the inclusion of German actors in the ensembles of English troupes, which gradually led to purely German-speaking travelling theatrical groups.
One example of this was the Hochdeutsche Hofcomödianten and their successor groups, which brought important innovations in the landscape of the Wanderbühne: longer, more literarily elaborate plays, dramas and female actors for women's roles.
As a result, the German Wanderbühne, especially the Neubauer group run by the Prinzipal and stage reformer Caroline Neuber, began to stick more closely to the poetical models of the mostly French theatrical texts.
It was only with Conrad Ekhof and other well-known traveling actors of the time that a certain, self-developed, realism and a beginning of ensemble performance gradually developed in the middle and at the end of the 18th century.
In addition, during the same period, the first national theatres were established with fixed theatrical ensembles, in which most of the German travelling troupes rose to prominence over time.
The privately financed Hamburgische Entreprise, where Gotthold Ephraim Lessing worked as dramaturge, was only able to survive between 1767 and 1769, but by the end of the 1820s, there were already over 65 regularly-recorded theatres in the German-speaking area.
Richard Wagner did not seem to be an actor like his siblings (though he was obliged to take part in the ballet in his first contract as a chordirigent in Würzburg), but he was still engaged with a travelling troupe in the 1830s in Bad Lauchstädt.
In this transitional period, the poet and actor Karl von Holtei describes the decline of the wandering troops in his novel Der letzte Komödiant (1863).
Helmut Qualtinger portrayed this type of performer with his cabaret Der Menschheit Würde ist in eure Hand gegeben (based on Friedrich Schiller's poem ‘The Artists’) – in which two small-scale actors discuss their stage roles during the period of National Socialism in the German-speaking theatres of Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe.
Self-promotion as a profession, on the other hand, daily self-surrender against payment - for amusement or for a tragic sensation for the sake of other spectators - appeared at first to be questionable and beyond all moral norms.
The actors came to a large extent from acting families, but also increasingly from circles with some education; for example, students – since reading was an important basic requirement of the profession.
The acting troupes were also the first commissioners to employ the young German dramaturges (such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing) and thus helped the German-language drama to have its breakthrough.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, individual actresses successfully managed a remarkable social rise, whether that involved marrying admirers from upper-classes, or becoming Prinzipals and dramatists themselves.
Prinzipal Friederike Caroline Neuber has the reputation of having banished Hanswurst from the German stage (although she only managed to suppress him partially because, for economic reasons, she could not do without the character in her own group).
