You are bidding on one handwritten, signed New Year's card ofActors, dramaturges, directors and theater directors Rudolph Sellner (1905-1990), director general and chief director of the German Opera in West Berlin.

pre-printedHappy New Year 1969 card, dated Deutsche Oper Berlin, December 1968.

With autograph dedication "Your Gustav Rudolf Sellner with heartfelt admiration!"

Motive:naive drawing ("World of Music - Europe") by British graphic artist Tom Eckersley (1914-1997) for UNICEF.

Format: 4.25" x 6.25"

Without envelope.

Condition: Map browned and unsightly stained (coffee stains?). Please notealso see the pictures!

Internal note: Kroll 2021-12-15 autograph autograph

About Rudolf Sellner andThomas Eckersley (Source: wikipedia):

Gustav Rudolph Sellner (* 25. May 1905 in Traunstein; † 8th. May 1990 in Königsfeld-Burgberg) was a German actor, dramaturge, director and theater manager. He emerged in the 1950s as a representative of a formally radically modernized, "instrumental theater".

Life

From actor to manager:Gustav Rudolf Sellner began his career as an actor, dramaturge and theater director at theaters in Mannheim under Francesco Sioli (1925-1927), in Gotha (1928/29) and Coburg (1929-1931). During this time, the work of the directors Otto Falckenberg, Leopold Jessner and Erwin Piscator had a lasting influence on him. Between 1932 and 1937 he worked as chief director, dramaturge and actor at the Landestheater Oldenburg.

on the 1st On 1 May 1933, Sellner joined the NSDAP (membership number 2,856,507). He then held the office of Gaustellesleiter in Oldenburg, was at times an SA candidate and head of the Thingspielstätte "Kultstätte Stedingsehre".

After Sellner had made a name for himself with several productions in line with National Socialist cultural policy, he was appointed theater director at the Oldenburg State Theater in 1937. Three years later he became director of the Stadttheater Göttingen (1940-1943). Sellner was then director of the municipal theater in Hanover (1943/44). From 1943 to 1945, Sellner was a cultural councilor in the Südhannover-Brunswick district.

From December 1943, Sellner also headed the Hanover Theater School in Hanover, which was newly founded under the umbrella of the Hanover State Music School. In April 1944, Adolf Hitler appointed Sellner General Manager of the Municipal Theater in Hanover. In October 1944, after many years of exemption from military service, Sellner was drafted into the Wehrmacht as a driver.

After the end of the Second World War, Sellner was taken prisoner by the US and was interned in two prison camps until 1947. During the denazification in 1949, a German tribunal classified him as a "follower" and "exonerated" in the 1950 revision.[3] From 1948 to 1951 he worked as a director in Kiel, Essen and Hamburg. In Kiel he staged Die Perser in 1948 and Bernarda Albas Haus in 1950, the latter play also in Darmstadt in 1961.

Director in Darmstadt and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin: From 1951 to 1961, Sellner was director of the Landestheater Darmstadt. Here he premiered Ernst Barlach's Der Graf von Ratzeburg in 1951. In Darmstadt, too, Sellner initially maintained a small theater school. When the state stopped the subsidies in 1954 due to a lack of placement success among the graduates, the theater school had to be closed. In 1954, Sellner directed Troilus and Cressida at the Berlin State Theater and in 1959 at the Ruhr Festival in Der Sturm. In Darmstadt he premiered Ionesco's murderers without payment in 1958, and at the Burgtheater he staged the classical cycle by Sophocles with King Oedipus (1960), Antigone (1961) and Elektra (1963).

At the time, Sellner was regarded as a representative classics director. In the early 1960s he turned to directing operas. From 1961 to 1972 he was general director and chief director of the Deutsche Oper in West Berlin. In 1964 he was honored with a bronze bust by the sculptor Heinz Spilker.

He staged, among others, Boris Godunow (1971, Berlin), the world premiere of Aribert Reimann's Melusine (1971, at the Schwetzingen Festival), Wozzeck (1971, Salzburg Festival), Idomeneo (1973, Salzburg Festival), Gottfried von Einem's Visit of the Old Lady (1975, National Theater Munich) and The Hunting Society (1974, Theater Basel).

Occasionally Sellner also worked for television and film. In Maximilian Schell's production of The Pedestrian, Sellner took on the title role, while Schell embodied his deceased son.

Sellner's first marriage was to the actress Manuela Bruhn from 1940, and his second marriage to Ilse Sellner from 1951. Two children were born of the first marriage.

factories

Gustav Rudolf Sellner: New German drama. Coburg 1929.

Gustav Rudolf Sellner, Werner Vienna: Theatrical landscape. Bremen 1962.

filmography

1955: Die Kluge (television, director)

1958: Die Bernauerin (television, director)

1957: Abu Kasem's Slippers (TV, Director)

1961: The Rhinos (TV, Director)

1965 The Silken Shoe (TV Series, Director)

1968: The Young Lord (Director)

1973: The Pedestrian (Actor)

1975: Views of a Clown (Actor)

1979: David (Actor)

1979: Dreamers (TV, Actor)

1980: Yesterday's Man (TV, Actor)

awards

1967: Berlin Art Prize

1965: Goethe plaque from the state of Hesse

1965: Order of Arts and Letters

1972: Grand Cross of Merit with Star

1974: Film Ribbon in Gold for The Pedestrian

exhibitions

1996: Gustav Rudolf Sellner. Director and Artistic Director, Theater Museum Düsseldorf (an exhibition of the Theater Studies Collection of the University of Cologne)

Thomas Eckersley (* 30. September 1914 in Lowton, Lancashire, United Kingdom; † 4 August 1997 London; also: Tom Eckersley) was a British graphic artist specializing in poster design.

Life:His artistic training began in 1930 at the Salford Art School, where his abilities were quickly recognized and he was awarded the Heywood Medal for the best student. In 1934 Eckersley moved to London and settled there, together with his fellow student Eric Lombers (1914-1978), as a freelance commercial artist. In 1937 he became a teacher at the Westminster School of Art. In 1941 his son Richard Eckersley († 2006), who also became a well-known graphic artist in the United States, was born.

After the Second World War, Thomas Eckersley worked freelance for numerous industrial companies such as British Petroleum; British Broadcasting Corporation; London Transportation; and governmental or independent institutions and associations such as UNICEF; World Wide Fund for Nature and for the General Post Office. He designed posters, designed magazines and illustrated books. In 1958 he became head of the graphics department (until 1977) at the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts. In 1964, his works were shown at the documenta III in Kassel in the graphics department.