You are bidding on one signed certificate by the German (later Russian) landscape painter Andreas Roller (1805-1891).

Dated Berlin, 21. May 1833.

Andreas Roller was from 1831 to 1834 Königsstadt Theater in Berlin worked as a decorator and machinist (strong influence by Karl Friedrich Schinkel).

Transcription:

"Testimony, by which the undersigned hirmit confirms that Mr. Friederich Pape is engaged as a decoration painter at the Königstädten Theater.

During the time of his engagement, Mr. Pape not only distinguished himself through diligence and study in his art to the general amusement of the local public, but also through his moral conduct and moral character earned the respect and love of all noble-minded people who surrounded him , so that Mr. Pape deserves the highest recommendation as a person and artist.

Berlin, 21. May 1833.

Andreas Roller, decorator and machine master of the Königstadt Theater."

With a nice big seal.

The name "Pape" was corrected by hand from "Cardboard".

Scope: one side (31.3 x 21.2 cm).

Condition: testimonial folded; Paper stained, with small tears in the fold. Please also note the pictures!

About Andreas Roller and the Königsstädter Theater (source: Carl Maria von Weber complete edition, online version & wikipedia):

Andreas Leonhard Sebastian Roller (soot. Andrei Adamovicscooter) (* 8. January 1805 in Regensburg as the son of theater machinist Adam Roller; † 20. June 1891 in St. Petersburg), Theatermachinist and set designer, active in Vienna, Graz, Bratislava, Kassel, Berlin, St. Petersburg and Moscow.scooterattended the Art Academy and the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna; he was a student of Antonio De Pian and Hermann Neefe, among others, and belonged to the circle of acquaintances of Joseph Carl Rosenbaum. From 1821 he was his father's assistant in Vienna as a decorator and theater mechanic in Vienna; worked from autumn 1822 to Easter 1827 at the Josephstadt Theater as decorator and machinist. 1827/28 under Stöger in Graz, with his company also in Trieste and Pressburg. From 1828 at the Kassel Theater; strongly influenced by his colleague there, Johann Georg Primavesi. In Kassel on 20. September 1829 marriage to the singer L(o)uise Schwei(t)zer. From 1831 worked as a decorator and machinist at the Königsstadt Theater in Berlin; strong influence by Schinkel. From 1834 in St. Petersburg and Moscow prolific and celebrated set designer at the Imperial Theaters (retired Easter 1853), took Russian citizenship in 1873.

Andreas Leonard Roller (Russian: Андреас Леонгард Роллер, also known as "Андрей Адамович Роллер"; 8 January 1805, Regensburg - 20 June 1891, St. Petersburg) was a German-born Russian landscape painter and theatrical set designer, who served as a professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts.

Biography:His father was a theater mechanic and his uncle was a concertmaster. All of his siblings became involved in the theater in some creative capacity. At the age of five, his family moved to Vienna, where he later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. Before and during that time, he also studied the construction of theatrical machinery with his father, and set painting with Antonio de Pian [de]; among others.

He began working as a decorator and engineering assistant to his father in 1821. The following year, he became Chief Engineer at the Theater in der Josefstadt. After leaving that post, around 1830, he worked at theaters throughout Germany and Austria; also traveling to England, Scotland, and France. While in Berlin, he worked with the architect and designer, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who would have a lasting influence on his work.

In 1833, he was invited to St. Petersburg to become a decorator and chief engineer for the Imperial Theaters: a position he would hold until 1879, when illness forced him to resign. During those years, he designed some of the most significant productions in his adopted country, including the premier of A Life for the Tsar, by Mikhail Glinka, one of the first Russian operas, at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre. His technical contributions included the introduction of moving scenery and the so-called "ruin effect", where the stage set appears to collapse. In 1862 he created a version of La Forza del Destino, by Verdi, with thunder and the illusion of rain.

He was eventually involved in over 200 plays, operas and ballets, as well as producing over a thousand tableaux vivants. He also painted curtains and created a panorama of the city of Palermo that was displayed near the Mikhailovsky Manezh, but was destroyed by fire a mere two years later, in 1852. Several reconstruction projects made use of his expertise; notably those at the Winter Palace (1836) and the Hermitage (1856). That same year, he was named a professor of perspective at the Imperial Academy. He became a Russian citizen in 1873.

The Royal Municipal Theater (contemporarily always Königsstädter Theater) on Berlin's Alexanderplatz was a privately run and financed popular theater in contrast to the city's court theaters. The stage was dedicated to the folk play, which had had a special aura since the wars of liberation. Because the theater names in Berlin were associated with a license instead of a building, after 1850 the name was transferred to various buildings outside the royal city. The Wallner Theater was mainly known as the Königsstadt Theater.

Original building: The Congress of Vienna made the operation of the private Viennese theaters generally known. So endorsed King Friedrich Wilhelm III. a similar facility in Berlin. Ludwig Tieck campaigned for a standing stage for the cheerful theater genre to be able to surpass comedy booths in terms of quality. The Königsstädter Theater became the first bourgeois theater in Berlin. The founding financiers included the banker Joseph Mendelssohn and Wilhelm Christian Benecke von Gröditzberg.

The theater got its name from its location in the Berlin district of Königsstadt. It was built according to plans by Carl Theodor Ottmer and modeled on the Parisian boulevard theater and the Viennese suburban theater and opened on April 4th. Opened on August 18, 1824 by Karl Friedrich Cerf, who ran it until his death in 1845. The sponsorship was a joint-stock company that was heavily dependent on court subsidies.

With the accession of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. In 1840 the Royal Municipal Theater lost court subsidies and found it difficult to survive. In the March Revolution of 1848, seditious events took place in and around the theater. In the censorship-free period that followed, politically undesirable plays were staged, so that the theater was closed when censorship was reintroduced in 1851. In addition, in 1850 the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädter Theater (German Theater (Berlin)) was opened, in which farces and folk plays were also performed. In 1932 the Berlin administration had the original building, which had been used for other purposes since 1851 (see Alexanderplatz), demolished.

Repertoire: As is usual for this type of stage, the Königsstädter Theater cultivated a mixed repertoire of farce, melodrama, singspiel and pantomime. Typical products were Louis Angely's The Festival of Craftsmen (1829) or Franz Gläser's Des Adlers Horst (1832). It was not allowed to perform tragedies or serious operas. From 1825 Karl von Holtei worked as a playwright or theater writer. House author for the theater, whose contributions to the Königsstadt theater were published in 1832.[1] Carl Blum tried to introduce a German variant of vaudeville here. Playwrights like Angely, David Kalisch and Adolf Glaßbrenner shaped the Berlin local posse, whose wit was more political than that of their Viennese counterpart.

Famous actors and singers such as Josef Spitzeder, Heinrich Schmelka and Friedrich Beckmann helped the theater gain its reputation. Glaßbrenner and Beckmann created the corner stander Nante on this stage as the standing role of the Berlin local farce. For economic reasons, Italian (and French) operas were also staged. Henriette Sontag was the singing star for two years and excelled in roles by Gioachino Rossini. In 1833 Franz Grillparzer's and Conradin Kreutzer's opera Melusina was premiered.

"One enters the Konigstadt Theater. One chooses a seat in the first tier, because relatively fewer people come there; and if one is to see a farce one must sit comfortably, and not be remotely embarrassed by that artistic importance which causes many to be crammed into a theater to see a play as if it were a matter of eternity bliss. (...) The orchestra is ready, the curtain is already rising a little, then that other orchestra begins that doesn't obey the concert master's cane, but follows an inner drive, that other orchestra, the natural sound of the gallery that Beckmann has already in guessed the scenes. In general, I sat far back in the box, so I couldn't see the second tier and the gallery, which jutted out over my head like a peaked cap. This noise seems all the more adventurous. Everywhere I could see there was mostly emptiness; the great room of the theater turned into the stomach of that sea monster in which Jonas sat; the noise in the gallery was like a movement in the monster's viscera. From the moment the gallery starts playing music, no accompaniment is needed; because Beckmann animates them and they Beckmann.(...) So I lay in my box, thrown away like a bather's clothes, stretched out in front of that stream of laughter, wantonness and jubilation that roared past me incessantly: I could see nothing but of the theater room, hearing nothing but the noise in which I dwelt. Only now and then did I get up, watch Beckmann and laugh so tired that I sank down again at the edge of the rushing river from exhaustion.”

– Soren Kierkegaard: Repetition

Wallner-Theater: Rudolf Cerf inherited the license and thus the famous theater name from his father. From 1852 to 1854 he renamed the former building of Circus Renz at Charlottenstraße 90 Königsstädtes Theater (see Berlin Theater).

In 1855, the actor and writer Franz Wallner (1810-1876) acquired the license to operate the cultural institution. His building on Blumenstraße, previously a theater in Concordia, was called the Königsstädtes Vaudeville Theater until 1858. Kapellmeister was August Conradi. After Cerf had withdrawn, the facility was given the name Wallner Theater or Wallner Theater in 1858. Wallner's theater[4], which she kept until 1864. It was still mainly devoted to local farce and had its heyday with actors like Karl Helmerding and Anna Schramm. The house was at Blumenstrasse 9b, the entrance was on Grünen Weg. The exclamation “Oh, you green nine!” is therefore often attributed to this theatre.

In 1864, Wallner had a new Wallner Theater built a little further south, at Wallner-Theater-Strasse 35, based on plans by the architect Eduard Titz. After its inauguration, it was considered one of the largest (for 1200 spectators) and most beautiful in Berlin.[5] Rudolf Bial became Kapellmeister here. Composers as diverse as Paul Lincke, Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek and Victor Hollaender worked as conductors in the new Wallner Theater. Theodor Herzl made his debut as a comedy author in 1888 with the play His Highness.[6] Farces like Pension Schöller (1890) were premiered. Actors at the Wallner Theater included Ernst Formes and Ernestine Wegner.

In 1894, under Raphael Löwenfeld, the building was given the new name Schiller-Theater Ost. Camilla Spira or Lotte Lenya played on this stage after the First World War. After an unsuccessful interlude as a National Socialist Volkstheater, in which on 10. March 1929, the play Blood Seed by Joseph Goebbels was premiered,[7] the house became the third Piscator stage in 1930 and was thus a location for multimedia avant-garde theatre. The time-critical piece § 218 - tormented people by Karl Credé-Hoerder was performed here. During the Second World War, the theater served as a record studio, before the end of the war it fell to rubble and ashes. Only the Wallnertheaterstraße reminded of the former cultural institution until around 1970. There is now a sports field at the site of the theater.

The old Wallner Theater, on the other hand, became an inn with a club theater. Wallner leased it to Theodor Lebrun in 1868, who renamed it the Bundeshallen-Theater. In the following year, 1869, a newly opened theater on Greifswalder Straße was renamed the Königsstädtes Theater. In 1872 the house on Blumenstrasse was renamed the Königsstadt Theater. The names were often changed. Since 1871, the Residenz Theater has been directly adjacent to the west. Actors who later went into film, such as Harry Walden or Hans Mierendorff, began their careers here. In 1910 it was converted into a cinema. Next to it was a dance palace, the area was a nightlife district of the city. – Only one house from the 1920s (Singerstrasse 1) on the site of the “green nine” with a remnant of the old Blumenstrasse is reminiscent of this lost part of Berlin.

Theater directors (selection)

1824-1845: Karl Friedrich Cerf

1855–around 1860: Franz Wallner[4]

1879-1880: Otto von Schimmelpfennig[8]

1884–1887: Anton Anno[9]

1888-1904: Raphael Lowenfeld

1904-1912: Richard Alexander

1912: Ferry Sikla