Schramm, Siegfried Friedrich

Artistic Director

Born: 26.01.1900 in Frankfurt am Main

died: 25.01.1981 in Basel

Schramm studied law in Frankfurt am Main and received his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1922. Already in his final semesters, he was drawn to Gustav Hartung's (1887-1946) Darmstadt reform stage. Heinz Tietjen (1881-1967) became aware of the young acting and directing talent and brought Schramm to Breslau. In Bochum, he came into contact with opera and in 1926 became head of the opera department in Düsseldorf.

After he was dismissed in 1934 as a so-called half-Jew and expelled from the Reichstheaterkammer, he took up the same position at the Basel Stadttheater. In 1937, he moved to the New German Theater in Prague, where he staged "Oberon" for the first time and met Ernst Krenek. In 1939, he fled to France via Hungary, Italy and Switzerland and settled near Grasse as a fruit grower. He was interned several times. In 1946, Schramm was able to work as a director in Bern and then again in Basel from 1950 onwards.

In 1953, he was offered an artistic director position for the first time in Wiesbaden. As director of the International May Festival, he intensified his contacts with Eastern Europe. As an intellectual successor to Paul Bekker, he set modern accents in the aesthetically backward-looking post-war era in Wiesbaden. He returned to Basel in 1962.

Schramm was awarded the Goethe Plaque of the State of Hesse and the Grand Cross of Merit.