Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1992 - 50

SEVEN EDITORS IN
EIGHTY· FIVE YEARS
TOP ROW:
C. A. SCHICK (1907·1909)
FRITZ BRANDT 11909-1914)
MAX HASEIT (1909-1914)
ADOlf UNNEBACH
(1914-1920 &1936·1945)
BOTTOM ROW:
FRITZ HANSING (1920·1936)
WAlTER UNRUH (1949·1970)
HElMUT GROSSER (1971- )

of many other offices and honors. At his
retirement, he recounted ro us some
highlights of his active theatre life, which
has spanned nearly half a century.
Shordy after Grager's birrh in 1927
his father died. As a half orphan, educated in one of those elite schools of the
Hider years, he was "pur in a uniform at
age ten and stayed in ir for eight years."
Living in the Soviet occupation zone, this
"past" prevented him after the war fram
realizing his original plans of srudying
languages and hisrory and becoming a
journalist. "Rather by accident" he got ro
the thearre.
"In those days I worked in open-air
'disassembly.' All facrories in the largescale indusrry were being taken aparr,
and everything that was useable was
shipped [Q the Soviet Union. A school
friend asked me if I wouldn't rather work
with him as a stage technician at the thearre. In those days it was all the same ro
me; the mood was a liule bit gloomy. 0
it didn't marrer what one would be
doing, and in the thearre I at least had a
roof over my head."
The thearre, an opererra thearre in
Dresden, was just being re-built under
Georg Brandt (an offspring of the theatre
technicians dynasty of the Brandts, ro
which also Richard \'\!agner's co-worker
Carl Brandt belonged). He had this task
assigned ro him for an unskilled workers'
pay, in a way as punitive labor in the
framework of a "positive denazification."
Brandt became aware of Croger, confided in him with regard ro his plans ro go
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ro Berlin, and established him in relatively shorr time ro be his successor. The 24year-old Croger (with some bureaucratic
difficulties, as one had ro be at least 25
years old) rook the examinations for
stage-and later lighting-master and
became the then-youngest technical
direcror in Germany.
Croger's flight ro the \'\!est occurred
in 1953, having been forced into it, and
it occured in the "deep of night." Groger
had helped a colleague flee who had spoken unwisely about the events of (the
workers' uprising on) June 17 and who
was abour ro be arrested. When this assistance was discovered, Groger's own safety, as well as that of his wife Rosemarie
and their twins, was in jeopardy. So in
Ocrober 1953 (immediately after the lifting of the state of emergency) they found
themselves with nothing but the baby
carriage in a \'\!est Berlin refugee camp.
Here he had ro go through the emergency acceptance processing, in which-in
order ro obtain refugee stams-one had
ro cerrify that "danger ro life and limb"
had existed. By means of newspaper arricles about his case this was indeed verifiable.
Then the family came ro lirnberg,
where their new beginning proved ro be
exrremely difficult. He urgendy looked
for work, wrote 40 job applications, bur
did not get a job. This lack of employmenr was largely due ro the facr he was
applying for a position of a technical
direcror-and at his age, nobody then
believed him. He struggled through, first

as magazine subscription salesman (since
then he suffers from "bell-phobia"), then
as stage and lighting master in a cabaret,
"which sounds brilliant, bur only meanr
that I had ro do everything myself,
including the nighrly work at the adjacent bar, so that I rarely made it home
before half past five in the morning."
At rhe point of giving up all effons of
applying for a job, he encountered an ad
for the City Theatre of Hagen which was
looking specifically for a young man ro
stand in as technical direcror. He received
that appointment and the "standing in"
proved ro be just a formality, since the
then-technical direcror was deparring.
Groger practised his profession for nine
years at Hagen, "where my professional
life began moving again in more orderly
paths."
In 1963 he switched over ro Drese in
Wiesbaden. There began the collaboration with Professor Unruh-the thenNesror of German thearre technologywho had a hand in innumerable theatre
reconsrructions and who furrhermore
was the publisher of the Biihllenteclmische
Rlilldschali. Groger and Unruh worked
rogether on rhe board of the DTHG
(Deutsche Theatretechnische Gesellschaft-German Society of Theatre
Technology) and were two of the founding members of the OISTAT, founded in
1968, an organization under the umbrella of
ESCO, which was established ro
bring rogether on the international level
stage designers, theatre technicians, and
theatre architecrs. Since 1978 Groger has

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1992