A lifetime work

Born in Lebanon (Pennsylvania, USA) in 1944, the librarian, bibliographer, and theater historian Paul S. Ulrich is well known for his publications on the most diverse aspects of theater, especially in the 19th century, as well as for his editorship of the Thalia Germanica series. His main occupation and passion, however, is collecting, recording and indexing theater almanacs and journals. This led to the publication of the biographical lexicon Theater, Tanz und Musik im Deutschen Bühnen-Jahrbuch with approximately 40,000 entries on individuals (Berlin 1985) and, a few years later, to a second edition with the title Biographisches Verzeichnis für Theater, Tanz und Musik with about 100,000 entries (Berlin 1997) – in the meantime Paul S. Ulrich’s biographical database currently contains nearly 150,000 entries.

Now, finally, Paul S. Ulrich presents his extensive bibliographies of theater almanacs and journals together with corresponding indexes. This is part of the Don Juan Archive Vienna’s series Topography and Repertoire of the Theater, edited by Paul S. Ulrich, Andrea Gruber and Matthias J. Pernerstorfer.

“Local theater journals” provide a retrospective of the past season of a theater company. The frequently included repertoires are therefore more reliable than playbills which were printed prior to a performance. In addition, these publications are often the only source of information on the artistic and technical staff of a theater. They were usually compiled by the prompters of a company at their own expense and peddled as an additional source of income; they were intended for local audiences and often contained poems, anecdotes, or couplets.

“Universal theater almanacs” provide information on several theaters. They list international German-speaking theater companies including their staffs in over 3,600 locations. The information was reported in autumn by the respective management to the editors. The almanacs and yearbooks were distributed nationwide and usually published over a longer period of time.