NEUBER, CAROLINE

ne Friederike Caroline Weissenborn born March 9, 1697, Reichenbach, Saxony died Nov. 30, 1760, Laubegast, near Dresden actress-manager, a major influence on the development of modern German theatre. Rebelling against her tyrannical father, she ran away with a young clerk, Johann Neuber, at the age of 20 and married him in 1718. They served their theatrical apprenticeship in the traveling companies of Christian Spiegelberg (171722) and Karl Caspar Haack (172225). In 1727 they formed their own company and were granted a patent by the elector of Saxony, Frederick Augustus I, to perform at the Leipzig Easter Fair. As early as 1725 Caroline Neuber's acting had attracted the attention of Johann Christoph Gottsched, the critic and drama reformer who modeled his work on classical French tragedy and comedy. Die Neuberin, as he came to call her, substituted in her company a careful learning of parts and rehearsal for the heavily improvised farces and harlequinades that then dominated the German stage. The collaboration of Gottsched and Neuber, which lasted until 1739, is usually regarded as the turning point in the history of German theatre and the start of modern German acting. Returning to Leipzig in 1737 after three years of engagements in other German cities, the Neuber company found that their patent, after the death of Augustus in 1733, had gone to the company of Johann Ferdinand Mller, a proponent of the old improvisations and harlequinades. Caroline Neuber reacted with a bravura gesture: on stage she enacted the banishment of Harlequin from the theatre. The company never regained its hold, and the addition of musical interludes between the acts proved inadequate to offset the current popularity of the musical shows. In 1740, on the invitation of the empress Anna, the Neuber company introduced modern theatre to Russia. But the empress died in 1741, and by the time the company returned to Leipzig, Gottsched had allied himself with another company. His differences with Caroline Neuber intensified: she replaced the togas he had specified for his play Der sterbende Cato with flesh-coloured tights; he attacked her in his reviews; she represented him in a prologue as a bat-eared censor; an obscene pamphlet in reply cast aspersions on the actress' private life. In 1747 she quit the stage but in the following year returned with a new company, which successfully presented G.E. Lessing's first play, Der junge Gelehrte. Indifferent success, however, dogged the company as it played at Dresden, Frankfurt, and Warsaw, as well as Leipzig. In 175354 Caroline Neuber attempted to establish herself in Vienna but failed; and the outbreak of the third Silesian War (1756), her husband's death (1759), and the bombardment of Dresden (1760) forced her to leave. She died in a peasant's hut, and, although she was refused burial in holy ground, a monument was erected in 1776, commemorating her as the foundress of good taste in the German theatre. She had already been immortalized as Madame Nelly in J.W. von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister.