Portal:German Empire

Festspielhaus Bayreuth 1900

The Bayreuth Festspielhaus (German: Bayreuther Festspielhaus) is an opera house north of Bayreuth, dedicated solely to the performance of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner. It is the venue for the annual Bayreuth Festival, for which it was specifically conceived and built. Its official name is Richard-Wagner-Festspielhaus.

Wagner adapted the design of the Festspielhaus from an unrealised project by Gottfried Semper for an opera house in Munich, without the architect's permission, and supervised its construction. Ludwig II of Bavaria provided the primary funding for the construction. The foundation stone was laid on 22 May 1872, Wagner's 59th birthday. The building was first opened for the premiere of the complete four-opera cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), from 13 to 17 August 1876. Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, the first two operas of the cycle, had premiered individually at the National Theatre in Munich in 1869 and 1870 respectively; the 1876 opening of the Festspielhaus was both the premiere of the latter two operas, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, and the first time all four were performed together as a cycle.

Hermann Detzner

Hermann Detzner (16 October 1882 – 1 December 1970) was an officer in the German colonial security force (Schutztruppe) in Kamerun (Cameroon) and German New Guinea, as well as a surveyor, an engineer, an adventurer, and a writer. In early 1914, the German government sent Detzner to explore and chart the interior of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, the imperial protectorate on the island of New Guinea. When World War I broke out in Europe, he was well into the interior and without radio contact. He refused to surrender to Australian troops when they occupied German New Guinea, concealing himself in the jungle with a band of approximately 20 soldiers. For four years, Detzner and his troops provocatively marched through the bush, singing "Watch on the Rhine" and flying the German Imperial flag. He led at least one expedition from the Huon Peninsula to the north coast, and a second by a mountain route, to attempt an escape to the neutral Dutch colony to the west. He explored areas of the New Guinean interior formerly unseen by Europeans and surrendered in full dress uniform, flying the Imperial flag, to Australian forces in January 1919.