Friedrich Strampfer

Friedrich Strampfer (24 July 1823 – 7 April 1890) was a German actor and theatre manager.

His career of varied fortunes included a successful period in the 1860s running the Theater an der Wien in Vienna; he managed many other theatres for short periods, and lived for several years in North America.

Life He was born in Grimma in Saxony. His father, Heinrich Strampfer (c.1790–1848), an actor, had appeared in Linz, and in Vienna at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt and the Theater an der Wien.

Friedrich's first engagement was in Linz in 1841, and afterwards appeared in Wiener Neustadt and Olomouc. In 1843, he was engaged at the court theatre in Weimar, being recommended by and Ottilie von Goethe.

He married in 1845 Anna von Ottenburg, an actress in the court theatre; she was Roman Catholic and Strampfer was Lutheran, so a priest to officiate was found with difficulty. The marriage was soon after declared null and void by Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, and Strampfer and Anna were dismissed from the court theatre of Weimar. Anna died in 1858, and he later remarried.

In 1870, he acquired the old building of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, and opened it in 1871 as the . It had 600 seats and 28 boxes. In 1873, he also became the manager of the . The ventures were not successful, and, in financial difficulty, he gave up both theatres in 1874. From 1875 until 1878, he gave acting lessons in Vienna, and during the following few years in Vienna he was manager successively of the Ringtheater, the Vienna Municipal Theatre and the Carltheater. He died in Graz in 1890.

Commentaries His biographer in Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich (1879) wrote that Strampfer "has been praised for being particularly fortunate in discovering talent for the stage." His biographer in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1893) wrote: "Strampfer was by nature an adventurer, full of enterprising spirit and understanding of the stage and the public."