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Josef Jarno
Actor and Managing Director (1899-1923)
*Aug. 24, 1866 Budapest, +Jan, 11, Vienna
When Jarno opened his term at the Theater in der Josefstadt on October 27,1899 with a play, called Ich bin so Frei, it was a symbolic way of announcing his deliberate and fearful way of leading the place. His focus was on Hungarian and French boulevard plays, vernacular and tragic plays, but also literary evenings. As an avant-gardist he firmly promoted the literature of social critics like Shaw, Ibsen, Chechow and Hauptmann, as well as more unpopular playwrights from the naturalist, impressionist, and expressionist school, like Schnitzler, Bahr, Schoenherr, and the barley known Strindberg.
Being an actor and managing director at the same time, Jarno was a busy but successful man. He created a program alike a commercial institution with more than 450 plays during his term, for instance playing Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband one hundred times before 1907. His greatest success became the premiere of Liliom by the Hungarian playwright Franz Molnár in 1913. This legend of suburbia had been despised in Budapest, but Jarno managed to convince Vienna’s audience with its lyrical depth.
