Hans Hollmann

Hans Hollmann was born on February 4, 1933 in Graz, Austria.

Hollmann attended the Gymnasium (school) in Graz and then progressed to the local university, emerging in 1956 with a doctorate in jurisprudence. He then switched to drama, as he studied at the Reinhardt Seminar at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

In 1958 he received a diploma in acting. He then made a start professionally, both an actor and as a director, at Vienna's Josefstadt Theatre.

His breakthrough as a director came in the 1964/65 season with a production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at the Heidelberg Theatre.

Since 1967 Hans Hollmann productions have frequently been invited to be at the Berlin Theatre Festival.

In December 1974 he directed the first comprehensive production of The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus,[4] over two evenings in the foyer of the Basel Theatre, which raised him to the status of one of the top theatre directors in German speaking central Europe. The next years he was appointed to the directorship of the theatre, a position he held for three years till 1978.

He reprised his The Last Days of Mankind for the 1980 Vienna Festival, with a cast that included Helmut Lohner, Peter Weck, Paulus Manker, Alexander Goebel and Götz Kauffmann, and returned the piece on various occasions.

In 1993 Hollmann accepted a professorship in Theatre Direction at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main., heading up the Faculty of Performing Arts as dean between 1998 and 2003.

While at Frankfurt (between 1998 and 200) he conceived and created what in 2002 became today's "Hessian Theatre Academy" ("Hessische Theaterakademie"), an association-network of four drama universities/academies and fifteen theaters in and around Frankfurt. It introduced an entirely new approach to artistic training, and for many years Hollmann himself served as its president, until succeeded in that role by Heiner Goebbels in 2006. The Hamburg Theatre Academy founded in 1994 followed the same model.

Hans Hollmann is married to the actress Reinhild Solf. The marriage produced two recorded children. Their son, Caspar Florian, was killed in an avalanche accident in 2001.

He has been a recipient of the Josef Kainz Medal from the city of Vienna and, in 2006, of the highest honour from the State of Hessen, the Goethe Award.