AXER Erwin

Born on 1 January 1917 in Vienna; son of the lawyer Maurycy Axer and Fryderyka Ernestyna, née Schuster. He moved together with his family to Poland in 1920. Four years later he became a pupil at the H. Jordan Primary School, a private school in Lwów (Lviv). It was there that he founded the periodical "Gaudeamus. Miesięcznik pan-gimnazjalny" (Gaudeamus. A pan-secondary school monthly) together with his schoolmates. The first issue included his own poem "Narody piekielnym wybuchną wulkanem..." (Nations will erupt as violent volcanoes...) and his translation of Friedrich Schiller's piece "Der Antritt des neuen Jahrhunderts" (The start of a new century). The following year he transferred to the K. Szajnocha State Grammar School No. 2 in the city where, in 1933, he founded the Lwów edition of "Kuźnia Młodych" (literally 'The Forge of the Young', a periodical edited by secondary school pupils). He was responsible for the selection of poems. He made his debut in that journal in 1934 (issue no. 8) with the poem "Droga" (The road). After completing advanced secondary education in 1935, he became a student at the State Institute of Theatrical Arts (PIST – Państwowy Instytut Sztuki Teatralnej), which Leon Schiller had established in Warsaw. A year later, he served as an assistant director for the first time, working with Krystyna Sewerynówna and Maksymilian Wiskind on a production of Jean Cocteau's Orpheus, which was presented as a workshop piece at PIST. He was subsequently assistant to Leon Schiller on several productions. He made his debut as an independent director with Eugene O'Neill's play The Moon of the Caribbees, which was performed in February 1937 to mark Aleksander Zelwerowicz's name-day. In June 1939 he was awarded a diploma in directing. He was in Lwów at the outbreak of the Second World War. In early September he volunteered for the army but was not accepted to serve. He attempted to escape following the occupation of the city by the Red Army but he was stopped by Soviet soldiers in the village of Majdan and returned to Lwów. In October he started a job tidying the Lwów theatre library. In 1940 and 1941, he served as an assistant director, director and actor (in minor roles) in productions by the Polish State Drama Theatre (Państwowy Polski Teatr Dramatyczny). In addition to this, he also wrote radio plays about Mickiewicz, Beethoven and classical dance, among other subjects, for the Lwów radio station. Following the occupation of the city by German forces in June 1941 and the imposition of forced labour on the local population, he worked as a sprayer in the SS-run automotive workshops before spending over a year as a metalworker. On 6 December 1942 he managed to reach Warsaw. He lived under the assumed name Walerian Gomólski in a flat belonging to Jan and Jerzy Kreczmar in the capital's Żolibórz district until 1944. He participated in the Warsaw Uprising, serving as a photojournalist in the Żyrafa (Giraffe) unit. Following the defeat of the Uprising, he was imprisoned in Stalag XI-A in Altengrabow near Magdeburg until the camp was liberated by US forces. He then spent several months in Halberstadt before returning to Poland. From July 1945 he was a director at Teatr Kameralny Domu Żołnierza (Chamber Theatre of the Soldiers' House) in Łódź. In 1946 he submitted a volume of children's poetry to the Warsaw publishing house Czytelnik. It was not published. In September 1947 he started lecturing in parallel at the Department of Directing at the National Higher School of Theatre (PWST – Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Teatralna), which was then based in Lodz but moved Warsaw in 1949. In 1950/51 he also served as dean of the department, then as associate dean from 1952 to 1956. In February 1948 he presented his first literary adaptation for the stage with a performance of Bolesław Prus's short story Omyłka (The Mistake) at Lodz's Powszechny Theatre. In 1949, the Chamber Theatre of the Soldiers' House was transferred to Warsaw and renamed Teatr Współczesny (Contemporary Theatre). Axer became its artistic director, remaining in the role until 1954. His long-standing collaboration with the journal "Teatr" began in 1950. Over the years he contributed numerous articles on theatre and acting, as well as memoirs (including (including some under the e.a.) and his regular column Listy ze sceny (Letters from the stage) that ran until 1970. Following the merger of the companies of the Współczesny Theatre and The National Theatre (Narodowy) on 1 January 1955, he became managing director of the latter. The same year he was made professor at PWST. In June 1956, he travelled with the company of the National Theatre in Warsaw to Paris to perform at the Théâtre des Nations festival. In autumn 1957 he resigned his position as head of the Narodowy and returned to the Współczesny Theatre where he served as managing director from 1958 to 1981, during which time he also directed numerous productions. He also directed many works abroad during this period, working with institutions including the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Theatre Arts in New York (1962), the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre in Leningrad (1963, 1969 and 1979), Schauspielhaus in Düsseldorf (1966, 1968, 1970 and 1972), Kammerspiele in Munich (1972), Toneelgroep Ensemble in Amsterdam (1967), Burgtheater at the Akademietheater in Vienna (1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1980 and 1981) and Schauspielhaus Zurich (1978 and 1979). He also directed stage productions for television (as part of the Television Theatre series) and the radio (the Polish Radio Theatre). Axer pubished articles and reviews in journals including "Dialog" which between 1979 and 2000 also presented a series of memoir-based articles titled Kartka z pamiętnika (A page from my diary). After resigning from his position as head of the Współczesny Theatre, he mainly directed at the Burgtheater in Vienna and at theatres in (West) Berlin, namely Hochschule der Künste, Schloßpark-Theater and Schiller-Theater until 1994. He subsequently returned to directing in Poland, primarily at the Współczesny Theatre, doing so until 2001. In 1992 and 1993 he was deputy director of The Council for Culture to the President of the Republic of Poland (Rada do spraw Kultury przy Prezydencie RP). He has received many prizes and awards, including the State Prize (1st class) for theatre (1955), the Leon Schiller Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association of Polish Theatre and Film Artists (SPATiF – Stowarzyszenie Polskich Artystów Teatru i Filmu; 1955), the Tadeusz Boy Żeleński Prize of the Polish Journalists Association (SDP – Stowarzyszenie Dziennikarzy Polskich; 1960), the prize of the Polish Minister for Culture and Art prize for artistic achievements between in the years 1960-1962 (1963), the Prize of the Capital City of Warsaw (1979), the Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz Prize for the dissemination of Polish theatre abroad awarded by the Theatre Critics' Section of the Polish Section of the International Theatre Institute (ITI; 1993), the prize of the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2007), and the "Dzieło Życia" (Lifetime Achievement) Award of the Mazovian Regional Government (2008). Axer also received the Merit Award of the Minister of Culture and Art of the USSR for promoting cultural cooperation between Poland and the Soviet Union (1970), and the Diploma of the Soviet Ministry of Culture (1979). In 2008 he was made an Honorary Citizen of the Capital City, Warsaw. He has received several official honours including the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1952), the Order of the Banner of Work 2nd class (1954) and 1st class (1981), the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1959), and the Decoration of Honour Meritorious for Polish Culture (1989).
He was in relationships with the teacher and editor Bronisława Kreczmarówna, with whom he had a son Jerzy (b. 1946), the actor Zofia Mrozowska, with whom he had a son Andrzej (b. 1955), and the stage designer Ewa Starowieyska. He died on 5 August 2012 in Warsaw and is buried at the city's Powązki Military Cemetery.