Austria – 175th Anniversary of Johann Nestroy
1976 Silver 100 Schilling 36mm (23.70 grams) 0.640 Silver (0.4938 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 2932
JOHANN NESTROY 1801-1862 1976, Portrait facing 1/4 left.
REPUBLIK ÖSTERREICH 100 SCHILLING, Eagle with text circling.
Edge Lettering: SCHILLING

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Johann Nepomuk Eduard Ambrosius Nestroy (7 December 1801 – 25 May 1862) was a singer, actor and playwright in the popular Austrian tradition of the Biedermeier period and its immediate aftermath.

Career

Nestroy was born in Vienna, where he was a law student from 1817 to 1822, before abandoning his studies to become a singer. He joined the Theater am Kärntnertor, beginning with Sarastro in The Magic Flute on 24 August 1822. After a year of singing in Vienna, he went to Amsterdam where he appeared in baritone roles for two years at the local German Theatre. From 1825 to 1831 he accepted engagements to sing and act in Brünn, Graz, Pressburg, Klagenfurt, Vienna and Lemberg. He then returned to his native Vienna and started to write and continued to perform.

Nestroy’s career as a playwright was an immediate success: his 1833 play Der böse Geist Lumpazivagabundus was a major hit. He soon became a leading figure in Austrian culture and society. Nestroy succeeded Ferdinand Raimund as the leading actor-dramatist on the Volkstheater, the Viennese commercial stage or ‘people’s theatre’.

Whereas Raimund concentrated on romantic and magical fantasies, Nestroy used comedy for parody and criticism. Working at the time of conservative minister Klemens von Metternich, he had to carefully draft his plays to skirt the strict censorship in place. His interest in word play was legendary, and his characters often mixed Viennese German with less-than-successful attempts at more “educated” speech. Music held an important role in his work, with songs elaborating the theme or helping on with the plot.

Nestroy wrote nearly eighty comedies between the 1830s and the 1850s. Among the most important were Der böse Geist Lumpacivagabundus [de], Liebesgeschichten und Heurathssachen [de], Der Talisman (play) [de] (made into the 1939 musical comedy Titus macht Karriere by Edmund Nick), Einen Jux will er sich machen (translated as On the Razzle by Tom Stoppard in 1981) and Der Zerrissene [de], all of which were marked by social criticism and biting satire. He died in Graz, Austria.

Works

Nestroy remained a singer all his life, and virtually all his plays include music. He worked closely with a relatively small number of composers: Adolf Müller Sr. [de], who set 41 of Nestroy’s texts between 1832 and 1847, Michael Hebenstreit, who set 10 works from 1843 to 1850, Karl Binder [de], who set seven from 1851 to 1859, as well as Anton M. Storch [de], Franz Roser, Carl Franz Stenzel, and Andreas Skutta.

Most of his works were designated as some form of Posse or farce, and of these the majority were Possen mit Gesang (i.e. ‘with singing’). He also produced a number of parodies, both of operas (including Cendrillion, La Cenerentola, Lohengrin, Martha, Robert le diable, Tannhäuser and Zampa) and dramas (including Karl von Holtei’s Lorbeerbaum und Bettelstab and Raupach’s Robert der Teufel). In addition he wrote four Quodlibets, two Burlesken, a Travestie and finally an Operette using music by Jacques Offenbach.

His early works were performed in Graz and Pressburg, then from 1832 to 1846 he worked exclusively at the Theater an der Wien, where 45 of his plays were premiered. After two productions at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt, he moved to the Carltheater from 1847 to 1859, where another 20 were performed.

About half of Nestroy’s works have been revived by the modern German-speaking theatres and many are part and parcel of today’s Viennese repertoire. However, few have ever been translated into English. Only one, Einen Jux will er sich machen, has become well known to English-speaking theatregoers. It has become a classic more than once. It was first adapted as Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker (which later became the musical Hello, Dolly!) and later achieved success as the comic masterpiece On the Razzle, which was translated by Stephen Plaice and adapted by Tom Stoppard.

Nestroy has a square-Nestroyplatz-named after him in Vienna, as well as a station on Line 1 of the Vienna U-Bahn, which opened in 1979. When the Reichsbrücke had to be rebuilt after its collapse in 1976, the tender was won by a consortium named Project Johann Nestroy. The official name of the newly built bridge is probably Johann Nestroy Brücke, but that name doesn’t seem to have any currency.

One of the most important German speaking theatre awards is named after Nestroy. The Nestroy Theatre Prize [de] is an annual award for primarily Austrian theatre with Oscar-like categories. Its ceremony is held in Vienna and broadcast live on national television.

The Austrian illustrator and painter Reinhard Trinkler [de] adapted Nestroy’s play Der Talisman for a graphic novel

Austria, officially the Republic of Austria (German: Republik Österreich), is a federal republic and a landlocked country of over 8.5 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The territory of Austria covers 83,879 square kilometres (32,386 sq mi). Austria’s terrain is highly mountainous, lying within the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 metres (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,798 metres (12,461 ft). The majority of the population speak local Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, and Austrian German in its standard form is the country’s official language. Other local official languages are Hungarian, Burgenland Croatian, and Slovene.

The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty when the vast majority of the country was a part of the Holy Roman Empire. From the time of the Reformation, many Northern German princes, resenting the authority of the Emperor, used Protestantism as a flag of rebellion. The Thirty Years War, the influence of the Kingdom of Sweden and Kingdom of France, the rise of the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Napoleonic invasions all weakened the power of the Emperor in the North of Germany, but in the South, and in non-German areas of the Empire, the Emperor and Catholicism maintained control. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria was able to retain its position as one of the great powers of Europe and, in response to the coronation of Napoleon as the Emperor of the French, the Austrian Empire was officially proclaimed in 1804. Following Napoleon’s defeat, Prussia emerged as Austria’s chief competitor for rule of a larger Germany. Austria’s defeat by Prussia at the Battle of Königgrätz, during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 cleared the way for Prussia to assert control over the rest of Germany. In 1867, the empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary. After the defeat of France in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, Austria was left out of the formation of a new German Empire, although in the following decades its politics, and its foreign policy, increasingly converged with those of the Prussian-led Empire. During the 1914 July Crisis that followed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Germany guided Austria in issuing the ultimatum to Serbia that led to the declaration of World War I.

After the collapse of the Habsburg (Austro-Hungarian) Empire in 1918 at the end of World War I, Austria adopted and used the name the Republic of German-Austria (Deutschösterreich, later Österreich) in an attempt for union with Germany, but was forbidden due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). The First Austrian Republic was established in 1919. In the 1938 Anschluss, Austria was occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany. This lasted until the end of World War II in 1945, after which Germany was occupied by the Allies and Austria’s former democratic constitution was restored. In 1955, the Austrian State Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state, ending the occupation. In the same year, the Austrian Parliament created the Declaration of Neutrality which declared that the Second Austrian Republic would become permanently neutral.

Today, Austria is a parliamentary representative democracy comprising nine federal states. The capital and largest city, with a population exceeding 1.7 million, is Vienna. Austria is one of the richest countries in the world, with a nominal per capita GDP of $52,216 (2014 est.). The country has developed a high standard of living and in 2014 was ranked 21st in the world for its Human Development Index. Austria has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, joined the European Union in 1995, and is a founder of the OECD. Austria also signed the Schengen Agreement in 1995, and adopted the euro in 1999.