(b Vienna, 1 June 1790; d Pottenstein, Lower Austria, 5 Sept 1836). Austrian dramatist, actor and theatre director. The son of a carpenter, Raimund became fascinated by the theatre when he sold refreshments at the Burgtheater as a boy. He determined to become an actor, and he spent some years as a member of small touring troupes. In 1814 he was engaged at the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna, three years later joining the famous ensemble of the Theater in der Leopoldstadt. His rise to pre-eminence was steady rather than meteoric, and was based above all on his remarkable powers of mime and of timing. For some years his rivalry with the older Ignaz Schuster deprived the public of the opportunity to see them both on the same stage in the same performance: Raimund’s suspicious, melancholy nature must bear much of the responsibility. He rose to the position of producer and then, in 1828, to that of director of the Leopoldstadt company. In 1830 he left and spent the rest of his life making guest appearances and touring; despite his archetypal Austrian dialect and style he enjoyed remarkable successes in Munich and even in Hamburg and Berlin. During his years at the Josefstadt theatre he contracted an ill-advised marriage to Luise Gleich which broke up after a year and left him unable to legalize his later union with Antonie Wagner. He died by his own hand, believing that a dog that had bitten him was mad.
Raimund was the most poetic of the dramatists of the Viennese popular theatre, though he became a playwright only out of necessity: the fortunes of Meisl, Bäuerle and Gleich, who had dominated the repertory in the first two decades of the century, were on the wane, and when Meisl failed to provide Raimund with a satisfactory play for a benefit performance, he wrote Der Barometermacher auf der Zauberinsel (1823, music by Wenzel Müller, 96 performances in the Leopoldstadt until 1855). Raimund followed this success with a further seven dramas: Der Diamant des Geisterkönigs (1824, music by Drechsler, 160 performances until 1854), Das Mädchen aus der Feenwelt, oder Der Bauer als Millionär (1826, music by Drechsler, 207 performances until 1859), Moisasurs Zauberfluch (1827, music by Riotte), Die gefesselte Phantasie (1828, music by Müller), Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind (1828, music by Müller, 163 performances until 1859), Die unheilbringende Zauberkrone(1829, music by Drechsler), and Der Verschwender (1834, music by Conradin Kreutzer, 142 performances in the Leopoldstadt until 1859). Raimund himself wrote the melodies for some of his best-known songs (sketches survive in his hand, notated in the treble clef – he was an accomplished if untutored violinist – for the ‘Aschenlied’ and ‘Brüderlein fein’ from Das Mädchen aus der Feenwelt, to mention but two of the songs that became Volkslieder). Though his voice was neither beautiful nor particularly strong, he was acclaimed for his skill at putting across the songs in his own and other authors’ plays. Along with his younger contemporary and antipode, Nestroy, Raimund marks the end and the peak of a long and distinguished tradition; though the most ambitious and tragic of his plays (Moisasur, Phantasie and Zauberkrone) enjoyed little success in Raimund’s lifetime and even now are less popular than the great comedies, his achievement as a dramatist is broad, unified and powerful. The role of music in his plays is considerable, averaging 20 numbers.
W.A. Bauer and H. Kraus, eds: Raimund-Liederbuch (Vienna, 1924)
A. Orel, ed.: F. Raimund: Die Gesänge der Märchendramen in den ursprünglichen Vertonungen, Sämtliche Werke, vi (Vienna, 1924/R)
A. Orel: ‘Raimund und die Musik’, Raimund-Almanach 1936
H. Kindermann: Ferdinand Raimund: Lebenswerk und Wirkungsraum eines deutschen Volksdramatikers (Vienna, 1940)
K. Goedeke and others: Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, xi/2 (Düsseldorf, 2/1953), 314–45
K. Kahl: Raimund (Velber, 1967)
J. Hein: Ferdinand Raimund (Stuttgart, 1970)
D. Prohaska: Raimund and Vienna: a Critical Study of Raimund’s Plays in their Viennese Setting (Cambridge, 1970)
L.V. Harding: The Dramatic Art of Ferdinand Raimund and Johann Nestroy: a Critical Study (The Hague, 1974)
R. Wagner: Ferdinand Raimund: eine Biographie (Vienna, 1985)
P. Branscombe: ‘Reflections on Raimund’s Artistic Relationship with his Contemporaries’, Viennese Popular Theatre, ed. W.E. Yates and J.R.P. Mackenzie (Exeter, 1985), 25–40
I.F. Roe: ‘Raimund's “Viele schöne Worte”’, ibid., 13–24
F. Patzer, ed.: Ferdinand Raimund: ‘Brüderlein fein’ (Vienna, 1986)
PETER BRANSCOMBE