Tyrolean actor Julia Gschnitzer is dead

Your agency confirmed a report in the online edition of the “Tiroler Tageszeitung” on Friday evening. The funeral will take place at her own request in the immediate family circle, it said.

Most recently, Gschnitzer lived in Elsbethen near Salzburg. There she was made an honorary citizen before her 90th birthday. Gschnitzer, born on December 21, 1931 in Innsbruck, has been on the stages that mean the world since her debut at the Tiroler Landestheater in 1951 until old age. The role of Jedermann’s mother at the Salzburg Festival, which she has held since 2013, was the essential culmination of a stage career that was second to none.

Gschnitzer achieved widespread popularity with the role of “Frau Vejvoda” in the cult series “A real Viennese does not go under” aka “Mundl”. She played the Tyrolean mother of “Nudlaug” Franzi, the friend of Edmund Sackbauer’s daughter Hanni. This made Julia Gschnitzer part of an unforgettable piece of Austrian television history.

Grande Dame, stage star, “Mrs. Vejvoda”

Acting was and remained her life, all her life. The naturalness your lifelong companion. For more than six decades she stood on the boards that mean the world – until old age. She was already a stage legend in her lifetime. And a part of Austrian television history and identity: as “Ms. Vejvoda” in the cult series “A real Viennese does not go under”.

The role of Jedermann’s mother at the Salzburg Festival, which she has held since 2013, was the essential culmination of a stage career that was second to none. “I don’t want to do big things anymore. Now I’m really retired,” said the native of Innsbruck with a laugh in the APA interview for her 85th birthday. Text learning is now too difficult. “And the joy is smaller than the fear,” she admitted openly at the time. “I want to enjoy privately. Read, go for a walk and travel,” explained Gschnitzer, who last lived in Elsbethen near Salzburg. There she was made an honorary citizen in the run-up to her 90th birthday.

But she couldn’t give up completely and finally: Her last role was in the TV film “Last Boat Trip – The Third Altaussee Crime” last year.

In her job, which was always her calling, Julia Gschnitzer was not to be overlooked throughout her life. When asked about certain highlights in her acting career, she once said that there were so many that it was impossible to list them all. Although she always saw the theater as the center of her creativity – “I became a stage actress” – there were also unforgettable moments in film and television. Logically, she included the role of “Frau Vejvoda”, Tyrolean mother of “Nudlaug” Franzi, in “Mundl”: “It was a wonderful time. Relaxed and nice, with great colleagues”.

A few years ago, she gave today’s (director’s) theater a more than improvable certificate to the APA. The type of staging and performance is completely different, “not my world anymore”. The own “fantasies and ideas” are more important than the matter. “The play that is at stake recedes into the background,” Gschnitzer criticized above all the directors. You no longer put yourself at the service of the cause.

At the same time, however, the actress is counting on an inevitable end to this theatrical development, the downward spiral, so to speak: “You can’t do anything more than jump around naked. Then hopefully it will become human again”. Returning to what is human,” says Gschnitzer.

Julia Gschnitzer was born on December 21, 1931 in Innsbruck. She made her debut in 1951 at the Tiroler Landestheater, where she was engaged until 1954. Guest performances took her to the theater “für Vorarlberg” in Bregenz. Gschnitzer then moved to Switzerland, where she was seen at the Stadtebundtheater in Biel-Solothurn until 1956 and then at the Stadttheater in Bern for three years. From 1959 she was mainly at home on stages in Vienna and Salzburg, but also at the New City Theater in Bozen.

From 1959 Gschnitzer worked at various theaters in Vienna. At the Volkstheater she embodied, among others, Frau Flamm in Gerhard Hauptmann’s “Rose Bernd” (1979/80), Marthe Rull in Kleist’s “Broken Jug” (1980/81), Kate Keller in Arthur Miller’s “Alle meine Söhne” (1981/82) , Trine in Karl Schönherr’s “Earth” (1981/82) or Regina Grothum in “The Rise of Regina G.” (1996/97 in the outskirts) by Friedrich Ch. Zauner. In 2000 she shone at the Tiroler Landestheater in Daniel Call’s female trio infernale “Wetterleuchten”.

Gschnitzer played again and again in Salzburg, mainly as a regular guest at the Landestheater. Major roles included Mrs. Peachum in “The Threepenny Opera” (1987/88), Maria in Turrini’s “Josef und Maria” (1991/92), the mother in “Mother’s Courage” (1995/96) by George Tabori, Mrs Wurm in Werner Schwab’s “Volksvernichtung oder meine Leber ist sinnlos”, the grandmother in Horvath’s “Tales from the Vienna Woods” (2000) and the mother in Thomas Bernhard’s “Am Ziel” (2002).

Prizes and honors were not lacking in her long career. In addition to the Silver Medal of Honor of the City of Vienna, she also received the Karl Skraup Prize and the Great Medal of Honor of the State of Tyrol. In 1989 Gschnitzer was appointed chamber actress in Vienna. In addition to “Mundl”, important works for television included Axel Corti’s “Fall Jägerstätter” (1971), Michael Haneke’s “Lemminge” (1979) and “Die Siebtelbauern” (1998). The busy man also stood in front of the camera for Xaver Schwarzenberger’s Andreas Hofer film. In 2001 she got the role of “Seffin” in the Anzengruber film “Der Schandfleck”, played in Julian Pölsler’s “Blumen für Polt” and in both parts of Peter Säman’s modern Heimatfilm “Im Tal des Schweigens” (2004/2005), as well as in Stephanus Domanig’s “Raunacht” (2005). In Reinhold Bilgeri’s “The Breath of Heaven” she was seen in 2010 as well as in “Luis Trenker – The Thin Line of Truth” (2015).