Augsburger Puppenkiste - The Puppenkiste (puppet Chest): A Family Business

The Puppenkiste (puppet Chest): A Family Business

In 1943, Walter Oehmichen (1901-1977) founded his own small puppet theater together with his wife Rose Oehmichen (1901 - 1985) and their daughters Hannelore (1931-2003) and Ulla: the Puppenschrein, a puppet theatre which consisted of a small wooden stage that could be set up in a door frame. In the night of February 26, 1944, this stage was destroyed in a fire following a bomb assault in Augsburg. The figures, however, remained undamaged - luckily Walter Oehmichen took them home after performing for the kids of the stage members in the city theater of Augsburg. Both the city theatre and the Puppenschrein within were almost completely destroyed by flames. Today, only one ornament from the original shrine is left.

After the war, Walter Oehmichen began planning a new puppet theater. At the former Heilig-Geist Hospital, he found a room to perform his shows. First, however, Oehmichen had to share the premises with the city’s Office of Statistics.

Despite all odds of the post-war period, the Oehmichen family was able to re-open the marionette theater as "Augsburger Puppenkiste" with the play Der gestiefelte Kater (Puss in Boots) on 26 February 1948 – exactly four years after the puppet shrine was destroyed. The first puppeteers and speakers were young actors from Augsburg – among others, Manfred Jenning. He would soon become the staff writer for the Augsburger Puppenkiste and in 1951 he established the year-end puppet cabaret show for adults, which has since become a yearly tradition. The first cabaret premiere was on 31 December 1950.

At first, Walter Oehmichen whittled the puppets himself, but he soon passed this important job on to his daughter Hannelore. She created all the puppets which would soon be well known as the "stars on strings". Hannelore whittled her first puppet at the age of 13. She had to keep her work a secret, because at this time she wasn’t allowed to use the sharp woodcarving knife. The first of her puppets to become famous was The Little Prince (a character from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's famous novel). In the first public performance of the Puppenkiste, Puss in Boots, Hannelore was responsible for manipulating Puss. Oehmichens wife Rose made all the clothes for the marionettes and lent her voice to many of the mother and grandmother characters.

In 1973, following the 25th anniversary of the Puppenkiste, Hannelore and her husband Hanns-Joachim Marschall took over the management. Hanns-Joachim Marschall, who was an actor, had already worked for the Puppenkiste in previous years. Walter Oehmichen died in 1977, but up to his death he supported the theatre. Rose Oehmichen died in 1985. Following Rose Oehmichens death, her daughter Hannelore inherited the Puppenkiste.

Since the beginning of the 1980s Klaus Marschall, the son of Hannelore and Hanns-Joachim Marschall, has been working in the theater. He took over the management from his parents in 1992. Hanns-Joachim Marschall retired from the theater and died in 1999. His wife Hannelore, however, continued to carve the figures and supported the theater again and again. Klaus's brother Jürgen stepped into/entered the business at the beginning of the 1990s/ got involved in the Puppenkiste in the 1990s and helped his mother to produce the puppets. He accepted her inheritance after her death on May 16, 2003. In the course of years the space at the Rotes-Tor building became too small for the theater. Within the means of the reconstruction of the Heilig-Geist-Spital and plans for the park Kulturpark Rotes Tor further premises were provided by the city of Augsburg in 2000. A new theatre hall, which is located exactly opposite to the old one, was established and opened in October 2000. In 2004, the Augsburger Puppenkiste won the Golden Camera, a well-known German film award.