ACKERMANN, KONRAD ERNST

(1712-1771)

   Actor, manager. One of the founders of professional German theater practice, Ackermann was a superb comic actor who specialized in Molière and Holberg characters. Ackermann began with Johann Friedrich Schönemann's troupe and later led his own company throughout Europe for three decades. The Prussian government in 1753 awarded him the unprecedented concession of building his own 800-seat facility in Königsberg, the first private playhouse in Germany. He premiered Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson in 1755 and thereafter worked in close collaboration with the playwright, creating the role of Major Tellheim in Minna von Barnhelm and staging other Lessing premieres. In Hamburg he opened the Komödienhaus, where Lessing served as dramaturg (though not for Ackermann) and for which he wrote his Hamburgische Dramaturgie (Hamburg Dramaturgy) in 1767. Ackermann continued to tour for the rest of his life, attracting many of Germany's finest actors to his troupe. Among them were his daughters, Dorothea Ackermann (1752-1821), known for the title role in Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm and as Countess Orsina in Emilia Galotti, and his younger daughter Charlotte Ackermann (1757-1775), best known for the title role in Emilia Galotti.