Gaaz Erwin Biography

Opposite me, a well -known theater and cinema, actor on the Taganka theater, director Erwin Gaaz, sat at the table, covered with home pies, was a well -known house and cinema lovers. Erwin belongs to the genus of the no less famous in Russia the Holy Dr. Fedor Petrovich Gas. In a recent interview with the Moscow German newspaper, Erwin said: “The main thing in life is not what nationality you are, but in humanity, in relation to good and to life itself.

I am a German, my wife is a Japanese, we live in Russia. I do not want to leave this country. This is my homeland. " Erwin Gaaz allowed me to turn on the tape recorder and thereby, we can say, opened the doors of his hospitable house and for you, dear listeners. Vaits: Erwin, we are sitting in the center of Moscow on Pokrovka. You are Erwin Haaz, Russian German. I believe that this is atypical that we are sitting in the center of Moscow, because after the war the Russian Germans did not live in Moscow.

HAAZ: I really understand what Russian Germans are, because the diaspora is very fragmented and scattered. I can only talk about the story of a kind. First of all, the surname Haaz or, how it sounds Haas in German. This surname is known in Russia, primarily thanks to Fedor Petrovich Friedrich Joseph, St. Doctor, who came to Russia at the invitation of Prince Galitsin in the 19th century and was the chief physician of Russian prisons.

He gave all his fortune for the benefit of the poor, destitute prisoners. He died in poverty himself, although he had previously been a rather rich man. Recently, he was canonized, as far as I know, by the Catholic Church, as a saint. Fedor Petrovich Haaz himself did not have children, this is the line of his brother, who remained in Germany. In general, the Gaazov clan is a genus who, for many generations, gave lawyers, doctors, representatives of humane professions.

And my dear grandfather, like Erwin Gaaz, in Russia, lived and worked in Germany, in Arnsdorf near Dresden, was the chief physician of a psychiatric clinic. The clinic, as far as I know, exists until now. In the year, he fled from Germany, because his wife, my grandmother, belonged to the Spanish-Jewish family. By this time, the Nuremberg laws on the purity of blood, on racial policy have already been adopted.

He, along with his wife and little son, my father, fled to Paris. He did not stay in Paris, because, as you know, in Paris, medical foreign diplomas were not recognized, and at the invitation of the Red Army surgeon Burdenko, grandfather arrived at work in the USSR, once again defended himself in Russian, became the head physician in the clinic in Orlovka, in the Voronezh province. He worked there for a year, then he was invited to the Ivanovo Medical Institute, one of the largest in the USSR, to the Department of Psychiatry.

In the year in Ivanovo on Gorokhova Street there was not a single house from where people would not be taken. My grandfather was also taken away, naturally like a German. Vaits: Sorry, some circumstances typical of Russian Germans begin here, which influence their fate ... E. Gaaz: I don’t know how typical. I tell a story of a kind. Vaits: But I still want to understand, because at the same time you have to do with the Russian Germans and represent the atypical side of this people.

HAAZ: Probably, because the concept of "Russian Germans" is people who arrived in Russia in ancient times under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, under Catherine the Great, under Peter, settled on the Volga or were deported to Kazakhstan, Siberia and so on. Vaits: But with the outbreak of World War II, Russian Germans have a certain fate. So I think that your father probably shared this fate.

HAAZ: In many ways, this is the fate of a repressed foreigner. At a later time, the father was given the investigation to read the investigation. This is an endless pile of lies, endless self -cargo, that is, a person was clearly tortured. Father remained a street child. The son of the enemies of the people. Orphanages, children's receivers, the blockade of Leningrad, where he got, then the inability to enter the medical institute that he dreamed about the son of enemies of the people.

He entered the Higher School of Painting, modeling and sculptures in Leningrad. The artist, playwright, writer, posthumously, we are now preparing with the mother of his manuscripts. Vaits: Nothing was published during life? HAAZ: Stories were published, plays were published, but this is a drop in the sea compared to what was written by them. And I praise him not because he is my father, but because it is really very good, strong male prose.

In the house where we are now, his paintings are hanging. All this has already been published on the Internet. There is a complete collection of works by Peter Gaaz, his paintings. Vaits: Erwin Petovich Gaaz also wanted to become a doctor, became a director, actor. Did everyone seek medicine in your family? HAAZ: My grandfather became a doctor, my father also largely became a doctor, although not professional.

Having not received a diploma, he in our village in the Ryazan region to many old people saved life. Owning medicine, he healed gangrene, osteochondrosis, arthritis and other diseases. Vaits: Let us return to you now. You also started studying at a medical institute. HAAZ: Yes, I studied for two years at the Third Medical Institute.Then one of my teachers who understood what I should do, said: Stop the fool.

Write plays, play. You still will not become a good doctor. Vaits: And at this time you already wrote plays? HAAZ: Yes, I started doing it early enough. After some time, he entered the course of Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov at the Schukin school. Vaits: But, probably, they just do not act to Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov. There must be some special talent to get to this course.

How did you succeed? HAAZ: I think that my teachers who took me to this course should judge this. Those people who invited me, apparently, they realized that I was worthy to study and finish this university. It was probably necessary to take some entrance exams, go through a creative competition ... E. Gaaz: At that time I wrote my first play on several novels by Nabokov, I gave it to read Lyubimov and Vilkin, my teachers.

They read and considered that I can study. I passed the exams as all other applicants and, apparently, withstood just a competition, among the seven people who went to this course. Vaits: It turns out that your father played a large role in your life, he handed you the ability to state thoughts on paper ... E. Gaaz: Of course, my father is my first teacher in directing and dramaturgy.

Since childhood, I have been sitting on his rehearsals, attended when he communicated with the actors. I can say that his influence on me is immense. Vaits: In the Taganka Theater, how long have you been working? What roles do you play? In what productions are you busy? HAAZ: In the Taganka Theater, I studied for five years on the course of the artistic director of Yuri, beloved and have been working for ten years.

During these ten years, he played Berlioz in Master and Margarita, Richard the Third in Shakespeare's Chronicles, in the Karamazov Brothers, Dr. Herzenshtub, a small role, but she was very dear to me, because Dostoevsky’s doctors wrote from my distant ancestor, from Fedor Petrovich Gaaz. In the play “Before and after”, the poetry of the Silver Age, I play Mandelstam, this is probably my favorite performance.

I play in the performances “Sharashka” according to Solzhenitsyn of one of the prisoners, in the “Theater Roman”.

Vaits: And more, besides this, you are acting in the cinema? HAAZ: This is a normal fate of the artist. Vaits: What does it mean for you to play in the theater on Taganka, because this powerful theater school, the stars of the Russian theater played and hiccups there. What for you, Erwin Gaaz, does it mean to play Taganka? HAAZ: I probably came there deliberately, because this theater is the most close to me in spirit, in creativity, according to theatrical laws, according to the laws of representation.

This is an open theater, the Square Theater, the Bright Theater. It so happened that the first professional performance that I looked in my life, at the age of 14 it was the performance of the Taganka Theater “Comrade Belief” about Pushkin. And then I knew then that someday after many years, I would work on the same site with people, who then, at the age of 14, made a phenomenal impression on me!

And it is happiness that I have been working in this team for 10 years. Vaits: But you are also a director. Do you carry out any of your productions or are it in your plans? HAAZ: I carry out the productions, of course. For three in a row I worked as the second director in the theater at the Nikitsky Gate under the leadership of Mark Rozovsky. I staged several performances: “The Triumphal Arc” of the Remarque, the performance of the two novels of Nabokov “Lolita”, “Invitation to Execution”, Andreev “Thought”.

Vaits: When you play on the stage, are you given the influence of the director of this theater or are you trying to be a director for yourself? HAAZ: I am law-abiding in my theater in German.