He was born in Chemnitz on 05/02/1922 and died in Stuttgart on 10/12/2012. He began his career as a baritone, recording works by Kurt Weill with Lotte Lenya (Sony). He served as general director of the State Opera in Stuttgart (1961-1981), where he oversaw the creation of 62 new productions. During the same time, he was active as a director in many theaters around Germany, such as: Frankfurt Opera (Hansel and Gretel/Hänsel und Gretel, 1954-55), Hamburg State Opera (The force of destiny/La Forza del destino, 1959), National Theater of Mannheim (Fidelio, 1959-60), German Opera on the Rhine (The merry widow/Die lustige Witwe, 1966-67), State Theater of Darmstadt (Matthias the Painter/Mathis der Maler by Hindemith, 1977-78) and The Beggar's Opera, 1979-80), Deutsche Oper Berlin (Palestrina by Pfitzner, 1995-96). He directed works staged at the Salzburg Festival (The Pretend Garden-Girl/La finta giardiniera, 1965), in Buenos Aires (Parsifal, 1969), at the Versaille Festival (The Magic Flute/ Die Zauberflöte, 1972), at the Royal Monnaie Theatre in Brussels (Turandot, The Master-Singers of Nuremberg/Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), at the Opera of Lyon (Jenůfa by Janáček, Rigoletto), in Vienna, Zurich, etc. He has directed first presentations of works by German composers Hans Werner Henze, Paul Hindemith and Hermann Reutter. He taught at the Opera School of the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart and, since 1998, he served as an honorary member of the city's State Theater. He collaborated with the GNO once, directing the opera Orpheus and Eurydice [Orfeo ed Eurydice] (1974-75).