György Harag Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

György Harag died on July 6, 1985. His very last staging was Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at the National Theatre in Târgu Mureș. He never got to see premiere. His memory is kept alive among theater people from Romania moreover, directors like Gábor Tompa or Levente Kovács consider him their master. His name was taken over by the Hungarian Company of the Theatre of Satu Mare.

In 1975 became first director of The Hungarian Theatre of Cluj and rested until his death. During this period he had been staging his most successful performances (including Sütő’s tetralogy).

The Professional theatrical art tradition in Satu Mare had recorded a history of more than two centuries, unfortunately interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. Terms of Baia Mare, a badly improved theater and small area in common usage with the Romanian section, made impossible their professional development and forced them to take steps to get the permission of moving in Satu Mare, where the beautiful heritage building of the theater (already refurbished of the ravages of war) sat abandoned in a city able to offer more opportunities for the company and also a much larger community of Hungarian audience. (The Romanian company being found only 11 years later, in 1968).

Between 1961 and 1963 is the period of Cluj-Târgu Mureș commute, surviving by occasional performances. In 1963 he became the first director the theatre of Târgu Mureș. He remained in office for ten years and after many years of “searchings”, he finds himself in here:

“I was 53, I already knew all the secrets of the craft. As a director, I had been always in touch with the organization and pedagogy of the world of theatre art. But I started to feel that I’m not entirely satisfied, I was missing my qualitative evolution. (…) The performances I directed between 1958 and 1960 were all the same pattern, I could not bring anything new. (…) I remember the day when Lucian Pintilie said me: „You’re the best realist director. Could you do anything else?” (…) Then I said so: it is time to make a decision regarding my life! (…) I decided just over a single night: I must risk!”

In 1956 the company moved to Satu Mare. It starts the directorship of Harag which lasts three years. He has the opportunity of making a more prominent profile and to strengthen a valuable company, but in 1960 he resigns and follows a period of ten years of searching for his artistic self, desiring to find his own style and the ways of his artistic refinement:

The company was founded in Baia Mare in 1953 by the graduates of the Hungarian Academy of Music and Theatre under the guidance of György Harag. After graduation, these students have decided not to separate, but to set their own company. Baia Mare has been shown to be suitable for the artistic commencement of the graduates, as there had already worked the Romanian company. That building became the birthplace of the Hungarian company, which later (after the death of the great master) took over his name, working nowadays in Satu Mare, as Harag György Company. (György Harag remembered that these young people have gone together in Bucharest, demanding to be allowed the establishment of the Hungarian section of the State Theatre Baia Mare). This young company named their young teacher Harag György manager and first director:

In 1952 Harag get his degree in directing. For a little while, he was working as an assistant at the Academy, but, at the same time, he was also working with the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj as a director and actor. In 1953 he joined the company that founded the Hungarian company of the theater in Baia Mare (the graduates of 1953).

Starting in 1948, he enrolled in the directing courses of the Academy, pursueding it in parallel with that of acting. He is instructed by the well-known Miklós Tompa and Ernő Szabó, both of them members of the famous Szekler State Theater of Târgu Mureș. Harag quickly noticed the differences between the two workshops, ideas that he later summarizes telling:

In 1946 was admitted to the Academy of Performing Arts, onto actor academic specialisation (lacking the director’s academic specialisation). Of the fifty students admitted, just eighteen reached BA. From the beginning, Harag had been shown, so that (together with four of his colleagues) is committed to the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj. From now on, he continued his studies in parallel with his work at the theatre. In 1947, he had played seven roles as an actor and in 1949 took place his debut as a director (having been gained experience through collaborations with eminent figures as assistant director of the theater).

Very ill, he returns to Tasnád in 1945. After a long period of convalescence, he enrolled at the Hungarian Academy of Music and Theatre in Cluj.

György Harag and his family were deported in 1944. From the brick-works ghetto of Szilágysomlyó, he is carried to Auschwitz, Mauthausen and then to Ebensee. He is the only survivor of his entire family, losing both his parents and brothers.

“Of course, I was day by day in theater at Oradea Mare. Although the company was a good one, the period between 1940 and 1944 was very difficult for the theater. It was headed by an exceptional director, namely Bálint Putnik. There were very popular the playful performances, because they brought the survival. Putnik, however, tried to raise the standards introducing classical plays, of course, within the limits of material resources.”

György Harag (June 4, 1925, Marghita, Kingdom of Romania – July 7, 1985, Târgu Mureș, Socialist Republic of Romania) was a Hungarian director and actor from Transylvania, Romania.

György Harag was born on June 4, 1925 at Marghita in a Hungarian Jewish family. He was the son of Kádár Magda and Harag Jenő, timber-merchant. He started his elemental schools on Marghita, but finished it in Tășnad. Made his high-school studies on Oradea Mare, first at Emanoil Gojdu High School, then at Jewish High School of Oradea Mare, finally he sat his school examinations in Szent László High School. After graduation he worked for a year as an apprentice, learning ceramics making in Budapest.