Iffland-Ring

The Iffland-Ring is a diamond-studded ring with a picture of August Wilhelm Iffland, a prominent German actor, dramatist and theatre director of the late 18th and early 19th century, who played in works of contemporary writers Goethe and Schiller, starting in 1782. The holder of the Iffland-Ring is considered to be the "most significant and most worthy actor of the German-speaking theatre", in the opinion of the previous holder who has passed it to him by will.

One exception to this rule came in 1954, when Werner Krauß was determined not by the previous holder Albert Bassermann (1867–1952) but by a committee of German-speaking actors. Bassermann had chosen a successor three times, but on each occasion his nominee had died shortly thereafter. Bassermann considered the ring cursed, and in 1935 declined to choose a fourth successor. Since his death, the Iffland-Ring has been earmarked as the state property of the Republic of Austria, although the holder retains it until their death.

The origins of the ring are shrouded in some mystery. The apocryphal story is that it was indeed worn by Iffland, but its established history only begins a century later with its supposed fifth holder, Friedrich Haase, who has been suspected of commissioning it for himself and inventing the story.

The current holder of the ring is Jens Harzer, having been named by Bruno Ganz as his successor. By tradition, the ring is only passed from one male actor to another. Since 1977, it has had a counterpart for female actors in the Alma-Seidler-Ring, named after the actress Alma Seidler. She had been considered as a successor for the Iffland-Ring by Krauß, who held it from 1954 to 1959.^{[citation needed]}

The origins of the Iffland-Ring are shrouded in some mystery, and the current ring is said to have been the most precious of a set of seven, of which only two appear to have survived: the Iffland-Ring itself and a less valuable similar ring which in the 1950s was in the private possession of Wilhelm Burckhardsberg, but that may now also be lost.

Iffland, a leading actor in his time in Germany, was inspired by Romanticism and is claimed to have commissioned the ring, to be carried by the leading German-speaking actor of his time. If so, Iffland's inspiration was most likely the play Nathan the Wise by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

The circumstances of where and when Iffland passed on the ring to Ludwig Devrient are uncertain; according to Albert Bassermann, Iffland handed the ring to Devrient in 1814, after his last performance in Breslau. Shortly after, in September 1814, Iffland died in Berlin.

Devrient, a close friend of E. T. A. Hoffmann, whose death in 1822 he never got over, was one of the most gifted actors Germany ever produced, but also a drunkard. He collapsed while performing King Lear and died on 29 December 1832. His choice as his successor to the ring fell on his nephew Emil Devrient.