1976 Gantschacher graduated on the second school in Klagenfurt. From 1977 to 1980 he studied at the Academy for Music and Performing Arts at Graz (now University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz). He graduated with honors in 1980 and in 1988 he got the M.A. Master of Arts.
Gantschacher worked for the Schauspielhaus in Graz, the Salzburg State Theatre, the Tyrolian State Theatre Innsbruck, the Danubefestival in Krems, the Chamberopera in Vienna, the Theater an der Winkelwiese in Zürich, the festival "Musica Iudaica" in Prague, the "Kulturbrauerei" in Berlin, the Polish festival "Theatre without Borders" in Szczecin, the National Theatre of Kosovo in Priština, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, the Concordia-University in Montreal, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., dem Museum of The Holocaust in Los Angeles and the Singapore Arts Festival.
In Dresden Gantschacher worked for the "Staatsschauspiel", the "kleine Szene" of the Semperoper, the "Dresdner Zentrum für zeitgenössische Musik" and the "Festspielhaus Hellerau".
Also in Stockholm he worked for some institutions as the Kulturhuset and the Royal Swedish Opera (Kungliga Operan).
Gantschacher worked also in cities Erfurt, Odessa, Sankt Petersburg, Helsinki and Bergen, there he worked as a lecturer at the University of Bergen in the section of theatre research and at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory
Now Gantschacher is the artistic director of VISUAL The European and International Visual Theatre Festival with deaf and hearing artists and deaf-blind in Vienna and Austria.
He is also the artistic director of the theatre- and research-project "War is daDa". For that project he created two exhibitions "Witness and Victim of the Apocalypse" (Exhibition and book about Viktor Ullmann in World War I and the influence of the experiences of war to his music especially to the opera The Emperor of Atlantis or The Disobedience of Death ARBOS, Vienna-Salzburg-Klagenfurt-Arnoldstein-Prora 2007/2008). A Czech translation of the exhibition has been presented at the City Archives of Prague in the Clam-Gallas Palace in 2015.
From the Austrian-Hungarian Wehrmacht to the German Wehrmacht (ARBOS, Vienna-Salzburg-Klagenfurt-Arnoldstein-Prora 2009/2010), About Images and Card Counterfeiters - The Paris Commune in the 19th century, Lenin 1917 and 1918, Austrian school atlas 2008 (Arnoldstein 2010), Refuse To Obey Any Military Work! (Arnoldstein), The Servants Of All Men (Arnoldstein 2012),
"... I receive a pension from The Vienna Philharmonic Society whose amount shall be fixed by the General Assembly on the measure of available resources ..." AS THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY DEVALUED THEIR JEWISH MEMBERS SHOWN IN THE LIGHT OF THE FATES OF THE DEPORTED AND MURDERED JEWISH PHILHARMONIC IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS WITH DOCUMENTS FOR ASSET RECOVERY AND QUESTIONS FOR RESTITUTION (Arnoldstein 2013),
Political Murder - the instrumentalization of politics in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century (Arnoldstein 2013). WAR AND LIAR or THE THIRD WAR AT THE BALKANS AS A RESULT OF THE DOUBLE MURDER OF SARAJEVO or THE BREAK OF INTERNNATIONAL LAW BY THE IMPERIAL AND ROYAL WEHRMACHT AND THE VIENNESE MINISTRY FOR FOREIGEN AFFAIRS IN BELGIUM IN AUGUST 1914 (Arnoldstein 2014). Members of the Vienna Philharmonic in The Great War and The Salzburg Festival 1918 (Arnoldstein 2014). WAR CRIMES and WAR RESISTERS (Arnoldstein 2015). WOMEN AT WAR: 'La Soldate Femme' Women-Soldiers in The Great War - Helen Keller: 'Strike Against The War!' (Arnoldstein 2016).
1999 Gantschacher was a lecturer at the "Theatre-Institute" of the University in Bergen in Norway.
Gantschacher worked on a lot of conferences as lecturer and director in Vienna at the International Conference "The Unifying Aspects of Culture" (2003), in Villach "On the Eve of the Apocalypse" (2004), in Nötsch "Art and War" (2005), in Villach "The Great War - The Forgotten War" (2005), "The Great War - The Great Dying" (2006), "The Great War - The Last Victory" (2007), "The Great War - Long Live the Republic!" (2008) and in Nötsch and Arnoldstein "Art.War.Music" about music and The Great War. From 2014 to 2019 he is the curator of the international project "War=daDa" in Nötsch, Arnoldstein (Austria), Prague (Czech Republic), Kingisepp, Saint Petersburg (Russia), Kobarid, Bovec, Lepena (Slovenia), Cividale, Redipuglia, Spilimbergo, Venice (Italia). 1999, 2000 and 2016 Gantschacher was a lecturer at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in Russia.
For the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF Gantschacher worked as a director for radio drama.
From 1994 to 1999 Gantschacher was a member of the Arts Council of the Government of Carinthia. Since September 2013 he is again a member of the Arts Council of Carinthia till 2018. And from 2013 to 2014 he was the chairman of the Council for Performing Arts of the Government of Carinthia too.
Since 2015 he works as a columnist for the Kleine Zeitung, one of the most important newspapers of Austria.
For his theatre works Gantschacher got some important awards:
Musictheatreperformance of the year 1993 in the Czech Republic for production of the opera "The Emperor of Atlantis or The Disobedience of Death" by Viktor Ullmann
Maecenas-Price 1994 for the project "Kar", music theatre in the mountains in cooperation with the Verbund-Company
Maecenas-Price 2002 für the project "Theatretraps in the Underground of Vienna"
European Label 2002 for innovative language projects
Maecenas-Price 2003 für the project "Dada in Tramline 1 & Tramline 2"
Nomination for the Bank Austria Art Prize 2012
Award of The UNESCO for the Visual Theatre Library for the "development of human rights for all" 2012
Award by the Federal Minister Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek for the theatre project "Sense of Touch - Sense of Smell - Sense of Taste" about the culture and communication techniques of the deaf-blind with deaf-blind students and five sensed students in 2014
Award by the Federal Minister Sonja Hammerschmid for the theatre project "Layers of History"
Arteco-Price the project "Different Trains" (three operas on a moving train through Europe on stations in Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria dealing with the theme of deportation and death during the Holocaust)
"Cerec-Award" of the Financial Times
Essays about theatre
"Signer and Rossini - two brothers in spirit?" - 1992
"Crossing Boarders" - 1993
"The new music theatre project KAR – a cooperation between industry and art" - 1994
"Music Theatre at the concentration camp of Terezín by the example of the composer Viktor Ullmann and its significance for our time" - 1994
"The Emperor of Atlantis - Lecture for CINARS 1994 in Montreal" - 1994
"About the Open Form of Theatrical Art of Theatre - Lecture about the new opera house in Linz" - 1996
"Memories and present, music and language, original and draft" - 1996
"Music, Theatre, Dance in Austria - Lecture for CINARS 1996 in Montreal" - 1996
"Art crossing Boarders" 1997
"For years, the mirror is imposed! About the correspondences of cultural behavior" - 1998
"The Art of Dialogue" - 1998
"Memory as a mirror of ideology" - 2000
"WorldWideWeb - Reality - Tool - Interaction" - in: TRANS - Internetmagazine for Cultural Studies Nr.9 - 2000
"That there is this attempt of political change in the world definitely" - 2004
"Victim myth Austria" - 2005
"The Rescue of to be forgotten! - The correspondence between the Austrian-Jewish philosopher Wilhelm Jerusalem and the American deafblind author Helen Keller" - 2009
Books
"Crossing the Boarders" - Das Zeichen 22/1992 - ISSN 0932-4747
"Plurality instead of Uniformity (Klagenfurt on other tracks)" - Kärntner Druck und Verlagsgesellschaft 1996 - ISBN 3-85391-138-2
"Tracks to Victor Ullmann" with essays written by Viktor Ullmann, Herbert Thomas Mandl, Dževad Karahasan, Ingo Schultz and Herbert Gantschacher published by ARBOS - Company for Music and Theatre / (Vienna: edition selene 1998), ISBN 3-85266-093-9
"Forms of life" (a theatre book written by Herbert Gantschacher and Dževad Karahasan) – edition selene 1999 - ISBN 3-85266-041-6
"The Mirror of History - The Past as Ideology" (3rd Prora Conference) - Stiftung Neue Kultur Berlin 2000
Co-Editor of "The Unifying Aspects of Cultures" – LIT 2004 - ISBN 3-8258-7616-0
"I Carry the Flag or War = daDa" – Peter Lang Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften 2006 - ISSN 0941-1488, ISBN 3-631-55038-3
"Witness and Victim of the Apocalypse" (Book for the exhibition about the composer Viktor Ullmann in World War I and the influence of the experiences of war to his music especially to the opera "The Emperor of Atlantis or The Disobidience of Death") - ARBOS, Vienna-Salzburg-Klagenfurt-Arnoldstein-Prora 2007/2008
"From the Austrian-Hungarian Wehrmacht to the German Wehrmacht" - ARBOS, Vienna-Salzburg-Klagenfurt-Arnoldstein 2009
"Forward, Don`t Forget!" in "Dirty Bucket K..." edited by FreiraumK, Drava Verlag-Založba Drava Klagenfurt/Celovec 2013, ISBN 978-3-85435-710-0
"VIKTOR ULLMANN ZEUGE UND OPFER DER APOKALYPSE - WITNESS AND VICTIM OF THE APOCALYPSE - Testimone e vittima dell'Apocalisse - Prič in žrtev apokalipse - Svědek a oběť apokalypsy" - Complete original authorized edition in German and English language with summaries in Italian, Slovenian and Czech language, ARBOS-Edition ISBN 978-3-9503173-3-6, Arnoldstein-Klagenfurt-Salzburg-Vienna-Prora-Prague 2015.
Viktor Ullmann - Svědek a oběť apokalypsy 1914-1944, ISBN 978-80-86852-62-1 Archiv hlavního města Prahy 2015.
Герберт Ганчахер Виктор Ульман - Свидетель и жертва апокалипсиса, ISBN 978-5-8392-0625-0 «Культ-информ-пресс» Санкт-Петербург 2016.
Translations
"Disconnected - Kein Anschluß" by Willy Conley. 2000
"On the edge of the desert" by Dževad Karahasan. 2003
"Banquet" by Dževad Karahasan. 2005
"The Universal Drum - Trommeln allerorts" by Willy Conley. 2011
"Strike Against The War!" by Helen Keller. 2013-2014
Theatreplays
"Agnus Dei" draft of a libretto based on a story by Francisco Tanzer, 1987 in: Austrian National Library - Austrian Literature Archive.
"The Couple" (in cooperation with Francisco Tanzer) 1987/1988 in: Austrian National Library - Austrian Literature Archive. Tanzer
"Late Afternoon in Paradise". Chamberopera (together with Walter Müller). Music: Stefan Signer - 1992
"The Language in Space" - 1994
"The Singing Of The Fools about Europe" together with Dževad Karahasan - 1994
"Rehearsals on Dialogues" - 1996
"19182338 - The number You have called is disconnected". Music theatre. Music: Werner Raditschnig - 1998
"I Can See Something You Cannot See" - 2000
"Chronicle 1933-1945". Dokumentary Theatre about the biographies of Robert Ley and Victor Klemperer (together with Katharina and Jürgen Rostock) - 2000
"Snow and Death". Dramatization of the novel "The Ring of Shahrijar" by Dževad Karahasan - 2002
"The Death of Empedocles". Dramatization of the Fragments written by Friedrich Hölderlin (in cooperation with Dževad Karahasan) - 2005
"Banquet". Transmission of the Librettos of Dževad Karahasan from the Bosnian Language. Music: Herbert Grassl, Bruno Strobl and Hossam Mahmoud - 2005
"A First Step" - 2008
"Wilhelm Jerusalem – Helen Keller – Letters" - 2008, published as Visual Theatre Library Volume 1; ISBN 978-3-9503173-0-5 ARBOS-Edition © & ® 2010-2012
"Heaven on Earth" - 2012
*Pig Alm" - 2013
"Talking Gloves" a visual theatre play about the painter Albin Egger-Lienz and the poet Dichter August Stramm - 2014/2016
"Witness and Victim of the Apocalypse - The Austrian Composer Viktor Ullmann in World War I as an artillery observer witnessing the poison gas attack at the Isonzo front on 24 October 1917 in Bovec (Flitsch / Plezzo), and in World War II as victims of murder by poison gas on 18 October 1944 in Auschwitz" - Arnoldstein 2007, Prora 2008
"From The Austro-Hungarian Wehrmacht in The German Wehrmacht" - Arnoldstein 2009, Prora 2010
"About Images and Card Counterfeiters - The Paris Commune in the 19th century, Lenin 1917 and 1918, Austrian school atlas 2008" - Arnoldstein 2010
""Refuses Any Military Work!" - Arnoldstein 2011
"The Servants of All Lords" Arnoldstein 2012
"'... I get a pension from the Wiener Philharmoniker subsidy whose amount shall be fixed by the General Assembly in accordance with the available resources ...' AS THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC DEVALUED THE PENSIONS OF THEIR JEWISH MUSICIANS BEFORE THE DEPORTATION IN THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS SHOWN WITH DOCUMENTS FOR ASSET RECOVERY AND QUESTIONS FOR RESTITUTION" - Arnoldstein 2013
"Political Murder - the instrumentalization of politics in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century" Arnoldstein 2013
"Viktor Ullmann - Way to the Front 1917" Documentary Film, Book and Director: Herbert Gantschacher, Editor: Erich Heyduck; ARBOS-DVD Vienna-Salzburg-Klagenfurt-Arnoldstein 2007.
"Spuren nach Theresiestadt - Tracks to Terezín" Documentary Film about the survivor of the Holocaust Herbert Thomas Mandl, Interview and Director: Herbert Gantschacher, Camera: Robert Schabus, Editor: Erich Heyduck/DVD in German and English; ARBOS, Wien-Salzburg-Klagenfurt, 2007.
"The Emperor of Atlantis or The Disobedience of Death" Documentary Music Theatre about the opera of Viktor Ullmann, Book and Director: Herbert Gantschacher, Sound-engineering: Roumen Dimitrov, Editor: Erich Heyduck, Montage: Dieter Werderitsch; ARBOS-DVD Vienna-Salzburg-Klagenfurt in German 2009, in English 2010, in Italian 2010, in Czech 2015.
Christian Martin Fuchs: "The Trip into the Dream" - 1992
Burgis Paier: "Love is no Tomato Juice!" - 1993
Dževad Karahasan: "About the Exile in an Open Society" - 1994
Dževad Karahasan: "Speech for the award of the Bruno Kreisky Award" - 1995
Alfred Goubran: "Music for eyes and ears" - 1995
Dominik Maringer: "Music in Tanzenberg" - 1996. ISBN 3-85378-459-3
Jean-Jacques van Vlasselaer: "The Emperor of Atlantis" - 1996
"Theatre Crossin Borders: 'The Emperor of Atlantis'. First production of the CD and Premiere at Terezín" - 1996
Johannes Birringer: Media & performance: along the border - 1998. ISBN 0-8018-5852-6
Michael Ausserwinkler: "Speech for the Culture Awards 1998"
Beate Scholz: "Delicatessen!" - 1999
Carolin Walker "The Project Kar" in: Thomas Heinze "Arts Funding: Sponsoring - Fundraising - Public-Private-Partnership" - 1999. ISBN 3-8258-4344-0
Gerhard Ruiss: "Spent commitments" - 1999
Guido Fackler: "Voice of the camp - Music in Concentration Camps" - 2000
Hans-Günter Klein: "Live in the moment, live in eternity. The lectures of the symposium of the 100th Birthday of Viktor Ullmann" - 2000. ISBN 3-89727-099-4
Alf Krauliz, Marion Mauthe, Lukas Beck: Rooms on the move – 10 years Donaufestival. 2002. ISBN 3-211-83864-3
Herbert Arlt: "Trans: documentation of a cultural polylog test in the WWW" - 2002. ISBN 3-86110-324-9
Michal Caban, Šimon Caban, Jan Dvořák: "Baletní jednotka Křeč" - 2003. ISBN 80-86102-10-6
Elena Makarova, Sergei Makarov, Victor Kuperman: "University Over the Abyss, The story behind 520 lecturers and 2,430 lectures in KZ Theresienstadt 1942-1944" - 2004. ISBN 965-424-049-1
Jan Vičar: "IMPRINTS Essays on Czech Music and Aesthetics" - 2005, ISBN 978-8024409894 (Department of Musicology of Palacký University Faculty of Philosophy in Olomouc), ISBN 80-903589-0-X (Togga)
Eva Zwick: "Hearing. 'Hearing Rooms' in Deaf Theatre" - 2007
Dario Oliveri "Musica e cultura nel ghetto di Theresienstadt - 2008, ISBN 9788883023583
Jana Unuk: "The Vilenica 2010 Prize Winner Dževad Karahasan", pages 9, 13, 17 - 2010. ISBN 978-961-6547-50-5
Rafael Ugarte Chacón "Theatre und Deafness" pages 195-203, transcript Edition Bielefeld 2015 ISBN 978-3-8376-2962-0
Gabriela Vojvoda "Room and Construction of Identity in the Novels of Dževad Karahasan" pages 241-253, LIT edition Berlin 2014 ISBN 978-3-643-12737-2
