Claire Heliot
Claire Heliot (born February 9, 1866 in Halle (Saale) as Clara Pleßke , married name Clara Hanmann , † June 9, 1953 in Stuttgart ) was a German animal tamer and animal trainer .
Life
Clara Pleßke was born as the daughter of the postal secretary Friedrich Pleßke and his wife Bertha. She married the trainer and stable master Karl Johann August Hanmann from Dresden. Her inherited fortune was lost due to her husband's addiction to extravagance, so that in 1896 she began to work as a zookeeper at the Leipzig Zoo due to the lack of other earning opportunities . There she first came into contact with big cats.
Clara Hanmann had already seen an animal tamer in the zoo. She wanted to become a predator trainer and finally convinced the zoo director Ernst Pinkert to use her to care for the lions. Pinkert himself used Carl Hagenbeck's dressage method , which was differentiated from the usual “hard dressage” with clubs or whips. Skilled in dealing with animals, Hanmann tamed lions by slowly getting them used to their presence and touch.
In 1898 Hanmann performed with a small group of lions in the Leipzig Zoo. She gave herself the internationally seeming stage name Claire Heliot. Pinkert took over the marketing and organized a first, successful tour that took her to Cologne , Stuttgart and Breslau . Tours to Belgium and France followed. An annual rhythm developed. In summer Heliot performed on Völkerschauwiesen and open-air stages, in winter in circuses and variety shows . Between 1899 and 1902 the trainer made several guest appearances in England. In 1902 the Tsar made a special train available to her, with which Heliot toured Russia. From this time there are collectible pictures of cigarette packets showing famous showmen and circus performers, including Claire Heliot.
Unlike other animal tamers, whose appearances were highly sexualized, Heliot's appearance suggested “cultivated femininity”, to which her good looks, her calm and careful treatment of the animals and the commands called in French contributed. Heliot's performance demonstrated the taming of the savage by civilization and culture. In the course of time, Heliot developed a dressage number with a total of twelve Berber lions and four mastiffs . For example, Heliot appeared in a black velvet torero suit with silver embroidery. At the beginning of their act, the lions took their places on pedestals in the ring. The mastiffs circled the lions and jumped over their backs. Heliot let the lions bob on a swing, climb high ladders, form large pyramids and jump through hoops and over barriers. She even managed to rope the lions. A specialty was the "lion carpet", where Heliot lay down on the lying lions. In 1899 she dared to put her head in the mouth of a lion for the first time. At the end of her dressage number, she took one of the 150 kg heavy lions on her shoulders and carried it out of the ring.
Her training was based on the fact that she raised young lions herself and produced extensive empathy. As the animals got older, they became more difficult to handle and the risk of attack increased. At this point, she removed the animal in question from her introductory program. The lion then came to the Leipzig Zoo, which in turn provided Heliot with young animals. Nevertheless, there were isolated attacks.
In 1905 Claire Heliot traveled to the United States for a seven-month tour. Then she announced, now 40 years old, that she was going to retire, as she felt tired and drained. At the farewell performances in Leipzig and Copenhagen , the heaviest lion attacks of her career occurred. One of the lions bit through her hip and she was in the hospital for a long time. Then Heliot withdrew from the ring. The Sarrasani Circus bought their lions, with which Hermann Haupt continued to work.
In 1907 Heliot acquired the "Rappenhof" near Leonberg , where she ran agriculture and bred horses. In 1908 she got official approval to use her stage name officially. In 1910 she sold the estate for a profit and moved to Stuttgart.
She lost her fortune in the hyperinflation of 1923 . In 1944, her apartment on Stitzenburgstrasse was bombed out, which destroyed her valuables as well as the written evidence of her career such as photos, letters, programs and newspaper clippings that were in her possession. Afterwards she lived in poor conditions in a retirement home above Beutelsbach . The Lord Mayor of Stuttgart Arnulf Klett later found her a place in the Hasenbergheim. She died in 1953 in the Feuerbach hospital.
After her eventful life, she summed up: “People have repeatedly disappointed me! My most loyal friends, they were - my lions ... "
Claire Heliot's grave, which she bought herself, is located in the Waldfriedhof Stuttgart in department 16 a. The director of the Sarrasani Circus is said to have donated the simple square tombstone, which only bears her name and dates of life, for her. An admirer set up the stone sculpture of a small standing lion in memory of her profession as an animal teacher. A lying lion of unknown origin crowned the gravestone in 2014, today it rests next to the other lion on the ground.
literature
- Julius Bazlen: At the Nill: Memories from the Tiergarten. Stuttgart 1925, pages 39-40.
- Hedwig Lohß : Miss Heliot. In: Through the peep window: memories of young people from old Stuttgart. Illustrated by Christine von Kalckreuth based on documents from the Stuttgart City Archives. Mühlacker 1972, pages 39-46.
- Helmut Engisch: Don't be afraid of big animals. Claire Heliot, the daring lion madam and the most charming of all trainers. In: The Swabian Buffalo King and the Lion Madam. Delightful stories from courageous and curious Swabians. Stuttgart: Theiss, 1998, pages 31-45.
- Mustafa Haikal : The Lion Factory. CVs and legends . With an afterword by Jörg Junhold , Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-936508-15-1 .
- Stephanie Haerdle: Don't be afraid, that's our job! Art riders, trainers and other circus artists. AvivA Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-932338-29-8 , pages 96-105.
- Werner Koch; Christopher Koch: Stuttgart cemetery guide. A guide to the graves of well-known personalities. Tübingen 2012, pages 107-108.
- Gabriele Katz: Stuttgart's strong women . Theiss, Darmstadt 2015, ISBN 978-3-8062-3157-1 , p. 66-76 .
- Jörg Kurz: Miss Claire Heliot. In: From Affenwerner to Wilhelma - Stuttgart's legendary animal shows . Belser-Verlag , Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-7630-2701-9 , pages 48-51.
- Jörg Kurz: "Miss Heliot" in Stuttgart. A world-famous animal trainer at the beginning of the 20th century. In: Wolfgang Walker (Ed.): Schwäbischer Heimatkalender 2016. Kohlhammer , Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-17-029019-8 .
- Jörg Kurz: Heliot, Claire, di Klara Hanmann (Claire, Clara, Klärchen), née Pleßke. In: Eva Labouvie (Ed.): Women in Saxony-Anhalt, Vol. 2: A biographical-bibliographical lexicon from the 19th century to 1945. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2019, ISBN 978-3-412-51145-6 , p. 216-219.
Web links
- Claire Heliot in the German biography
Individual evidence
- ↑ Glems and Würmgau newspaper, May 2, 1910
- ↑ #Kurz 2015 , page 51, #Koch 2016 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Heliot, Claire |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Pleßke, Clara (real name) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | German animal tamer and tamer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 9, 1866 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hall |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 9, 1953 |
| Place of death | Stuttgart |