Marie Nejar

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marie Nejar (born March 20, 1930 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ; stage name Leila Negra ) is a German - French former pop singer and actress who played as a dark-skinned extra in UFA films during the Nazi era and, at the beginning of the 1950s, became a child star regardless of her real age . She ended her career in the spotlight in late 1957 and began training as a nurse.

life and work

family

Marie Nejar is the granddaughter of a lady from an upper-class Hamburg family who - when she married a Creole from Martinique - was rejected by her family. The couple received little support and from time to time moved from one place to another in search of employment. Their daughter Cécilie was born when the small family settled in Riga , where the grandfather Marie Nejars was shot in a pub.

The widowed grandmother then moved back to Hamburg, where she settled. Her adult daughter Cécilie - Marie's mother - worked as a musician at the time and went singing from bar to bar. Marie's father was the captain's steward on a ship from Liverpool and came from Ghana . He returned to England very soon and saw his daughter only a few times later. Her mother tried to keep the pregnancy a secret and gave birth to the baby in an orphanage in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Marie Nejar is - contrary to popular opinion - not a so-called " occupation child" - especially since she was born in 1930. Three years later she was brought to Hamburg at the urging of her grandmother, who in the meantime had found out about Cécilie's illegitimate daughter. Marie Nejar lost her mother at the age of ten. She bled to death after an unsuccessful abortion because she could not find help in any hospital.

Early years

Marie Nejar grew up in the St. Pauli district when the National Socialists came to power. Because of her dark skin color, she was openly exposed to persecution and hostility, but the Nazis' focus was on the Jews and regime critics, so she was spared for the time being. In 1934 she played in the Paul Lincke operetta Gigri in Hamburg. Due to the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, however, she could not finish her schooling and was obliged to do forced labor in a factory. With the help of a liberal class teacher, a Jewish doctor and the humanity of police officers from the Davidswache , she was able to survive the first few years. The then Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels was looking for black children who should play so-called "bush folk" in various UFA films. So Marie Nejar has also written and soon invited to Potsdam-Babelsberg, where they eventually 1942 in a scene in the lavishly produced Munchausen - film alongside Hans Albers played a black servant with a palm frond. "Excuse me. I was a kid then. I loved it, and I also had two weeks off from school. With signature and on instructions from Mr. Goebbels. "

A few months later she played a small role alongside Heinz Rühmann as the daughter of a tribal chief in the Quax strip in Africa .

Career start

After the war ended in 1945, she first worked in the Er & Sie-Bar in Hamburg . After the death of her grandmother in 1949, she was a cigarette seller on Timmendorfer Strand when she was asked by chance to test a microphone that was used to entertain the evening guests. During this “rehearsal” she sang a song by Horst Winter , popular at the time , which convinced the musicians of her talent. In Vienna she took on a supporting role in a revue, where she also had to sing. As a result, the now grown woman received a contract with a record company.

Marie Nejar was passed off as a 15-year-old and started a career as a singing child star in the early 1950s, releasing numerous German hits. Because of her skin color, there was great interest in her as a "post-war curiosity", just like with Josephine Baker before the war and the Tunis-born Afro-Cuban Roberto Zerquera ( Roberto Blanco ) and the Trinidad-German Peter Mico Joachim ( Billy Mo ) after the war.

Marie Nejar had her greatest hit success under the stage name Leila Negra in 1952 together with Peter Alexander under the title The sweetest fruits only eat the big animals, produced by her - and Alexander - discoverer Gerhard Mendelson . But other songs such as Don't Make So Sad Eyes or the Toxi song from the film of the same name (premiered on August 15, 1952) won the audience's approval and landed in the middle of the charts. Together with Peter Alexander and other musicians, she toured Germany in the 1950s with a large teddy bear in her arms, which would become something like her trademark. In an interview on April 20, 1955, she described herself as “a Hamburg woman through and through”, even though she was French.

After appearing in five films and recording around 30 hits, Leila Negra's active career ended in the late 1950s. She began training as a nurse in 1957 and later worked in this profession in Hamburg. Marie Nejar lives as a pensioner in Hamburg (as of 2017).

Others

Her Toxi song was used in the 2015 crime scene Niedere Instinkte .

Films starring Marie Nejar

Schlager by Marie Nejar (under the stage name Leila Negra )

  • The sweetest fruits only eat the big animals, with Peter Alexander (1952)
  • Toxi Song (1952)
  • Mütterlein (1953; 1954 cover by Wolfgang Sauer : Believe me)
  • Gilli-Gilli-Ox Pepper (1954)
  • Hei Lili (The most beautiful happiness on earth) (1954)
  • My teddybear
  • The little boy from the Grand Hotel
  • Dear God, let the sun shine again
  • The two little finches
  • A bouquet of forget-me-nots (1957)
  • Don't look so sad
  • Mamachi
  • Silver horse
  • Pony Serenade, with Peter Alexander
  • Sparrow and sparrow
  • Twelve little negroes
  • If I had two wings
  • A little negro in the snow
  • When the sandman comes softly
  • Virginia Blues, with Kenneth Spencer
  • A Little Negro Boy Dreams of a Snowball Fight (1955)
  • A Little Tryst (1956)

literature

  • Marie Nejar: Don't look so sad because you are a negro: my youth in the Third Reich (written down by Regina Carstensen) . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-499-62240-3 .
  • Adam Soboczynski in Die Zeit - No. 21 from May 16, 2007, page 84

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ from Zuendfunk (BR) with picture ( memento from September 18, 2002 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ A b Marie Nejar: "Everyone always sees the exotic in me, not the German" , Zeit Online , March 20, 2015, accessed on June 24, 2017
  3. ^ Marie Nejar: Das Glückskind von St. Pauli , Der Tagesspiegel, November 3, 2013
  4. ↑ Wild Marie. Report by Frank Sandmann, TAZ v. June 30, 2007
  5. ^ Walther Zeitler: Bayerwald portraits . Verlag Attenkofer, Straubing, 2nd edition 2010, p. 16
  6. ↑ cf. Adam Soboczynski in Die Zeit - No. 21 of May 16, 2007, page 84 German view
  7. ↑ Experienced stories: Marie Nejar, former pop singer , ardaudiothek.de , April 17, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Nejar, Marie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Negra, Leila
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German singer and actress
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Mülheim an der Ruhr