Barbara Mayer (artist)

Barbara Mayer (born June 27, 1926 in Leipzig ) is a German artist . She works under the name Babette , she is particularly known for her dog revue.

Life

Barbara Mayer grew up in a simple working-class household with numerous siblings. Early on she began to practice artistic tricks with her siblings and friends; To this end, they mostly met on the bare grounds at the Lindenau harbor, which was under construction at the time, or on the open space behind their housing estate in the west of Leipzig, where the Proscho circus occasionally performed.

Following her school education, she began training in domestic economics in the 1940s; she spent a year as a senior year girl with a family out of town. She taught the children artistic figures.

At that time there was no professional training in acrobatics in Leipzig. This changed in the mid-1940s: The artist Heinz Matloch built a school in the so-called Milchinsel (former milk distribution point) that was affiliated with the Eros circus . At the time, Barbara Mayer's siblings were scattered in all directions: her favorite brother (a budding trapeze artist ) was walking from France back to Germany, her sister was fully employed as a nurse at the Dresden Clinic.

In the fifties, Barbara Mayer and two colleagues formed the artist trio " Romanis ". They appeared in various circuses and variety shows, including in the western part of the country, for example in 1952 in the Riverside Club in Bamberg. The highlights of the joint tours were the shows in the Friedrichstadtpalast Berlin. The venues in the 1960s were concentrated in Leipzig and the surrounding area, Erfurt, Magdeburg and Dresden.

In 1958 their son Frank was born, who later ran an important tiger breed. At the same time she started a solo career under the stage name “Babette” and specialized in a dog show with her two terrier mix-breeds Juri and Laika in combination with demanding acrobatic formations. She performed seasonally in retirement homes and company holiday camps, in the 1970s annually during the "Baltic Weeks" in the Hotel Neptun / Ostseebad Warnemünde.

Her son Frank Mayer, of the 1980 BRD ransomed was further led with his partner Marion Wessel, the daughter of the famous West Berlin tiger breeder Siegfried Wessel, whose tiger breeding. Even in his early childhood he was fond of and interested in the big cats, awakened by the famous Leipzig lion breeding of the zoo director Karl Max Schneider. Many of Siegfried Wessel's tigers were housed in well-known circuses (for example Circus Renz ).

In the second half of the 1980s, Babette made herself scarce, and no more public appearances could be heard. Presumably it was Babette, who for a short time was seen twice a day in the Plänterwald cultural park ( Spreepark Berlin ) with “Carmen's Hunderevue”, where other former colleagues from the GDR state circus also worked until it was completely dissolved. In 2001 there was the last “Carmen's Hundrevue” in the Spreepark. Since then, her trail has been lost.

Awards

• 1975: Medal for merits in the artistic work of the German Democratic Republic

literature

• Bodo Liese and Dietmar Winkler: There were 60 million. The GDR State Circus in figures and photos. ISBN 3-8334-4142-9
• Franz Wedemann: Experiences of a Leipzig acrobat. 1996, Verlag Volk und Welt Berlin
• Anne Schumann and Rebecca Wilton: Album. 2006
• In the Leipzig Elsterland. Plagwitz, Schleussig, Kleinzschocher, Grosszschocher, Knauthain, Knautkleeberg, Windorf. Hartmannsdorf Verlag Haikal 1997, ISBN 3980536831