Carola Williams

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Sign of the Carola-Williams-Park in Cologne
Stele in the park reminding of the former location of the Williams building : Carola Williams' daughter Jeanette (r.), Granddaughter Caroline (l.) With great-grandson Dominik

Carola Williams , née Carola Althoff , (born December 1, 1903 in Bad Sassendorf , † December 12, 1987 in Cologne ) was a German circus director .

biography

Carola Althoff came from a circus dynasty and was the oldest of eight children of the circus director Dominik Althoff (1882–1974), who founded Circus D. Althoff in 1905 . At the age of three she made her debut in the arena as the "smallest voltigeuse in the world". In 1931 she married the artist Harry Barlay (actually Reinhold Kwasnik ), in the same year the son Holdy Barlay was born, who later appeared as a Texas rider in his mother's circus. Together, the couple founded their first company, the Barlay Circus .

After the marriage broke up, Carola Barlay and her son returned to their parents' company, which she and her brother Franz Althoff managed until the Second World War . In 1941 she married the jockey and animal trainer Harry Williams and had three more children with him, Alfons (1940-1960), Emanuela (1945-1947) and Jeanette (* 1946).

During the Nazi era, Carola Williams and her brothers protected Jewish people, for example by letting them travel with their circus, and other Jewish circus families in the camp provided them with food. Her brother Adolf Althoff and his wife Maria were honored as Righteous Among the Nations in 1995 for this commitment . During the war, the Williams family lost almost all of their belongings. Nevertheless, shortly after the end of the war, in June 1945, Carola and Harry Williams presented The Great Williams Circus Show in rented tents . This was also possible because Williams had a British passport and therefore received this early approval from the occupation authorities. In the same year Carola Williams gave birth to her daughter Emanuela, who died at the age of just 14 months.

In 1946, Carola and Harry Wiliams had the semi-permanent Williamsbau winter building (corner Aachener Strasse / Innere Kanalstrasse ) built in Cologne, the largest hall in the destroyed city with a capacity for 2500 people. Operetta, sports and carnival events took place there in the following years. It was opened with a guest performance of the Csárdásfürstin with Marika Rökk in the leading role for several months . In 1947 the Düsseldorf carnivalists rented the circus' heated winter tent on Erkrather Strasse in Düsseldorf for their first major carnival session.

In 1950 Harry Williams suffered serious injuries during rehearsals for a Roman chariot race at London's Harringay Arena and died three weeks later. As a result, the widow was supported by her brother Adolf in running the circus. In 1955, the siblings in Berlin were awarded the Ernst Renz Memorial Plaque by the Society of Circus Friends in Germany . In 1957 the Circus Williams moved into the newly built winter quarters in Cologne-Mülheim . From there the circus, whose trademark was the oval Strohmeyer Chapiteau , traveled to Germany and Western Europe. In 1960 Carola Williams' son Alfons died in a car accident in Belgium . Her daughter Jeanette and adoptive son Günther Gebel , who were also married from 1961 to 1967, supported Carola Williams during this time; Gebel took the name Williams .

Grave of the Williams family in Melaten Cemetery

From 1962 to 1966, Carola Williams' circus traveled with Spanish circuses as the Spanish National Circus . In 1962 the company was awarded the Circus Oscar as the world's best circus program by the Fédération Internationale du Cirque , primarily because of its first-class animal numbers . After the end of the 1968 season, the animal numbers were rented to the US circus Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and artists and animals were shipped to the US, including their daughter Jeanette, who became US residents. The travel business in Germany was stopped and Carola Williams stayed in Cologne. The former winter quarters of Circus Williams in Cologne-Mülheim was sold to Bernhard Paul in 1984 and has been the location of Circus Roncalli since 1986 . Carola Williams died in Cologne in 1987 and is buried in the family grave (hall 12 in G) in the Melaten cemetery . Her husband Harry and the children Alfons and Emanuela are also buried here.

Carola Williams engaged in socially Cologne: "Popular and the Grande Dame of Cologne society Williams was due to popular sustainable gestures." So they supported financially about rebuilding the church of St. Apostles and placed horses and in 1949 an elephant for the Rosenmontagszug available. In 1950 she gave on a carnival meeting of the 1. FC Köln in Williams building the player-coach of the football team, Hennes Weisweiler , marking the two-year anniversary of club joke a little goat for good luck. This was named Hennes . He and his successors became the team's mascot , which is why they are also known as "the billy goats".

In December 2017, the Cologne city center district council decided to name the part of the inner green belt (between Aachener and Vogelsanger Strasse) where the Williamsbau had been until 1956 after the circus director Carola-Williams-Park . The designation became effective on May 6, 2018. ( Location of the park )

Web links

Commons : Carola Williams  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The sources indicate December 11th or 12th. The gravestone reads “12.12.”. See: [1]
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Circus Williams story. In: circus-williams.de. December 1, 1903, accessed January 27, 2018 .
  3. ^ Stefan Nolte: Circus in Aschaffenburg. BoD - Books on Demand, 2015, ISBN 978-3-732-29806-8 , p. 30 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  4. ↑ a b Dominique Jando: Gunther Gebel-Williams. In: Circopedia. Retrieved May 8, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Alex, Alfred and the Alfons Blumenfeld family (pdf) Retrieved May 8, 2018.
  6. ^ The Righteous Among The Nations - Althoff familiy. In: db.yadvashem.org. Retrieved May 8, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Emanuela Williams in the Find a Grave database . Accessed February 4, 2018.
  8. ↑ a b c d Ulrich S. Soénius / Jürgen Wilhelm (Ed.): Kölner Personen-Lexikon . Greven, Cologne, p. 582 .
  9. ↑ a b c Cologne: Park in the green belt is named after Carola Williams. In: Focus Online . January 27, 2018, accessed January 27, 2018 .
  10. ^ Dominique Jando: Circus Williams. In: Circopedia. February 20, 1995, accessed January 27, 2018 .
  11. ↑ Susanne Happe-Greis: 40 years of the circus: Roncalli is much more than a circus. In: Kölnische Rundschau . March 23, 2016, accessed January 27, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Ayhan Demirci: Melaten. Myth and Legends . Wienand, Cologne 1996, p. 130 .
  13. ↑ An elephant in the Rose Monday procession. In: walter-dick-archiv.de. Retrieved January 28, 2018 .
  14. ^ Minutes of the resolution on the meeting of the inner city district council on December 7, 2017
  15. ↑ Open Council Information System. In: politik-bei-uns.de. Retrieved January 27, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Williams, Carola
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Althoff, Carola (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German circus director
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Sassendorf
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 1987
Place of death Cologne