Circus flower field
The Circus Blumenfeld was a German circus company owned by the Jewish Blumenfeld family. In Magdeburg , the circus had a sizable building in what was then Königstrasse, today's Walter-Rathenau-Strasse . The circus was founded in 1811, existed for 117 years and went bankrupt in the Great Depression in 1928. Most of the family members were murdered in the Holocaust , only a few survived the Second World War.
history
Beginning to the end of the 19th century
The Blumenfeld family originally came from the Rhineland and were traveling jugglers as early as the 17th century . In the city chronicles of Frankfurt and Leipzig from this time they are listed as tightrope walkers . In the 18th century they formed a "gymnastics troop".
The founder of Circus Blumenfeld was Maurice Levi Cerf (1783–1867), also known as Moritz Hirsch Levy. He came from Alsace and owned a traveling menagerie with birds and monkeys. When he married a daughter of the Blumenfelds in Beuel , he was allowed to take her family name with official approval. In 1811 the family started touring as Circus Blumenfeld with four horses, two bears and a few artists. Maurice / Moritz Blumenfeld and his wife had nine children: Moritz, Meyer, Emanuel, Sophia, Nathan, Leopold, Hermann, Mina, David and Simon.
The children of Maurice / Moritz Blumenfeld first appeared in the Circus Blumenfeld. Some of them also founded their own circuses, including the youngest son Simon, who was born in Wassenberg around 1829 . He had seven children with his wife, the equestrian Wilhelmina Blennow (born in Trier in 1841 ), whom he married in 1859. Their different places of birth reflect the nomadic way of life in the circus: Egon (born 1861 in Leipzig ), Virginie Henriette Wilhelmine Clothilde (1862 in Zwolle ), Alexander August Hugo (1863 in Delft ), Karl Heinrich (1866 in Warsaw ), Baptist Fritz (1868 in Braunschweig ), Paul Matthäus (1874 in Pfullendorf ) and Wilhelm Eduard (1876 in Reutlingen ). Two other children probably died in childhood. The newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad reported on a performance in Amsterdam in September 1862. Around 1867 Simon founded his own circus Simon Blumenfeld , which performed for three weeks in January 1877 in Nördlingen with 60 artists and 18 horses. Between 1889 and 1894, the Simon Blumenfeld Circus toured abroad in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In 1895 the entire family emigrated to London . Simon died here on June 2, 1911 and his wife Wilhelmine on October 30, 1915.
In many circuses their own professional jargons emerged ; the Circus Blumenfeld formed the flower field language , a mixture of French, Yiddish , Romanes and technical circus terms.
In 1834 the founder Moritz Blumenfeld handed the circus over to his son Emanuel. He modernized the company, placed the emphasis on the performance of horses and trained his children to be excellent riders . After the death of his first wife Jetta Hartog, he married Jeannette Stein, who brought her parents' circus into the marriage, so that the Circus Blumenfeld became one of the largest German circus companies of its time.
In 1874 the Circus Blumenfeld acquired winter quarters in Guhrau in Silesia . When Emanuel died in 1885, his widow took over the management until 1896. During this time, the circus was able to perform over 80 horses and variously trained animals such as a "wonder pig" and visited 120 locations in a seven-month season. In 1897, the company switched from road to rail, which meant that fewer places could be visited, but instead they stayed longer in the cities. At the turn of the 20th century, the circus had six tents , 130 horses, its own orchestra, and the average attendance was 4,000 people.
Emanuel had sixteen children. The management was initially taken over by his sons Adolf, Hermann, Simon and then by Simon's sons. The children Betty, Jeannette, Arthur and Eugen as well as Alex, Alfons, Alfred, Alice, Willy, Fritz and Erich came from the marriage of Simon Blumenfeld and Rosa Strassburger.
20th century
The First World War permanently damaged the company. Seven of Simon's eight sons were drafted into the army . Many animals were requisitioned for military use or starved to death. After the winter quarters in Guhrau had to be given up, the headquarters was relocated to Magdeburg. In the 1920s, traditional horse numbers resumed, with a Roman chariot race at the end. In 1922 the circus went on a foreign tour to the Baltic States , and by 1925 it had rejoined the big German companies. At that time he owned 45 horses, two elephants, four camels, two dromedaries, three llamas, a guanaco and two bulls. As a result of the global economic crisis, unemployment and the beginning of political radicalization, the company then had to file for bankruptcy in 1928.
After the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, circuses were closed. The Blumenfelds could only perform in other circuses for a short time and were soon excluded from working life as Jews. Simon's son Eugen died in Magdeburg in 1937, his daughter Jeannette emigrated to England. Simon himself and his wife Rosa were murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp . Their children Alice and Willy committed suicide in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz . Alex, Alfons, Alfred, Willy, Fritz and Erich emigrated to France, but were deported to the Drancy assembly camp and from there to Auschwitz and Majdanek , where they were murdered. Betty's fate remains unclear.
Only Arthur survived World War II and was able to hide in Berlin. After the war he tried to revive the circus with his wife Victoria and performed in front of Allied troops and orphans. However, in 1949 he had to sell the business to Circus Busch and committed suicide in 1951. In the 1960s, Jack Blumenfeld, Emanuel's great-grandson, married Christine Busch and took over the management of Circus Busch.
The Blumenfeld circus building was destroyed in the air raid on Magdeburg on January 16, 1945 . At the former building site on Walter-Rathenau-Straße, a series of stumbling blocks , a project by Gunter Demnig , reminds of the family members murdered in the Holocaust. Some members of the Blumenfeld family are buried in the Israelite Cemetery in Magdeburg .
Individual evidence
literature
- Gisela and Dietmar Winkler: The Blumenfelds: Fates of a Jewish circus family: a documentation. Edition Schwarzdruck, Gransee, 2012.
- Rudolf Geller: The Blumenfeld family and their circuses , in: Die Zirkuszeitung, Kulturhistorische Gesellschaft fur Circus und Varietékunst, June 1992. Circus Varieté and Artist Archive, Marburg.