Cléo de Mérode

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Cléo de Mérode, photo taken around 1901

Cléopatre-Diane "Cléo" de Mérode (born September 27, 1875 in Paris ; † October 17, 1966 there ) was a French ballerina and variety dancer.

Life

Cléo de Mérode was born on September 27, 1875 in Paris, France. She was the illegitimate daughter of the Austrian baroness Vincentia de Mérode (1850-1899), who was of Austrian and Belgian descent, and of the Austrian judge, lawyer and tourism pioneer, Theodor Christomannos , who was of Greek, German and French descent. Her parents were estranged, but her father continued to support her mother financially. She was raised a Catholic.

At the age of seven she began her ballet training at the Paris Opera with Mlle. Théodore. At the age of eleven she was already under contract at the opera. During this time she was a model for the painter Edgar Degas, among others . Her loose hair, tied with a headband, was her trademark from the age of sixteen and became a common fashion hairstyle à la Cléo in the early 20th century . In May 1896 she won a beauty contest organized by the magazine “L'Éclair”: A large majority of the readers voted her the most beautiful among 131 “jolies actrices”. In the same year she sat as a model for the sculptor Alexandre Falguière . His sculpture, entitled Danseuse , depicting a naked dancer with the features of Cléo de Mérode, caused a sensation at the Paris Spring Salon in 1896. Her first engagement at the Grand Casino was the result of the sensation. She danced in the role of Phryné in the ballet of the same name by Auguste Germain . The premiere was a great success.

Mérode always denied a passionate affair with the Belgian King Leopold II . Because of the rumor about the royal love affair, the derisive name Cléopold was added to him ( Sigmund Freud dealt with this in his "joke" essay from 1905). Leopold's visit to Paris in 1896 was not about her, but about secret negotiations about common African colonial interests against Great Britain, she was only sent a bouquet of roses. Jagatjit Singh , the Maharaja of Kapurthala and other famous men were among her admirers. During this time she appeared in the pieces Les Deux Pigeons , La Korrigane and Etoile . Gustave Charpentier hired her for the role of La Beauté in Le Couronnement de la Muse . This was followed by a guest performance in New York , where she celebrated great success with the play Faust . She danced in the Hamburg Hansa Theater and in the Berlin Winter Garden , among others .

Her grave in the Père Lachaise cemetery

Due to many lucrative offers, she left the opera and began performing in variety. In 1900 she created her famous dance La Cambodgienne , which she presented at the Paris World Exhibition at the Théâtre Indochinois . In 1901 she appeared for the first time in the Folies Bergère . Numerous guest tours have taken her across Europe. During her stay in Munich between 1903 and 1904 she was a model for the painters Friedrich August von Kaulbach and Franz von Lenbach . In 1908 she danced for Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Family in Berlin and in the same year she interpreted the role of Phoébe in Endymion et Phoébe in the Opéra Comique alongside the first dancer of the Opéra national de Bordeaux Régina Badet . In her great years, Cléo de Mérode was one of the most frequently portrayed women in the world (according to her own statement: the most photographed). Her tours were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I, but from 1920 she made other guest tours in France. Your date of birth was often given as "1885".

Slowly she withdrew from the stage. In 1934 she danced again in the Revue 1900 in the Paris Alcazar . She lived in Biarritz for a long time. Simone de Beauvoir referred to in her volume of essays Le deuxième sexe ( The opposite sex ) Mérode as a courtesan , who defended herself against this and in 1955 initiated a (successful) trial for insult. In the same year she published her memoir. In her “old-fashioned” clothes, she was well known in her Paris quarter as “Madame la Baronne”.

Cléo de Mérode died on October 17, 1966 at the age of 91 in Paris. She found her final resting place in her hometown in the Père Lachaise cemetery (Dept. 90).

  • Cléo de Mérode around 1898

  • Alexandre Falguière,
    Danseuse ("dancer")

Works

  • Le ballet de ma vie. 2nd edition Horay, Paris 1985, ISBN 2-7058-0162-6 (EA Paris 1955, foreword by Françoise Ducout).

literature

  • Simone de Beauvoir : Le deuxième sexe. Hachette, Paris 1950.
    • German translation: The opposite sex custom and sex of women . 4th edition Rowohlt, Reinbek 2004, ISBN 3-499-22785-1 .
  • Karl Reissmann: Cleo de Merode. A dancer's dream of happiness (women of love; vol. 7). MVA, Heidenau 1921 (biographical novel)
  • Brygida M. Ochaim, Claudia Balk: Variety dancers around 1900. From sensual intoxication to modern dance . Stroemfeld, Frankfurt / M. 1998, ISBN 3-87877-745-0 , pp. 132-133 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name at the Deutsches Theatermuseum , Munich, October 23, 1998 to January 17, 1999).
  • Christian Corvisier: Cléo de Mérode et la photographie. La première icône modern . Éditions du Patrimoine, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-85822-911-6 .
  • Michael Garval: Cléo de Mérode's Postcard Stardom . In: Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide , Ed. 8 (2009).
  • Cléo de Mérode , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 48/1966 of November 21, 1966, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Cléo de Mérode  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Archives Paris. 1875, Naissances, 05 V4E 3017. # 2179. http://archives.paris.fr/
  2. ↑ https: // gw.geneanet.org/frebault?lang=en&pz=henri&nz=frebault&p=vincentia+maria+cacilia+catharina&n=de+merode
  3. ↑ https://www.dolomitipremiere.com/en/our-grandfather-theodor-voice-of-eternity/
  4. ↑ http://www.bolzano-scomparsa.it/christomannos_e_la_ballerina.html
  5. ↑ https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Grab_Theodor_Christomannos.jpg
  6. ↑ Michael D. Garval: [https: //books.google.com/books? id = VOqQfYNWoC8C & printsec = title page # v = onepage & q = father & f = false Cléo de Mérode and the rise of modern celebrity culture] 2012, ISBN 978-1-4094-0603-7 .
personal data
SURNAME Mérode, Cléo de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mérode, Cléopatre-Diane de (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION french ballet dancer
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris , France
DATE OF DEATH 17th October 1966
Place of death Paris , France