Edith Türckheim

Edith Türckheim (born August 3, 1909 in Berlin ; † January 16, 1980 in Berlin) was a German expressive dancer , choreographer and dance teacher . Her most important work is the cycle Die Nachtlichen , for which she had Siegfried Borris write the music. She was considered to be almost the only keeper of expressive dance in its purest form.

Life

Edith Türckheim was born in the Berlin district of Moabit , where she also spent her childhood. After that she lived on Motzstrasse in Wilmersdorf and from the end of the war until her death in January 1980 on Hohenzollerndamm , also in Wilmersdorf.

As a doctor's daughter, she was meant to study medicine . Since music was very important in her parents' home, she was not lacking in musical inspiration , which led to the discovery of the desire to move, which she then passionately lived out in sports . It was only after going to school at a Mary Wigman demonstration that she discovered the perfect combination of music, sport and exercise. Her parents did not like the enthusiasm for dancing. She secretly attended the first Wigman School in Berlin, led by the later opera director Margarete Wallmann . Mary Wigman herself traveled from Dresden every week to give lessons there. This is how Türckheim was influenced by expressive dance.

School performance suffered from her double life , and she sometimes skipped classes so as not to miss her dance lessons. Ultimately, she got the next degree, but then dropped out of school. Her parents still forced her to learn a down-to-earth profession. But she was just as inflexible, which is why, in addition to her work as a librarian in the city library, she continued to secretly attend the Wigman School, where she now took the "in-depth layman course". Wallmann tried to find a solution by soliciting the parents' consent for professional dance training. After all, they agreed to let an art publisher , and therefore an expert, uncle, attend a dance lesson for the purpose of assessing performance. What they saw convinced the uncle and thus the parents. Two years of professional training as a dancer followed. During this time she worked at the Salzburg Festival and also at the Munich Theater Congress. She gained further spurs as the leader of children's and lay courses .

Following her first job, a two-year dancer engagement in Magdeburg , she became a member of the ensemble at the Berlin State Opera in 1934 , where Lizzie Maudrik trained her in ballet , and rose to become the first solo dancer. In 1936 she began to stage her own dance pieces and passed her baptism of fire in the Wigman City of Dresden. Soon she went on tour with her program .

Your attitude during the Nazi dictatorship is opaque. On the one hand, she still performed here and there with dance performances in 1942/43 at popular diversions organized by the Wehrmacht commanderships or the Reichstheaterkammer , created a dance called Kampflied and pleaded for an increased mental and physical education in schools, on the other hand, she was in the second half of 1943 declared a " half-Jew " and had to leave the State Opera. At least until December 1943 she performed her rehearsals at dance matinees and solo guest performances in various cities. Unless it is a self-made legend , during the last months of the war Türckheim sought refuge with her cousin Maria Merz, who had also become an expressive dancer, in order to avoid being seized by the Nazis (or simply because their Berlin apartments, which were occupied one after the other, had been bombed out ).

After the war, she did not succeed in being accepted again at the State Opera, so she and Maria Merz opened a dance training studio in Berlin's elegant Grunewald district on Hubertusbader Strasse and Hubertusallee. While in the first decade it was purely geared towards training actors , in this case broadly up to pantomime and soon also tap dancing , the offer was made in response to a lack of appreciation for dance art in Germany and the consequent decline in professional demand for courses for children and laypeople expanded. From 1947 onwards, she continued to organize dance matinees, was hired for theater performances , was a choreographic assistant in a dance history book publication, developed teaching programs for television, gave dance demonstrations for schools at the “Musical Weeks” and, meanwhile, assisted her with everything related to it, such as the costumes responsible partner Maria Merz in the production of dance films, which were sometimes used as the end of an event. In order to introduce the so-called “Wigman technique”, she was a welcome guest lecturer or dance group leader abroad.

From her dance suite Die Nachtlichen , set to music by Siegfried Borris in 1949 , the subject of which are dodgy or outcast (mostly) female figures - The Malicious , The Fool , The Whore , The Obsessed - she often later incorporated individual scenes into her program a. The “modern phantasmagoria ” with a tendency towards “atonal dance”, which is “without role models, without comparison”, may be considered her magnum opus . Otherwise, the range of portrayals ranged from tragedies to Wilhelm Busch figures, and their choice of music spanned various eras, with a focus on contemporary composers such as Orff , Bartók and Stravinsky . Despite a serious illness, Türckheim still performed in December 1979. She was supported by her master student Nicolaine Weisz because Merz had died in 1976. She herself succumbed to her condition on January 16, 1980.

Reviews (excerpts)

Fritz Böhme (1943):

"[...] Edith Türckheim [...] creates her dances in a not loud, but clear and beautiful sign language. Rhythmic bondage and harmonious unity emphasize the dance as opposed to the pantomime. The composition shows a fine musical feeling. The expression is lively, unsentimental, full of strong impulses and changeable in contrasts, the character drawing is clear and unexaggerated. "

Herbert Pfeiffer (1946):

"Edith Türckheim [...] proved [...] again which artistic understanding controls and masters her ability and her sense of style: there is never a contradiction between the physical world and the subject, the will to ensure success through" effects "never tolerates and always causes it the attitude of a cohesive personality that technology and dance content become a unit. "

Walter Kaul (1954):

“It is true that the prelude,“ Shining Clarity ”after Handel's music, in its fanfare-like programmatic accentuation, seemed rather inflated and outrageous. Dancing this spiritual theme is probably not given to any mortal today - not even as a dream. But already the second dance "In floating light" after Erik Satie swung free of any emotional burden: it was a lyrical impression in absolute form. The themes that became the symbolic expression of our tormented and torn times, such as “Endless Path” and “Dance of Delusion”, were most tied. A composition that is as original as it is imaginative: the gorgeous mask and costume dance “The Lost Face”. The final dance “Signs in Red” rightly had to be repeated. How the artist here, following Orff's music, unleashed the circles and eddies from the held to swaying looseness and tied them again, varying and increasing, that became a triumph of expressive dance, which emphatically proved that it - whether fashion or not - it to ballet and the Pantomime is equal. "

Georg Zivier (1965):

“With the strength and freshness of a twenties, she still masters her articulation with virtuosity and flexibility, fascinates her in both the Adagio and the Allegro. But the violent as well as the humorous, yes, one could say sarcastic dances correspond more to their nature than the solemn or even the psychological numbers. She showed an astonishing amount of verve in step, and her ironic parodies of so-called "mood dances" were peppery and witty at the same time. "

literature

• Karl-Heinz Taubert (choreographic assistance: Edith Türckheim, Maria Merz): Court dances. Your story and choreography . Schott, Mainz 1968, ISBN 3-7957-2880-0 .

Web links

• Page about Edith Türckheim at the German Dance Archive Cologne .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} F.R .: Life for dance. Body as an expression: Edith Türckheim died . In: The evening . January 18, 1980, p. 5.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Tsp / dpa: Edith Türckheim died. In: Der Tagesspiegel . January 18, 1980.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Georg Zivier: expressive dance. Edith Türckheim in the academy . In: Der Tagesspiegel. May 16, 1965, p. 4.
4. ^ Herbert Pfeiffer: Edith Türckheim danced . In: Der Tagesspiegel. June 14, 1950.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Patricia Stöckemann, Hedwig Müller: Berlin 1945-1949. A documentation . In: dance drama. No. 29, issue 2/1995, p. 19.
6. ↑ Two cheerful hours (daily reports from the city and district of Kalisch) . In: Litzmannstädter Zeitung , June 26, 1942, page no longer available , search in web archives: wimbp.lodz.pl (PDF)
7. ↑ Fritz Böhme: Dance and dance poem . In: Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . Evening edition, February 1, 1943.
8. ^ Fritz Böhme: The dancer Edith Türckheim . In: Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . Evening edition, February 18, 1943.
9. ^ Telegraph . October 14, 1943.
10. ↑ ^{a b} Herbert Pfeiffer: Edith Türckheim danced . In: Der Tagesspiegel. May 21, 1946.
11. ↑ Horst Koegler: My Berlin. Horst Koegler on his beginnings as a ballet critic in Berlin in the 1950s . On: tanznetz.de , March 2012 or May 14, 2012. ( tanznetz.de ( Memento from October 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive ))
12. ^ Herbert Pfeiffer: Edith Türckheim danced . In: Der Tagesspiegel. November 15, 1949.
13. ↑ Fritz Böhme: A master of the mask and the dance expression . In: BZ at noon . February 11, 1943.
14. ^ Walter Kaul: Edith-Türckheim-Matinee. Between fanfare and poetry . In: The courier . [?]. September 1954.

Remarks

1. ↑ The often found indication "1900" (eg mehrwissen , wispor , wienerzeitung or Paul S. Ulrich: Biographical Directory for Theater, Dance and Music. Volume 2: M – Z. 2nd edition. Berlin-Verlag Arno Spitz, 1997, ISBN 3-87061-673-3 , p. 1915) is synonymous with "19 ??". The widespread indication of “1912” (e.g. in the book publications by Ernst Probst, the dance drama documentation cited in the individual references and again in “Ulrich”) is a false information from Türckheim to Reclam's ballet dictionary . The correct year of birth is listed in the obituaries - verified by files in the Berlin State Archives (accident reports from December 20, 1939 and January 4, 1941 under the signature A Pr.Br. Rep. 042 No. 16923 Prussian State Theater VI, branch offices, workshops, etc. or A Pr.Br. Rep. 042 No. 16922 Prussian State Theater V, State Opera Unter den Linden (dancers, musicians) ).