Elizabeth Duncan

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Elizabeth Duncan (born Mary Elizabeth Bioren Duncan, born November 8, 1871 in San Francisco , USA , † December 1, 1948 in Tübingen ) was an American dance teacher.

Live and act

The school establishment

Together with her famous younger sister Isadora Duncan , Elizabeth Duncan founded a boarding school dance school in the Berlin district of Grunewald at 16 Trabener Strasse in 1904, in which selected children were trained free of charge from an early age, especially in music and dance. The body, soul and spirit of the students should develop equally. “When the pupils are accepted, no distinction will be made in national and social relationships. The school is democratic and international. Fatherless and motherless children, as well as children of unknown origins, are also welcome, ”said a press release (printed, among other things, in the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten of November 11, 1904). Classes began in February 1905. Elizabeth Duncan, who, unlike Isadora, lived in the school and was responsible for the entire school operation, was called "Aunt Miss" by the children. According to her mother, she once danced "much finer than Isadora" in San Francisco, but after an accident had to limit herself to dance pedagogy.

The development association

Isadora Duncan was unable to finance the boarding school with her performances and because of her own high debts. She wrote to the father of her first daughter Deirdre, Edward Gordon Craig : “How Elizabeth goes along in this sort of an Inferno I don't know - She keeps up against it with really wonderful courage.” In February 1906 Elizabeth Duncan founded an association to support and maintain the dance school of Isadora Duncan eV, and the sponsors included u. a. the composer Engelbert Humperdinck , Helene von Harrach (born Countess von Pourtalés (1849–1940); married to Ferdinand von Harrach in 1868 a confidante of the Empress) and the writer Ernst von Wildenbruch . Branches were set up in several cities, e. B. in Leipzig, Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Munich, Hamburg, and The Hague. Through the Munich branch, registered in the register of associations in 1927, the association existed until 2010 under the name Elizabeth Duncan Gesellschaft eV and was the oldest association for the promotion of artistic dance in Germany of its time.

Stations of the school

The years 1906 to 1911 were a restless and financially difficult time for the school, during which the Berlin building had to be abandoned in 1908 (initially rented) and the school in various locations, including a. found temporary accommodation in Paris. Around 1909 the sisters agreed that the actual school should be run by Elizabeth alone and that it should be called the Elizabeth Duncan School from now on. Isadora then made several attempts to found her own schools in France and Russia, for which she borrowed the most talented students from the original school, now run by her sister alone.

the school building in Darmstadt, 1957

With the support of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig von Hessen and his wife, the school was given its own spacious building on Marienhöhe near Darmstadt in 1911 and for a short time had ideal conditions for its activities. At the beginning of the First World War, Elizabeth brought the students to England first, then America, unless they returned to their families. The Darmstadt time and the years in Tarrytown are u. a. Described in the memoirs of the student Sonja Gaze (niece of the sculptor and draftsman Moissi Kogan , later wife of the composer Heino Gaze ). After the end of the World War and the return of the school to Germany, Elizabeth found that the building had been lost to the school through "patriotic actions" by the association's board. More restless years for the school followed, with the planned settlement of the school in Hagen, which failed due to the early death of the sponsor Karl Ernst Osthaus , the accommodation in the Communs of the New Palace in Potsdam and finally the settlement in Klessheim Palace near Salzburg ( 1925-1935). Perhaps the most prominent short-term student of the Klessheim years through her father was James Joyce's daughter Lucia Joyce, who attended a summer course for five weeks in the summer of 1928. From today's perspective, probably the most prominent of the few male students in Klessheim at the time was Johannes Mario Simmel , who lived in the Duncan School for several months in 1927. The most important witness of the Klessheim years for Duncan's pedagogy, however, was Lucia Burkiczak (1917–2013), of whom children's photos were published at the time (“the jumping Lucy”) and who was close to school until the last years of her life.

In 1936 the entire institute was relocated to Kaulbachstrasse in Munich (until autumn 1943) and the boarding school character was abandoned. During the war, the school deposited its property in three places: in Zwettl Abbey , in the Villa Gutmann in Baden near Vienna and in a garage in Freilassing , the border station near Salzburg , and lost almost everything in the process to looting (including Elizabeth's diaries and art possessions such as the Bronze figure of Isadora by the sculptor Constantin Starck ). Some documents and works of art that Elizabeth had lent her younger brother Raymond for an Isadora Duncan Museum in Paris burned in the private collection of his family in New York in 1999. A small remainder of documents from the dance school is in the German Dance Archive in Cologne. After the war, the Elizabeth Duncan School had various branches and teaching locations, including a. in Mörlbach Castle near Icking in the Isar Valley. Today the Elizabeth Duncan School's (own) studio is located at Belfortstrasse 5 in Munich (near Ostbahnhof) and is maintained by the Duncan Dance Foundation founded by Hannelore Schick (1937–2008).

Management, teachers and branch schools

From 1910 until her death in 1948, Elizabeth Duncan was the sole director of the school, supported since 1907 by her musical director Max Merz , a student of Robert Fuchs , and later by her assistant Gertrud Drück. Four of the six most important pupils from the early days of the school in Berlin, who were adopted by Isadora and who were allowed to carry the family name Duncan, have founded branch schools: Irma, Marie-Therese and Anna in America and Lisa in France. The student Anita Zahn, who went with us from Darmstadt to the USA, is also important as a Duncan teacher and director (from 1925) of an (Elizabeth Duncan) branch school; The main representative of this line in the USA was then Hortense Kooluris (1914-2007), and many Duncan dancers and educators of the younger generations, including such prominent people as Jeanne Bresciani, received their first Duncan lessons from Anita Zahn. Further branch schools were founded in Saint-Germain-en-Laye near Paris by Yvonne Berge and in Prague by Jarmila Jerabkova (today's director: Eva Blazícková). The traditional secondary school in Germany was directed by the Gertrud Drück student Hannelore Schick (1937–2008) until her death. Since February 2008, the Munich Duncan School has been jointly continued by their students Astrid Schleusener (artistic and educational director), Angela Flesch and Marion Hollerung, supported by Aribert Mog as musical director. Another student of Hannelore Schick from the Munich Duncan School, the Duncan dancer and teacher Birgit Pittig, teaches Duncan dance in Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg.

literature

  • Elizabeth Duncan School. Marienhöhe, Darmstadt . Diederichs, Jena 1912.
  • Hans Brandenburg: The modern dance . 3rd modified edition, Müller Verlag, Munich 1921, pp. 75–81.
  • Max Merz: Body Formation and Rhythm . In: Paul Stefan (ed.): Dance in this time . Universal-Edition, Vienna 1926, pp. 29–32.
  • Irma Duncan: The Technique of Isadora Duncan (as Taught by Irma Duncan) . Dance Horizons, New York 1970, ISBN 0-87127-028-5 (EA New York 1937).
  • Max Merz: 50 years of the Elizabeth Duncan School 1904-1954. Munich 1954.
  • Irma Duncan: Duncan Dancer. To Autobiography . BFL Publ., New York 1980, ISBN 0-8369-9288-1 (EA Middletown, Conn. 1966).
  • Kay Bardsley: Isadora Duncan's first school . In: Patricia A. Rowe (Ed.): Dance research collage (Dance research annual; Vol. 10). CORD, New York 1979, pp. 219-249, ISSN  0149-7677
  • Kathleen Quinlan and Erik Näslund: Anna Duncan. In the footsteps of Isadora - I Isadoras footspor . Dansmuseet, Stockholm 1995, ISBN 91-630-3782-3 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name, Dansmuseet November 10, 1995 to March 10, 1996)
  • Frank-Manuel Peter (Ed.): Isadora & Elizabeth Duncan in Deutschland / in Germany. Wienand, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-87909-645-7 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name, German Dance Archive Cologne , May 26 to July 30, 2000)
  • Sonja Gaze: The barefoot dancer . Ullstein, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89834-014-7 (with the assistance of Jörg Plath).
  • Alfred Winter (arr.): School of Moving Bodies. Isadora & Elizabeth Duncan and Erika Giovanna Klien in Salzburg. Verlag Schatzkammer LAnd Salzburg, Salzburg 2001 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name July 7 to 31, 2001).
  • Carol Loeb Shloss: Lucia Joyce. To dance in the wake . Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, New York 2003, ISBN 0-374-19424-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Margarete von Olfers, Letters and Diaries, 1870-1924, ES Mittler & Sohn, 1930 - 355 S. books.google.de
  2. ^ Archive registration office Baden / "New biographical archive Stadtarchiv / Rollettmuseum Baden": registration form from Elizabeth Duncan and Max Merz from August 22, 1944.
personal data
SURNAME Duncan, Elizabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American dance teacher
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH San Francisco
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1948
Place of death Tübingen