Fanny Meyer (puppeteer)

Fanny Meyer , married Fanny Heineberg (born June 7, 1905 in Cologne ; probably murdered in 1943 in Auschwitz ) was a German puppeteer .

Fanny Meyer was the daughter of Ludwig Meyer and Cäcilie Meyer, geb. Skipper. She had a brother five years her junior, Leo. She grew up in the south of Cologne . After attending the drama school in Cologne, she joined the ensemble of the Hänneschen Theater as a puppeteer . There she played the role of Bestemo (also known as Bestemoder or Mariezebell ) for years .

In 1933 Meyer was the only Jewish artist at the Hänneschen Theater. As a municipal institution, the theater was asked to report its Jewish employees. Since only Meyer's father was Jewish and her mother was Catholic, she was initially given permission to continue working at the Hänneschen Theater, but was fired in 1935. The Jewish Marionette Theater in Cologne, founded in 1936, was Meyer's only opportunity to work as a puppeteer.

In 1938 Fanny Meyer married the decorator Lothar Heineberg. In the early 1940s, Meyer worked in a cardboard box factory in Cologne, presumably as a forced laborer .

In 1942 she and her husband were the "Jewish camp" Köln-Müngersdorf deported from there some time later to Auschwitz. Fanny Meyer wrote her last postcard to her father from there on March 3, 1943. After that, her track is lost. Her mother Cäcilie Meyer was able to go into hiding and thus escape persecution. Her father Ludwig Meyer was also deported to Auschwitz in 1944. He saw the liberation of the camp, but died a year later from the damage to his health there.

Marina Barth dealt with Fanny Meyer's life in her historical novel Lumpenball , which was published in 2017. In the same year, the Hänneschen Theater honored Fanny Meyer with a doll named after her.

literature

• Barbara Becker-Jákli: The Jewish cemetery Cologne-Bocklemünd. History, architecture and biographies . emons, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-95451-889-0 , p. 308-311 .
• Frauke Kemmerling, Monika Salchert: Mieh Hätz like wood - 200 years of Kölsch Hännesche . 1st edition. emons, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-89705-237-7 , p. 33. 45 .
• Irene Franken: Women in Cologne. The historical city guide. Bachem, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3761620298 , p. 199.

• Marina Barth: Rags . emons, Cologne 2017, ISBN 978-3740801625 (novel).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Marc Strassenburg: Memorial Book - Victims of the Persecution of the Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933-1945. Retrieved July 29, 2018 . 
2. ↑ rag ball. Retrieved January 19, 2018 .