Heintje Davids

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Heintje Davids (1969)
Davids on her 75th birthday, with Jasperina de Jong and Rudi Carrell
Heintje with her brother Louis (date unknown)

Hendrika "Heintje" Davids , also Henriëtte Davids and Henriëtte Pinkhof-Davids (born February 13, 1888 in Rotterdam ; died February 14, 1975 in Naarden ), was a Dutch comedian , singer and actress .

biography

Youth and years until the war

Heintje Davids came from a poor Jewish vaudeville family with eight children, four of whom died early. Her mother Francina Terveen (1858–1927) was a soubrette , her father Levie David (1857–1909) was a comedian, and he ran a café. Heintje Davids was the youngest and was known as the “ ugly duckling ”, which is why she was not allowed to appear in the family theater that went to popular festivals in the summer . In 1907 she received an engagement in a revue by Henri ter Hall , where she appeared with songs by her brother Louis . After the marriage of her sister Rika, who had previously been on stage with Louis and who moved to England with her husband John Weil, a magician , the brother accepted - albeit reluctantly - Henriette as her successor. The siblings toured Germany and England together. From when Hendrika Davids appeared under the name Heintje is unclear.

Davids was of a plump stature, five feet tall, and portrayed happy, loud women telling jokes and singing. In 1914 she married the journalist Philip Pinkhof, who wrote texts for the Amsterdam Flora Theater under the pseudonym Rido . Davids performed there for ten years, including the popular song Zandvoort bij de Zee with a text by her brother Louis. From 1925 to 1932 she was on stage in what was then the largest revue in the Netherlands, the Bouwmeester Revue . She also made several films; her partners were actors popular in the Netherlands such as Lou Bandy , Sylvain Poons and Johan Kaart . Johannes Heesters took part in Hollandsch Hollywood (1933), the most successful pre-war Dutch box office hit .

Through this and other films ( De Jantjes (1934)) and popular songs such as Draaien , she became known nationwide. In 1935 she founded her own company, Henriëtte Davids Revue NV . In 1939, her brother Louis died at the age of 55, who had suffered from asthma for years. Today he is considered to be one of the founders of Dutch cabaret culture .

Until 1940 Heintje Davids performed in the Hollandsche Schouwburg in Amsterdam. The revues were staged by Herbert Nelson and written by his father Rudolf Nelson . The Nelsons were Jews who had fled Germany. There were always arguments between the two strong personalities Rudolf Nelson and Davids: Heintje Davids did not like Nelson because he was a "snob" and on top of that a German, the sensitive Nelson, in turn, found David's "vulgar" and her humor flat. After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, the two settled their quarrels about dominance in the theater.

From 1941 Heintje Davids was one of the two directors of the Joodsch Kleinkunst Ensemble in the Schouwburg alongside Werner Levie . The ensemble was supported by the Van Leer Foundation , which was an agreement between the Jewish factory owner Bernard van Leer and the German occupiers: Van Leer was allowed to leave the Netherlands with his family after paying a large sum of money; part of the money went to the foundation.

In September 1942, Davids and her husband went into hiding , first in the country and later in the Academic Hospital in Utrecht , where they were supposedly patients. She was the only one of her siblings who survived the Holocaust in the Netherlands : her sister Rika and her brother Hartog, a pianist and conductor, were murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943 .

After the war

In June 1945 Heintje Davids celebrated a “moving comeback” in the sold-out Concertgebouw in Amsterdam . In 1948 she published her memoir. Shortly after her 65th birthday in 1954, she officially said goodbye to the stage in the Tuschinski Theater . This farewell show was so successful that it appeared in 70 cities. After the death of her husband two years later, Davids returned to the stage on the advice of her colleagues, who feared she would become lonely. Until she was very old she was persuaded to perform again and again and always called it “the very last time”. The repeated return after saying goodbye has since been called heintjedavidseffect in Dutch . In 1970 her " namesake " Heintje , then 14 years old, sang the song Mama for her at the Amsterdam RAI on the occasion of an Edison award .

On her 87th birthday, Heintje Davids was admitted to a hospital in Naarden, where she died a day later. She was laid out in the Carré Theater in Amsterdam , where prominent colleagues held the wake . With great public participation, she was buried in the columbarium of the crematorium in the Westerveld cemetery in Driehuis , next to her husband and her brother Louis. Davids himself had deposited instructions with a notary about the procedure for the funeral service.

Honors

On her 60th birthday, Heintje Davids received the Louis Davidsring from the municipality of Rotterdam in memory of her brother and her siblings who were murdered by the Germans. In 1954 she handed this ring over to the lecturer Wim Kan , who passed it on to Herman van Veen in 1976 , who in turn presented it to Claudia de Breij in 2015 .

In 1968 David became a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau . Streets and squares are named after her in several Dutch cities, such as the Heintje Davidsplein in Zutphen .

Publications

  • Mijn levenslied . Mulder, Gouda 1948.
  • With Johan Luger / HP van den Aardweg: Een small one die je nooit vergeet: het leven van Louis Davids . Engelhard, Van Embden & Co., Amsterdam 1949.

literature

  • Jan Jacob Liber: Altijd maar draaien. De levensroman van Heintje Davids. De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam 1963.
  • Barbara Beuys : Living with the Enemy. Amsterdam under German occupation. Hanser, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-446-23996-8 .

gallery

  • Heintje Davids in 1910

  • With Isodoor Zwaaf (before 1940)

  • Heintje Davids as a cowboy (1948)

  • On a rocking horse (1948)

  • With Wim Sonneveld on her 80th birthday

Web links

Commons : Henriette Davids  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d David, Hendrika (1888-1975). In: resources.huygens.knaw.nl. August 1, 2013, accessed February 13, 2020 (Dutch).
  2. ^ Hollandsch Hollywood (1933). In: imdb.com. Retrieved February 14, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Vandaag in 1939 overleed Louis David, een van onze grootste Artiesten. In: juffrouwjo.wordpress.com. July 3, 2016, accessed February 14, 2020 (Dutch).
  4. ↑ Beuys, Leben mit dem Feind , p. 167.
  5. ↑ Klaas AD Smelik (Ed.): Etty Hillesum en de contouren van hair tijd. P. 178 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ↑ Beuys, Leben mit dem Feind , p. 169.
  7. ↑ Rebecca David. In: joodsmonument.nl. Retrieved February 13, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Hartog David. In: joodsmonument.nl. Retrieved February 13, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Heintje Davids. In: joodsamsterdam.nl. Retrieved February 13, 2020 (Dutch).
  10. ↑ heintjedavidseffect. In: woordenlijst.org. Retrieved February 13, 2020 (Dutch).
  11. ↑ Jan Adrian Zwarteveen: I was Heintje. His life as a child star with the most unforgettable voice in the world. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  12. ↑ Van Veen approved Louis Davidsring for 40 years to Claudia de Breij. In: nos.nl. November 25, 2015, accessed February 13, 2020 (Dutch).
  13. ↑ Amsterdam, April 29, 1968. In: anp-archief.nl. Retrieved February 13, 2020 (Dutch).
  14. ↑ Heintje Davids. In: TheaterEncyclopedie. Retrieved February 14, 2020 (Dutch).
personal data
SURNAME Davids, Heintje
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Davids, Hendrika (real name); Davids, Henriëtte (alternative name); Henriëtte Pinkhof-Davids (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch comedian, singer and actress
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Rotterdam
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1975
Place of death Naarden