Helen Vita

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Helen Vita , civil: Helene Vita Elisabeth Reichel , married: Baumgartner (born  August 7, 1928 in Hohenschwangau ; †  February 16, 2001 in Berlin ) was a Swiss chanson singer , actress and cabaret artist .

Career

Helen Vita was born as the daughter of the concert master Anton Reichel and the solo cellist Jelena Pacic as Helene Vita Elisabeth Reichel. After being expelled from Germany in 1939, the family moved to Geneva , their father's homeland in Switzerland.

After training to be an actor at the Conservatoire de Genève , she gained her first stage experience in 1946 at the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier in Paris. For two years she was engaged at the Schauspielhaus Zurich , where she took part in the world premiere of Bertolt Brecht's Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti . It was also Bertolt Brecht who discovered her comic talent and encouraged her to do cabaret. She did not accept the wish to join his Berlin ensemble , as she could not share Brecht's advocacy for a socialist Germany. Instead, she joined the Cabaret Fédéral in Zurich in 1949 . In 1952 she went to Munich and played at the Kleine Freiheit , for which Erich Kästner wrote the time-critical texts. Here she met Friedrich Hollaender , whose songs she added to her repertoire. She later worked with the Berlin voles . Her marriage to the Swiss composer Walter Baumgartner in 1956 resulted in two sons. In 1965 she moved into her second home in Berlin.

Helen Vita had already been discovered for the film in the early 1950s. She played in 58 cinema and television films: mostly homeland films, pop music and sex clothes, in which she often played the buxom counterpart to Caterina Valente and Sonja Ziemann . The cliché of “sharp whore with a lot of cleavage” haunted her for years. The role of Cornelia Gatzka in the 5th part of the television classic Am green beach on the Spree , in which she was seen as the partner of Gerhard Just and Günter Pfitzmann, did not fit into this cliché . She also starred in the 08/15 and the Immenhof films. She later appeared in front of the camera in the musical film Cabaret alongside Liza Minnelli in the role of Miss Kost. But she only let her roles in some of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films count throughout her life : Love is colder than death , Roast Satans , Berlin Alexanderplatz and Lili Marleen .

During her film career, Vita always remained true to her great passion, the "serious" theater. She convinced in classics by Shakespeare , Molière and Goethe as well as in modern plays by Thornton Wilder , TS Eliot or Hans Henny Jahnn . At the side of Hans Albers she played in Liliom and later for years at the Munich Volkstheater she was an acclaimed “Pirate Jenny” in the Threepenny Opera .

Vita became a scandalous figure in the clean man FRG before 1968 primarily as "pious Helene" and with the sensational record series with the "cheeky chansons from old France" in German translation by Walter Brandin . From today's perspective, the folk and children's songs, which have been handed down for centuries and are rather harmless, called on German public prosecutors and moral guards. Years of legal disputes followed: the gallant, vicious songs were declared forbidden by the state, penal orders were issued, judgments were announced and repealed, and trials were reopened. "The court understands art to be a product that elevates the average citizen above everyday life and presents him with the finest thing he can imagine," said Cologne judge Bubenberger , explaining the confiscation of the "artless mess". At times, the records were only allowed to be labeled “For young people!” sold under the counter, which made them all the more successful. By contrast, they were praised by the critics and twice received the German Record Prize. The “bawdy songs” of English-speaking troubadours have now joined the French chansons. Her following records were called Dolce Helen Vita Vol. I and Vol. II. It was not until 1969, in an official decision from the regional council of North Baden in Karlsruhe, that Helen Vita's songs were "artistically superior".

Her numerous solo programs had such self- deprecating titles as: Lotterlieder from Brahms to Brecht , Von wejen Liebe , Helen Vita total and Die Seuse singt . In 1985 she received the German Cabaret Prize . Always there: the pianist Paul Klein, who died in 1989. From 1991 she was accompanied by the pianist and cabaret artist Frank Golischewski , who wrote numerous chansons for her ("The old woman still sings", among others) and initiated and accompanied the program "Three old boxes on the way". Songs by Hollaender and Brecht / Weill as well as texts by Kästner and Tucholsky have always been part of her favorite repertoire.

She celebrated her last big success at the end of the 1990s with Evelyn Künneke and Brigitte Mira as one of the three old boxes . Until shortly before her death, she was still involved in numerous television productions and was still on stage with her program The old woman sings .

Helen Vita also appeared as a radio play speaker. In 1969 she played the gangster bride “Effi Marconi” in Rolf and Alexandra Becker's Dickie Dick Dickens .

She died of cancer on February 16, 2001 in her adopted home Berlin. Her grave is in the Zollikerberg / Zollikon cemetery near Zurich.

Quotes

Gravesite of Helen Vita

« Eve is the reworked, improved and abridged edition of Adam. Men are like flashlights - they dazzle without shedding much light. Women are like air traffic controllers: if they don't want to, nobody can land. Only men can think of nocturnal activities to be "meetings". »

- Helen Vita

Awards

Available CDs

Filmography (selection)

Radio plays

literature

Web links

Commons : Helen Vita  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Markus M. Ronner: The best punchlines of the 20th century: humorous-satirical flashes of inspiration, arranged alphabetically by keywords . Stuttgart: Gondrom. 1990, keyword Adam
  2. ^ BR radio play Pool - Ruederer, Die Morgenröte


personal data
SURNAME Vita, Helen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reichel, Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss chansonnière, actress and cabaret artist
DATE OF BIRTH August 7, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Hohenschwangau , Upper Bavaria
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 2001
Place of death Berlin