Herbert Nelson

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Herbert Nelson , actually Lewysohn, (born October 31, 1910 in Berlin ; died May 18, 1988 in Riverdale , New York ) was a German-American cabaret artist.

Life

Herbert Lewysohn was the son of the cabaret artist Rudolf Nelson , who adopted this stage name, and the actress Käthe Erlholz, formerly Reinholz. His half-brother was the journalist Hanns Reinholz . Herbert Nelson married the actress and Holocaust survivor Silvia Grohs in 1945 and after their divorce in 1949 Eva Fenchel, they have their son Peter David Nelson, who was born in 1952.

Herbert Nelson attended the Realgymnasium in Berlin until 1926. He did a newspaper apprenticeship at Ullstein-Verlag and worked in the editorial offices of the Vossische Zeitung and the BZ am Mittag . After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , he was released in September 1933. He fled to Marienbad in Czechoslovakia and, together with Emmerich Bernauer , made his way through works for theater productions by Rudolf Bernauer ; from 1935 both worked in the Netherlands. After the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, he worked in a theater that Heintje Davids , Werner Levie and his father were allowed to run for a while in the Hollandsche Schouwburg exclusively in front of a Jewish audience in Amsterdam. In 1943 he was classified as a half-Jew and thus escaped immediate persecution. Herbert Nelson was still doing underground cabaret in his apartment and took part in the Dutch resistance forging passports.

At the end of the war, he ran a cabaret for a short time for the British and US troop support in the Netherlands. He emigrated to Switzerland in 1946 and to the USA with his first wife in 1947 , where he received American citizenship in 1950.

At first he appeared in German at cultural events for immigrants and refugees, and from 1949 with his second wife in English. Nelson developed into a representative of English-language cabaret in the tradition of European literary cabaret. From 1952 to 1976 he was also the editor-in-chief for Voice of America . From 1972 he and his wife were engaged at the summer school of Middlebury College to teach cabaret, in the 1980s the Nelson duo came to the Netherlands and the Federal Republic for a tour.

Cabaret (selection)

  • with Emmerich Bernauer: Expired! and I have a feeling ... . Presented in the mid-1930s with Rudolf Nelson at Cabarett Gaité in Amsterdam. In: Volker Kühn, Deutschlands Erwachen , 1989, pp. 187–189.
  • Life goes on and the big road . 1940, 1941 in the Joodschen Schouwburg and a new children's song . 1943 underground. In: Volker Kühn, Deutschlands Erwachen , 1989, pp. 204–207.
  • Cabaret with Eva Nelson . Vinyl record. Eva Nelson; Herbert Nelson; Gene Allen; Gloria Shayne; Noel Paris. New York, NY: Panorama, 1975 ?.

literature

  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume II, 2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 850.
  • Volker Kühn (Ed.): Germany's Awakening: Cabaret under the swastika; 1933-1945 . Volume 3. Weinheim: Quadriga, 1989 ISBN 3-88679-163-7 , p. 382 (short biography)
  • Nelson, Herbert , in: Frithjof Trapp , Bärbel Schrader, Dieter Wenk, Ingrid Maaß: Handbook of the German-speaking Exile Theater 1933 - 1945. Volume 2. Biographical Lexicon of Theater Artists . Munich: Saur, 1999, ISBN 3-598-11375-7 , p. 696

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karin Ploog: When notes learned to run . Norderstedt: Books on Demand, p. 592.
personal data
SURNAME Nelson, Herbert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lewysohn, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American cabaret artist
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 1988
Place of death Riverdale , New York