Ingeborg Schiffner

Ingeborg Schiffner (born July 19, 1924 in Lautawerk near Zittau ; † April 26, 2012 in Berlin ) was a German dancer , dance teacher and choreographer . She was one of the most well-known pedagogues in children's and amateur dance in the GDR .

life and work

Ingeborg Schiffner, daughter of the war invalid Alwin Schiffner and his wife Marka, received ballet lessons in the Zittau Theater from 1936, where she became a child star . After elementary school, she graduated from the girls' vocational school in Zittau in 1940. In the same year she began training in classical dance with Lula von Sachnowsky at the Eduardowa School in Berlin, but switched to the Wigman School in Dresden after six months . Mary Wigman discovered her comedic talent and noted in her diary at a school performance in 1941 that she "was weird to scream as 'Venus'". She followed Wigman to the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Leipzig, where she graduated in 1943 with the qualification for a “dance teaching profession” in addition to the final examination for dance.

Her first engagement at the Reichenberg City Theater , which was quickly ended by the proclamation of “total war” , was followed in 1945 by a new start at the Zittau City Theater as a dancer and teacher. In 1946 she joined the " Theater des Tanzes Weimar-Erfurt" under Henn Haas, becoming its assistant and deputy. Here she worked successfully as a soloist and choreographer and taught expressive dance and dance gymnastics in the associated school . Her own ensemble, the “Kammertanzspiele” in Erfurt, based at the Deutsche Volksbühne, Thuringia regional management, had only one premiere in 1948, albeit a very successful one, due to a lack of financial security.

At the beginning of 1949 Inge Schiffner was engaged in the "Dramatic Ballet" led by Jean Weidt at the Volksbühne Berlin . After the ensemble closed a year later, she went to the National Theater Weimar as deputy ballet master and solo dancer , and returned in 1951 as a soloist and teacher to the “Dramatic Ballet”, which was now called the “Volksbühne dance ensemble” and was transformed into a folklore group by Aenne Goldschmidt on a political mandate. After a long illness due to exhaustion, she took over the dance group in the " Erich-Weinert-Ensemble " (EWE) of the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (KVP) in early 1952 and developed it into a renowned professional ensemble that soon belonged to the National People's Army (NVA). Schiffner's most productive phase as a choreographer and teacher thus coincided with the so-called realism debate . In this discussion about socialist realism in dance, which was mainly conducted in the magazine Die Weltbühne , Schiffner sat down for the specific use, if necessary, of each of the "various means of expression in dance (classical technique, the forms of so-called expression dance, the means of dance Pantomime and the elements of folk dance) in the same dance game or ballet ”. In spite of the great success of the ensemble, for example in the Soviet Union, there in front of Foreign Minister Andrej Gromyko , with praise in Pravda and recognition from Igor Moissejew , as well as in China, she ended her work at EWE in 1959. Her choreographies, folk dance suites and soldier dances remained in the repertoire for a long time.

After an interlude as a ballet master at the Hans Otto Theater Potsdam, which the construction of the Wall interrupted in 1961, she found her actual field of activity as a child pedagogue as a niche in the music school in Berlin-Mitte from 1963 to 1984 . The former expressive dancer acquired the methodological tools for teaching classical dance in an intensive course in Prague with the Russian pedagogue Olga Ilyina and in other courses. Under Schiffner's direction, the children's dance department at the Musikschule Mitte became a supplier to the state's three state ballet schools - and it has repeatedly received awards for its achievements. Her credo was that “the best ballet masters and dance teachers should devote themselves to children's dance”, “because what is neglected in the dance education of children can no longer be done well later on.” Her educational work led to the lexical appreciation: “She played an important role in the development of children's dance in the GDR.” At the same time, she worked as an amateur teacher who gave her own group, the “Studio-Ballett Berlin”, gold medals at competitions, TV appearances and guest performances abroad.

Your estate is kept in the German Dance Archive in Cologne .

Honors

• 1955 Medal "For loyal performance of the CIP"
• 1957 Medal "For loyal service to the NVA"
• 1959 Medal "For Excellent Achievement"
• 1960 Silver Merit Medal of the NVA
• 1965 Prize for artistic folk creation in the GDR
• 1982 Awarded the title "Senior Teacher"
• 1983 Artur Becker Medal of the FDJ in silver

literature

• Volkmar Draeger: Through, through, through! Ingeborg Schiffner: dancer, teacher, choreographer . Autumnus, Berlin 2014. ISBN 978-3-944382-06-7
• Eberhard Rebling : Ballet Primer . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1974, p. 299.
• Entry Schiffner, Ingeborg , in: Lexikon der Tanzkunst . Edited by an author collective under the direction of Norbert Molkenbur. for the Central House for Cultural Work of the GDR, Leipzig 1970/1972 (published in single deliveries, without page numbers).
• Eberhard Rebling: Ballet. Yesterday and today . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1961, p. 361.

Web links

• Biography on the website of the German Dance Archive Cologne

Individual evidence

1. ↑ quoted from Volkmar Draeger: Through, through, through! Ingeborg Schiffner: dancer, teacher, choreographer . Autumnus, Berlin 2014, p. 18.
2. ^ Ingeborg Schiffner: For the discussion "Realism in Dance" . In: The world stage . Vol. 8/1953, no. 17, pp. 528-531, here p. 530.
3. ↑ Jochen Krause: We spoke with ballet master Ingeborg Schiffner , in: Der Tanz. Magazine for amateur dance groups, society and tournament dance. Leipzig, H. 6/1963, pp. 6–8, here p. 6.
4. ^ Entry Schiffner, Ingeborg , in: Lexikon der Tanzkunst . Edited by an author collective under the direction of Norbert Molkenbur. for the Central House for Cultural Work of the GDR, Leipzig 1970/1972 (published in single deliveries, without page numbers)