Kalanag

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The following has to be improved:  Partly very colorfully worded, more like an essay "so-called, still, already, played badly with", "which Schreiber had played along badly during the time of National Socialism", "with the degree of sex appeal allowed at the time" ... as an encyclopedia - Toppas Balance ( discussion ) 09:05, Aug 7, 2020 (CEST)

Kalanag, bourgeois Helmut Ewald Schreiber, (born January 23, 1903 in Backnang , † December 24, 1963 in Gaildorf ) was a German film producer and magician in the German Empire and in the early Federal Republic of Germany .

Life

Early years

Already in his youth, the factory owner's son devoted himself intensively to the art of magic and joined the magic circle of Germany at the age of 16 . He attended secondary school in Stuttgart and later studied at the University of Munich and the Technical University of Munich .

While studying philosophy in Munich, he organized one of the first German magicians' congresses. At the same time he gained experience as an actor and dramaturge at the Münchner Kammerspiele . From 1925 he worked, ostensibly with a doctorate, in the film industry in Berlin. As a manager he was in 1926, among others, the silent movies chasing people (1926), The Man Without a Head (1927), One against all (1927), The obligation to remain silent (1927), circumstantial evidence (1928), The Winner (1928 ), Ehe in Not (1929), Mutterliebe (1929), The mistress and her servant (1929) and Innocence (1929) involved.

In 1927 he became editor-in-chief of the magazine MAGIE des Magischen Zirkel. He chose his stage name after the elephant Kala Nag ("black snake") from Rudyard Kipling's jungle book .

time of the nationalsocialism

Due to his good contacts with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels , he made a career at the Tobis Film Company . With the dawn of the sound film age , Schreiber was promoted to production manager , and from 1930 to 1934 he was also active as a motorcycle racing driver. From autumn 1936 he worked as a production group leader, in 1939 he joined the management team of the film industry, in June 1942 he finally became head of production at Bavaria and remained so until the end of the war. As an author, cameraman, recording and production manager, Schreiber was responsible for a total of 150 films. Schreiber, who had been a member of the NSDAP since 1933 , prevented the dissolution of the magic circle, which, however, was forcibly incorporated into the Reich Chamber of Culture ( Reich Theater Chamber , Artistic Group) from June 1936 as part of the so-called Gleichschaltung . Schreiber let himself be appointed by the National Socialists as President of the Magical Circle (1936–1945), reduced the original 1,373 members to 400 and prohibited the use of Jewish compositions as background music. Without belonging to the circle controlled by Schreiber, magicians were banned from performing in Germany, which inevitably affected Jewish magicians. In contrast, after the war, Jewish artists referred to Kalanag and pointed out that he kept Jewish staff in the service of Bavaria for a long time. In 1936 Schreiber was awarded the Hofzinser ring , which he passed on to Ludwig Hanemann (artist name Punx ) in 1948.

After the annexation of Austria , Schreiber also extended his influence there. Schreiber became director of Bavaria Film in Munich, performed magic before Hitler's public speeches and was a guest at his Berghof on Obersalzberg in 1939 . Schreiber was friends with Hitler's personal adjutant, SS-Gruppenführer Julius Schaub , who sponsored magic events. Unusually for magicians, Schreiber disapproved of the public education of fraudulent tricks by spiritualists and even openly threatened traitors with the Gestapo . This attitude may be related to Schreiber's friendship with the Berlin police chief and occultist Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff , who at the time thought the tricky impostor Erik Jan Hanussen was a real magician . Schreiber propagated the now widespread magic spell “Simsalabim” as his creation, although historians ascribe it to the Danish-American magician Dante .

End of war

Towards the end of the war, Schreiber mediated between the Allies and wanted SS men , who, in return for safe conduct, offered access to the legendary looted gold , most of which is officially considered lost. When the military police later wanted to arrest Schreiber on the Bavaria site, he appeared in the presence of high- ranking American soldiers who were protecting him. As President of the Magic Circle, he was deposed and banned from his profession by the Allies . After a denazification process , Schreiber fled to the British zone of occupation in Hamburg, where he lived with a magician friend who was known as the "king of the black market" and was later convicted of smuggling diamonds with a Swiss magician.

Economic boom

Since Schreiber had been banned from working in his previous branch, he turned his hobby into a profession in 1947 - at a time when the post-war period was turning into a post-war boom or economic miracle . With the support of former Tobis people, he entertained British occupation soldiers with his Kalanag revue , consisting of elaborate grand illusions and lightly dressed show girls.

Among the best-known numbers, among many others, were the Magical Bar , which dates back to Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin and was made large-scale by David Devant , in which every desired drink was served from a single mug on demand for the entire performance, as well as that he with special tricks the (now eloquent) saying “And we'll do it all with water from India” poured a dash of water onto the stage from a never-ending carafe . As the highlight of every performance, he made a car disappear from the brightly lit stage based on an idea by Howard Thurston . An important element of his shows has always been his wife and partner Gloria de Vos (Anneliese Voss). As his assistant, with the level of sex appeal that was permitted for the time, and as a dancer, she gave every performance its special shine. A cheetah appearing in a box provided the exotic .

It was never officially known how Schreiber had financed the lavish show in post-war Germany from scratch. The cost of the vanishing car alone amounted to the astronomical sum of DM 10,000 at the time. Magicians like Janos Bartl or Fredo Marvelli , whom Schreiber played badly during the Nazi era, called for a boycott of his shows in leaflets.

World tours

In the 1950s Kalanag toured with his almost 50-strong ensemble through Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, South Africa, Brazil, the USA, Turkey and Switzerland. In the summer of 1960 he appeared in the Zwickau large variety Lindenhof . At that time, Kalanag was the only big illusionist in the world who toured with such an elaborate show. The magical historian Richard Hatch points out that the countries he visited are a striking match for the banknotes that disappeared with the Nazi gold in 1945. Allegedly because of this , the CIA is said to have observed Kalanag's activities throughout his life. Before and after Kalanag, no other German magician has ever taken the economic risk of such costly world tours. At the end of the 1950s, interest in variety shows waned, which also brought Schreiber into financial difficulties.

Germany TV GmbH

Schreiber became head of entertainment in the commercial Free Television Society . The company served to build up the Deutschland-Fernsehen GmbH planned by Adenauer , which should have offered a conservative alternative to the broadcasting stations of the ARD . However, the project failed due to the 1st broadcasting judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court .

The late years

Although Kalanag had achieved a high level of awareness and corresponding status, he was unable to build on his successes to the same extent with a slimmed-down version of his revue. In the mid-1950s, Schreiber moved from Hamburg to the Württemberg village of Fornsbach , where his cousin Margarete Sedlmayer owned land and ran a café . Here he built a bungalow with a show stage ("Kalanag Studio"). On January 23, 1963, he celebrated his 60th birthday on a grand scale, and on Christmas Eve 1963 he probably died of heart failure in the Gaildorf hospital. According to his daughter Brigitte Löser, "[he] lived very unhealthily and was very overweight". He left his now divorced wife Gloria a fortune of 500,000 DM . Throughout her life, she was looking for a larger treasure trove of Nazi gold , which she also assumed Schreiber had hidden somewhere.

Fonts

  • Kalanag: Simsalabim is whirling around the world. A magical book full of miracles, purrs and sensations. 1949.
  • Kalanag: A magician tells his life. 1962.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Bettina Albrod: The leader's magician. In: Welt Online . November 15, 2008, accessed November 13, 2017 .
  2. According to Kay Less since 1939.
  3. MAGIE / PUNX: Man from the cloud. In: Der Spiegel . 6/1950, February 9, 1950.
  4. Elizabeth Klaper: He captivated an audience of millions. In: Festschrift 650 years Fornsbach - special publication of the Murrhardter Zeitung. 3rd July 2014.