Lilly Flohr

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Flohr, around 1918.

Lilly Flohr , born Elisabeth Günsburger , in Australia Lily Flohr (born October 15, 1893 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † July 7, 1978 in North Ryde near Sydney , Australia ), was an Austrian singer , stage actress and silent film actress in the German cinema 1920s.

Live and act

Lilly Flohr made her stage debut at Vienna's Raimund Theater as a child at the age of eight . At 14 she had already risen to the soubrette . A little later, the still young artist left for the German capital, where she was also hired as soubrette. In the 1915/16 season she worked at Monti's operetta theater, and from 1917 to 1919 Flohr was part of the ensemble of the Berlin theater. Here, on February 21, 1917, the Viennese landed her first great singing and stage success with the title role in the world premiere of Walter Kollo's operetta The Great Comteess . Almost a year later, on February 9, 1918, she was brought in for the world premiere of Kollo's operetta Blitzblaues Blut . On October 8, 1920, Lilly Flohr was also a member of the cast of the cabaret revue Total manoli at the Nelson Theater by Rudolf Nelson . The cabaret artists Fritz Grünbaum and Paul Morgan , who also contributed the lyrics, as well as the dancer and film actress Anita Berber were her partners.

Since she was first brought in front of the camera by Walter Schmidthässler at the end of the war in 1918 , Lilly Flohr has been a sought-after silent film actress for a decade with major supporting and a few leading roles. Right at the beginning of her screen career, she was given daughter roles in a few films that were not necessarily artistically significant, but caused a sensation in their time, including the moral drama The Girl from Ackerstrasse. 1st part by and with Reinhold Schünzel and the Fridericus-Rex four-parter by Arzen von Cserépy . Flohr's film career was largely over by 1925; three years later she got her last film role in Carl Boese's Children of the Street .

Despite her intensive film work, especially from 1918 to 1922, Lilly Flohr did not neglect her stage work, both as a singer and as an actress. She played at the Neues Operettenhaus in the operetta Yu-Shi tanzt…! and performed at the 'Cabaret Potpurri' in the Künstlerhaus. at the Deutsches Theater, the Residenz Theater, the Theater des Westens, the Metropol Theater and the Neues Theater am Zoo. She also remained loyal to cabaret and could be seen in La Scala as well as in the winter garden and in the cabaret of the comedians . Guest tours led Flohr to Germany and abroad. Classic theater roles were August Strindberg's Fraulein Julie and Polly Peachum in Bertolt Brecht's and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera . The seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 ended abruptly the theater activity of the Jewish artist. Lilly Flohr was banned from performing and had to switch to the Jüdischer Kulturbund in February 1934 , an artistic institution reserved exclusively for Jews. There she was seen, among other things, in the Tingel-Tangel cabaret program . After her appearance at the Jüdischer Kulturbund in Cologne, where she entertained the audience with chansons and couplets in July 1938, her time in the German cultural scene also ended.

Shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939, Lilly Flohr managed to emigrate to Shanghai , at that time one of the last remaining escape routes for Jews from Nazi Germany . In the Chinese metropolis, now in front of a small audience of German and Austrian emigrants, she continued her artistic career with cabaret numbers, chanson lectures and small theatrical performances: in December 1943 she appeared in Leo Fall's operetta The Divorced Woman , in February 1946 as Nina in Bruno Frank 's comedy of the same name. In May 1946 she appeared in Johann Nestroy's posse Der Zerrissene and again as Polly in the Threepenny Opera . In September 1946, Lilly Flohr appeared in the Bernauer / Austrian fun game Der Garten Eden . As a result of the communist takeover in China, she traveled to Melbourne , Australia, where she settled in New South Wales (Wentworth, Warringah). She spent the last years of her life as a housewife Lily Flohr, but she probably never returned to her traditional job. Lilly Flohr died in a suburb of Sydney in early July 1978.

Filmography

  • 1918: the heiress
  • 1918: A song of hate and love
  • 1919: King Krause
  • 1919: The man without a memory
  • 1919: The girl from Ackerstrasse. 1st chapter
  • 1920: The girl from Ackerstrasse. Part 2
  • 1920: Doctor Klaus
  • 1920: Lottchen's marriage
  • 1920: The suburban Caruso
  • 1920: The merry widower
  • 1920: A day on Mars
  • 1921: The house on Dragonergasse
  • 1921: The beach mermaid
  • 1921: The little midinette
  • 1922: the power of a woman
  • 1922: Se. Excellency the Auditor
  • 1922: The tsarina's diadem
  • 1922: Fridericus Rex
  • 1924: The little one from clothing
  • 1925: Reveille. The great awakening
  • 1928: Children of the street

literature

  • Hans Richter (Ed.): Filmstern 1922 . Hans Hermann Richter Verlag, Berlin-Wilmersdorf 1921/22, p. 26
  • Frithjof Trapp, Werner Mittenzwei, Henning Rischbieter, Hansjörg Schneider (eds.): Handbook of the German-speaking Exile Theater 1933 - 1945. Volume 2, Munich 1999, p. 256 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ according to lexm.uni-hamburg.de . The date of birth “15. November 1903 ”can also not be correct due to the passage of time from Flohr's career stages at the theater
  2. ^ Gravestone inscription
  3. ↑ Data according to ancestry.com
  4. ↑ Flohr's place of residence
personal data
SURNAME Flohr, Lilly
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Günsburger, Elisabeth (maiden name); Flohr, Lily
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian singer, theater and silent film actress
DATE OF BIRTH October 15, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 1978
Place of death North Ryde near Sydney , Australia