Lola Bach

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Lola Bach (* around 1900, † around 1930) was believed to be the first nude dancer in the 1920s.

Youth and education

Lola Bach may have been born in Dresden around 1900. According to a newspaper article, her name was Margarete Adolf. Her exact life dates are unknown.

In Dresden she is said to have been an apprentice at the opera ballet. There she met the much older “Dr. Römer ”, a culturally well-read private scholar interested in dance, to whom she fell into love. She was thrown out of the ballet and also lost her parents' home. The not poor “Dr. Römer ”brought her to Berlin, set up an apartment for herself and Lola Bach and took care of her further dance training. Lola Bach's role models were Isadora Duncan and Olga Desmond . "The ideal woman's body in motion - that was dance for me."

The naturalistic ballet

After the First World War she encouraged “Dr. Römer ”to implement their inclination for naturalistic dance in private performances. Lola Bach gathered a group of young women, from ballet and nudist movement, and studied with them what she had had in mind for years. "Römer" meanwhile founded the "Society of Friends of Art" and rented a hall at Joachimstaler Strasse 13 from the Logenbaugesellschaft. The Lola Bach Ballet premiered there in the spring of 1921 and received "furious applause".

In the early summer of 1921, “Römer” arranged an engagement with director Walter Kollo (the well-known operetta composer) at the “Kleinkunstbühne Potpurri” in the Künstlerhaus.

When her former co-dancer Marlen - who has since become the lover of a well-known publisher - committed suicide, Lola Bach had to identify her in the morgue. A world collapsed for Bach, but she still did not manage to escape her addictions (including a cocaine addiction).

Although the “Society of Friends of Art” had its members signed that they would not take moral offense at the demonstrations, police spies were smuggled in. In August 1921 there was a judicial charge of causing public nuisance .

The managing director of the “Naturalist Ballet Lola Bach” contacted the defense attorney Erich Frey , who was known for his spectacular lawsuits , and who at the same time was defending his girlfriend Celly de Rheidt over a very similar matter. Almost forty years later, Frey described his first encounter with Lola Bach:

“ What came next was magic. It wasn't a dance anymore. It was a heady, seamless sequence of everything that had ever been danced anywhere in the world. From the Kasochok of the Russian steppe to Spanish flamenco, from the Balinese temple dance to the love dance of the harem, to the waltz, to the tango ... I was enchanted, as if dazed. "

In mid-January 1922, just a few days before the trial of Lola Bach, the nude dancer Celly de Rheidt was sentenced to a heavy fine by a criminal chamber. Perhaps it was she who played the role of Phryne in the film Lady Hamilton (premiered October 20, 1921) that gave lawyer Erich Frey the idea of staging the Phryne's verdict in a modern trial.

"The Phryne Process"

At the end of January, the trial began before the 6th criminal division of Regional Court II in Berlin-Moabit against Lola Bach, two other dancers and an actor who had participated in their pantomimes, and against “Dr. Römer ”and a previous director. The litigation was in the hands of District Court Director Brennhausen. The prosecution represented Bradke Prosecutor's Office. As a witness for the prosecution, criminal operations assistant Witte acted, who had obtained a membership card in a liqueur room on Kurfürstendamm at the expense of the Society of Friends of Art.

Your lawyer Erich Frey actually succeeded in persuading the court to make a local appointment. On February 1, 1922, the Vossische Zeitung reported on the delicate matter, not without a smile. The first local appointment was the separate presentation of a closed performance of the 'Society of Friends of Art' in the cabaret 'Potpourri'. The dances "Spring Voices", "The Motte flew to the light" (light waving veils) and the pantomime "Fashion Ballet" were performed; the latter "only in hats of the latest creation, stockings, high heels and a mirror in hand". The conclusion was the dance “The Nun”. The second local appointment in the late evening took place as a public event of the cabaret 'Potpourri', which was much more reserved.

Nonetheless, Lola Bach was sentenced to one month suspended prison sentence for aiding and abetting causing public scandal. Römer was allowed to convert his prison term into a fine of 18,000 marks.

Police observation and racist interference

The convicted Lola Bach was still under observation. On February 23, 1922, the police spy Kubbat reported on the Lola Bach Ballet and the dancer Alfred Köhler:

“ The Negro is an artist known in local artistic circles under the name 'Paprika'. His name is Alfred Köhler, born on October 29, 94 in Duala in Cameroon, Augsburgerstrasse 62, Gartenh. ptr. lives, is with a white woman, Herta geb. Hasenbein, 24 years old, married and has a three year old girl with her. Köhler explained that he was only temporarily taking on these and similar positions, which use negroes. He is a 'fakir' and is traveling with a circus in the summer. In view of the conditions in the west of our country , he had already had the most unpleasant harassment when he had taken his wife with him on trips and went out with her. In Dresden he and his wife would have been spat at by workers too. "(Nagl)

On March 7th, the report of the informer Günther: In the Lola Bach number “Harem Nights”, sexual intimacies between a black maharajah and a dancer are depicted on the stage. Actors: Peter Johnson, born August 22, 1893 in Liberia, married "to a white woman". On March 11th, Kubbat again, who had also observed the harem nights: In view of “the conditions in the west of our fatherland (so-called black disgrace )” (cf. Allied occupation of the Rhineland ), the dance must be banned “from a national point of view”. On March 24th, police assistant Kubbat reported: The police enforced to replace Johnson with “a white person who should be made yellow” (Nagl). Ames et al. describe Lola Bach's ballet as critiziced for racial inversion .

Lola Bach now danced in the "White Mouse", a cabaret in which you could wear a white or black mask in order to remain anonymous.

“Lola Bach, who was sentenced to prison in the first instance, continues to dance every evening in the 'White Mouse', and the business travelers from Germany who see it are disappointed: Lola's girls are wearing too much for them. That season that began with the parade of the naked goddess of reason during the great French Revolution is apparently coming to an end in revolutionary Germany as well. Of course, I still do not believe in any spiritual purification among us. But money is getting scarcer and the police are gradually getting tough. "

This was confirmed by Frey, who also met Lola Bach in the "White Mouse". Lola wears too much of the traveling salesman. She was not from “Dr. Romans "got away. The thought of her child brings tears to Lola Bach's eyes.

Restless on tour

In the summer of 1923 they were still in Berlin. But soon they were moving across Germany, unsteady and living more badly than right from the fame of the scandal. There is evidence of an appearance in Düsseldorf around 1924; from April 1925 onwards, the “Lola Bach Beauty Ballet” took place in Hamburg at Ballhaus Alkazar, Reeperbahn 110 “with Rita Grammont and the rest of the program”. Around this time Lola Bach fell ill with tuberculosis . The last appearances of the Lola Bach ballet probably took place in Wesermünde in 1928 .

Lola Bach had paved the way for her successors without being able to enjoy the new freedom she had dreamed of. Sick and entangled in addictions, she probably died before she was 30 years old. The date and place of her death are not known.

Her lawyer Erich Frey reported about a child that Lola Bach had placed with her parents in Dresden in 1922. Nothing is known about his further fate either.

Afterlife

Lola Bach was apparently the first nude dancer of the twenties in the spring of 1921 and thus set a ball rolling that could only be slowed down with regulatory measures at the beginning. On November 30, 1923 z. B. Anita Berber made her scandalous appearance in Vienna, followed in 1925 by Henny Hiebel ( La Jana ) and Josephine Baker . The nude dance has been an indispensable cliché of the 1920s since Lola Bach.

Influencing films such as Lola Montez, the King's Dancer ( Willi Wolff 1922), Her Highness, the Dancer (Richard Eichberg 1922), Die Tolle Lola (Richard Eichberg with Lilian Harvey 1927) and The Blue Angel (with Marlene Dietrich as Lola, 1930) cannot be ruled out.

Vladimir Nabokov , who had been in Berlin since 1922 , may also have received some inspiration from Lola Bach for his novel Lolita , published in 1955 .

Literature (chronological)

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The name chosen by Erich Frey in his autobiographical memoirs “Dr. Römer “is a pseudonym, presumably to avoid recourse claims. His account of the process is one of the most important sources for Lola Bach. However, here the partisan view of the lawyer is often sharpened in favor of the literary effect. This applies in particular to the black and white drawing in the ratio of Bach to "Romans". Individual information provided by Frey is verifiably incorrect (e.g. Lützowstrasse 12a, mentioned by Frey, where the private performances are said to have taken place). Unless its information is confirmed by other sources, a certain degree of caution is advisable here.
  2. ↑ Erich Frey: I request acquittal . P. 89
  3. ↑ The star lawyer and the nude dancer for one day
  4. ↑ Eric Ames et al. (Ed.): Germany's colonial pasts. P. 188.
  5. ↑ (Rumpelstiltskin. "What Berlin Tells" Born 1921/22 Berlin, Gloss 26, March 16, 1922)
  6. ↑ cf. Rumpelstiltskin. “Un det jloobste?” Born 1922/23 Berlin, glosses 40–42, June 28 - July 12, 1923
  7. ↑ Eric Rothstein: " Lolita : Nymphet at Normal School." in: Contemporary Literature , Vol. 41, No. 1 (2000) pp. 22-55.
personal data
SURNAME Bach, Lola
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German nude dancer of the 20s
DATE OF BIRTH around 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: Dresden
DATE OF DEATH around 1930