Lotte Berk

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Lotte Berk (born Lieselotte Heymansohn on January 17, 1913 in Cologne ; died November 4, 2003 in Froxfield , Wiltshire ) was a German- British dancer and training theorist . After fleeing Germany in the 1930s, she opened a fitness studio in London , where she taught the Lotte Berk Method of Exercise , which she had developed herself and which was widely used internationally.

biography

live in Germany

Lotte Berk was born Lieselotte Heymansohn in Cologne in 1913; her mother was German and her father was of Latvian descent with Russian citizenship; she had a sister. The wealthy father, Nicolai Heymansohn, was a trained tailor and ran several men's fashion shops. Lotte was driven through the city in a six-seater Mercedes, wrapped in a Russian cape . When she was six years old, her mother died of a stroke , "perhaps sowing the seeds of her legendary emotional control and physical willpower" ("which perhaps planted the seeds of her legendary self-control and physical willpower").

Lotte Heymansohn first learned to play the piano for eleven years and, according to her father's wishes, was to become a concert pianist. At 18, she began dance training at the Wigman School of Chinita Ullman , where her future husband Ernest Berk met. In 1930 she completed her training with a diploma. She has performed with well-known ensembles, including in Salzburg and as a soloist at the Nationaltheater Mannheim . Together with her husband, she also performed as a dance couple, often with the piano accompaniment of pianist Norbert Schultze . In 1931 the couple appeared in programs at the Kolibri cabaret in Cologne .

Heymansohn and Ernest Berk (1909–1993) married in 1933, and their daughter Esther was born the following year. In the year of their marriage, the Berks opened a school for gymnastics and dance in Cologne. In 1934 Lotte Berk was warned not to take part in a planned appearance in the Great Hall of the Civil Society, as otherwise she, as a Jew, risked arrest, so that her husband would appear alone. In an interview from 1989, she described standing behind the scenes and shouting to the audience: “Dance, Lotte, dance”. She then went on stage, although the auditorium was full of SS men. She was presented with flowers and a basket with groceries and a shirt for her little daughter. Then the SS men stormed the stage and shouted "out, out". "It was the most dramatic evening of my life," she later reported. The next day, Lotte Berk's money and passport were confiscated and her license as a teacher revoked.

After Ernest Berk was forbidden to issue diplomas for his students and thus the school could not continue, the family went to England in 1935 accompanied by nanny Mimi, which was possible because he had an English passport. According to Lotte Berk later, the couple lived in a small room and slept on the floor, the child in a suitcase and the nanny in the only bed. In 1939 Lotte Berk traveled back to Germany to persuade her father and sister to leave. Her sister followed her while her father stayed in Cologne and was deported to Auschwitz together with his second wife and murdered on February 26, 1943, after the two had fled to the Netherlands .

Living in the UK

Lotte Berk first worked as a model at the Heatherley School of Fine Art and later as a dancer again, including at the Ballet Rambert and at the festivals in Glyndebourne and Edinburgh . During the war she was involved in the British troop support ENSA . Lotte and Ernest Berk performed together with Indian and Hasidic dances and founded a dance school.

In the 1950s, Berk, who herself suffered increasingly from back problems, developed a series of gymnastics exercises based on her dance experience with the help of an osteopath . Similar to Pilates or yoga , these exercises are intended to strengthen certain physical exercises and at the same time make them supple, accompanied by pop music - a novelty. In 1959, with the support of her friend, the psychoanalyst Ann Mankowitz and her husband Wolf Mankowitz , she opened the Manchester Street Studio for Exercise in London , an exercise studio for women. She gave her various exercises unusual names such as "The Prostitute" ("The Prostitute "), "Peeing Dog" ("Peeing Dog") or "French Lavatory" ("French toilet"). Among her customers were such prominent women as Joan Collins , Britt Ekland , Barbra Streisand (who is said to have left immediately), Siân Phillips , Edna O'Brien and Yasmin Le Bon . These voluntarily submitted to Berk's sometimes rigid methods, which she is said to have beaten from time to time with a riding whip so that they adopt the correct posture.

Callan Pinckney , the later inventor of Callanetics , was also among the students . Lotte Berk's body school became a worldwide success, with offshoots in New York , Milan , Rome and Zurich after Berk sold the rights to her method and name in 1971. Their training method is also known as the barre method because it uses ballet bars .

Also in the 1950s, Lotte Berk separated from her husband, with whom she had previously had an open marriage ; both had numerous love affairs. With her husband's consent, she moved in with another man; Ernest Berk is said to have assumed that this separation would only be temporary and that his wife would return to him. When she was 50, however, the marriage ended in "markedly amicable" divorce. She married the antique dealer Herbert Rieser, and the marriage lasted only three weeks. Berk was related by marriage to the German-British journalist and writer Pem , who was married to her sister Hildegard. In the swinging sixties she was one of the most prominent women in Great Britain. She was known for her eccentric appearance, always in designer clothes, made up with her typical red lipstick and speaking in a low voice to hide her German accent.

Lotte Berk worked until she was over 80 years old. She died in 2003 at the age of 90 in a nursing home in Froxfield , Wiltshire . Her daughter Esther Fairfax continues to teach the Lotte Berk Method of Exercise and wrote a biography about her mother called My Improper Mother and Me . In it, she describes her mother as a neurotic woman who has dedicated herself to chocolate, morphine , sleeping pills and sex. She adored her mother, but was emotionally neglected by her in her youth. When she was 15, she was raped by a film producer and her mother forbade her to file a complaint with the police because "[w] e could all lose our jobs".

Publications

literature

  • Martin Köhler: Then come together, make music, sing and be happy: Ernest Berk's electronic music; a musician's estate in the historical archive of the city of Cologne . Peter Lang, Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 978-3-631-55560-6 .
  • Jürgen Müller: The cabaret Kolibri 1930-1933 in Cologne . Ed .: Cologne Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation . the authors, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-9810334-0-X .
  • Jürgen Müller: "Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome ...": political review - cabaret - vaudeville in Cologne, 1928–1938 . Emons, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89705-549-0 , pp. 140-217 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Müller, "Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome ..." , p. 206.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Julie Welch: Obituary: Lotte Berk. In: theguardian.com. November 10, 2003, accessed August 31, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Müller, "Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome ..." , p. 208.
  4. ↑ a b c Müller, "Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome ..." , p. 209.
  5. ↑ Müller, Das Kabarett Kolibri , p. 77.
  6. ^ Köhler, Then comes together , pp. 38/39.
  7. ^ Köhler, Then comes together , pp. 40/41.
  8. ↑ Köhler, Then Come Together , p. 43.
  9. ↑ a b Lotte Berk. In: telegraph.co.uk. November 7, 2003, accessed August 31, 2018 .
  10. ↑ Müller, Das Kabarett Kolibri , p. 78.
  11. ↑ Müller, "Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome ..." , p. 211.
  12. ↑ Lotte Berk. In: telegraph.co.uk. November 7, 2003, accessed August 31, 2018 .
  13. ↑ a b Nadine Meisner: Lotte Berk. In: The Independent . November 10, 2003, accessed September 7, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Lotte Berk - The original home of the Lotte Berk Technique, still taught by her daughter Esther Fairfax. In: lotte-berk.com. Retrieved September 8, 2018 .
  15. ↑ a b c Müller, "Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome ..." , p. 212.
  16. ↑ How the barre workout was created: German-born dancer who fled the Nazis devised an exercise regime with moves like the 'love-making position' - but died in anonymity after selling the rights to her own name. January 30, 2018, accessed September 11, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Köhler, Then Come Together , p. 48.
  18. ↑ Thomas Willimowski: “Being an emigrant is not a job”. The life of the journalist Pem . Berlin 2007, p. 7 u. 196.
  19. ↑ Lotte Berk: one of the strangest and most ruthless characters of the 20th century. In: telegraph.co.uk. July 20, 2010, accessed September 7, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Berk, Lotte
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berk, Lieselotte; Heymansohn, Lieselotte (maiden name); Heymansohn, Lotte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British dancer and training theorist
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH November 4, 2003
Place of death Froxfield , Wiltshire