Lydia Weiss

Lydia Weiss (born May 14, 1939 in Vienna ) is an Austrian ballet dancer, actress and singer . She was the ORF presenter of " Am dam des " and under the pseudonym "Fernsehkindergartentante" (Pippa) the female counterpart to Heinz "Enrico" Zuber.

Life

Lydia Weiss grew up in poor conditions in Vienna. Before the bombing raids on Vienna, her mother fled with her to the Waldviertel in Groß Eberharts in the Waidhofen an der Thaya area . They lived there for a few years until the Russian occupation. Mother Franziska invested the money she earned as a cleaning lady in her daughter's education.

After returning to Vienna, Lydia received ballet lessons and speech training in the Dannbacher studio and from 1950 onwards, in addition to attending primary school, worked regularly as a child actress on the Austrian radio , at that time RAWAG, as well as an apprentice at the Vienna Volksoper . She went on tour to England with the Dia Lucca Ballet and took part in the operetta “Merry Widow” ( Lehár's “ The Merry Widow ”) alongside Jan Kiepura and Martha Eggerth . On this occasion, Lydia trained with the Sadler Wells Ballet. On the ice she became the ASKÖ youth champion.

In 1958 she was seen in the cinema as a partner of "Conny" Froboess and Fred Bertelmann and also alongside Peter Kraus and Paula Wessely . "If my big brother only knew", "Hulla hopp Conny", "The divorced woman" are just some of the films in which Lydia Weiss participated.

Since Lydia Weiss failed the entrance exam at the Max Reinhardt Seminar because of “charisma ineffectively on the stage”, she took private lessons from Dorothea Neff and became a soubrette and comedian. She played children's fairy tales, danced both on Austrian television and at what was then the “Theater der Jugend” in Vienna, in musicals and as a singer, worked for German television in Cologne and played cabaret. She sang Arthur Honegger as well as Franz Lehár, Paul Burkhard or Polly Peacham in Brecht / Weill's Threepenny Opera .

Lydia Weiss was a partner of Elfi Mayerhofer in “Die Pariserin”, of Lil Dagover in “A Somewhat Weird Lady”, of Freddy Quinn in the musical “ Prärie Saloon ”, of Thomas Fritsch in “ Monpti ”, of Giuseppe Di Stefano in Franz Lehár's “Land of Smiles”, by Monika Peitsch in “Blick zurück im Zorn”, by Josef Meinrad and Alma Seidler in “The incorruptible” by Hugo von Hofmannsthal . “Katharina Knie” with Carl Raddatz was probably one of her favorite roles and probably also one of the reasons that she called her daughter, born in 1976, that.

Their venues were spread across German-speaking Europe. From the Theater des Westens in Berlin to the Theater am Dom in Cologne, from the Theater an der Wien to the Basel City Theater, from the Bregenz Festival, where Weiss sang the world premiere of Robert Stolz : “Die Trauminsel”, to the Stockerau Festival, where from 1978 she was a permanent guest of the artistic director Jürgen Wilke for several years .

In 1975 she was engaged by the director of the Wiener Festwochen Ulrich Baumgartner for the role of Anachoana in Jura Soyfer's “Christoph Columbus” in her hometown of Vienna. After her guest appearance in the arena, there were constant offers. So she finally returned to Vienna in 1976 , married and gave birth to a daughter. She can be found in the cast lists of Arena 75 and Arena 76 as well as in the Little Comedy in the Theater am Kärntnertor, where she played the leading roles in "Pepsie", "Scher dich zum Teufel, Karin", "No sex, please - we are British ”or“ And that on the wedding morning ”made the pieces long-running. The theater The tribune brought them for "August, August" by Pavel Kohout . And the ORF for the cabaret series: "G'schichten über ..." with Erwin Steinhauer , Gunther Philipp , Kurt Sowinetz and many others. Also in the legendary "Mundl, a real Viennese does not go under", she was seen at the side of Karl Merkatz and in "Leihopa" with Alfred Böhm .

As her daughter grew up, Lydia Weiss rediscovered her love for children's plays and played for Evamaria Kaiser 's children's theater group “ Kaikukas ” for a few years , and landed with them on children's TV programs such as “ Am dam des ” and “Betthupferl”. There she met her "old" director Peter Dörre , who suggested her as a TV child aunt, with success. At this place she received the "TV-Krone" an award from Austria's largest daily newspaper, the Kronen Zeitung : " TV crown for a TV laugh" , her trademark. A little later, the character “Pippa”, the female pedant to Heinz Zuber's “Enrico”, was invented for her . "Gendarmerieposten Sulzenau" was the last television series in which she acted as Heinz Petters' film wife .

In the late 1980s Lydia Weiss withdrew into private life and from then on devoted herself to various social tasks on a voluntary basis. In April 1999 she was seen again in a short life review by Bea Thiemhard on the television program “Willkommen Österreich”. It still rings in the ears of many radio listeners today when she said her farewell text as the presenter of the legendary Austrian Saturday night program “Dance Music on Order”: “... if you stay up, good entertainment, but if you go to sleep, then I wish you good night."

Individual evidence

1. ^ Theater program of the Swiss Theater Guest Performances in Basel, September 1965.

Web links

• Lydia Weiss in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Lydia Weiss