Max Salomon (Carnivalist)

Max Salomon (born June 3, 1886 in Cologne ; died 1970 in the United States ) was the founder and president of the only Jewish carnival club in Cologne during the Weimar Republic , a cabaret artist and speaker at the hands of the people . After the National Socialists came to power , the Jewish artist was ostracized and from 1935 was banned from performing publicly. Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War , in November 1939, Max Salomon and his family had to emigrate from Cologne to Los Angeles .

Life

Max Salomon was born in 1886 as the son of the Jewish textile wholesaler Salomon Salomon and his wife Henriette, b. Lion born in Cologne. After graduating from school, he began commercial training. He then worked as a traveling salesman in his parents' knitting yarn wholesaler in Cologne. After the early death of his father, he took over the management of the company.

From 1910 he appeared as a hand-made speaker for the carnival society Konventsmöhne . He published numerous texts and books that were published in the Cologne publishing house Salm . After the First World War , he began his stage career as Kölsche Markfrau , a character that he reinterpreted over and over again for over 50 years.

In order to counter the burgeoning anti-Semitic tendencies in the early 1920s, he and his younger brother Wilhelm, relatives and Jewish business friends founded the Kleinen Kölner Kegelklub in 1922 , which appeared in public as the Kleiner Kölner Klub during the carnival session . The Small Cologne Club was the only Jewish carnival club in Cologne. Similar to the traditional societies , the carnivalists gave themselves nicknames in the Bütt : Max Salomon appeared as de Pläät (bald head) and his brother Wilhelm as stopping (stopper). Max Salomon was elected president of the association.

Due to the general ban on performing for carnival societies during the British occupation of the Rhineland , the first masked balls of the Small Cologne Club from 1925 are known. Other Cologne carnival societies such as the Rote Funken or Fidele Ehrenfelder were regular guests at the carnival events and ceremonial meetings in the Rhineland Hall or the Wolkenburg , which Max Salomon directed and at which he himself appeared as a handmade paper speaker . Max Salomon was friends with Hans Tobar , who wrote the pieces for the club in Cologne dialect . Besides him, well-known Cologne carnivalists such as Karl Küpper , Gerti Ransohoff, Albrecht Bodde, Karl Berbuer , Willy Millowitsch and Gerhard Ebeler worked with Salomon. In 1931 and 1932, events of the session carnival were banned due to the economic hardship in Cologne.

After the National Socialists came to power , many Jewish artists were banned from working and could only appear at events organized by the Jewish Cultural Association of Rhine-Ruhr. At the beginning of 1935 Max Salomon was forced to give up his activity as a sales representative. Until 1935, the carnivalist popular in Cologne was allowed to perform occasionally, which enabled him to make a modest living. Due to the loss of a regular income, the Salomon family was forced to sell jewelry, furnishings and real estate in order to survive and to finance their escape.

After his brother Wilhelm and his family had emigrated to Palestine at the end of 1935 , Max Salomon managed to escape to the United States in November 1939 . As early as the early 1940s, he appeared again in Los Angeles - together with his daughter Erika - in front of emigrants and on radio broadcasts with carnival programs. Max Salomon died in 1970.

Private life

Max Salomon married the Krefeld- born merchant's daughter Christina Berger, whose brother Ignaz (called Iwan) was also actively involved in the Cologne carnival. In 1922, their daughter Erika was born. While the families of Max and Wilhelm Salomon managed to emigrate abroad, his mother Henriette Salomon, which in the 1939 Netherlands fled, was arrested in April 1943, the camp Westerbork abducted and into the 20 July 1943 Sobibor extermination camp deported and killed.

Honor

Play media file

Laying of the stumbling blocks for Max, Christina and Erika Salomon in front of the house at Lothringer Straße 1 on March 19, 2019

On March 19, 2019, three stumbling blocks in memory of Max Salomon, his wife Christiane and his daughter Erika were laid by artist Gunter Demnig in front of Max Salomon's former residential and commercial building on Lothringer Straße , on the initiative of the newly founded Jewish carnival association Kölsche Kippa Köpp . Stumbling blocks were also laid the day before in Brusselser Strasse 88 in memory of his brother Wilhelm Salomon, his wife Emma and daughter Lieselotte, who emigrated to Palestine in 1935 . A stumbling block for his murdered mother, Henriette Salomon, was set in the same place in spring 2018.

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  Stumbling block for Max Salomon

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  Stumbling block for Christina Salomon

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  Stumbling block for Erika Salomon

literature

• Hellen Santana Silva: Carnival-like biographies - Simon Oppenheim, Hans Tobar and Max Salomon . In: Daniela Sandner, Romana Wahner, Hans Driesel, Magret Löther (eds.): "Jüdisch jeck" Fastnacht and Purim an approximation , Kitzingen 2017, ISBN 978-3744815048 , pp. 89-92.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Marcus Leifeld: The Cologne carnival in the time of National Socialism: from the regional folk festival to the propaganda instrument of the National Socialist community . emons, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-95451-405-2 , p. 274 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Daniele Sandner, Romana Wahner, Hans Driesel, Margret Löther: " Jüdisch jeck": Carnival and Purim, an approach . 1st edition. Norderstedt 2017, ISBN 978-3-7448-1504-8 , pp. 92 .
3. ↑ Horst Matzerath: Jewish fate in Cologne 1918–1945. Catalog for the exhibition of the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne / NS Documentation Center . Cologne 1989, p. 121 .
4. ↑ Marcus Leifeld: The Cologne carnival in the time of National Socialism: from the regional folk festival to the propaganda instrument of the National Socialist community . emons, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-95451-405-2 , p. 460 .
5. ^ History of the Cologne Carnival | Cologne Carnival | Carnival information. Retrieved on March 29, 2019 (German). 
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Marcus Leifeld: The Cologne carnival in the time of National Socialism: from the regional folk festival to the propaganda instrument of the National Socialist community . emons, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-95451-405-2 , p. 276 .
7. ↑ ^{a b} Marcus Leifeld: The Cologne carnival in the time of National Socialism: from the regional folk festival to the propaganda instrument of the National Socialist community . emons, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-95451-405-2 , p. 277 .
8. ↑ Marcus Leifeld: The Cologne carnival in the time of National Socialism: from the regional folk festival to the propaganda instrument of the National Socialist community . emons, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-95451-405-2 , p. 275 .
9. ↑ Marcus Leifeld: The Cologne carnival in the time of National Socialism: from the regional folk festival to the propaganda instrument of the National Socialist community . emons, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-95451-405-2 , p. 298 .
10. ^ "Kölle Alaaf" under the swastika. In: deutschlandfunk.de. Retrieved on March 29, 2019 (German). 
11. ^ Entry in the memorial book for Henriette Salomon. Federal Archives, accessed on March 29, 2019 . 
12. ↑ Karine Waldschmidt: Commemoration in Cologne Südstadt: Stumbling blocks remind of Jewish jackets. March 21, 2019, accessed on March 29, 2019 (German). 
13. ↑ Gunter Demnig laid 54 new stumbling blocks / Köln Nachrichten / Köln Nachrichten / / report-k.de - Cologne's Internet newspaper. Retrieved March 29, 2019 .