Paul Robeson

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Gordon Parks : Paul Robeson , June 1942 ( FSA / OWI Collection)

Paul LeRoy Robeson [ ˈɹoʊ̯bsn̩ ] (born April 9, 1898 in Princeton , New Jersey , † January 23, 1976 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ) was an American actor , singer , athlete , author and civil rights activist .

Life

Paul Robeson was the great-great-grandson of George Washington's baker and the youngest of seven children of Maria Louisa Bustill and Reverend William Drew Robeson, a former slave . His father managed to escape slavery north as a young man in North Carolina, in Martin County . Robeson attended, against the express wishes of the family, who would have preferred a historically African American college (HBCU), the Rutgers University on a scholarship from 1915 to 1919. There he played American football , baseball and basketball and did athletics . In addition to extraordinary artistic and academic successes, he was awarded a total of twelve varsity letters in all sports . His football game, in particular, found nationwide recognition: Frank Menke (1917 and 1918) and Walter Camp (1918) became the first football player at his university to make him an All-American in his playing position ( end ). He was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995 for his accomplishments . In 1921 and 1922 he played professional football, first for the Hammond Pros and then for the Akron Pros in the American Professional Football Association (predecessor of the National Football League , NFL), later with the Milwaukee Badgers in the NFL. Robeson came to a total of 15 missions. He received up to $ 500 per game. After completing his academic training at Rutgers University, Robeson began studying law at Columbia University , which he was able to finance with his income from professional football. He graduated in 1923.

As early as the following year Robeson appeared as an actor in the play All God's Chillun Got Wings by Eugene O'Neill and then received a leading role in his play Emperor Jones . The role of Othello was Robeson's most significant on Broadway. As early as 1924 he appeared in a silent film, Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul . As a courtesy, he then worked with his wife Eslanda and the poet HD in 1930 in Kenneth MacPherson's artistic film Borderline , after which he made a number of commercial films , beginning with Emperor Jones (1933). His role as narrator in Joris Ivens ' film Das Lied der Strom ( DEFA , GDR 1953/54) is out of the ordinary. He used his bass singing voice in his first appearance in a Broadway musical , Show Boat , in 1932 , for which he received a standing ovation. Through the role of Joe and the hit Ol 'Man River in Universal Pictures - film adaptation of the musical, he became known to a wider audience in 1936 and became one of the leading stage and film actors.

He lived in London from 1927 to 1939, where he became a staunch socialist under the influence of George Bernard Shaw and leading British Labor Party politicians ( Stafford Cripps , Clement Attlee ) and the Communists ( Harry Pollitt ). He read the originals of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and received explanations on Soviet society from Ivan Maiski , the Soviet ambassador in London. Robeson did not join any communist party. In 1934 the Robesons visited the Soviet Union , and they were subsequently regarded as Communists and Stalin sympathizers. His wife Eslanda Goode's two brothers, John and Frank Goode, lived in the Soviet Union. Robeson saw the Soviet Union as a liberation and a truly human society. He confessed to Sergei Eisenstein : Here, for the first time, I walk in human dignity (“Here I can move humanely for the first time ”). In 1936/37 he sang for the International Brigades in Spain. In 1939, with Paul Robeson in the lead role, the cantata Ballad for Americans by John La Touche (text) and Earl Robinson (music) was performed on the CBS radio station. The Kenyan freedom fighter and later President Jomo Kenyatta , who was living in London at the time , played a casual job in Sanders of the River with Paul Robeson in 1940 . Robeson became the main mentor to young Harry Belafonte , who became one of the most popular black entertainment stars in the early 1950s, but also a protagonist of the African-American civil rights movement . Belafonte referred to Robeson both artistically and politically.

In the McCarthy era , Robeson's passport was revoked, his records disappeared from stores, and his name was blacklisted, resulting in a ban on performing in the United States. International committees were formed to demand freedom of travel for Robeson, especially in Great Britain. For example, in May 1957, members of the British House of Commons organized a “transnational” concert in London by telephone in London's St. Pancras Town Hall . Another concert over the phone was organized by Welsh miners the following autumn, with whom Robeson had developed a close relationship since the 1920s. He was only allowed to leave the country again in 1958. He then played Othello again in England and also had an appearance in the GDR in 1960 , in which Robeson was celebrated and received many awards as the "embodiment of the 'other' America" ​​and to which he returned in 1964 for medical treatment.

Paul Robeson was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale .

Honors

The Robeson inventory in the archive of the Academy of Arts of the GDR in 1981

Robeson received numerous honors, including the International Stalin Peace Prize in 1952 and the World Peace Prize in 1955 . In the GDR he had been a corresponding member of the Akademie der Künste , Berlin (East), performing arts section since 1956 . On October 5, 1960, the Philosophical Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin awarded him an honorary doctorate . In Leipzig , a primary and secondary school is called "Paul Robeson", and in 1978 in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg Stolpische Strasse was renamed "Paul-Robeson-Strasse".

In 1979 a documentary was made about him with the title Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist . The film, voiced by Sidney Poitier , won the 1980 Oscar for Best Documentary Short . In 1990 Kurt Tetzlaff made a documentary film, "I'm a Negro, I'm an American", about Paul Robeson in the McCarthy era.

The Manic Street Preachers dedicated a song to him with Let Robeson Sing . The band also covered Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel? a spiritual song ( gospel ), which was also interpreted by Robeson. Eric Bibb , Robeson's godchild, and his father Leon Bibb dedicated the record Praising Peace - A Tribute to Paul Robeson to him . The New York band The World / Inferno Friendship Society honored him on their record Speak of Brave Men EP and the album Red-Eyed Soul with the song Paul Robeson .

Paul Robeson is remembered today by a musical play by the British writer and singer Tayo Aluko , who has been performing his one-person play Call Mr. Robeson worldwide since 2006 , in which he plays Robeson himself, who describes and reflects on his life.

In The Book of Daniel, EL Doctorow describes the concert with Paul Robeson in Peekskill , in the state of New York, after which the Peekskill Riots broke out and visitors were severely insulted and physically threatened.

In the Soviet Union, a tomato variety was named after him: "Pol Robson", a dark, precocious stick tomato. The main inner belt asteroid (2328) Robeson was named after him.

Publications (selection)

Filmography

  • 1925: Body and Soul
  • 1926: Camile (short film)
  • 1930: borderline
  • 1933: The Emperor Jones
  • 1935: Bosambo
  • 1936: Show Boat
  • 1936: Song of Freedom
  • 1937: Big Fella
  • 1937: King Solomon's Mines
  • 1937: Jericho
  • 1940: The Proud Valley
  • 1942: Six Fates (Tales of Manhattan)
  • 1954: Song of the Streams

literature

Web links

Commons : Paul Robeson  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russell T. Wiggington: The Strange Career of the Black Athlete. African Americans and Sports. Westport / London, 2006: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-98223-8 (pages 40-43 , in English.)
  2. ^ Paul "Robey" Robeson, Member Biography. In: National Football Foundation. Archived from the original on February 22, 2015 ; accessed on January 8, 2017 .
  3. ^ Scott Allen Nollen: Paul Robeson: Film Pioneer. P. 31.
  4. ^ Paul Robeson, Jr .: The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An Artist's Journey, 1898–1939. John Wiley, Danvers MA 2001, p. 286 f.
  5. ↑ Anatol I. Schlosser: Paul Robeson in Film. An Iconoclast's Quest for a Role. In: Ernest Kaiser et al. (Ed.): Paul Robeson: The Great Forerunner. Freedomways Associates, New York 1978, p. 76 (English).
  6. ↑ Phone Calls Breach Boundaries. ( Memento of October 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: ScienceMuseum.org.uk , 2014 (English).
  7. ↑ Tracy J. Prince: Culture Wars in British Literature: Multiculturalism and National Identity. McFarland & Company, Jefferson NC 2012, pp. 89-92 .
  8. ^ Michael Rauhut : The Voice of the Other America. African-American Music and Political Protest in the German Democratic Republic. In: Timothy Brown, Lorena Anton (Ed.): Between the Avant-Garde and the Everyday. Subversive Politics in Europe from 1957 to the Present. Berghahn, New York 2011, p. 98 f. (English).
  9. ^ Victor Grossman : Oxygen in the stuffy Leipzig. Impressions from an American from the International Documentary Film Week in Leipzig. In: Uta A. Balbier, Christiane Rösch (Ed.): Courted Class Enemy. The relationship between the GDR and the USA. Christoph Links, Berlin 2006, pp. 180–193, p. 180 .
  10. ^ Academy of Arts - Paul Robeson .
  11. ↑ Paul Robeson was awarded an honorary doctorate from Humboldt University ( Memento from January 5, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ^ Paul Robeson School - Middle School
  13. ^ Paul-Robeson-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  14. ↑ Ingar Solty : A Victim of the Cold War. In: Neues Deutschland , September 19, 2008.
  15. ^ EL Doctorow: Book of Daniel. Random House, 1971, p. 53 ff.
  16. ^ Pol Robson tomato variety ( Memento of August 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ).
  17. ^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp.  186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on August 3, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1972 HW. Discovered 1972 Apr. 19 by TM Smirnova at Nauchnyj. "
personal data
SURNAME Robeson, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Robeson, Paul LeRoy Bustill (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actor, singer, athlete, author, and civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Princeton, New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1976
Place of death Philadelphia , Pennsylvania