Paul Spadoni

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Paul Spadoni , real name Paul Krause , (born October 3, 1870 in Berlin , † July 11, 1952 in Rome ) was a German variety artist, power acrobat and artist agent .

Live and act

Paul Spadoni was born the son of a restaurant owner and discovered his talent and enthusiasm for artistry at a young age . At the age of 12 he practiced juggling tricks with the coffee set at home, and when he was 14 he was doing magic and juggling at a classmate's birthday party.

Since Spadoni also had a talent for drawing, his father sent him to the Berlin drawing academy. Here, too, he was successful, but continued to practice artistic feats without parental knowledge. Eventually he ran away from home and got his first engagement as a clown and juggler with the circus company Labersweiler-Laberyel. He then joined the magician Agoston, who gave him the stage name Spadoni. Spadoni switched to power juggling and developed tricks and feats that were groundbreaking at the time and were sometimes considered inimitable. A poster created around 1892 shows Paul Spadoni together with his sister Agnes.

Since power juggling was also very popular in the New World and the defense industry there often used props such as grenades and cannons for advertising purposes, Spadoni came to appearances in the United States. He traveled through the USA for many years, always as the main attraction. He often changed the scenery to keep his program interesting. For example, he exchanged his Roman outfit, which was often worn in Germany, for a loincloth and gave a caveman who balanced heavy wooden clubs with playful ease.

When the First World War broke out , Spadoni returned to Germany and became a soldier. A serious wound ended his career as a strength acrobat. An obligation to the Hamburg circus Hagenbeck saved him from returning to the front after his recovery. After the end of the war, Paul Spadoni and his wife Maria founded a very successful agency, which over the years has placed 50,000 artists all over the world, including such well-known names as Max Hansen and Claire Schlichting .

He had a very friendly relationship with the famous juggler Enrico Rastelli , and it was Spadoni who was the first to take over the foreign agency of the Soviet state circus in Central Europe.

Paul Spadoni had two daughters who also performed as vaudeville artists. Magdi Spadoni later had to give up her career due to a foot injury, Marion worked as a magician and, together with Nicola Lupo, ran the Friedrichstadt-Palast, which was renamed Theater des Volkes in 1934, under private management during the Nazi era . Although the two women received a license to continue the establishment after the end of the war, this was withdrawn from them by the Soviet commandant office on September 1, 1947.

In 1949 Spadoni left Berlin and moved to Rome, where he also opened an agency. According to a newspaper report, he founded another agency in Hamburg in 1951. Paul Spadoni died in Rome in 1952 at the age of 81.

Tricks and tricks

In the course of his long career, Paul Spadoni constantly devised new acrobatic tricks. Using a sling board, for example, he jumped over a galloping horse or eight horses standing side by side. He balanced with a crockery service or set tables, came on stage with a horse and chariot, unhitched the horses and balanced the chariot on his head. With the advent of the car, he built it into his program by balancing a model upright on his shoulder.

Juggling and balancing with military bullets took up a lot of space. Spadoni was the first person to shoulder a 45-pound bullet from a cannon; in 1897 he balanced a 200-pound torpedo, threw it into the air and caught it between his shoulder and neck. He juggled tennis balls and cannon balls at the same time, caught a grenade in the neck and two iron balls thrown up by a seesaw with his hands. Another variant replaced the iron balls with filled goldfish bowls. In the USA, he presented for the first time the feat of catching a cannon barrel with shoulder and neck that was thrown into the air by stepping on a seesaw. A popular final trick was catching a grenade falling from a height of four meters with shoulders and hands.

In 1872 the Danish acrobat John Holtum (1845-1919) succeeded for the first time in catching a bullet fired from a cannon with his hand without injuries. Paul Spadoni developed this number further by catching three 90-pound grenades on the back of his neck and balancing and juggling with them.

literature

  • Lothar Groth: The strong men - a history of strength acrobatics , Henschelverlag Berlin, 1987, ISBN 3-362-00223-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Lothar Groth: The strong men - a history of strength acrobatics , Henschelverlag Berlin, 1987, page 104 ff, ISBN 3-362-00223-4 .
  2. ↑ a b c David Chapman via Paul Spadoni, Iron Man Magazine , March 2015 issue , accessed March 13, 2015
  3. ^ Biography of Max Hansen
  4. ↑ Ben Becker: Na und, ich tanze , Verlag Droemer, 2011, p. 38 ff.
  5. ^ The Billboard , September 6, 1947 edition , accessed March 13, 2015.
  6. ^ The Billboard , April 9, 1949 edition , accessed March 13, 2015
  7. ^ The Billboard , January 20, 1951 edition , accessed March 13, 2015
  8. ^ Francisco Alvarez: Juggling - its history and greatest Performers / PART 3: Heyday of Cinquevalli and Others , accessed on March 13, 2015
  9. ↑ Come in. Part 4 - From Astley to the 20th Century Circus , Retrieved March 13, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Spadoni, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Krause, Paul (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German variety artist, power acrobat and artist agent
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 11, 1952
Place of death Rome