Peter Pan (cabaret artist)

Peter Pan , actually Alfred Nathan , (born November 27, 1909 in Berlin ; † June 11, 1976 in Portenschmiede in the Thuringian Forest ) was a German cabaret artist .

Live and act

Born in 1909 as Alfred Nathan, son of a middle-class family in Berlin, Pan gave his first revue in 1928 on the occasion of the sister's wedding in Berlin. A year later, during a trip to Paris, he first came into contact with socialist ideas and became a sympathizer of the left. He appeared in Paris as a chansonnier alongside Lucienne Boyer, among others . Between 1930 and 1932 he made several appearances in the Berlin "Küka" (artist coffee), in the " Toppkeller " and in the cabaret "Die Wespen" and in 1931 undertook his first study trip to the Soviet Union with the sports club "Fichte".

Third Reich and imprisonment

In 1933 Pan was forced to flee to Paris. SA troops had demolished his apartment. He worked in Paris as a furniture transporter, waiter, salesman and in other temporary jobs. From 1934 he wrote texts for the exile cabaret “Laterne” and appeared in “Chez elle”, a Parisian nightclub for young talents. In 1939 he was arrested and placed in an internment camp. In December 1942 he managed to escape from there, together with the dancer Fred Leschnitzer . They were able to dig under the barbed wire fence because the guards were drunk and therefore inattentive. After crossing the border, Pan pretended to be a Canadian parachutist and was sent to jail for this. During an inspection of the prison, however, he was recognized by an embassy employee from France, whom Pan was known from his time in Paris. He was released a few days later. With a borrowed tuxedo and close-cropped hair, he began working as an artist in Barcelona. In 1952 his son Michael Nathan was born in Madrid , later known as the actor Michael Pan .

Return to Germany

In 1957 Pan returned to Germany and initially settled in Munich. A year later, however, he moved to the GDR and from then on lived in East Berlin. In the same year he performed the solo program "Gesänge Behind Barbed Wire" and completed a six-week tour through the GDR. In 1962 a tour of Cuba followed. Eleven years later, Pan moved to a small apartment in Bernburg (Saale) . Three years later, in 1976, he died of heart failure in Portenschmiede in the Thuringian Forest during a summer vacation. His grave is in Cemetery III in Bernburg (Saale).

literature

• Klaus Budzinski , Reinhard Hippen : Metzler Cabaret Lexicon . Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01448-7 , p. 294.
• Rudolf Hösch: Cabaret from yesterday. Based on contemporary reports, reviews and memories . Henschelverlag, Berlin

1. 1900-1933 . 1967.
2. 1933-1970 . 1972.

• German Cabaret Archive : Bernburg Collections .
• Volker Kühn (Ed.): Germany's Awakening: Cabaret under the swastika; 1933-1945 . Volume 3. Weinheim: Quadriga, 1989 ISBN 3-88679-163-7 , p. 383 (short biography)
• Nathan, Alfred , in: Frithjof Trapp , Bärbel Schrader, Dieter Wenk, Ingrid Maaß: Handbook of the German-Language Exile Theater 1933 - 1945. Volume 2. Biographical Lexicon of Theater Artists . Munich: Saur, 1999, ISBN 3-598-11375-7 , pp. 691f.