Ping-pong (cabaret)
Ping-pong was a political-satirical cabaret in Berlin and Amsterdam , the Weimar Republic , which existed from 1931 to 1934.
The political-satirical cabaret was founded in October 1931 by Kurt Egon Wolff , who was barely 20 . It found its venue in Goltzstrasse No. 9, Berlin-Schöneberg , in the rooms of the Russian emigrant cabaret The Blue Bird .
The motto of the first program was “We want to laugh”. The lyrics were mainly written by Curt Bry and Peter Hagen .
Colette Corder , Ellen Frank , Franz Fiedler , Wolfgang Helmke , Elfriede Jerra , Robert Klein-Lörk , Traute Kroll , Fritz Lafontaine , Ilse Trautschold , the parodistic singing duo Bep & Git , the voice and sound imitator Dotz Sohn participated in the colorful mixes of the programs -Rethel and Dora Gerson involved with their impressive chanson interpretations. The sequence of scenes was accompanied by Curt Bry and Fried Walter on two pianos. Liselott Wilke, who later became internationally famous as Lale Andersen with the song Lili Marleen based on a poem by Hans Leip , was also on stage in the first program “We want to laugh” .
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In the late 1920s and early 1930s tourists had come to Germany from all over the world. Hundreds of amusement shops, bars, theaters, movie theaters and Tingeltangel had made Berlin the capital of entertainment and the rest of Europe a province. The Netherlands had also looked to Berlin, in Amsterdam and The Hague too, circus, cabarets, revues, operettas and dance theaters from the Spree were the epitome of light entertainment and, since theater owners and Kurhaus directors couldn't find anything comparable in their own country, they came to Germany and engaged there solo programs and entire revues. Until the war, “the German” still had such a good reputation that many Dutch people were willing to pay for German-language entertainment, and so large Dutch cities and seaside resorts became popular stations for German singers and comedians such as Richard Tauber , Hans Albers , or the comedian Harmonists .
Shortly before Hitler came to power in January 1933, Kurt Egon Wolff emigrated to the Netherlands . As early as May 6, 1933, ping-pong in the Rika Hopper Theater in Amsterdam opened with a first program and presented to the Amsterdam audience as the first emigrant cabaret. Newcomers to the ensemble were the actor Erwin Parker , who fled with the Leopold Jessner ensemble , the comically fat Geza L. Weisz , the grotesque dancer Julia Marcus , who had already danced her Hitler parody in the Berlin cabarets in 1930, and Chaja Goldstein with Yiddish Songs and dances. Because of their experiences with fascism and anti-Semitism in Germany, the members struck political tones. Dressed up as a demi-world lady, for example, the dance pantomime Julia Marcus ended her interpretation of a waltz by putting on a gas mask.
However, there was no success. The Dutch audience wanted to be entertained and not bothered with problems from foreign refugees. Also because it was forbidden to insult the head of state of a friendly country and one did not want to have to deal with the police under any circumstances, Kurt Egon Wolff and Dora Gerson, who now belonged to the permanent ensemble, decided to go back to the tried and tested light entertainment to put. Another reason contributed to this decision. Unlike many other writers, Gerson and Wolff did not flee for political reasons, but because as Jews in Germany they were banned from performing . The members of the ping-pong belonged more to the bourgeoisie and do not necessarily want to be brought into contact with the socialist and communist exiles , who saw their life's work in the offensive fight against National Socialism . Rather, their goal was to please a wide audience and make a living from their income.
When the troupe presented their second program in August 1933 at the invitation of the Dutch cabaret artist Louis Davids at his '' Kurhaus Cabaret '' in Scheveningen , they performed apolitical songs by Bertolt Brecht , Friedrich Hollaender , Erich Kästner , Kurt Tucholsky and the composer, lyricist and singer Curt Bry . In addition, literary parodies made up a significant part of the evening. Schiller's ballad “The Bell” was presented in the tone of a 6-day race moderation. There were the noise simulator Dotz Sohn-Rethel, the cabaret artist Geza L. Weisz, the chansonniere Hedi Haas and the singing duo Bep & Git with variations on the folk song "May has come" in the style of famous composers and a jazz version. Another prominent member of the ensemble was the singer and dancer Chaja Goldstein .
Despite this shift to entertainment, work permits were threatened to be withdrawn towards the end of the year. The troupe evaded this by going on tour. The first stop was in Zurich with a guest performance in the Tonhalle , where Liselott Wilke, who emigrated to Switzerland , joined. Bearing in mind the experiences with the Dutch public and the authorities, there was no obvious political cabaret. After the successful premiere , but with bad reviews , the ensemble toured Switzerland for some time, then they split up. Liselott Wilke was left alone in Switzerland. Soon creditors who had lent money to the cabaret threatened with a complaint that could in turn lead to the loss of their residence permit.
Lale Andersen returned to Munich in April 1934. There she appeared in the Simplicissimus. In order to protect her children who were left with friends in Zurich, she adopted the stage name Lale Andersen - and a short time later became world famous with the song Vor der Kaserne.
Another part of their former colleagues, without Dora Gerson and Dotz Sohn-Rethel, but with Erwin Parker , had meanwhile returned to Amsterdam and tried to revive the ping-pong. In the meantime, Dutch artists had protested against the oversupply of German emigrants in Dutch entertainment and successfully demanded that Dutch people should also be represented in German ensembles in future. When the ping-pong appeared with a new program in Amsterdam in the autumn of 1934, Kurt Egon Wolff added the desired locals and thus escaped another ban. As a criticism in the newspaper De Volkskrant on October 8, 1934 suggests, this decision turned out to be wrong. “The idea was to include young Dutch talent in the ensemble, but everything that was accepted was the most pathetic amateurism. […] The talent in this line-up is German […] The rest of the people who confer, sing and try to be funny here are below the level of entertainment in the pub at a village fair and should not appear on the boards of a serious cabaret. "
After such meetings, the audience stayed away. After a few performances, the ping-pong finally dissolved. His merit, however, is to have stimulated Dutch cabaret so that a performance cannot be a collection of disjointed numbers, but a self-contained program.
Kurt Egon Wolff survived the war by moving to England with his son Rethel in 1937 and finally emigrating to Los Angeles in 1939 , where he made a career in the music department of Warner Brothers . Chaja Goldstein was sent to the Westerbork transit camp , survived it, and went to New York with her husband a few years after the end of the war. Julia Marcus went to Paris , worked there and helped other dancers escape from the Nazis. Curt Bry was also able to escape and immigrated to the USA via England. Dora Gerson tried to escape to Switzerland , she was discovered at the border, deported and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943 , together with her second husband and children.
literature
- Peter Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret, 1993
- Michael Balfour, Theater and War, 1933-1945: Performance in Extremis, 2001
- Reinhard Hippen: satire against Hitler. Cabaret in exile. Pendo-Verlag, ISBN 3858422010
Web link
swell
- ^ Kurt Egon Wolff, Son of Cabaret Ping Pong star in Puget Sound
- ↑ Russian cultural life in Berlin in the 1920s
- ↑ Valeska Gert: Fragments of an Avant-gardist in Dance and Drama of the 1920s, Transcript Verlag Bielefeld, 2006, ISBN 3899423623
- ↑ Peter Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret, 1993, p. 259 (en)
- ↑ Chaja Goldstein, Exile Archive
- ↑ Horst JP Bergmeier: Chronology of German Cabaret in the Netherlands 1933-1944, Hamburg 1998, p. 36
- ↑ Michael Balfour, Theater and War, 1933-1945: Performance in Extremis, 2001, p. 139