Rosa Matilda Richter

Rosa Matilda Richter as Zazel 1897

Poster for the "Human Cannonball" in the Royal Aquarium

Rosa Matilda Richter, artist name Zazel (also: Rossa, married name Rosa Starr; * 14. April 1862 in London , † December 8, 1937 in England) was a German-English circus performer, who first " human cannonball " became famous. As the first female acrobatics circus star, she paved the way for women to follow her in this profession.

Life

Rosa Matilda Richter was born in London in 1862 as the second daughter of the English circus dancer Susanna Richter and the German circus and theater agent Ernst Richter, who claims to be from Dresden .

As a child she was trained in acrobatics and performed as a singer and dancer on London stages. She made her stage debut as a pantomime at the age of five. As “La Petite Lulu” she first appeared on the trapeze at the age of eleven and toured Europe with a “Siamese” acrobatics group, performing in Dublin , Marseille and Toulouse . After she had an accident in Toulouse and was injured, her father brought her back to London in 1873. She later performed with William Leonard Hunt , a well-known Canadian acrobat who ran across Niagara Falls on a rope as "The Great Farini" in 1860 .

On April 2, 1877, at the Royal Aquarium in London, he presented a new attraction for the first time with Zazel in the lead role, which went down in circus history as the "human cannonball": Zazel climbed into a "cannon" attached to the wall, the was actually based on a spring mechanism and was "shot" into a safety net over the audience. The show was spectacular - a seemingly delicate, helpless young woman, passively at the mercy of her “demonic impresario ”, but also autonomous through her athletic physicality - and had enormous success in Victorian London with an audience of more than 20,000 every day. By the beginning of 1878, the program ran 1300 times in the aquarium , also slightly modified .

During a performance in Portsmouth in 1879, Rosa had an accident due to a rotted safety net - she fell to the ground and was at least so injured that she could not perform the next day. Another accident in Chatham ultimately provoked increasing criticism of the performances - a legislative initiative was even launched that would have severely restricted dangerous acrobatics by women and children in particular. Rosa's father also made attempts to dissuade her from performing, as an interview from 1879 shows. He accused his wife (from whom he was apparently separated or divorced) of endangering Rosa's life in order to generate income from her performances.

From 1880 Barnum signed Farini and Zazel with their show and Farini took the opportunity to evade possible restrictions.

The two toured with their show from 1880 with Barnum through 15 states of the USA, with 100,000 people said to have seen the show in Chicago alone. This was followed by a temporary return to London in 1881 with further appearances in the aquarium (the excitement about the dangerous appearances had subsided somewhat), and another season in 1882 with Barnum. Farini has since sold the show several times and had more than five female artists under contract who appeared as Zazel .

In the early 1880s, Rosa Richter married George O. Starr, who worked as a talent scout for Barnum and other large American circuses, among other things. She ended her collaboration with Farini and withdrew a bit from the business - without Farini, who had patented his "cannon" technology and the show, she could not show it. At the end of the 1880s she appeared again in the US, still as a star, but with other acrobatic shows. Among other things, she worked for years with the New York Fire Department, for which she demonstrated jumping in everyday clothing from the fourth floor of a house into the jumping mat in order to relieve women of fear and to demonstrate the safety of this rescue method.

The end of her career was heralded by a serious fall from a height of 15 meters while she was performing with the Forepaugh Circus in Las Vegas in New Mexico in 1891 : although she was not paralyzed, she could no longer work and retired into private life.

When her husband became a representative for Barnum & Bailey in Europe and later manager of the Crystal Palace , she went back to England with him. George O. Starr died in Upper Norwood in 1915 . Rosa Starr fulfilled his last wish to disperse his ashes "to the four winds" in 1916 on a ship trip to the United States.

The artist stayed in Monte Carlo towards the end of her life . According to a newspaper note in The Bystander from 1933, she enjoyed her life on the Riviera , occasionally played roulette and had a painting that George Frederic Watts once painted of her in her possession. Two more recent books give 1922 or 1923 as the year of their death; however, British newspaper reports indicate that she did not die in Norwood until December 8, 1937 .

Web links

Commons : Rossa Matilda Richter  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Brigitte Felderer: Rosa Matilda Richter, alias Zazel . In: Helma Bittermann, Brigitte Felderer (Hrsg.): Tollkühne women. Circus artists between the high wire and the predator cage . Knesebeck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-86873-737-0 , p. 115-121 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Steve Ward: Sawdust sisterhood: how circus empowered women . Fonthill Media, 2017, ISBN 978-1-78155-530-9 , pp. 96 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - (no page number)).
3. ↑ ^{a b c} 'DADDY,' AT 78, GETS LEGACY FROM WOMAN . In: The Daily Mirror . February 11, 1938, p. 3 ( digitized via britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk (login) ).
4. ↑ ^{a b} 50 Bequest to 'Daddy'. Surprise For A Former Resident . In: Norwood News . Norwood February 18, 1938, p. 1 ( digitized via britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk (login) ).
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Scrutator. The father of Zazel. Truth. In: HathiTrust. May 22, 1879, p. 635 , accessed March 7, 2020 (English). 
6. ^ Olympians of the Sawdust Circle, XYZ. Retrieved March 7, 2020 . 
7. ↑ Mrs. Starr Arrives . In: New York Clipper . New York City July 15, 1916, p. 7 ( digitized via idnc.library.illinois.edu ).
8. ^ The New Pepys . In: Truth . London December 22, 1937, p. 16, 17 ( digitized via britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk (login) ).