Suse roses

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Suse Rosen (born on March 7, 1910 in Dresden as Susanne Rosenthal ; died on March 14, 1968 in Locarno ) was a German ballet dancer who was engaged at the Stuttgart Opera in the 1920s . Persecuted as a Jew, she had to leave Germany in 1933. In 2008, the exhibition “ Silent Voices ” paid tribute to their work in Stuttgart .

Life

Susanne Rosenthal was born to Jewish parents. Her father was the merchant Fritz Rosenthal. She grew up with a sister in a middle-class family in Berlin. At the age of 15 she received ballet lessons from Lina Gerzer, a solo dancer at the Deutsche Oper Berlin . When Gerzer became a ballet master at the Stuttgart State Theater , she caught up with Susanne Rosenthal, who was hired as a choir dancer under the artist name 'Suse Rosen' from 1927. The ballet in Stuttgart was not a separate division at that time, but provided dance interludes for operas and operettas. Suse Rosen's performances were enthusiastically received by the press. In 1929 she danced a solo in the comic opera Fatme by Friedrich von Flotow . One critic described it as a "dreamy, light ivory shape". From 1931 she was also used as a soloist in major opera productions, such as in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro , Gluck's Orpheus in the Underworld or Verdi's Aida .

With the rise of the Nazi movement, anti-Semitic propaganda was directed against the young dancer. After the first performance of the operetta Das Lied der Liebe by Erich Wolfgang Korngold on November 4, 1932 at the Stuttgart State Theater, the Nazi courier got excited about the text's “Jewish bedroom poetry” and the portrayal of the hotel room girl Tini as “the bad game and the ordinary dance Suse Rosens ”. The law for the restoration of the civil service of April 7, 1933, with the " Aryan paragraph " contained therein, allowed the National Socialists to officially "purge" state institutions of Jewish employees. State theaters were also affected. All ensemble members of the Stuttgart theaters were checked for their “racial origin”. Questionnaires distributed in May and June were used as the basis for recording. As a result, Otto Krauss, who took up the post of General Director of the Württembergische Staatstheater Stuttgart on March 27, 1933, a staunch supporter of the NSDAP and a member of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur , dismissed all those who were considered Jews according to the Nazi ideology, including the actor Max Marx, Heinz Rosenthal and Fritz Wisten , the singer Hermann Weil , the choir singer Elsa Reder and the director Harry Stangenberg . Suse Rosen received her notice of termination on June 30, 1933.

At first she stayed with her mother in Berlin. Then she left Germany and made her way as a variety dancer in Holland, Belgium and Italy. Their attempts to find a permanent commitment failed. At the end of 1934 she was taken in by friends in Switzerland, seriously ill and penniless. In order to obtain Swiss citizenship, she entered into a marriage of convenience in 1936. She was never able to gain a foothold in her job again. In 1943 she learned that her mother and sister had been gassed in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp . The father had died in 1927. At the invitation of friends, she went to New York in 1955, where she worked as a domestic help. She only returned to Europe when the state of Baden-Württemberg recognized her application for reparation in 1963. As part of the German reparation policy , she received compensation of around DM 26,000 . She moved back to Switzerland, where she ran a pension in Locarno and died at the age of 58.

Stumbling block for Suse Rosen in Stuttgart, Werastr. 9

Commemoration

Her work in Stuttgart was recognized as part of the exhibition Mute Voices , which was also shown in the Stuttgart State Opera in the autumn of 2008 to expel Jewish artists from the opera from 1933 to 1945. On April 7, 2016, another memorial hour was held for the victims of National Socialism among the members of the Stuttgart State Theater. In this context, a blackboard "Mute Voices" for 23 artists, including Suse Rosen, was unveiled in the foyer of the State Theater.

At the initiative of the Stuttgart Stolpersteine ​​project, Gunter Demnig laid a stumbling stone on November 12, 2013 in front of Suse Rosen's former home in Werastr. 9 in Stuttgart-Mitte .

Her fate is the starting point for the piece Until the Last Dance , which students from the Stuttgart Drama School performed in the Wilhelma Theater in 2017 .

supporting documents

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg: Silent Voices - Exhibition in the State Opera Stuttgart and in the House of History
  2. ↑ Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg: Memorial plaque for Nazi victims unveiled in the Stuttgart State Theater (April 7, 2016)
  3. ↑ Silent voices - Stuttgart Opera recalls ostracized artists (April 7, 2016) with audio recording of Hannes Heer's lecture on Suse Rosen a. a.
  4. ^ Dorothee Schöpfer: Critique of the play "Until the Last Dance". Fallen out of the nest , in: Stuttgarter Zeitung.de, October 8, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Roses, Suse
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rosenthal, Susanne (real name); Rosenthal, Edith Susanne (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ballerina
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1968
Place of death Locarno