Tilly Bébé

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Miss Tilly Bébé Dompteuse, advertising poster, 1902/03
Tilly Bébé, postcard with autograph, 1905

Tilly Bébé (actually Mathilde Rupp ; born March 27, 1879 in Perchtoldsdorf , Lower Austria ; † April 11, 1932 in Vienna ) was an Austrian trainer .

Live and act

Mathilde Rupp was the daughter of a fruit and flower dealer. She initially worked as a typist in a law firm, then changed her profession out of love for animals and was employed in the Vienna Prater Vivarium initially as a zookeeper for the snakes, but soon at the demonstration of hyenas (under the tamer R. Falk). The decisive factor, however, was Rupp's training in predator training by the trainer "Comtesse X", who brought her to the Bonn zoo and gave her the stage name Tilly Bébé: Due to her small stature and her childlike costume, she became a "backfish in a lion cage" a term in the professional world. 

From the age of 18 she made guest appearances - initially with the twelve lions of her teacher - at all Weltstadtvarietés (including in the Berlin Wintergarten  ) and circuses such as Krembser, Henry and Hagenbeck (where she also worked with a group of 14 polar bears); her first appearance in the Viennese Varieté Ronacher was a triumph. Rupp is considered a pioneer of tame dressage. Highlights of her program were the throat trick, in which she stuck her head into the throat of a huge lion, as well as the final trick in which she carried a lion out of the ring on her shoulders despite her delicate figure. 

Bébé's appearance in girlish clothes lent the interaction (or the fight  ) with the predators (including tigers) in the eyes of the audience a special attraction. Contemporary photographs emphasized the erotic aspect of the animal's "love" for its tamer.

Tilly Bébé “was famous for a Mae West of the Empire. Wherever it appeared, the local press turned over in sensational reports ”.

A short documentary that has survived, shot by Deutsche Bioskop in Kaulsdorf near Berlin in 1908 , documents Tilly Bébé's lion training act. In 1987 director Antonia Lerch made a short film titled Tilly Bébé .

Mathilde Rupp died completely impoverished after a long illness. 

Filmography

literature

  • B (erthold) Lang:  Rupp Mathilde. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 9, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7001-1483-4 , p. 329.
  • August Heinrich Kober: The big number. Stories and fates of famous circus and variety acts. Ullstein AG, Berlin 1925. 
  • Stephanie Haerdle: Amazons of the arena. Trainers and other circus performers (= Wagenbach's pocket library. Vol. 649). Wagenbach, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-8031-2649-8 . 
    (Formerly under the title: Stephanie Haerdle: Don't be afraid, that's our job! Female riders, trainers and other circus performers. AvivA-Verlag, Grambin 2007, ISBN 978-3-932338-29-8 ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c B (erthold) Lang: Rupp Mathilde .
  2. ↑ Circus poster Circus Tilly Bébé Wintergarten Löwe 146 ( Memento of the original from February 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: shop.billerantik.de , accessed on May 18, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / shop.billerantik.de
  3. ↑ Jürgen Weisser: Between Lustgarten and Lunapark. The Volksgarten in Nymphenburg (1890-1916) and the development of the commercial amusement gardens (= cultural studies ). Utz, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-89675-449-1 , p. 131 online .
  4. ↑ Gerhild Kaselow: The curiosity of the exotic animal. Studies on the representation of the zoological garden in painting of the 19th and 20th centuries. Olms, Hildesheim 1999, ISBN 3-487-10858-5 , p. 96.
  5. ↑ Thomas Brandlmeier: FilmMaterialien 10 - The comical cinema. Early German comedy film. 1895-1917 . In: deutsche-filmografie.de , accessed on May 18, 2011.
  6. ↑ Tilly Bébé - The famous lion tamer in the Internet Movie Database (English) (silent film from 1908)
  7. ↑ Tilly Bébé, the famous lion tamer ( Memento of the original from November 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: stummfilm.at , (2011), accessed on May 18, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stummfilm.at
  8. ↑ Permalink German National Library .
  9. ↑ Table of contents online (PDF) .

Web links

Commons : Tilly Bébé  - Collection of Images
personal data
SURNAME Bébé, Tilly
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rupp, Mathilde
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian tamer
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Perchtoldsdorf , Lower Austria
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1932
Place of death Vienna