Veronika Jenke

Elisabeth Sophie Louise Veronika Jenke née Veronika Meißelbach ( April 17, 1810 in Stettin - March 20, 1841 in Oldenburg ) was a German opera singer ( soprano ).

Life

Jenke, the daughter of Wilhelm and Charlotte Meißelbach, took music lessons in Greifswald and performed various piano concerts in front of the audience as a child. After her voice had also developed, she took the stage for the first time in Lübeck in Ernst von Houwald's Curse and Blessing . However, this was not done out of love for art, but simply to better support her parents.

Little by little, however, she began to enjoy the theater life and appeared on the boards more often, but was forced to stop singing as a result of excessive exertion, as there was a risk of breast disease. Only several years later did she make a guest appearance in Magdeburg again. The increasing success determined her to definitely turn to the stage.

She first joined the Leipzig Theater Association, then came to Frankfurt (1832) and then to Kassel (1833), went to Düsseldorf in 1835 and worked under Karl Immermann . After the dissolution of this theater on April 1, 1837, she accepted a call to the court theater after she had married the comedian Karl Jenke on March 16, 1838 . From there, she went on guest tours to various cities of art, alone and with her husband. That's how she came to Copenhagen.

That should be their undoing. Here pneumonia developed, she began to be sick and came back to Oldenburg, already bearing death within her. It could only appear a few more times. It was touching when on November 23, 1840, in the Diamond of the Spirit King, she took part as "hope" at a cheering performance by the director and often could hardly speak with tears. On December 20, 1840, she dragged herself onto the stage as "Countess Marianne" in Robber Sobri . It was her last appearance. She reached her dressing room crying. Your time was up. On January 3, 1841, she could no longer get out of bed. On March 20, 1841 at 10 a.m., a stroke in the lungs put an end to her life and suffering.

Her daughters Antonia and Emma were theater actresses.

literature

• Friedrich August Schmidt (Ed.): New Nekrolog der Deutschen . Nineteenth year 1841, 1st part. Weimar 1843, pp. 336-338
• Ludwig Eisenberg : Veronika Jenke . In: Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century. Paul List, Leipzig 1903, p. 480 ( daten.digitale-sammlungen.de ).

Web links

• Veronika Jenke at Operissimo  on the basis of the Great Singer Lexicon

This article is based on a public domain text from Ludwig Eisenberg's Large Biographical Lexicon of the German Stage in the 19th Century , 1903 edition.

Please only remove this note if you have revised the article to such an extent that the text reflects the current state of knowledge on this topic, this has been proven and it meets today's linguistic requirements.