“Otto was the coming of warmth and color to the drab cold city, bringing the linden trees into leaf, sweating the citizens out of their topcoats, making the bands play outdoors. Christopher rode on the bus with him to the great lake at Wannsee, where they splashed together in the shallow water amidst the holiday crowds, then wandering off into the surrounding woods to find a spot where they could be alone.”

Christopher Isherwood – ‘Christopher And His Kind’

At 1.5 kilometres long and 80 metres wide, Europe’s largest inland Lido, the Strandbad Wannsee has been a much-loved day-trip destination for generations of Berliners. The resort as we know it now owes very much to its Weimar-era heyday but its origins date back a little further than that, to 1907.

(Pic : Strandbadwannsee.de)

Times were hard in Berlin in the early 1900′s and the city’s residents liked nothing more than to escape their cramped, dark living conditions by heading out to the many lakes that surrounded the burgeoning capital. However, laws decreed that men and women bathing within sight of one another was illegal. By 1909, the authorities relented and the ‘Freibad Wannsee’ was created, with one beach each for women and men separated by a family section. An entrance fee was introduced and the whole area surrounded by fencing to discourage casual onlookers.

After the First World War, and with the ownership of the beach now transferred to the City of Berlin, the resort thrived. Temporary tented structures were replaced by thatched pavilions and the toilets and changing facilities greatly improved. The beach was now open all-year round and with the arrival of the railway, visitors topped the 900,000 mark in 1927.

The facilities were now completely overwhelmed and plans were drawn up in 1926 to erect permanent buildings at the beach. City architects Martin Wagner and Richard Ermisch were given the task of transforming the site. By the summer season of 1930, the construction of the newly named ‘Strandbad Wannsee’ was complete but the financial situation had led to the original 5 million Reichsmark budget being scaled back to 2 million Reichsmark. Attendances were now at record levels, with Berliners eager to enjoy their new city beach.

(Pic: Bundesarchiv)

The onset of National Socialism in the early 1930′s, saw signs being erected banning Jews from the beach, although these were removed in time for the 1936 Olympics, only to be replaced in 1938. The Nazi party would only employ their own party members as staff for the resort and the only entertainment on offer was provided by bands of the Wehrmacht and the SA.

However, during the Second World War, the beach provided much-needed respite for those citizens of Berlin that were allowed to use it and with the buildings escaping the bombing, annual attendances reached 425,000 in 1944 and 615,000 by 1947. On June 1st of that year, an all-time record 51,000 people came to Stranbad Wannsee.

In 1951, the beach was featured on a hit song ‘Pack die Badehose ein’ (Pack the swimming trunks) sung by Die Kleine Cornelia – the 8 year-old incarnation of the soon-to-be hugely popular German singer Conny Froboess. She went on to represent Germany in the 1962 Eurovision Song Contest.

The beach has only rarely been closed in its time and in 2004, now under the management of the Stiftung Denkmalschutz Berlin, a comprehensive restoration and refurbishment project was undertaken. The entire area is now a listed historical site.

(pic: Alex Mauruszat)

(Pic: Alex Mauruszat)

The beach is now 355,000 sq metres and can accommodate up to 30,000 people at a time.

Ten percent of the area is dedicated FKK (nudist), there are also beach volleyball facilities, a football area, boat rental and a children’s playground. There are also a plethora of cafes and bars to choose from.

A day ticket to the beach is €5 but, as this picture from the 2013 season opening-day shows, it may be a while before you ‘Pack die Badehose ein’ this year.

(Pic: welt.de)

Born Siegfried Aron in Hamburg in December 1895, he attended the Talmud Torah school before training as a fashion designer at the Hamburg School of Applied Arts. He made his stage debut at the Stadttheater Harburg  and also performed in Hamburg and Prague before moving to Berlin with his younger brother Bruno, in 1921.

They took neighbouring apartments at Zähringerstraße in the Charlottenburg district of the city, a few doors along from Anita Berber and her family.

His first film role came almost immediately when in 1921 he appeared alongside his younger brother in ‘Die rote Katze’. A year later he married for the first time, to actress Lia Dahms, and had a son, Peter, in 1926.

The tall, thin, awkward-looking performer soon formed a double-act with the burly comedian Kurt Gerron and as ‘Beef and Steak’ they were regulars at the Kürfurstendam cabaret of comedians, the KaDeKo.

Comparisons immediately started to be drawn with other stage and silent movie performers of the time and his signature role soon became that of the sad-faced misfit.

Film roles kept on coming – fifteen in 1926 alone – but  Siegfried maintained his commitment to stage and cabaret work and, in 1930, was cast in the premiere of the acclaimed revue ‘Im weißen Rößl’ (The White Horse Inn) at Berlin’s  Großes Schauspielhaus, alongside Max Hansen and Camilla Spira.

By 1930, Siegfried was regularly being referred to as the ‘German Charlie Chaplin’

In 1933, like so many others, he fled Germany and worked in cabarets across Europe including an extended spell with fellow KaDeKo performer Willy Rosen’s ‘Theater der Prominenten’ troupe in the Netherlands, reunited with his double-act partner Kurt Gerron.

His first marriage had ended in divorce and in 1934 he married his second wife Barbara Kiranoff.  He made just two films over the next six years, ‘Gado Bravo’ in 1934 and his debut as a director in ‘De roem van’t regiment’ in 1936.

The lure of Hollywood proved too strong and Siegfried arrived there in 1939, making three films that year including ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’. The following year, he appeared alongside Charlie Chaplin in ‘The Great Dictator’.

Over the next fifteen years, and now known as Sig Arno, he proved to be one of the most high-profile of the European emigrants to America, appearing in plays, operettas and revues in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. He was nominated for the ‘Best Featured Actor in a Play’ at the 1958 Tony Awards.  He also notched up another 53 film credits – never in a major role, but often playing waiters, barmen, loafers and ‘quirky Europeans’.

In 1953 he married for a third time, to Austrian actress Kitty Mattern, and two years later returned home to Germany.

He continued to work on stage and screen and in 1966 was awarded the German Film Prize for an outstanding contribution to cinema.

He died from Parkinson’s disease in Los Angeles in August 1975, aged 79.

From 1924 -1926, he worked at the Fürstlich Reussischen Theater in Gera, under the director Walter Bruno Litz and from 1926 to 1929 at the Hamburger Kammerspielen.

From there he came to Berlin for engagements at the Lessing -Theater, The Deutsches Schauspielhaus and by 1930, the Staatstheater am Gendarmenmarkt.

He rejected several offers of film work due to political reasons but did appear in the film ‘Der gestohlene Gesicht’ ( The Stolen Face) in 1930, directed by Erich Schmidt.

Fiercely political and a committed activist, in 1930 he became Chairman of the German Workers Theater League, was a vocal spokesman of the Stage Workers Union (GDBA) and a Communist Party member.

On January 21st 1933, he starred in the premiere of Goethe’s Faust II at the Staatstheater, alongside Werner Krauss and Gustaf Grüngens, to enormous acclaim.

A week later Hitler was appointed  Chancellor and four weeks after that Hans Otto’s contract with the theatre was terminated according to the Nazi Party’s new cultural policy. His last performance was on May 23rd 1933, after which he went into hiding and continued his, now illegal, political activities.

An offer to move to Vienna from the theatre director Max Rheinhardt was turned down and on November 14th he was arrested by the SA, in a cafe on Viktoria-Luise-Platz.

Over the next 11 days, he was moved to several locations around the city, being interrogated and beaten, before arriving in the Gestapo headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.

His continued silence and refusal to name political associates enraged his captors and he was thrown from a third-floor window of the building, in what was meant to appear to be a suicide attempt.

He died from his injuries on November 24th, he was 33 years old.

Joseph Goebbels banned any announcement of his death or any attendance at his funeral, which was paid for by fellow actor Gustaf Gründgens. A distressed Bertolt Brecht wrote an open letter to the theatre community in Berlin asking for information on what had happened to him:

” Could you not go and check on him?  We ask you to take care of a quite extraordinary, utterly indispensable man.  A rare kind of man.  Where is he?”. 

He was interred in the Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof Stahnsdorf.

The Hans Otto Theatre in Potsdam and the Theaterhochschule in Leipzig are both named after him, his image was used on a DDR postage stamp in 1975 and there is a Stolpersteine dedicated to him outside his former Berlin home at Hansa-Ufer 5.

A man lost in time

Near KaDeWE” 

Where Are We Now  – David Bowie, January 2013

The Femina-Palast was built in 1928 by architects Richard Bielenberg and Josef Moser for businessman Heinrich Liemann. Occupying Nürnberger Straße 50-53 on the border of Schöneberg and Charlottenberg and at 185 metres long, it is one of the most important examples of the ‘New Objectivity’ style built in the city.

(image – Fritzhirzel.com)

Primarily consisting of offices and shop fronts, at the core of the building was the spectacular Femina-Palast ballroom, a combination of Art Deco and Bauhaus design.

The ballroom doubled as a vaudeville theatre and featured performances by Josephine Baker amongst others. Patrons were served by flamboyant, transvestite waiting staff , there were telephones on the tables, and over the dance floor was a spectacular glass-domed roof that could be opened to give the feeling of dancing under the stars. At the corner of the street was the extraordinary  ‘Kaffee Tauentzienpalast’ coffee house.

The ballroom was severely  damaged in the Second World War, but by the 1950s had reopened as the ‘Badewanne’ – a jazz club that became famous in West Berlin featuring appearances by Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington and was hugely popular with American GIs and the other Allied Forces.  It was also home to the cabaret group ‘Die Stachelschweine’.

The building was, by this time, generally known as The Tauentzienpalast and, from 1950 to 1957, housed the 900- seat ‘Cinema Im Tauentzienpalast’.

In the early 1960s, a ground-breaking Chinese restaurant “San Lin Nan” was added to the building, designed by architect Chen-Kuen Lee, a Berlin resident since the early 1930s.

In 1978, Berlin’s up-and-coming ‘Dschungel’ discotheque moved from nearby Winterfeldplatz into Nürnberger Strasse and rapidly became the stylish and sought-after place to be – Berlin’s equivalent to New York’s ‘Studio 54′.

A spiral staircase from the main club took VIP guests to the loft space ‘The Aquarium’ which featured fountains and the beautiful, ornate mosaic tiling left over from its days as the ‘San Lin Nan’ restaurant.

(image – druffmix.com)

(image – lucianocastelli.com)

From 1978 to 1993, a ‘who’s who’ of stars passed through the doors of the ‘Dschungel’ – David Bowie and Iggy Pop, Frank Zappa, Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, Prince, Boy George, Barbra Streisand and, of course, Depeche Mode.

For ordinary customers – if you got past the bouncers – the door charge was a hefty 10 Deutschmarks!

The club fell out of fashion in the early 90s and closed its doors in 1993. Its successor, the ‘Dschungel Restaurant’, only lasted a further three years before the building closed down completely in 1996, lying empty for the next nine years.

In 2005 , the local authority, Bezirk Templehof-Schöneberg,  accepted a proposal for a €40 million conversion of the historic building into the 285-room Ellington Hotel, which opened in March 2007.

(image – cabaret-berlin.com)

I have reviewed this production, from Autumn 2010, earlier on this blog ( http://www.cabaret-berlin.com/?p=428)  and I fully anticipate that this revival will live up to the previous one.

(Photo – Jan Wirdeier)

It’s worth mentioning again that this is NOT a staged version of the film – it is the original theatrical production adapted by Joe Masteroff from the John Van Druten play “I Am a Camera’ and Christopher Isherwood novel ‘ Goodbye to Berlin’.

There are additional songs, extra characters and a slightly different plot, including the storyline of Fraulein Schneider and her fruit merchant suitor Herr Schulz.

(photo – Jan Wirdeier)

There is something very special about seeing this production in the city where it was conceived, and whilst the script is in German, English-speakers will not be disappointed as the songs are mostly in English and surely you know the plot by now!

(Photo- Norbert Kestern/ Shamrock photo)

Book a table, enjoy a fabulous dinner and let the show unfold around you. You can also just book for the show if your budget is a bit tighter.

Cabaret at The Tipi am Kanzleramt

June 27th to September 1st 2013

Tuesdays to Saturdays 8pm (doors open 6.30pm)

Sundays 7pm (doors open 5.30pm)

Tickets €44,50 to €59,50 (Show only)

www.tipi-am-kanzleramt.de 

phone : 030 39 06 65 50

But who to invite? You’ll need to dig out the hefty 1500-page Berlin phone directory for help.

First on the list is, of course, that lovely chorus-girl everyone is beginning to talk about

Next up, you want some big-hitting names, Anita might not be at home but you could always leave a message with her mother

Then there’s that gorgeous young actor who, it’s rumoured, also works the streets dressed as a woman

You’ve heard that there is new, just-published British writer in town, but in order to get to Mr Isherwood, you’ll have to get past his formidable Landlady first

You need to show you’re not just interested in the 24-hour party people, so how about an up-and-coming poet, and that eminent Doctor Hirschfeld?

Guests who can double as the entertainment are always good value, so how about a pianist

So, where are you going to have this party? You’re certainly not going to host it at home. After all, you practically live in poverty, you’ve had to let the maid go and most of the decent china is in the pawnbrokers.

So, how about somewhere your credit is still good?

Being the perfect host, your male guests may well want a little late-night ‘action’ so of course you will send them on here, Gerhard will make sure they are well looked after!

Perfect!

The 2,000 seater Titania-Palast opened on 26th January 1928, with the gala premiere of the silent film ‘Der Sprung ins Glück’ starring the Italian actress Carmen Boni,  local-born star Hans Junkermann and cabaret stalwart Rosa Valetti.

The opening night was an extraordinary event with crowds taking to the streets and local press of the time describing it as more akin to a state occasion than a theatre opening.

The grand entrance on the corner of Schloßstraße and Guthsmuthßtraße, led into a beautiful Art Deco foyer containing a cafe and a cloakroom for 1700 coats.

The first films were accompanied by an orchestra of 60 musicians, and a supporting program of cabaret and vaudeville. Within 18 months of the cinema’s opening, the first ‘talkies’ were being screened and the crowds flocked in for the next three years.

By the Spring of 1933, the cinema had come under the ‘ownership’ of Josef Goebbels and his ‘Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda’.

The programme from then on was very much Nazi propaganda films and by 1937 the party had taken over control of Germany’s largest film studio Ufa, and the Titania-Palast was its flagship.

Surprisingly, the cinema survived the war almost intact and on 26th May 1945 staged the first post-war performance by the Berlin Philharmonic. The cinema came under the control of the American forces in 1948 and the programme continued with a mix of films, operetta, concerts and special events.

The Titania-Palast was host to the first ‘Berlinale’ film festival in 1951 and in 1953 equipped with Cinemascope sound.

Throughout the next decade  the venue hosted concerts by world-wide stars like Maria Callas and Louis Armstrong, and on 30th May 1960 played host to a ‘homecoming’ concert by Marlene Dietrich.

Despite fears that she would receive a hostile reception, Marlene walked to the venue, greeting waiting fans outside and went on to receive a standing ovation and 18 curtain-calls.

By the early 1960′s, attendances had begun to decline sharply and the last film was screened in December 1965. The building was leased by the Berlin Municipal Electricity Company, Bewag, who prevented it’s demolition. The main foyer was given over to retail space and the auditorium used as a rehearsal stage.

By the early 1990′s, work had begun to restore the venue and divide the vast auditorium into smaller, more manageable spaces.

On 24th May 1995, after nearly three decades in the dark, the first films were shown in 5 brand new cinemas, with 2 more halls being added in August 2007.

The original name was reinstated in 2008.

It was written in English and performed by Brecht, to his own music, on stages all over Berlin. He was soon approached by an unlikely collaborator, the classical composer Kurt Weill, who was impressed with Brecht’s poetry and wanted to break away from the constraints of his previous work.

The text was set to new music composed by Weill and premiered at the Baden-Baden Festival in 1927 as “Songspiel Mahagonny”, with Weill’s wife Lotte Lenya singing the main role. It received an extraordinary reaction at the thoroughly traditional festival, with the audience cheering and booing in equal measure.

On their return to Berlin, Brecht and Weill set to work on a full-length version of Mahagonny, taking a few months off to finish their original commission – Die Dreigroschenoper, ( The Threepenny Opera).

The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny premiered in Leipzig in 1930, with The Alabama Song performed by the character of Jenny and her fellow prostitutes. The song is always performed in English, even when the rest of the opera is performed in its original German.

Despite not being in the cast for the Leipzig production, Lotte Lenya recorded the song for the Ultraphon record label in 1930.

Much like its’ contemporary ‘Die Morität von Mackie Messer (‘Mack The Knife’), the song has become a modern-day classic, recorded hundreds of times and been covered by some of the biggest stars of the 20th Century.

Lotte Lenya continued to perform the song throughout her professional career, here she is in 1958

The Doors recorded a now legendary version in 1966

A resident of Berlin during the 1970′s, David Bowie added the song to his repertoire in 1978

Marianne Faithful performed a full-throated version at The Montreal Jazz festival in 1997

And finally, Bette Midler incorporated the song into a medley for her 1976 stage show featuring a character called Nanette

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5e8AOBh0SQ

Führer durch das lasterhafte Berlin – Curt Moreck (1931)

The Silhouette was one of the very few Weimar-era clubs where both male and female cross-dressing was accepted and, indeed, encouraged.

It opened in 1926, on the corner of Geisbergstraße and Kulmbachstraße at the border of Schöneberg and Charlottenburg.

Seemingly always under a blue haze of cigarette and cigar smoke, the club attracted film stars, cabaret artists and some very wealthy nobility. Conrad Veidt, Maria Orska, Anita Berber, Hilde Hildebrand and a young Marlene Dietrich were regulars alongside Princes, Counts and Barons.

Men and women in smoking jackets and smart suits could be seen alongside other men and women in sequined evening gowns and jewels.

The bar area to the front was long and narrow and featured very low lighting and Japanese lanterns. The bar was furnished with many comfortable armchairs, that the regulars would take up position in early in the evening and be served exquisite Martinis by a beautiful and stylish black head-waiter.

This led to smaller room at the rear with a carpeted dance floor and some raised booth seating for more intimate encounters. A small orchestra kept the dancing going with occasional performances throughout the night from female and male drag acts.

Partying until dawn was the norm, when it fell to the enormous bearded doorman, Jonny,  to secure taxis for everyone.

It was here, one night early in 1929, that the composer Friedrich Holländer went looking for Marlene Dietrich.

He found her in one of the booths near the dance floor with a large group of friends and broke the news that she had been cast in the lead role in ‘The Blue Angel’. Word went around the club in a flash that Marlene had got her big break, the orchestra immediately started playing “Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo” and Marlene “ordered so much champagne that you could bathe in it”

The club, like so many others, closed in 1933. Today it is an unremarkable residential corner.

(image : Edition Gauglitz)

From 1925 to 1929, the premises had been a German/Russian restaurant called Yar, but was taken over by Otto Schulze and relaunched with a full Entertainments Licence as the Jockey Bar. It was an immediate hit with the ‘A-List’ set it had been aimed at and regularly saw a stellar guest-list comprising the likes of Erich Kästner, Klaus and Erika Mann, Alfred Kerr, Gustaf Gründgens, Jean Cocteau, Andre Gide, Ernest Hemingway and, most famously, Marlene Dietrich. It is also entirely probable that Christopher Isherwood and W.H Auden were also amongst its’ patrons given their presence in the city at the time and close association with some of the names listed above.

The pianist was Ernst Engel, a popular performer with the Berliner Rundfunk and also a regular contributor to the film production company Ufa. At the Jockey-Bar, he delighted his audiences by combining his repertoire of jazz and popular classics with pieces by Bach and Mozart. He later went on to be a founding member of the hugely successful Comedian Harmonists.

A regular performer was a black dancer, very much in the style of Josephine Baker and

“a little blond sailor girl dancing on the grand piano and belting out

chansons and songs in a thin voice with bold gestures”

Führer durch das lasterhafte Berlin – Curt Moreck (1931)

(image : Edition Gauglitz)

Even after formally leaving Berlin in 1930, Marlene Dietrich was still a regular visitor during her frequent visits to Berlin, bringing a many a celebrity in her entourage.

After the opening night of Friedrich Holländer’s Tingel Tangel cabaret in January 1931, the crowd wound their way to the Jockey Bar, where the partying went on into the early hours of the morning.

Marlene Dietrich and Friedrich Holländer, 1930

(image : Edition Gauglitz)

The unique atmosphere of the bar caused it to be referrred to in several post-war novels:  ’Das kunstseidene Mädchen’ by Irmgard Keuns, ‘Mitteilungen an den Adel’ by Elisabeth Plessens, and ’Am grünen Strand der Spree’ by Hans Shoke – which was made into a 6-part TV drama in 1960.  It was also mentioned in the memoirs of the prolific German writer and journalist, Oda Schaefer.

The venue remained open throughout the war, with the owners seemingly having very good connections to ensure a plentiful supply of food and drink.

After the war, the Jockey Bar moved to nearby Fassanenstraße but failed to replicate its’ previous success. The premises at Keithstraße became ‘Keith-Klause’ and later, in 1967, ‘Dicken Heinrich’- a famous supplier of quality ‘Kurfürstendamm’  sausages. The titular ‘Fat Henry’ died on the premises from heart failure brought on by obesity.  Today it is home to the ‘PodoPraxis’.