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Volksoper Berlin
The Theater des Westens (Theatre of the West) is one of the most famous theatres for musicals and operettas in Berlin, Germany, located at 10–12 in Charlottenburg. It was founded in 1895 for plays. The present house was opened in 1896 and dedicated to opera and operetta. Enrico Caruso made his debut in Berlin here, and the Ballets Russes appeared with Anna Pavlova. In the 1930s it was run as the Volkstheater Berlin. After World War II it served as the temporary opera house of Berlin, the Städtische Oper (Municipal Opera). In 1961 it became the first theatre in Germany to show musicals. Since then it has become the "German equivalent of Broadway extravaganzas", putting on plays and musical comedies. History The theatre was founded in 1895. The construction of the present building began in 1896, designed by Bernhard Sehring. It was opened on 1 October 1896 with a fairy tale, Holger Drachmann's ''Tausendundeine Nacht''. From 1898 the house was used for opera, from 1908 for opere ...
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Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg () is a Boroughs and localities of Berlin, locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a German town law, town in 1705 and named after Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Kingdom of Prussia, Prussia, it is best known for Charlottenburg Palace - the largest surviving such royal palace in Berlin - and the adjacent museums. Charlottenburg was an independent city to the west of Berlin until 1920 when it was incorporated into "Greater Berlin Act, Groß-Berlin" (Greater Berlin) and transformed into a borough. In the course of Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was merged with the former borough of Wilmersdorf becoming a part of a new borough called Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Later, in 2004, the new borough's districts were rearranged, dividing the former borough of Charlottenburg into the localities of Charlottenburg proper, Westend (Berlin), Westend and Charlottenburg-Nord. Geography Charlottenburg is located in ...
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Mikhail Fokine
Michael Fokine ( – 22 August 1942) was a Russian choreographer and dancer. Career Early years Fokine was born in Saint Petersburg to a prosperous merchant and at the age of 9 was accepted into the Saint Petersburg Imperial Ballet School. That same year, he made his performing debut in '' The Talisman'' under the direction of Marius Petipa. In 1898, on his 18th birthday, he debuted on the stage of the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in ''Paquita'', with the Imperial Russian Ballet. In addition to being a talented dancer, Fokine was also passionate about painting and displayed talent in this area as well. He also played musical instruments, including mandolin (played on stage in ensemble led by Ginislao Paris), domra, and balalaika (played in Vasily Andreyev's Great Russian Orchestra). Transition to choreographer He became frustrated with the life of a dancer and began considering other paths, including painting. In 1902, he was offered a teaching position at the Imperial ...
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Erich Mühsam
Erich Mühsam (6 April 1878 – 10 July 1934) was a German Antimilitarism, antimilitarist anarchism, anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a Federalism, federated Bavarian Soviet Republic, for which he served five years in prison. Also a cabaret performer, he achieved international prominence during the years of the Weimar Republic for works which, before Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, condemned Nazism and Satire, satirized the future dictator. Mühsam was tortured and murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934. Biography Early life: 1878–1900 The third child born to Siegfried Seligmann Mühsam, a middle-class Jews, Jewish pharmacy, pharmacist, and his wife Rosalie (née Cohn), Erich Mühsam was born in Berlin on 6 April 1878. He had two siblings Hans and Charlotte Landau, Charlotte. Soon after, the family moved to the city of Lübeck. Mühsam was educated at the Katharineum-Gymnasiu ...
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Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote ''The Threepenny Opera'' with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, Brecht wrote didactic ''Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . When the Nazi Party, Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Brecht fled his home country, initially to Scandinavia. During World War II he moved to Southern California where he established himself as a screenwriter, while also being surveilled by the FBI. In 1947, he was part of the first group of Hollywood film artists to be subpoenaed by the Ho ...
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Curt Bois
Curt Bois (born Kurt Boas; April 5, 1901 – December 25, 1991) was a German actor with a career spanning over 80 years. He is best remembered for his performances as the pickpocket in ''Casablanca (film), Casablanca'' (1942) and the poet Homer in ''Wings of Desire'' (1987). Life and career Bois was born to a German Jews, German Jewish family in Berlin and began acting in 1907, becoming one of the film world's first child actors, with a role in the 1907 short film ''Bauernhaus und Grafenschloß''. In 1909, he played the title role in ''Der Kleine Detektiv'' ('The Little Detective'). Bois performed in theatre, cabaret, musicals, silent films, and "talkies" over his long acting career. He performed under Max Reinhardt and found success in 1928 in a Viennese stage production of "Charley's Aunt" at the Josefstadt Theater. He was a successful character comic, and for a while film studios tried to make him into a "German Harold Lloyd". In 1934, institutionalized Anti-Semitism forc ...
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Marlene Dietrich
Marie Magdalene "Marlene" DietrichBorn as Maria Magdalena, not Marie Magdalene, according to Dietrich's biography by her daughter, Maria Riva ; however, Dietrich's biography by Charlotte Chandler cites "Marie Magdalene" as her birth name . (, ; 27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992) was a German and American actress and singer whose career spanned nearly seven decades. In 1920s Berlin, Dietrich performed on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as Lola Lola in Josef von Sternberg's ''The Blue Angel'' (1930) brought her international acclaim and a contract with Paramount Pictures. She starred in many Hollywood (film industry), Hollywood films, including six iconic roles directed by Sternberg: ''Morocco (film), Morocco'' (1930) (her only Academy Award for Best Actress, Academy Award nomination), ''Dishonored (film), Dishonored'' (1931), ''Shanghai Express (film), Shanghai Express'' and ''Blonde Venus'' (both 1932), ''The Scarlet Empress'' (1934), ''The Devil Is a Woman (1935 fi ...
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Friedrich Hollaender
Friedrich Hollaender (in exile also Frederick Hollander; 18 October 189618 January 1976) was a German film composer and author. Life and career He was born in London to a Jewish family, where his father, operetta composer Victor Hollaender, worked as a musical director at the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Young Hollaender had a solid music and theatre family background: his uncle Gustav was director of the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, and his uncle Felix Hollaender was a well-known novelist and drama critic, who later worked with Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater. In 1899 Hollaender's family returned to Berlin. His father began teaching at the Stern Conservatory, where his son became a student in Engelbert Humperdinck's master class. In the evening he played the piano at silent film performances in local cinemas, developing the art of musical improvisation. By the age of 18 he was employed as a répétiteur at the New German Theatre in Prague and also was put in ...
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Trude Hesterberg
Trude Hesterberg (2 May 1892 – 31 August 1967) was a German film actress. She appeared in 89 films between 1917 and 1964. Selected filmography * ''Ein Schwerenöter'' (1916) – Liddy * ''Die Eheschule'' (1917) * ''Die Reise ins Jenseits'' (1917) * '' The Rosentopf Case'' (1918) – Bella Spaketti, Tänzerin * '' The Story of a Maid'' (1921) – Lia de Pau * '' Fridericus Rex'' (1922–1923, part 1, 3) – Marquise von Pompadour * ''Die Frau mit dem Etwas'' (1925) * ''The Woman with That Certain Something'' (1925) – Zuschauerin imm Varieté * '' Upstairs and Downstairs'' (1925) – Auguste, Mädchen für alles * '' Manon Lescaut'' (1926) – Claire * '' Circus Romanelli'' (1926) – Frau Direktor * '' Maytime'' (1926) – Julia * '' Madame Wants No Children'' (1926) – Elyane's mother * '' White Slave Traffic'' (1927) – Meta Pohlmann * '' Love Affairs'' (1927) * '' The Imaginary Baron'' (1927) – Fränze * '' The Vice of Humanity'' (1927) – Mrs. von Führing * '' T ...
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Josephine Baker
Freda Josephine Baker (; June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975), naturalized as Joséphine Baker, was an American and French dancer, singer, and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in France. She was the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 French silent film ''Siren of the Tropics'', directed by and . During her early career, Baker was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the in Paris. Her performance in its 1927 revue caused a sensation in the city. Her costume, consisting only of a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties. Baker was celebrated by artists and intellectuals of the era, who variously dubbed her the "Black Venus", the "Black Pearl", the "Bronze Venus", and the "Creole Goddess". Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she renounced her U.S. citizenship and became a French nationality law#Dual citizenship, Fr ...
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Max Adalbert
Max Adalbert (born Johannes Adolph Krampf; 19 February 1874 – 7 September 1933) was a German stage and film actor. Biography Adalbert was born in Danzig (Gdansk), Imperial Germany as ''Maximilian Adalbert Krampf'' to a Prussian Officer. Using his first names as his stage name, he debuted at the age of 19 at the theater of Lübeck and in 1894 at the municipal theater of Barmen. Adalbert also appeared in St.Gallen, Nuremberg and Vienna. He moved to Berlin in 1899 to work at the ''Residenztheater''. Coming in contact with Curt Bois, Adalbert turned into a comedian and co-founded the popular ''Kabarett der Komiker'' in December 1924. On 30 May 1931 he made his debut as the central character of Carl Zuckmayer's Der Hauptmann von Köpenick at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, which was filmed in the same year. Max Adalbert died of pneumonia while in Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,60 ...
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Fritzi Massary
Fritzi Massary (31 March 1882 – 30 January 1969) was an Austrian-American soprano singer and actress. Early life and career Fritzi Massary was born Friederike Massaryk in Vienna in the Austro-Hungarian Empire on 31 March 1882. She was one of the leading operetta singers in Berlin and Vienna. During World War I, she performed for the soldiers of the Imperial German Army in theatres in occupied Belgium.'Das Koniglich Preussische Reserve Infanterie Regiment Nr.15', Major von Forstner (Published 1929), P.272. In 1920, she worked with the composer Oscar Straus, and performed in several of his operettas, including '' Der letzte Walzer.'' Emigration to England and America Massary was of Jewish familial extraction, and she had converted to the Protestant religion in 1903. In late 1932, she departed Germany due to the rising persecution of the Jewish population by the Nazis, shortly before the group seized dictatorial power in a paramilitary revolution and declared the Third Reic ...
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Old Heidelberg (play)
''Old Heidelberg'' () is a German romantic play by Wilhelm Meyer-Förster first performed in 1901. While studying at the Heidelberg University, Prince Karl from Saxony falls in love with Käthie, an innkeeper's daughter, but has to give her up when his father dies, and he is called to return to his homeland and rule as King. The play was based on Meyer-Förster's own 1898 novel '' Karl Heinrich''. The play's title alludes to a poem by Joseph Victor von Scheffel. The work was a major international success and became one of the most performed plays in Germany during the first half of the 20th century. Adaptations Film Owing to the story's popularity it has been turned into films on numerous occasions, including the American silent film '' Old Heidelberg'' (1915), the German silent film '' Old Heidelberg'' (1923), Ernst Lubitsch's '' The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg'' (1926), and Ernst Marischka's '' Old Heidelberg'' (1959). Operetta In 1924 the play provided the basis for ...
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