Claire Waldoff
Claire Waldoff (21.10.1884 – 22.1.1957), famosa cantante lesbica, nel 1926 cantava “Raus mit den Männern!” (“Basta con gli uomini!”) mescolando lesbismo e attualità politica; si esibiva vestita da uomo ed era una celebrità alla radio; incise molti dischi e girò la Germania in tournèe fino a quando il regime nazista non glielo impedì.
Nel 1936 si trasferì in Baviera (Bad Reichenhall) e si ritirò dalle scene; si impegnò in iniziative di solidarietà in favore dei disoccupati facendo parte di Soccorso Rosso. Lei e Olga Freiin v. Roeder (12.6.1886 – 11.7.1963) con cui visse per quaranta anni, sono sepolte nella stessa tomba nel cimitero di Stoccarda.
Claire Waldoff in “Raus mit den Männern ausm Reichstag”
Claire Waldoff in “Wat Braucht Der Berliner Um Glücklich Zu Sein”
http://youtu.be/uIYkvm5V7Wk
Claire Waldoff canta “Hannelore”
Claire Waldoff. Biography
di Brigitte Warkus, allo http://www.fembio.org/english/biography.php/woman/biography/claire-waldoff/
Born 21 October 1884 in Gelsenkirchen; died 22 January 1957 in Bad Reichenhall. German cabaret performer and singer.
Berlin, 1913, in the Linden Cabaret: Head of flaming red hair tipped slightly back, one eyebrow mockingly raised, wearing perhaps a favored gentleman’s tie with her simple blouse – Claire Waldoff sings the song that will become her best-known song, her trademark.
Kurt Tucholsky describes her appearance: “Smoothly, mewlingly and innocently she first sings a bunch of things, “if and how and where” – and then suddenly her voice bellows out andante above the heads of the laughing audience and through the cigar smoke and the noise: ‘Hermann heest a ….’ (His name is Hermann …) And once again, softer: ‘Hermann-heest-a…’ And dying away: ‘Hermann-heest-a…’ And on it goes, how he dances and snores and ‘selbst noch im Traume nach mir quäst er… Hermann heest a…!’ (how even in his dream he whines for me). And this piano is so comically studied, so inadequate to the bawling voice that one is stunned. How does she get that piano, that soprano out of herself? A soprano that’s so high that it’s just about to tilt over, G, G sharp, A, B flat…Thank goodness, saved! She sings the way a Berlin sparrow sings, carefree, bold – and then (voice from inside, fading away): ‘Hermann heest a…’”
Claire Waldoff, who is so identified as an Ur-Berliner through and through, as a perky “Bolle” (bold Berlin chick) “mit Schnauze und Herz” (a good-hearted, brash Berliner), was not actually born in the city on the Spree River. She first came to the whirling metropolis in 1906. “Then I saw the gigantic city Berlin for the first time and was overwhelmed. I immediately sensed the special qualities of this town, the incredible tempo, the temperament, the amazing brio,” she writes in her memoir.
Gelsenkirchen was forgotten – that’s where the miner’s daughter had spent her childhood – forgotten Hanover, where she attended Hedwig Kettler’s high school for girls with the dream of becoming a doctor. And forgotten too was Kattowitz: after her parents’ divorce she could no longer afford to study, but why not make a career out of her love for the theater and music? For two years she played and sang minor roles for provincial and travelling theater companies for a pittance, before succumbing to the magnetic attraction of Berlin, with its theaters and Kleinkunst-stages, the newly popular cabarets.
The novice found at first no regular theater-engagement, only a few minor roles and temporary contracts, and her friends often had to help her out financially. But her name was made after her first performance at the cabaret “Roland von Berlin,” which immediately had new posters printed: “Claire Waldoff, the Star of Berlin.” She had sung only three innocuous little songs (in a dress bought on credit instead of her smart suit, since the official censors forbade women to appear in male clothing after 11 p.m.), but her sassy, comical style, her “winking,” ironic approach even to the most sentimental texts made Claire Waldoff an instant hit and unmistakable star of cabaret. Elegant and simple audiences alike loved their Claire Berolina and laughed at songs such as “Ach Jott, wat sind die Männer dumm” (Oh, God, how stupid men are), “Wer schmeißt denn da mit Lehm” (Who’s throwing mud here?), or “Raus mit den Männern aus dem Reichstag” (Toss out the men from the Reichstag). And they were touched by others such as “Mutterns Hände” (Mother’s hands) or “Das war sein Milljöh” (That was his (Heinrich Zille’s) milieu).
Her rough, unmistakable voice could be heard on the radio and on records; her huge repertoire included music-hall songs, popular Berlin street music, folksongs, operetta melodies, literary chansons. Over a period of three decades she had become a true folk singer.
FrauenbildClaire Waldoff was a thorn in the side of the Nazis. Many of her songs were too bold; many of her composers and lyricists were Jewish, many of her friends rejected National Socialism, as she did. And it was no secret that she lived with a woman…. Under the Nazis many cabarets were closed, many friends went into exile. Claire Waldoff had fewer and fewer appearances and was virtually banned from radio broadcasts. This Berlin was no longer her city, and she seldom appeared there any more, attempting to avoid the constant surveillance by guest appearances in other cities.
Claire Waldoff experienced the end of the war with her companion and lover Olly von Roeder in their small Bavarian vacation house. In 1950, already suffering heart problems, she returned one more time, one last time, to her beloved Berlin; one more time she sang the old songs, head of flaming red hair tipped slightly back….
Brigitte Warkus
Altro:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Waldoff; su quel periodo vedi anche il commento allo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N-z5vF3qjY
Claire Waldoff was a German singer. She was a famous cabaret singer and entertainer in Berlin during the 1910s and 1920s.
Yvonne George was a Belgian singer and feminist actress.Weakened by her the excesses of her lifestyle, George fell ill with tuberculosis. Following ineffective treatments, she died in a hotel room near the port of Genoa on the 16th of May 1930, aged 33.
Violette Morris was a decorated French athlete who won many French national championships. However, her sporting achievements have been overshadowed by the fact that she worked with the Gestapo during the war. She was killed in a Resistance-led ambush as a traitor to the French state.The youngest of six sisters, she spent her adolescence in a convent, L’Assomption de Huy. Although a lesbian from an early age, she married a man named Gouraud on August 22, 1914, before serving in World War I as a military nurse during the Battle of the Somme and a courier during the Battle of Verdun. She later divorced in May of 1923.Morris’s lifestyle was quite different from the traditional role of women during the 1920s. In addition to her wide-ranging athletic activities, Morris deviated from traditional behaviors of the time in several other ways. Among other things, she smoked heavily, two to three packs of cigarettes per day, and swore often. She was refused license renewal by the FFSF (French: Fédération française sportive féminine) (English: French Women’s Athletic Federation) amid complaints of her lesbian lifestyle and was therefore barred from participating in the 1928 Summer Olympics. The agency cited her lack of morals, especially in light of the fact that one of her lovers, Raoul Paoli, made public her bisexual activities. Paoli had recently left Morris after she had initially decided to undergo an elective mastectomy in order to fit into racecars more easily. After 1928, Morris settled into owning a car parts store in Paris, and, along with her employees, building racecars.
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