Margarete Schlegel

Margarethe Schlegel 1946, London

Margarete [Margarethe Elisabeth Sylva] Schlegel (1899–1987) was a German theatre/film actress and soprano operetta singer active in Germany between 1919-1933 and on British radio between 1935-1955.

The sixth of seven children and the third of four girls, she was born at 11.45pm on 31 December 1899 in Bromberg, West Prussia, Germany, (now Bydgoszcz, Poland) to a German-speaking Prussian-Polish Catholic family. Her father was Augustin Heinrich Schlegel (1865-1934), who legally changed the family surname from Wisniewski upon relocating them to Berlin in 1904, while her mother was Anna Agatha Schlegel nee Garski (1864-1940).

Naturally beautiful and talented (she could sing, dance and act very well from an early age), Margarete Schlegel sought a chorus role in theatre in 1917 as a way of earning extra money for her family while still a schoolgirl due to the privations of war. This soon led to a starring role in Charley's Aunt at the Thalia Theatre and later both serious and comic roles at the Deutsche Theater in Berlin, where she was trained and mentored by theatre director Max Reinhardt. After the Great War she was cast in Weimar silent films by the pioneering cinema directors F. W. Murnau and E. A. Dupont and in whose films she worked with actors Bela Lugosi and Conrad Veidt, all of whom later left for Hollywood along with writer and director Billy Wilder, who co-wrote the screenplay of her last German film, a romantic operetta comedy called Das Blaue vom Himmel. The film was released in December 1932 just prior to Hitler's ascent to power and therefore not subject to Nazi dictates. Her best known and penultimate film was Phil Jutzi's morality play Berlin-Alexanderplatz (1931) which was remade as a German TV miniseries by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1980. In all, she appeared in 35 silent films and three sound films of differing styles during the Weimar era. During the 1920s she continued to star in theatre roles and operettas, such as Franz Lehár's Merry Widow and Gypsy Love. Her soprano repertoire included arias and lieder by Puccini, Handel, Brahms, Richard Strauss and Johann Strauss (see below), which she performed in recitals and radio broadcasts, in addition to the popular songs she sang in her sound feature films.

In 1924 Margarete Schlegel married the assimilated Jewish-Prussian political economist, Prof Hermann Joachim Levy. In 1926 they had a son, Hermann Martin Heinrich Levy, who was baptised Catholic. When her husband was dismissed from his professorship at Technical University of Berlin in May 1933, he travelled to Britain to give the Sidney Ball Memorial Lecture at Oxford University[1] and to lecture as a Visiting Professor at King's College, Cambridge at the invitation of the Professor of Economic History, John Clapham. Although she was offered many opportunities to join her Weimar expatriate film colleagues in Hollywood from the early 1930s onwards, and in 1935 was offered the chance to continue her film career under the Third Reich on the condition she divorced her non-Aryan husband, she declined these offers and joined her husband in London with their son. In July 1938 the Nazis officially proscribed her films, which could no longer be shown publicly in Germany or its occupied territories. At about the same time, her husband was added to Hitler's so-called Black Book,[2][3] the list of opponents of the Third Reich who would be liquidated upon the anticipated Nazi occupation of Britain. Also in 1938 her husband's former family residence and the marital home in Tiergarten, "Villa Kabrun", was seized by the Nazis for use as a foreign embassy in its putative "world capital", Germania. After arriving in England, she was a featured soprano on BBC Radio in operettas by Lehar and others, and during WW2 broadcast anti-Nazi German-language propaganda radio programs for BBC Europe which were heard across the Continent. After her husband died suddenly in 1949 from a heart attack, she remarried and moved to Saltdean on the Sussex coast in England. In the 1950s she continued broadcasting for BBC Radio, singing in operettas and recitals as well as taking speaking roles in BBC German language educational radio programs. She died on 15 July 1987 after being very active in local Catholic church affairs for many years.

Filmography

Operatic Repertoire

Composer Title/Role Parent Work/Opus
Puccini, G Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore Tosca
Puccini, G Un bel di vedremo Madame Butterfly
Handel, GF Ombra mai fu (Larghetto) Xerxes
Gounod, CF / Bach, JS Ave Maria (Meditation) Musica et Memoria
Strauss, Richard Standchen Six Songs, Op 17 (No 2)
Strauss, Johann Spiel ich die Unschuld vom land (The Country Innocent) Die Fledermaus
Mozart, WA Alleluia Exsultate jubilate, K.165
Handel, GF Amor gioie mi porge (Jealousy) Duets
Handel, GF Va speme infida pur (Fickle Hope) Duets
D'Albert, E Amor und Psyche (Myrtocle's aria) Der Toten Augen
Reger, M Zum Schlafen (The Golden Bird) Op 76 (No 59)
Handel, GF Tu la mia stella sei Guilo Cesare
Handel, GF Voi dolci aurette al cor Tolomeo
Strauss, Johann Fruhlingstimmen (voci di primavera) Op 410
Strauss, Richard Wiegenlied (Lullaby) Five Lieder, Op 41 (no 1)
Strauss, Richard Morgen! (Tomorrow) Four Lieder, Op 27 (no 4)
Brahms, J Minnelied (Love Song) Op 71 (No 5)
Strauss, Richard Traum durch die Dammerung (Dream in the twilight) Three Lieder, Op 29 (No 1)
Strauss, Richard Zueignung (Devotion) Eight Lieder, Op 10 (No 1)
Papini, G Caro mio ben After Tommaso Giordani
Arditi, L Sprich! (Parla!) Waltz for Soprano
Lehar, F Zorika (role) Zigeunerliebe (Gypsy Love)
Lehar, F. Hanna (role) The Merry Widow

Popular Songs (English)

Composer Title Lyrics
Keel, F Four Songs of Childhood Walter de la Mare
- Reverie
- Sleepy Head
- John Mouldy
- Bunches of Grapes
Traditional French Song Come Sweet Morning (Viens Aurore) R H Elkin (English)
Sanderson, W June is Calling N Fielden
Ronald, L Four Songs of the Hill H Simpson
- Away on the hill there runs a stream
- Come home my thoughts
- At Dawn
- A Little Winding Road
Leslie-Smith, K Always Song (Puritan Lullaby) J Dyrenforth
Leoni, F The Leaves of the Wind G Cooper
Ronald, L O Lovely Night! E Teschemacher
Quilter, R Amaryllis at the Fountain Anon
White, M V So We'll Go No More A Roving Lord Byron
Forster, D Dancing in Dreams in Vienna E Lockton
Quilter, R Love's Philosophy Shelley
Traditional (arr Lehmann, L) Annie Laurie Anon
Quilter, R Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal Tennyson
Trad (arr Clutsam) Come to the Dance M Mervyn
Wertheimer, E To A Mother (An Einer Mutter)
Cadman, C W At Dawning N R Eberhart

References

  1. ↑ https://www.spi.ox.ac.uk/about-us/history/sidney-ball-memorial-lectures.html
  2. ↑ https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/hitlers-black-book/person/233/hermann-levy/
  3. ↑ https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/hitlers-black-book

Bibliography

External links


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