Martin Gleisner (Tapes 60 & 74)

 

Biography

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(1897–1983)

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Martin Gleisner began as an actor, working with director Max Reinhardt, but after meeting Laban in 1923 he turned towards dance. He specialised in community dance and collaborated with Laban on a number of public dance events. He published Tanz fur Alle (Dance for All) in 1928. He left Germany in 1933, and eventually settled in the US, no longer practising dance. 

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Summary of Tape 60

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Laban’s contacts in Nuremberg and Mannheim. First meeting with Laban in 1923. He heard about him through readings reviews and then the text of Die Welt des Tänzers. The dancers around Laban in the 1920s. Working with the Laban Kammertanzbuhne in Hamburg. Gleisner’s shift into Lay Dance (bewegungschor). Meets the publisher Eugen Diederichs (who published Laban’s Die Choreographie in 1926 and the journal Die Tat). Laban’s recitals with Gertrud Loeszer. 1927 he becomes chairman of the association of Laban schools which in 1929 joins with the Deutsche Chor Singer und Ballet Verband, of which he is chairman and which now includes Free Dance. Laban is interested in anatomy. Movement is central to Laban’s world outlook. The fight with Wigman. The first Dancer’s Congress in 1928 which he co-organised. How Laban could be fickle in his loyalties. 1933, Laban stays, MG leaves. MG’s quarrel with Laban’s My Life in Dance (Jooss called it a ‘Nazi book’). 

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Summary of Tape 74

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Laban’s ability to work with the Nazi’s: ‘If the Nazis had allowed him to work, he would have stayed there. He was forced to go away.’ The Mannheim Festspiel (1929). Vilma Mönckeburg (expert in the spoken word choir, and collaborator with Laban on Faust (1922). Gleisner’s work with the Social Democrats and movement choirs. The difference between his choirs and Nazi processions. His meeting with Sergei Eisenstein. His work Volkserschule (primary and junior schools). Gaukelei. Laban’s philosophy is informed by Nietzsche. The cultural scene during the hyperinflation in Germany 1922 – 1923.  Laban’s recitals with Gert Loeszer (1924). Die Nacht in the 1927 Dancers’ Congress in Magdeburg.

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Tape 60 [Side B from 09.48] 

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Laban’s contacts in Nuremberg and Mannheim

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MG: Heinrich was then the first Weimar Republic, I guess, Burgermeister of Nuremberg who Laban had somehow known for years. Who was the reason he came to Nuremberg. And Heinrich was later the UberBurgermeister of Mannheim when he made that Festspiel for the 100 years theatre. And after Second World War Heinrich was minister of state for Baden Wurtemburg. I thought a few years ago he had died. He was a really prominent Weimar politician who was very much interested in Laban and arranged for that festival thing and so a quite interesting connection with Laban, who had known him I guess as a young man when he was a student in Munich in a time when Laban was in [inaudible name] at the beginning of the Century. I guess now it is lost but Mrs Meisenbach, if she is still alive would have lots of material, photos of 

 

JH: The early days

 

MG: With her husband maybe. I guess the present Mrs Meisenbach between the wars in the ‘20s was the second wife from the pre-war time. He has died long ago, [Jo] Meisenbach. But it was very interesting in this transition time. But now ask me a question, I don’t know what…

 

JH: Well, I want to know everything. 

 

MG: What is everything? 

 

First Meeting Laban

JH: Begin at the beginning. When did you first meet Laban? 

 

MG: Laban personally? The beginning of 1923, about fifty years ago. Personally, after before having corresponded with him, etcetera. 

 

JH: How did you first hear of him? 

 

MG: I heard first of him in that book of Brandenburg which you know. Do you understand German? 

 

JH: No, but I’ve had most of it translated for me. 

 

[break in tape]

Finding Out About Laban

MG: 1930 dances by [inaudible] Pavlova. [inaudible] trying to look at dance as what was then the [inaudible]. I then went into theatre school, to the Reinhardt School and became an actor. In between I got interested more and more in dancing. Originally I tried once in my free time to learn ballet for six weeks but it didn’t touch me anything. And then it must have been I was in Frankfurt, must have been 1920 Die Welt des Tänzers came out, I read reviews of it and I saw Mary Wigman on her first tournée and then I read this Die Welt des Tänzers and this might be typical. After I had read it in the winter of ’21/’22 I guess, I wrote to Laban, so and so, an actor, but I believed that movement is very important for acting and I wanted to learn this modern movement. I had tried ballet but this had not given me anything for acting, but I read in this book, it touched me very much and whether he has not a summer courses in my vacation where I could learn about these things. Laban wrote me back, he himself cannot do anything, he goes to Gleschendorf that summer, it was ’22, to form a dance theatre and he cannot choose people who don’t want to be dancers but there was Mrs [Edith] Walcher in Stuttgardt who has a school in Stuttgardt and is one of his best teachers and I should write her and then I went to a Summer course in Blaubeuren where we were four people with Miss Walcher and then I became more and more convinced. Next winter I came to Berlin and then did … did somebody tell you about the first appearance of von Laban in Berlin? 

 

JH: No.

 

MG: That was… in the meantime there had been, in that… an interest in what they call in German Kultur Modern, Gymastik and so weiter. There had formed a Deutsche Gymnastik Bund that its first big congress in the fall of ’22. And they were all from [Bess] Mensendieck, Loheland [Körperkultur group] Bode, and Laban was also invited. And came the six men of his dance theatre group, Berlin. There was [Kurt] Jooss, [Albrecht] Knust, [Jens] Keith, [Edgar] Frank, [Julian] Algo, and still one. And by the way, I was in America at a school in the middle West. I forget the name. But anybody in London can tell you easily. So there is really nobody of this time. These are all later people. Lisa Ullmann is relatively late and Snell is also late. Knust is still the only one who knows all these people. Anyhow, that interested me very much. I was still playing small parts in Berlin theatres and at that performance I made the acquaintance not of Laban himself but of Knust and Jooss and Keith and whoever the rest … I asked them then, who was that? One of the people there, Dusia Bereska, also told me that there is nobody yet that Herta Feist opened a school in Berlin. And I started to work there the whole winter. To make the matter short that was the first performance of Laban in Berlin where he … people who were interested [inaudible few words]. When I came back to Berlin in the fall… oh yes, I was still directed by Walcher to Fritz Böhme, you know Fritz Böhme? And he spread the rumour among the people who were interested in learning about Laban things, the Helene Paetz, Juta Klamt, they were modern Berlin dancers who had heard of Laban, and had seen him, and friends [inaudible]… they asked me to show him to work with him and we exchanged then things in studios. 

 

How Gleisner Met Laban

And then came about in December or January ‘22/’23 Herta Feist opened her school and I and Lutzie Wins -  have you heard of her? – worked in the Spring of that year, must have been April/May. Herta Feist invited Laban for a - as he liked to do it – for a lecture-demonstration to … it was the Spring of ’23 … for a lecture-demonstration to Berlin. She arranged this; rented a hall, the Sehengruppehall and Laban, I guess he had no money to bring anybody from Hamburg… there was the sponsor of that, somehow I guess Laban head of Heiss or Böhme’s connection… there were always some sponsors. There was a Geheimratmoll, a physicist who sponsored that. Geheimvatmoll who introduced him and Herta Feist who wanted two people, a male student and a female student to show his Schule [school], his movement scales. Herta took me and Lutzi Wanes. This was an hour before and we had this lecture and he was very satisfied with our demonstration and things, and after that he thanked us of course for helping him in that lecture and then I asked him that I was seriously thinking to switch over to dance. What he would think? And then he made with me an appointment for the next morning and what you would call in theatre an audition. And said ‘I can’t offer you very much but you can come as apprentice to our Tanz Buhne if you want in October to Hamburg. This was the beginning of inflation in Germany. I cannot offer you anything similar to salaries which you would get at the theatre but I can give so much as all the other people get paid in Hamburg. So I said, Fine. Yes, before you come to Hamburg I want to see you [a lot of words obscured by microphone interference]. …the Tanz Buhne Berlin studied in two or three big… he had the Kammer Tanz Buhne which gave two performances every week in the Zoo on that little stage, and the people there were Jooss and Keith and Dusia Bereska and this was the October/November, early December of ’23 which was a very … was it ’23? … which was very restless time in other parts of Hamburg there were shootings and this was the same time as the ten days which shook the world [i.e. the beginning of the Russian Civil War] – there were the Hamburg riots at this time. But we quietly danced in another part of town. 

 

[jumps in tape]

 

MG: …Tanzbuhne… After the Berlin Gastspiel which was no financial success, which was to a big part financed by Hahn, the banker in Berlin. Have you heard of Hahn? 

 

JH: No

 

MG: He arranged, he was also interested in Lotte Reiniger, and she made the costumes which Hahn paid for these two big productions, she designed the costumes. I don’t know if you want to know about that, but she remembers. She lives in London, near London in High Barnet, I can give you the address. But her costume business she knows. Not very much about Laban, but about this project. Hahn roped her in. Koch is her civil name now. She was married to [Director] Karl Koch. 

 

[Jump in tape]

 

MG: The very small group of the Tanzbuhne and we all went back to Berlin and so on. And in the winter did some acting and my things are not so interesting. We can skip most. 

 

[Jump in tape] 

 

Gleisner’s Shift into Lay Dance

MG: I guess at that time he was still somewhere in Southern Germany in Munich or in Bamburg or that was before ’24, after the stabilisation of the mark which came in January ’24. Then I looked around and I looked around for dance jobs and became the leader of the dance school in Gera [a town between Leipzig and Erfurt] … [Jump in tape] …very much impressed since the first day in Hamburg by the Bewegungschor [movement choir] business which was really also Knust’s hobby. And very much interested. My whole political attitude and my whole interests in adult education und so weiter [etc.]. And after a year in Gera, I didn’t like it very much at the theatre there as Tanzmeister, I decided to leave the theatre and to try to do only lay-dancing and I was helped in establishing that by Diederichs. You know about Eugen Diederichs? 

 

JH: No, tell me. 

 

MG: aside from a direct connection with Laban he was the publisher of Die Choreographie, the first book about choreography by Laban. You know about that? 

 

JH: Yes. 

 

MG: And Diederichs was funny to understand but he got very much interested in Laban, probably through Brandenburg who had written [about Laban in a book called Der Moderne Tanz]. He was a funny publisher for German [inaudible], and was interested in all kinds of such things. Very much interested in modern dancing, that is why he published the Choreographie. And as I was [inaudible] in Gera he was very glad that they had got a Laban person there. I went to Jena where the publishing house was and stayed in Jena for the Folkschule which was the adult education and for the teacher’s seminar and Diederichs was very much interested by the way… While I was in Jena I was the only one that understood somehow … I read the proofs of Choreographie [laughs], of that book. I have my copy for proofreading still here of the Choreographie. And I kept pretty close contact with Laban in the fall of ’24, the beginning of Spring ’25 while I was in Gera. He had been touring to Germany with Gertrud Loeszer. Did you hear about that tour? 

 

JH: No, tell me about it. 

Gert Loeszer and Laban

MG: A very funny thing. He travelled with Gertrud Loeszer and a pianist and had a full programme of dances. Dances to Wagner music, from Tristan, from Tannhäuser, from I don’t know – all Wagner! He and Gert Loeszer, very sexy and very involved, and I arranged two of these evenings in Gera while I was there. 

 

And then when I was in Jena the next year he had a programme that he travelled with a small group and had Gluck’s Don Giovanni, of that you know, his Don Juan? It was his tour in ’26. And when he came he needed a Bewegungschor [movement choir] for the mass scenes, and he did that in Jena and in Weimar also. And then we kept contact. After developed Laban School in Jena and the whole matter that he tried to get structure in Diplomas and schools and I then went back to Berlin in ’27 and we founded the Association of Laban Schulen and officially I was the chairman … we founded in ’27. We had every year at Easter a one week meeting with Laban. And in the meeting in ’27 I guess we founded this Association of Laban Schools, and I was the chairman and had the office of that Association until ’33. I had to leave. 

 

JH: How many schools was that? 

 

MG: There were quite a lot. I should have prepared that. I have all that material there. Have you not seen our pamphlet with all the names of the schools? [Jump in tape] … we all of course, respected him, practically adored him, found him a genius what he was, and all that. And Laban had a knack to use people in a very sensible for a man of that context, of that stature, who used people that could be helpful. [Gertrud] Snell for keeping order, Ullmann, later in England for organising and for keeping things together. And very quickly he used me very much for bringing order for being able to do this organisation and also for publicity. I was very facile [handy] in writing little articles and lecturing, popularising the idea of lay dance and the idea of dance notation, when the first dance notation was attacked by other systems, I wrote against this. I had accessed in the house publication, Die Tat, the monthly magazine of the Diederichs Verlag, I could always have place to write, and I wrote regularly every two months about events in dance. I spoke about Bewegungschor or the dance congress, and so on. He used me … And we consulted, of course, quite often together. Then there were difficulties in organisation, money difficulties, he very much used me, very willingly I did a lot in organisational things. We decided about, I guess in ’29, that we, with the necessity that modern dancers found jobs on stages, that we needed the affiliation with the Union for ballet, this was the Deutsche Chor Singer und Ballet Verband, and we renegotiated, that means chiefly, I, with the Union which changed its name to Tänzer Verband and accepted also dancers who were not on the stage, who were free dancers. So we all collectively went into this and then, as a representative of the ‘free dancers’, the modern dancers, I went onto the board of the Chor Singer und Tänzer Verband, of the Union and was there from ’28 to ’33 and with Laban very much reorganised the dance community of which Laban was the chairman and ballet masters, the one from the staatische oper Berlin and Olga Brandt-Knack (1885 – 1978). Have you heard of her? 

 

MG: It would be interest for you. She is now a very old lady, 88 or 89 and lives in the Municipal Old Age Home. A very interesting woman. I don’t know how much you can get off her now. But from another side, again, she was one of the first classical ballet masters who got interested in modern dance and was instrumental in paving the ways for Laban in Hamburg. She was until 1918 Ballet Mistress of the Hamburg Opera and she introduced Laban. Her husband was in the city parliament and was the director of a big municipal hospital and was in the Social Democratic Party. She was a woman who had a great union history. She organised the ballet dancers and brought them into the Union. And after the war she was politically very active until her eightieth birthday in the Hamburg parliament. And was very active there. And she in these Hamburg years of Laban quite some memories. This summer before I was in London to visit her. We were both… she was the other dancer on the board of the Union. We met there and [inaudible] … afternoon where Laban came to Hamburg and what she discussed with him and she told things which I didn’t know. For instance, that he was rare [?] in his interest in anatomy and so got her husband, who was later [inaudible] got him to allow Laban to assist operations that he saw, and he saw the cramp movement. He was interested in the operation of muscles. He told me that she introduced him to her husband and that he very much was interested in the mechanics of involuntary movements. Everything in the movement very much interested [him]. And that she remembers. Olga Brandt Knack. 

 

[break in tape]

 

MG: It was to arrange the performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Kammerspiel, and I guess Olga Brandt Knack recommended him for that. And there was of course money. It was one of the ways the Tanz Buhne could earn money. And Laban was until the English time very short of money, all kinds of things he did to get his hands on some few Marks. And when he had money he spent it very royally. Did you know him still [to Viv Bridson]. 

 

VB: Yes. 

 

MG: But only in the English time? 

 

VB: Yes. 

 

MG: When he had the money he was very well. And it was not important. He was only interested in movement. Everything was translated into movement. That was his only interest. And any kind of movement. And this seeking for movement laws and movement harmonies and space harmonies and [inaudible] he could throw out ideas, not so good in working them out, but brilliant in finding new things. And about the other big things he did in Hamburg. [Inaudible] De Prometheus and that, yea? 

 

[jump in tape]

 

MG: …in these Hamburg years was a production of Prometheus or Prometheus Bound, the real old Greek which he did together with a speaking choir of Miss [Vilma] Mönckeberg, and was very famous then, and where the action was in movement choir and solo dancing. 

 

JH: Did you see that? 

 

MG: No, I came later to Hamburg. 

 

JH: But it made quite a reputation? 

 

MG: yes, it made quite a reputation in Hamburg. There were wonderful, true dancers who supported him in Hamburg very much. These reviewers. It was different. Fritz Böhme was one. Schikowski. Other were violently against him. The Wigman party. Later the fight between the Wigman school and the Laban school. It was very bitter and we were all engaged in very much hostility. 

 

JH: Now what initiated that? 

 

MG: Difficult to say. Difficult to say. I guess it was the competition for very little living space, for very little money at every level, and for every little bit of advantage. So access to money sources, to publication sources and so … there was so little money, so little broad interest. There was much interest in young people but in something which had an existence, the schools brought money... It’s difficult to say who initiated that. I guess Wigman, after a while … obviously there was a coterie that was around her, and wanted to emphasise that she was everything… [inaudible few words] … she had a few lessons and so on… but I guess really behind was the paucity of means available, the poverty…

 

[Jump in tape]

 

MG: … modern dance, that it is not as good, for instance, the… what was his name, this man [inaudible] critic who, the critic who found that all that Laban was a theoretician, but all that created was not as good, with the exception of Jooss. In a matter also of taste. The Wigman school was an organisation which competed with ours, so there was of course also for the full finances for the available students, for all that. [inaudible] … sometimes ridiculous. Joining with the Union was anyhow treason to free art, she intimated it was even labour, going to labour on what we are free artists, and all that. It was a matter… Anyhow, Laban then came, you know Laban was trying to find really a room for his school. He tried at first in Würzburg which was the home town of Loeszer. That was the time he was practically with Loeszer, living. It was first Bereska, now she always stayed in the background and so was never completely [inaudible]… other girls in between. I guess later also Lisa had a child or an abortion from him when he has produced quite lot of children and in this respect he was very male, and very much potent and then from Würzburg he went to Berlin and had this institute in Haransee for a few years. Also then the finances went down with the common crisis. And then he was, after Terpis was fired, he became Ballet Master at the Berlin opera which was of course the first secure earning job he had. And there he started with 

 

JH: The only…

 

MG: In England 

 

JH: No job

 

MG: And that was of course … a bourgeois existence … and the first thing he did was a staging of The Mikado where he did the … not of The Mikado, of The Geisha and that was a success. It was [inaudible] done. Really total theatre and that was a success. The second was Dances in Prince Igor. That also had good press. But then came, which didn’t have good press, and it was in ’31 that he became Ballet Master. We hadn’t seen… there wasn’t much contact. I don’t know whether I should tell you about my differences with him. 

 

JH: yes, yes

 

MG: We had someone in … perhaps I am too bourgeois, too organisation man and too much stick to principles which are outside of dance. The only loyalty he had was to dance, to movement. That was his only loyalty, his only real loyalty. Now people who served him, he could be charming to people who worked with him and very nice, and he could forget you the next day. There was the Dance Congress in Munich 1930, a big international dance congress where there was also a day about lay dancing, educational dancing, where I had the introduction from the labour side and then the very famous [Friederich] Muckermann from the Catholic side on use of movement and education and in the use of organisations. But that’s not … and there was an organisational meeting where … what was really the beginning? In the union Laban was the chairman of the art committee of the Union, the Dance Committee of the Union and in an open meeting and I was on the Board of the Union and represented the dance side. And in an open meeting Jooss started out to criticise, ‘What do we need an Art Committee [for]?’ And they had obviously with Jooss and Wigman got in agreement to attack the Union. That was the beginning of that. It was an open meeting. So I was up sharing and I said, Laban you are Chairman of the Art Committee, please explain. And he very weasel-mouthed, retracted from the Chair, he doesn’t do committees. I was very angry. It was in an open meeting. It was my first disagreement with him. The rest of the days… we had a big bewegungschor demonstration and I co-organised this Dance Congress as representative of the Union, I was on the organising committee. Then he was in Bayreuth in summer and the Venusberg in Tannhäuser, so then in the summer I worked in an international labour children’s camp in Switzerland and after that I went to Bayreuth and we made a reconciliation. He just apologised, ‘I am just an artist what do I know about organis…, you must tell me before that I have to say…’ and such things, ‘You are the man for such organisations’. Okay. Of course I stay as chairman of this committee and so on. By the way, before he became Ballet Master in Hamburg he was in Essen in the Folkwangschule with Kurt Jooss and that I had forgotten. That was the first. 

 

Then came 1933. And immediately when Hitler came to power I could not stay in Germany and I left Germany in April of ’33. Hitler came to power in March ’33 and I left. I went illegally to Czechoslovakia. The day before I went to Laban and had a long talk with him and he was very sympathetic and gave me letters of recommendation and so on, and I said to him, ‘What are you still doing here? Nazis.’ And I said, ‘Look, I get to go to Prague. I cannot advertise myself but I could advertise you. When you would go with me to [inaudible], make a declaration that you resign your job as Ballet Master of the Staatsoper as you don’t want to serve under, as to have your top boss, Mr Göring with his bloody hands. This is the sensation and you get a foothold in the Western world. I am sorry. During a few years, it will not last for ever these Nazis.’ He said, ‘That’s my first … here I have a job… I am a dancer, my dancing, that won’t care about the politics…’ And I said, ‘But you cannot stay out. Your work for a man like Göring practically, and you will get the demands for making Nazi dances and for things and when you then will be thrown out by them, and maybe I don’t see you, don’t speak of imprisonment and danger, and then when you come as a poor who has been thrown out and went away, it’s not infected when you make it at the beginning out of free will.’ He said, ‘I hate this sort of thing and cannot see it. But is doesn’t [inaudible] my dancers, my work with my dancers, anyhow I have nothing to do with politics’ and so that was that. Okay, you know how he got out of Germany. I was then, when he came, he came from Germany first to Paris, because Miss Bereska was there, and then I heard that he was in France… Yes, and in the meantime, while he must have come to Paris in the beginning of 1938. I guess he was forbidden to work in Germany in 1936 with the Olympiad, where, incidentally, they all tried to make Nazi art. But it was not good enough for, probably, Wigman and people. And he was then as result working somewhere in Bavaria. He came 38 to … But before I got very, very angry at him. I did some work in the international library of the dance in Paris and there came this book which he published in Germany, My Life as a Dancer or something like that. Do you know it? 

 

JH: yes, The Life of a Dancer, yes

 

MG: And I find that this is typical, to be mellow and more tolerant and so. But in that time it is typical of what all German intellectuals who were not under… but the little adaptations to the Nazi ideology. And I got personally very angry at him. It is typical… which went… I don’t know whether I should tell that. You want only… you want an official biography and only emphasise the strengths of this…

 

JH: No, no, no, no

 

[cut in tape]

 

MG: For instance in this Mannheim Festspiel I wrote the texts for the piece, I directed the sprichchor, there was the last one, the last big dance was about, how shall one say? In The Ninth Symphony [by Beethoven] is all men are brothers. And the sprichchor, the speaking choir, in my text, ‘So grosse, community, from family, to city to nation and mankind.’ Laban in this book wrote this, because this is very close to me, but quotes in the book, ‘So grosse, community, from family, to kin, to city and nation.’ ‘Mankind’ is left out, it doesn’t exist with Nazis. So when I read that I became very, very angry. Besides it is as if he had written the text. As a professor so does this, stealing papers, that I don’t mind. 

 

JH: Any other points in the book?

 

MG: What? 

 

JH: Can you quote any other instances in that book

 

MG: I don’t have the book. 

 

JH: But you feel it’s full of that sort of thing. 

 

MG: Yes, these small adaptations which, when you were real anti [inaudible] I found at that time, small and wouldn’t say ‘mean’ today but, such adaptations. Also, such a man like he who really was no Nazi. And was probably disgusted and so, but in all that you say of his [inaudible] and so of course when you know I have worked in the sixties three years in Germany now, [inaudible] have become a social worker, you come across such things all over in Germany, adaptations. Maybe it was right to save one’s skin. One cannot ask heroism, Only when one wants to be a great man that is… [end of tape]

Tape 74 

[to 00.50.38]

MG: [returning to Laban’s rewriting of Gleisner’s words from the 1929 Festspiel in Mannheim] … and this ends, von Familia, zu Freunden, zu Stadt, zu Folk, und zu Menschheit. And in his book under the Nazis he left out Menschheit, mankind. My text which I had written, he had written and left out in his adaptation to the Nazis which didn’t happen very much, the mankind. 

 

JH: Do you think that he was very aware of the Nazis in writing that book? Because.,.

 

MG: Very aware. He was like now, what is 

 

JH: Jooss says it is a very Nazi book. I don’t think I agree with him. 

 

MG: It is [inaudible] you don’t agree because you are an Englishman and you are young and far out of the atmosphere. These were the small betrayals which were so disagreeable to the people who really were refugees and were opposition, and the small adaptations which gave Hitler the chance, why he got so many years long. He was not a Nazi, but he lived through that, he wanted to make this holiday and this work for, and so he made these adaptations. Mankind was not popular, the top was the Nation, so he stopped with ‘the Nation’, falsified the intention of this last [inaudible]. But we all, but I, was very angry with him. For years I could not speak with him or didn’t contact him when he was in England because these are the small details. These help. That is… Lisa also was in fear to give the whole sequence, so she quotes me, but she also hesitates in order to lay cosmetic [inaudible]. If the Nazis had allowed him to work, he would have stayed there. He was forced to go away. These are the things which seen from today are understandable. He had for the first time in 1931 with Ballet Master at the Staatsoper, it was the first time had a secure financial foundation. He always had never money. He was always short. And everybody who had some money loaned him some money which they never got back, which was very right, and with an absolute man of his capacity one should make it possible to live. But it’s understandable, and he did not do anything cruel, but same with Wigman’s group. It is exactly the same line. 

 

JH: More so since she stayed in

 

MG: Wigman was much more in the line; mystical, which was not, in this sense, Laban’s way. But these are the adaptations which disappointed us very much like [inaudible] like Knust, Laban summer courses in 1935 or so. A Dutch colleague of mine attended a course and came back to Amsterdam, I was then living in Amsterdam, horrified. There was in the entrance to that camp was ‘Jews not allowed’. They made exception with her, she was a Nederlander, a Hollander. These are the summer camps which Knust directed, and these are the things which are not really right and are not gentleman like. 

 

The Mannheim Festspiel (1929)

JH: Tell me about the Mannheim occasion. When did Laban ask you to write the work, how long did it take you and what discussions…

 

MG: I guess it started in ’29 in the Spring, but we started on that the fall before. When were the dates? [sound of pages being turned]. The third of June ’29. Probably, we started to work the year before. In the same year there was the Viennese matter [the procession of the trades]. And he asked me, ‘We are so busy with the preparation of Vienna.’ I was also very busy, but he asked me to help him in that. And there was, practically that whole winter, I guess from Wednesday morning till Thursday night in Mannheim, I don’t know how often. 

 

JH: How much collaboration? What did you do? 

 

MG: We talked about the whole plan, and we planned the first rehearsal and that he had to plan to have a real expressing to all that individualistic, human, basic, strife and fight, love, and then over this, everything belongs to mankind. And then I wrote a frame, I offered texts for each. He wanted an introduction to each of the [phone rings, tape cuts] participated in the choreographic details and [inaudible few words]. I had the school in Mannheim which then was a year old and I went to the [inaudible] houses and probably went to

 

JH: Did you lend a hand with the speech choirs too? 

 

MG: each one I directed from the beginning. We were about 80 or a 100 kids, borrowed from one of the Mannheim gymnasium. Gymnasium is what you call a Grammar School. Also kids of sixteen years. That I did completely.

 

JH: And how did you work on that? 

 

MG: I worked with them in rehearsal

 

JH: What was your theory? 

 

MG: What?

 

JH: What was your theory? Did you used solo voices, group voices…

 

MG: I distributed the voices. I was very much on rhythmical dynamics in speaking and then of course… You see, at that time the whole business of using … it was the first time possible that you could speaking in the open air. It was very new, as one used microphones and loud speakers. It was always a problem, no stage then had any installations. We wanted power from 

 

JH: From the numbers of people

 

MG: From movable electric generators in big trucks. I’ve done that a few times later, also in Berlin, Amsterdam and so on. So that one had technical … and I tried to coordinate the technical last rehearsals in the stadium along without the dancer. Tried to adjust that so that it was really understandable in the Stadium. The time of use of loudspeakers, of microphone, was still, at least in Germany, and I guess in all of Europe, was quite new. 

 

JH: But you used them? 

 

MG: Yes, of course we used them. 

 

JH: How many microphones would you have for a hundred youngsters? 

 

MG: I have no idea. 

 

JH: And they stood on one part of the stage

 

MG: I had also, I did also some solo lines. So we changed between solo and then parts of the choir, and so forth. 

 

JH: And they spoke it with natural rhythms or with … specially emphasised rhythms or with natural inflections. 

 

MG: Slower, faster, louder, softer. [Inaudible sentence, possibly German] But these were, so to say, interludes, not with the movement. That was before the arrival before

 

JH: I see, so you never danced the stage? 

 

MG: Not in this thing. I did things with sprichchor [spoken word chorus] together later, a few years on. 

 

JH: Did Laban? 

 

MG: Not with Laban, but in my own work? 

 

JH: But did Laban do it with anyone else?

 

MG: No, as I told you, Laban did only work with words in that Vienna big procession, so to say, in that Vienna pageant and with Vilma Mönckeburg, together. Of course, now, probably the relationship to… I wasn’t there in Hamburg. I would suppose that Knust would know more. He was very active in that … the Vilma Mönckeburg was of course another matter. Laban was a newcomer in Hamburg and Vilma Mönckeburg was the authority for speaking choir in Hamburg, for dramatic speaking. So probably the relationship added support. But have you tried to reach Mrs Mönckeburg? 

 

VB: Yes we have and we’ve had a letter from her and she was due to come to England last summer but she didn’t in fact come in the end and she may be coming [jump in tape]

 

MG: … Berlin, when I started to teach I worked three years in Jena with Gerhart [inaudible] in Thuringia. And there I did with Laban, I played with Laban. He had Don Giovanni there. And I made a performance that was in Thuringia. I worked there for 1924 – 28. And I went back to Berlin in ’27. 

 

JH: Tell me about Berlin in those years. Can you give me some feeling of the political and social atmosphere. 

 

MG: Ah, there are so many people who write about that in the Weimar time. 

 

JH: But they don’t give me the colour. 

 

MG: for us it was a good time because one could experiment and there was interest in everything. Now, political is how you stand. I was more and more [inaudible] at that time. While many people of my generation post-war, 1918 and already before during the world war, we were very much interested in the world and in politics but one had this kind of liberal sympathising fellow-traveller, all kind of organisations which did not really get involved, most of the people had remained with …People like Kurt Jooss all his life really never got formally organised, got part of an official part of a party of the organisation. Now I went a little but different and that was really the first… The bewegungschor which I had there in Gera, that was at a theatre in Gera, the director of the dance group that I started with the Volksschule. Do you what a Volksschule is?

 

JH: Yes. 

 

MG: An adult education movement which was in Gera, a Social Democrat organisation. I got involved and I liked these people. They had a Volksschule and so on. Then I decided to officially become part of the Social Democracy and I was probably a rear guard for the dance teacher to do that. I left the theatre and started completely to specialise in the teaching and in movement choirs and as soon as I started my first movement choir with the socialist youth group, there was a demand for that. And this demand quickly spilled over, not only dance, but also movement. I responded to a demand, to a market, so to say. Our whole Laban group were, at that time at least… Two of Laban’s leading teachers who were involved really in political parties, that was Jenny Gertz, who was a communist from old and remained that and tried to express that, and later also went to Russia, and came back after the war to Halle in East Germany and died about fifty years ago. And I. We were the only red ones who lived officially. For instance when we founded the Association of Laban Schools, I became the Chairman. There were many who came, good bourgeois young ladies, girls who found [inaudible German words] somebody with a party affiliation is real. In England somebody would say, somebody who was in the Labour Party cannot be real! I don’t know how it would have been fifty years ago in England. If somebody of the Labour Party was affiliated with the Labour Party might have directed the Association of Dance Teachers. In 1925 it would have been possible. But I cannot say; today, certainly is… Laban had no [inaudible]. On the contrary Laban liked this populist connections. He wrote very nicely, he was really affected by big festivals and music, orchestras, speaking choir, which I made in Berlin for the fiftieth anniversary of the Labour singers, National Association. He liked it very much, this outspoken, less political. That was possible in Germany and in general, there was a very lively time in Theatre and in literature and experiments, directly after the war. The expressionist time. And time had support for all kinds of experiment, also governmental support. Of course this is only the basis of the whole social climate where masses of organisations representing masses were interested in culture. The German Social Democracy, I don’t know if the Labour is similar, was as well a cultural organisation. They had their own adult education, they had … you see this is the amazing thing. You take the … somebody … all these young local kids who have no formal schooling for fourteen years who were aged fourteen. But when then, to the workers who studied the socialist classics and studied the literary classics, you have something similar when you look at Aneurin Bevin and certainly some of the other, then you have that kind of type, the academicians didn’t direct [inaudible] the groups. Former workers who sat down and were very intellectually interested. 

 

JH: And you say Laban enjoyed that support. 

 

MG: Laban enjoyed it. He was very interested [inaudible] and these organisations. He was probably more interested than in the little circles of middle class girls who did very nice aesthetic things. At least I had the impression. Laban was giving me that impression and could give to, say, Lola Rogge, that impression. Laban was very adaptable, was a very generous man. And whoever was caught as interesting, he built on it. He impressed himself that I mobilise in that Stadium in NeuKölln [District of Berlin] in 1931 that I mobilised 2,500 people to work together, an orchestra of 200 and a speaking choir of 100. He was impressed I could mobilise them. The possibilities when you go back to his first book Die Welt des Tänzers and you see how the … and also how Wigman speaks about his festival ideas. It was of course one of his basic interests and

 

JH: And long before the Nazis were on the scene

 

MG: yes, long before this. All that the Nazis did was destroy. That is another matter. Long before. 

 

JH: But it was a good basis for the Nazis. 

 

MG: You see that is one of putting it [tape cuts]… An organised march, a procession. A deployment of masses. A disciplined movement of masses. This is of course a thing which has an emotional and enthusiastic impact. Now these are forms and the content, what you express with this, as you would say, you can get an enthusiastic crowd with a lively, rhythmic melody, for that you cannot say the rhythm is for the Nazis. That music in general. These are forms which are there for ever. 

 

JH: Large crowds

 

MG: Yes, 

 

JH: Mass movement

 

MG: But you use it, you give for content, for that he cut out the ‘Mankind’ but he left it with the ‘Nation’ as climax. You see, that is what you can … one nation more or less, obviously he was no Eisenstein. I had an occasion, Eisenstein spent about one year of his disgrace in the late ‘20s travelling around in Europe. And he came to one of the editors of the film, who was an old friend of mine, and Eisenstein asked him was good in the theatre. It was all realistic. And this friend told him about me and Eisenstein asked him whether he couldn’t see something. Then he got sick so I went to him. He wasn’t bad and I spent the whole morning talking with Eisenstein. I told him how I liked his handling of masses in Ten Days That Shook the World. And he said, ‘Look, look, I would have liked much more. I couldn’t do more because I could only let them march down the ramp and around the … I don’t know there were many people marched down Leningrad or Moscow. Which I liked very much. But nothing came from it and no real development. And I cannot do much. When I get anybody of thing, I have either soldiers or I have our old ballet masters, and they cannot really do free movement. But you will show me on pictures that the group splits and against it, and things around. Why don’t you come to Russia? There we could do wonders with what you are doing. There you have thousands of people, here you have hundreds.’ And I said, ‘No, I am a Social Democrat and I am not a Communist.’ ‘We are artists.  Say you are a communist, say you are a communist and I will have an invitation to Russia in two months, but never as a Social Democrat. If you would be a Nationalist or Conservative I could get you over in a few months, but not as a Social Democrat, that is the worst thing.’ It was not for me. He said, ‘In Western Europe I would also be, and therefore I would also adapt to things.’

 

JH: What was it like economically then? What did you

 

MG: We did not all much more. Later I was pretty safe. I owned a house in Berlin and had tenants and what I did in Jena and Berlin, I started to make money with these big festivals where the organisations can really pay what I wanted which really covered in a modest way … the Festspiel in… 

 

JH: The people in your festivals were they…

 

MG: The festivals started the last years

 

JH: The people who took part were they well-fed and economically secure? 

 

MG: The Social Democratic party or the Association of Workers singing choruses, all the Unions, the districts of the parties. For instance, when did it start? Somewhere around ‘20/’30, 1929, before I had made any of the big festivals came suddenly the … I had started about ‘28/’29 in Thuringia making little choruses of 10 – 12 minutes for meetings of the workers, of the young workers’ organisations and that found attention. And as the speakers come from other places. When the secretary of the Berlin [inaudible] phones me, ‘Can I come over to you with the secretary of the Magdeburg party, that was in ’29 or ’28, when the party congress of the Social Democratic party was in Magdeburg that year, so they came. The same was in Mannheim. I spent that year, Wednesday and Thursday in Mannheim and Friday to Sunday in Magdeburg to preparing. And that was probably very modest, but it got more and more. For instance, May Festivals, was the old-fashioned probably today all over, there was a speech and the chorus sang and the gymnastic group did something to show culture, but it was all disconnected. My idea when I made a festival, it had to be one fluid thing where these different elements were worked in but expressed the whole idea where also the speaker was put in the middle. But in one fluent thing. For instance, I had once my first Mime Festival, you are too young for England history, and [Ellen] Wilkinson [of the Labour Party] was enthusiastic. Do you know who Wilkinson was? 

 

JH: Yes

 

MG: It was my first May festival and the groups who looked for new… See, these old men were cultural chairman. Oh dear, there must be something more than the old-fashioned thing. And she came to the first May festival. I was told we must have a gymnastic group, we have this and we have that. And we have a little choir here. But bind that whole thing together. And then … but after that, next year three districts came to me for the May Festival. I could have built up a business simply on May Festivals. Berlin had 24 districts and each district had these evenings. There was the big demonstration in the centre, but in the evenings they had to do something, and then some of my … I rehearsed the last year before Hitler, so ’32. I had three May festivals, one afternoon which was very interesting which I made in a park in Neukölln on a big stair. 

 

JH: Now what difference did Hitler’s arrival and when did Hitler really

 

MG: Hitler probably did similar. I left when Hitler came. 

 

JH: He didn’t just come. He gradually came. 

 

MG: He did not. It this area it is not clear. I don’t think Hitler and the Nazis did anything in the cultural area before. At least not in Berlin. 

 

JH: And this happened overnight. 

 

MG: He got then the power. That I cannot tell you, ask Knust about that. I was not in Germany. 

 

JH: You left when? 

 

MG: Hitler became Dictator on the 5th March 1933 and I left on the 18th April 1933. 

 

JH: His influence had not been felt before that? 

 

MG: No

 

JH: But he was trying

 

MG: Not in any cultural sense. Not that I know of. 

 

JH: But he was already

 

MG: Also not even in the theatre. There were of course when I was in Gera, later wife of Göring, the actress. Everybody laughed at her, she was pretty well known in the provinces, in the Weimar National Theatre. I saw her once in Romain Rolland’s Rue D’Amour where she played the wife very decently. But everybody in the theatre laughed about her already in the ’25/’26. She went around with a big gold swastika. A crazy woman. An exceptional actress but a crazy woman. But any cultural activity, probably then, when they were in power, they brought a mass youth movement, they had to do something. But it was much more militaristic. Much more marching and such. I do not know … Knust ought to know. 

 

Gaukelei

JH: But Laban did a … did you ever see Gaukelei, the ballet? 

 

MG: No. 

 

VB: Gaukelei

 

MG: Oh yes, that I saw. You find that very dictator-like? 

 

JH: I find it against dictators. 

 

MG: Yes, it’s against dictators, yes. But that was

 

JH: Was that not dangerous? 

 

MG: I was very impressed by Gaukelei. And Wigman also 

 

JH: But was that not against dictators? 

 

MG: Yes, but in general. It’s against dictators. 

 

JH: But very dangerous when Hitler comes. 

 

MG: That might be but it was probably well played. Jooss played quite long, all over Germany. That was one of his stand-outs before he made The Green Table. Laban had general pacifist and the whole time very decent ideas against dictatorship. 

 

JH: But in the same book that he left out ‘Mankind’, he includes a synopsis of Gaukelei. 

 

MG: I don’t have the book and that might be. He might not even realise the political implication. 

 

JH: I think I would agree. 

 

M: For him is that the individual against the… and the tragedy of the man who becomes the dictator, who gets isolated. That is probably… You see, Laban’s roots ideologically are in the 19th Century in Nietzsche and all this … already there is the motto, the anti-Nietzsche, against the dictatorial ideas in Nietzsche, the rebellion. That is of course where he realises where he relates this to politics. That I don’t know. You also know who was involved in the Mannheim Festival? Dr Heinrich. 

 

JH: Tell me about him? 

 

MG: You had no occasion to meet him? He died three years ago. Dr Heinrich was basically a municipal functionary and Laban came after the First World War, 1918/19, exactly I don’t know. It was first in Nuremburg where a student of his a friend, Meisenberg, and she came to Jooss in England, in Dartington. And Dr Heinrich was then a commissioner, I don’t know where or of what, of streets or so. A young municipal official who was a Social Democrat, met Karolina in municipal administration and Dr Heinrich became Lord Mayor of Mannheim about 1925 and he was interested in Laban’s work. All the time they corresponded, they were quite friendly. And he gave him the business, and Heinrich wanted also, not only performances and theatre and opera, but a mass festival, so he asked Laban to do that. That was Dr Heinrich. 

 

JH: A medical doctor? 

 

MG: No, a Doctor of Law. 

 

JH: A doctor of philosophy. 

 

MG: In Germany we have doctors of everything. Of administration, probably. Municipal administration. They studied administration which is not a simple thing. And Heinrich was after the war, after the Second World War, what was he? Either a minister in Baden Wurtenburg or the Mayor of a big city. No he was one of the Hessian ministers. He died four or five years ago. He was very interesting. He was the kind of man who out of the populist ideas, out of Social…, Laban also came to befriend, such people always find in Laban’s life the cultural, political side. 

 

Hyperinflation in Germany 1922 - 1923

JH: Can I take you back to 1923 to the fall of the German Mark? When the mark collapsed. 

 

MG: You know that Laban had, the year before, build up his Hamburger Tanz Bühne? It paid very small salaries but it had an ensemble of students of maybe 25 – 30 people. And which was partially financed by all kinds of sources. By a Berlin banker - what’s his name? - who financed also Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette films, with dollars, when the inflation came. But Laban sent away and kept only a small nucleus of five or six people – the Kammertanz Bühne. Dusia Bereska and Gert Loeszer. These are names, eh? That was financial. But then he started with just a small group to build up bigger. There he had movement classes in Hamburg with Knust. In Jena with me, he did Don Juan where he came like a touring company with his three or four soloists and then used the choruses which came. A few months before he showed what he wanted of movement, and music…

 

JH: This collapse of the economy, did it not affect the artistic environment very much. 

 

MG: No. During that time everything went helter skelter. Nothing was solid. It happened things in the theatre which were marvellous; for instance, Rheinhardt’s production of Saint Joan by Shaw and such things. We had no money so we lived from week to week. When we were with Laban in the Tanzbühne, it was Christmas 1923 shortly before the stabilisation… but for instance, we were not Hamburgers. We lived in furnished and there was the mother of one of the clerks in the office who had a big house and cooked for 20 – 25 people so we got the money on Friday and we rushed to her and gave her 90% and for that she fed us the week and for the rest one bought bread for the week and milk for the week. Thus we had one meal. And it was a very convenient, as long as it went, as long as there were a few dollars. And that is the… And Laban prepared two or three, he prepared for December a Gastspiel in Berlin and he worked very hard on preparing. He didn’t care very much for politics. On the other side of Hamburg there was shooting.  There was what John Reed [American author Ten Days that Shook the World] so falsifies as if all Hamburg was in flames, but it was only three sites in Barmbeck [a distinct in Hamburg] in reality. But the American journalist make a bigger story of the events, of everything. 

 

JH: what else was happening in Berlin, besides, say… Brecht? 

 

MG: Brecht was in Berlin and very young. 

 

JH: So Laban would never meet Brecht. 

 

Laban’s recitals with Gert Loeszer

MG: He didn’t go much to the theatre, and he had no time. [Inaudible sentence] He was very much attracted by Wagner and he had a programme with Gert Loeszer of dances to Wagner music. That was in 1924. A whole year. All kinds of Wagner music, much from Tristan and Isolde and Götterdammerung. That was one of his … the same idea of the gesamtkunstwerk. Word and ton [sound] and movement. That was of course his line. I don’t know where he got some of his first ideas from Wagner. That was the atmosphere where he grew up, the gesamtkunstwerk. For him, he had to bring the dance in and put it on the basis of dance. Berlin came on the height of inflation. We had prepared three big dance dramas, one was a re-study of the Gaulelei and two others. And it was a complete fiasco. The philharmonic hall was three-quarters empty. It was a complete … What was the name of the banker? The old man lives in Munich, the old man who co-financed him and his son managed Lotte Reiniger. You’ve heard of her in England?  This banker paid for the costumes? 

 

JH: Which Berlin occasion was that? 

 

MG: That in December ’23. 

 

[cut in tape]

JH: When was Die Nacht? 

 

MG: Die Nacht must have been 1927 at the Dance Congress in Magdeburg, the first Dance Congress. That was in the Festhalle in Magdeburg and was based on some lines of Goethe. I cannot find it now, with its forty volumes. But you have programmes in the archives about that. You would be amazed when you would move what happens in your chest in the night in dreams, what you all can have for ideas. All kinds of grotesque and things try to… and the darkness of the night can be in your mind, and you are lost. 

 

[cut in tape]

 

MG: In ’27 in Dusseldorf, Tanz Congress was two years later. But I think it was Die Nacht in the first. 

 

JH: I can check it anyway. 

[cut in tape]

 

MG: What’s it called? 

 

VB: Barnet. 

 

MG: Oh you know her, yes? 

 

VB: I’ve had contact with her. 

 

MG: In High Barnet she lives there in what do you call that Abbey, that former artist’s colony? 

 

[Ends 00.51.00]

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 Der Moderne Tanz, Hans Brandenburg (Munich, Georg Müller, 1917)

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See reference in Valerie Preston-Dunlop’s Laban: An Extraordinary Life (London, Dance Books, 1998) p.75

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Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger (2 June 1899 – 19 June 1981) was a German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation. Her best known films are The Adventures of Prince Achmed, from 1926—thought to be one of the oldest surviving feature-length animated films—and Papageno (1935). [Wikipedia]

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​ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Brandt-Knack