Helga Hahnemann | |
---|---|
![]() 1988 | |
Born | September 8, 1937 |
Died | November 20, 1991 54) | (aged
Alma mater | Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts, Berlin-Niederschöneweide |
Occupation(s) | Cabaret artiste Stage performer Actress Singer Voice-over artiste Television/radio presenter/moderator |
Spouse | Maria Johanna Caroline Bladt |
Helga "Big Helga" Hahnemann (8 September 1937 - 20 November 1991) was an East German multi-faceted stage performer and entertainer. She came to wider prominence through her television and radio appearances after 1962. By the time reunification arrived in 1990 she had become a leading star of the small screen in East Germany. She fell terminally ill and then died shortly afterwards, possibly because of the extent of her addiction to cigarettes: she was 54. Her death left unanswered the question of how successfully her performances might have captivated pan-German television audiences post unification. [1] [2] [3]
The annual "Goldene Henne" (literally "Golden Hen") prize was inaugurated in 1995 to celebrate and commemorate her. (One of Helga Hahnemann's informal soubriquets among fans was "Henne".) [2] [4]
Helga "Henne" Hahnemann was born in Berlin-Wilhelmsruh, the youngest of her parents' four children, a couple of years before war broke out. [5] Wilhelmsruh was a central quarter of Berlin which after 1945 would find itself administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone. [6] The zone was rebranded and relaunched in October 1949 as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany). She later told an interviewer that she discovered her talent for comedy while still at school. [4] Passing her Abitur (school final exams) opened the way for a university-level education: between 1956 and 1959 Hahnemann studied at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin-Niederschöneweide. [7] In 1959 she made her stage debut with Die Pfeffermühle (literally, "The Pepper Mill"), a mildly edgy cabaret ensemble established five years earlier in Leipzig. [2]
She found Leipzig did not suit her, however, and returned in 1961 or 1962 to Berlin, [1] where she concentrated on cabaret and comedy genres, working on a freelance basis, primarily with one-woman programmes. [5] Increasingly, however, she found herself undertaking work for DFF, East Germany's party-controlled monopoly broadcaster. Her work covered television and radio work as well as voice-acting assignments. [1] Some of her best remembered appearances from this time were on the regular satirical comedy show, "Tele-BZ". [8] Her appearances as the main attraction on "Tele-BZ", which soon won a nationwide audience of several million for the shows in which she appeared, continued for three decades, earning her the prestigious arts prize of the East German Trades Union Federation. [9] Eventually, in 1969, Hahnemann joined the broadcaster's payroll as a member of the "DFF Drama Ensemble" ("Schauspielerensemble des DFF"). She remained on the payroll for the next 21 years, despite an annual salary of 1,500 Ostmarks, which even then was a relatively modest amount: by 1990 it had increased to 2,100 Ostmarks. [3]
1974 marked the start of a productive seventeen partnership with the scriptwriter Angela Gentzmer who worked with her on song lyrics and sketches. At least one source describes the two women as a "dream team". Where the dream team needed a new tune, the composer Arndt Bause would produce another from his apparently endless stream of new dance music melodies. The material Hahnemann was now using made her "the voice of the little man". There are suggestions that she was allowed a certain measure of license that a more overtly political performer would have been denied. [3] [9] At the end of the 1970s she began working with the Berliner Rundfunk ("East Berlin Radio") as a moderator-presenter on her programme "Helgas Top(p)-Musike", which also formed the basis for three television programmes. [3] Success as a singer continued with "Schlager" numbers - many employing local Berlin dialect - such as "Wo ist mein Jeld bloß geblieben", " Jetzt kommt dein Süße", "U-Bahn-Beat", "100 mal Berlin", "Clärchens Ballhaus" (sung as a duet with Hartmut Schulze-Gerlach), and "Een kleenet Menschenkind". [10]
Another much loved programme which Hahnemann regularly presented was Ein Kessel Buntes, a Saturday evening television variety show. She performed with actor-comedians such as Alfred Müller, Herbert Köfer, Dagmar Gelbke and Ingeborg Naß in a wide variety of television comedy sketches. [3] She appeared regularly alongside Rolf Herricht, Gerd E. Schäfer, Margot Ebert, Traute Sense and Heinz Behrens in her role as "Erna Mischke" in the long-running light-hearted television drama series Maxe Baumann. [11] She teamed up with Ingeborg Naß to head up workers' cabaret in Berlin. [7] Hahnemann also progressed her career as a voice-over artist. Of particular note in this context was the use of her voice for Yvonne Jensen, the main female protagonist in the popular German-language versions for 3 of the 14 (filmed in Danish) Olsen Gang movies. [12]
The changes which led the German Democratic Republic to democracy were followed, formally in October 1990, by German reunification. Hahnemann set about trying to win over audiences in a very different kind of Germany, in which western social and economic norms tended to trump those that had emerged in the east under Soviet socialism. [8] However, she was already terminally ill. There were well advanced plans for a New Year's Eve "television spectacular" on 31 December 1990 / 1 January 1991 with Helga Hahnemann presenting it. In the event she was too ill to participate. It remains unclear when she realised the seriousness of her physical problems. Sources indicate that "Big Helga" had long been noted as a big eater, and she was a heavy smoker. [13] There are indications that for several months she held off visiting a doctor in pursuit of a diagnosis. She was keen that "the public should say she was 100% fit when she died". [9] According to at least one source the late-stage lung cancer diagnosis came through in November 1991, when only a couple of weeks of life were left to her. [2]
Aktuelle Kamera was the flagship television newscast of Deutscher Fernsehfunk, the state broadcaster of the German Democratic Republic. On air from 21 December 1952 to 14 December 1990, Aktuelle Kamera was one of the main propaganda tools of the East German government.
Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, shortened to MDR, is the public broadcaster for the federal states of Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt in Germany. Established in January 1991, its headquarters are in Leipzig, with regional studios in Dresden, Erfurt and Magdeburg. MDR is a member of the ARD consortium of public broadcasters in Germany.
Falko Götz is a German football manager and former player.
Berliner Fussball Club Dynamo e. V., commonly abbreviated to BFC Dynamo or BFC, alternatively sometimes called Dynamo Berlin, is a German football club based in the locality of Alt-Hohenschönhausen of the borough of Lichtenberg of Berlin.
Sender Freies Berlin was the ARD public radio and television service for West Berlin from 1 June 1954 until 1990 and for Berlin as a whole from German reunification until 30 April 2003. On 1 May 2003 it merged with Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg to form Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg.
Rundfunk der DDR was the collective designation for radio broadcasting organized by the State Broadcasting Committee in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) until German reunification in 1990.
Frank Terletzki is a German football coach and former player of BFC Dynamo.
Helga Schubert is a German psychologist and author.
Deutscher Fernsehfunk was the state television broadcaster in the German Democratic Republic from 1952 to 1991.
Ursula Karusseit was a German actress.
Erik Neutsch was one of the most successful writers in East Germany.
Vera Franziska Oelschlegel is a German actress, singer, artistic director, drama director and professor of drama at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts. She was a celebrity in East Germany before 1989. After that, from 1990 till 2013, she headed up the Theater des Ostens touring theatre company.
The Schöneiche bei Berlin tramway is the tramway network of the city of Schöneiche bei Berlin, Germany.
Arndt Bause was a German composer of popular songs.
Ulrike Liedtke is a German musicologist and politician (SPD). From 1991 to 2014 she was founding director of the Musikakademie Rheinsberg. Since 2014 she has been a member of the Landtag of Brandenburg. After her re-election in 2019 she was elected President of the Landtag.
Wolf-Dieter Hauschild was a German conductor, choirmaster, artistic director, composer, harpsichordist and university lecturer.
Peter Dorn is a German composer and classical pianist.
Uschi Brüning is a German jazz and soul singer and songwriter. She made her career in East Germany and was 42 when the Berlin wall was breached. She has transitioned and sustained her career more successfully than other former East German performance artists post-reunification, though her fan base remains concentrated principally in the east.
Irina Liebmann is a German journalist-author and sinologist of Russo-German provenance. She has won a number of important literary prizes: the most significant of these, probably, was the 2008 Leipzig Book Fair non-fiction Prize, awarded for "Wäre es schön? Es wäre schön!", a biography of her father, a noted anti-Nazi activist and political exile in Warsaw and Moscow who, after 1945, returned to what became, in 1949, the German Democratic Republic and in 1953, despite his longstanding record of communist activism, emerged as an uncompromising critic of the East German leader Walter Ulbricht: he was expelled from the party and suffered various other government mandated public indignities. She grew up and lived the first part of her adult life in the German Democratic Republic, but succeeded in moving to West Berlin during 1988, thereby anticipating reunification by more than a year.
Jutta Fleck is an attempted escapee and former political prisoner of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. She is known as "The Woman from Checkpoint Charlie". Following a failed attempt to escape from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with her daughters in August 1982, she was imprisoned in Hoheneck Women's Prison and, after being deported to West Germany, spent four years protesting for her daughters' release from East Germany.
{{cite web}}
: |author=
has generic name (help){{cite web}}
: |author=
has generic name (help){{cite book}}
: |work=
ignored (help){{cite web}}
: |author=
has generic name (help)