Leila Negra

Last updated

Leila Negra, the stage name of Marie Nejar (born 20 March 1930) is an Afro-German singer and actress. She began her career as a child film actor in the 1940s, became a singer after World War II, and left performing in the late 1950s to become a nurse.

Contents

Family and early childhood

She was born Marie Nejar in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany. [1] Her father was a black sailor out of Liverpool, England, who originally came from Ghana; he saw his daughter only a few times. [2] Her mother, Cécilie, was the daughter of a white German woman and a creole man from the island of Martinique. [2] Cécilie was initially disowned by her family on account of her interracial relationship. She concealed her pregnancy from her family and placed Marie in an orphanage when she was born. When Marie was three years old, Cécilie removed her from the orphanage and they moved to Hamburg to be near Cécilie's mother, with whom Cécilie had reconciled. Cécilie, who worked as a musician, [3] bled to death following an abortion when Marie was 10 years old and Marie was then cared for by her maternal grandmother.

Marie grew up in the Hamburg docklands neighbourhood of St. Pauli. [4] When the National Socialists came to power, she was exposed to hostility because of her dark skin. [1] Due to the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, she was unable to finish her education and instead had to do forced labour in a factory. By her own account, she survived the early years of Nazism with the help of sympathetic people in her community, including some of the local policemen; [1] later her appearances in Nazi propaganda films offered some protection. [5]

Career as performer

Her film career as a performer began as a result of a search instigated by Joseph Goebbels, the German Minister of Propaganda, for black children who could play African natives in various films being made by UFA, which had been taken over by the Nazis in 1933. Nejar first appeared in the 1943 fantasy film Münchhausen , performing as a black servant with a fan. Only 12 years old when the film was shot, she didn't realize it was propaganda and was happy to have two weeks off from school and earn some money. [1] After that, she had a small role in the comedy Quax in Africa (produced in 1943/44 and released in 1947) as the daughter of an African tribal chief. After the war, she performed in films as a singer rather than an actor, including Dancing Stars (1952), Salto Mortale (1953), The Sweetest Fruits (1954), and Der Schweigende Engel (1954).

During the post-war years, she worked at a bar in the winter and as a cigarette girl at a resort in the summer. Asked to test a microphone one evening for other performers, she impressed the audience and the musicians with her talent and started a career as a singer. [3] It was at this time that she adopted the stage name Leila Negra. [1] Even though she was already 20, when she got a contract with a record company, she was promoted as a "15-year-old child" star. Over the next decade, she had a number of hit songs, including the title song from the 1952 film Toxi , which was about the first wave of children born to black Allied servicemen and white German mothers. [6] She was the first to record the Gerhard Winkler song "Mütterlein" (English equivalent: Mommy), which subsequently became a hit for both Frankie Laine and David Whitfield with English lyrics under the title "Answer Me, My Love". [7] She toured with the well-known Austrian singer Peter Alexander, as well as with other musicians. [6]

In her mid-twenties, after a career spanning half a dozen films and some 30 songs, she withdrew from performing as Leila Negra. In 1957, she began training as a nurse, which became her career for the remainder of her working life.

In 2007, she published her autobiography, Mach nicht so traurige Augen, weil du ein Negerlein bist: Meine Jugend im Dritten Reich (Don't look so sad, because you are a little Negro: my youth in the Third Reich). The title is taken from one of her hit songs of the 1950s. As of 2015, she was retired and still living in Hamburg.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hitler Youth</span> Youth organisation of the Nazi Party

The Hitler Youth was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name Hitler-Jugend, Bund deutscher Arbeiterjugend in July 1926. From 1936 until 1945, it was the sole official boys' youth organisation in Germany and it was partially a paramilitary organisation. It was composed of the Hitler Youth proper for male youths aged 14 to 18, and the German Youngsters in the Hitler Youth for younger boys aged 10 to 14.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marika Rökk</span> Hungarian-born actress, singer, dancer

Marika Rökk was a German-Austrian dancer, singer and actress of Hungarian descent who gained prominence in German films in the Nazi era. She resumed her career in 1947 and was one of Europe's most famous operetta singers, performing onstage until 1986.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zarah Leander</span> Swedish actress and singer (1907–1981)

Zarah Leander was a Swedish singer and actress whose greatest success was in Germany between 1936 and 1943, when she was contracted to work for the state-owned Universum Film AG (UFA). Although no exact record sales numbers exist, she was probably among Europe's best-selling recording artists in the years prior to 1945. Her involvement with UFA caused her films and lyrics to be identified as Nazi propaganda. Though she had taken no public political position and was dubbed an "Enemy of Germany" by Joseph Goebbels, she remained a controversial figure for the rest of her life. As a singer, Leander was known for her confident style and her deep contralto voice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emmy Göring</span> German actress and Hermann Görings wife (1893–1973)

Emma Johanna Henny "Emmy" Göring was a German actress and the second wife of Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief Hermann Göring. She served as Adolf Hitler's hostess at many state functions and thereby staked a claim to the title of "First Lady of the Third Reich", a title also sometimes conferred upon Magda Goebbels.

Afro-Germans or Black Germans are Germans of Sub-Saharan African descent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ireen Sheer</span> German-English singer

Ireen Sheer is a German-English singer. She had a top five hit on the German singles chart with "Goodbye Mama" in 1973. She went on to finish fourth at the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 representing Luxembourg, sixth at the Eurovision Song Contest 1978 representing Germany, and thirteenth at the Eurovision Song Contest 1985 representing Luxembourg again.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lena Valaitis</span> Lithuanian–German schlager singer (born 1943)

Lena Valaitis is a Lithuanian–German schlager singer who had her greatest success during the 1970s and 1980s. She finished second at the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest.

<span title="German-language text"><i lang="de">Die Deutsche Wochenschau</i></span> Newsreel series released in Nazi Germany

Die Deutsche Wochenschau is the title of the unified newsreel series released in the cinemas of Nazi Germany from June 1940 until the end of World War II, with the final edition issued on 22 March 1945. The co-ordinated newsreel production was set up as a vital instrument for the mass distribution of Nazi propaganda at war. Today the preserved Wochenschau short films make up a significant part of the audiovisual records of the Nazi era.

Wunschkonzert is a 1940 German drama propaganda film by Eduard von Borsody. After Die große Liebe, it was the most popular film of wartime Germany, reaching the second highest gross.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harald Paulsen</span> German actor and film director

Harald Paulsen was a German stage and film actor and director. He appeared in 125 films between 1920 and 1954.

The German Strafgesetzbuch in section § 86a outlaws "use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations" outside the contexts of "art or science, research or teaching". The law does not name the individual symbols to be outlawed, and there is no official exhaustive list. However, the law has primarily been used to outlaw fascist, Nazi, communist, Islamic extremist and Russian militarist symbols. The law, adopted during the Cold War, most notably affected the Communist Party of Germany, which was banned as unconstitutional in 1956, the Socialist Reich Party, which was banned in 1952, and several small far-right parties.

Das Erbe was a Nazi propaganda movie published in 1935. Produced by Harold Mayer under the aegis of the Nazi party's Office of Racial Policy and directed by Carl C. Hartmann, it aimed at legitimizing the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, which allowed for sterilization. The movie is 12 minutes long, and was shown as part of several trailers in contemporary German movie theaters.

<i>Negermusik</i> Defamatory term for blues and jazz

Negermusik was a derogatory term used by the Nazi Party during the Third Reich to demonize musical styles that had been invented by black people such as blues and jazz. The Nazi Party viewed these musical styles as degenerate works created by an "inferior" race and they were therefore prohibited. The term, at that same time, was also applied to indigenous music styles of black Africans.

Das häßliche Mädchen is a German comedy film made in early 1933, during the transition from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany, and premièred in September that year. It was the first or second film directed by Hermann Kosterlitz, who left Germany before the film was completed and later worked in the United States under the name Henry Koster, and the last German film in which Dolly Haas appeared; she also later emigrated to the US. A riot broke out at the première to protest the male lead, Max Hansen, who was supposedly "too Jewish." The film's representation of the "ugly girl" as an outsider has been described as a metaphorical way to explore the outsider existence of Jews.

<i>Toxi</i> 1952 film

Toxi is a 1952 West German drama film directed by Robert A. Stemmle and starring Elfie Fiegert, Paul Bildt and Johanna Hofer. The film's release came as the first wave of children born to black Allied servicemen and white German mothers entered school.

<i>Vienna Blood</i> (film) 1942 Austrian film

Vienna Blood is a 1942 German operetta film, based on the 1899 operetta of the same name. With box-office takings of seven million Reichsmarks, it was one of the most financially successful films of the Nazi era.

Alice Ludwig was a German film editor who worked on many films and television series between 1932 and 1973. After first entering the film industry during the Weimar Republic, she worked continuously during the Nazi era. Following the Second World War she edited Marriage in the Shadows (1947), an anti-Nazi work of the rubble film period. Much of her later film work was in popular melodramas such as Gabriela (1950). From the 1960s onwards she switched to working in television, her final employment being the editing over fifty episodes of the crime series Hamburg Transit.

<i>Salto Mortale</i> (1953 film) 1953 West German drama film

Salto Mortale is a 1953 West German drama film directed by Viktor Tourjansky and starring Margot Hielscher, Philip Dorn and Karlheinz Böhm. It was shot at the Bavaria Studios in Munich and at the city's Zirkus Crone. The film's sets were designed by the art directors Hans Kuhnert and Theo Zwierski.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theodor Wonja Michael</span> German journalist (1925–2019)

Theodor Wonja Michael was a German child actor, journalist and public servant, as well as a prominent speaker on living as an Afro-German and a prisoner in Nazi forced labor camps during Nazi Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert Engelsing</span> German lawyer and resistance fighter (1904–1962)

Herbert Enke Wilhelm Engelsing was a right-wing German Catholic lawyer in Berlin and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. When the Nazi regime began, Engelsing found himself unable to work in law. Instead he found work in the German film industry, becoming a very successful film producer with Tobis Film. In 1938, Engelsing and his wife Ingeborg became close friends with Libertas and Harro Schulze-Boysen who were part of a resistance organisation against the Nazis. Engelsing maintained a high profile in the film business and low profile in the resistance, but made his mark by introducing many new people into the organisation, brokering deals and providing secure locations for meetings. The couple survived the war and moved to the United States in 1947. Engelsing did not receive permanent residency due to false accusations of being the head of a Soviet sleeper cell.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Raffington, Jermaine. Interview with Marie Nejar. YouTube, Aug. 1, 2015.
  2. 1 2 "Marie Nejar Remembers Her Childhood in Nazi Germany". Black Central Europe, 2015.
  3. 1 2 Jet, May 15, 1952, p. 59.
  4. ↑ Michael, Theodor. Black German: An Afro-German Life in the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 6.
  5. ↑ Layne, Priscilla. "Leila Negra and the Struggle for a Black German Identity". UNC Global. Information about talk on April 15, 2012.
  6. 1 2 Fenner, Angelica. Race under Reconstruction in German Cinema: Robert Stemmle's Toxi. University of Toronto Press, 2011.
  7. ↑ Kutner, Jon, and Spencer Leigh. 1,000 UK Number One Hits Omnibus Press, 2010.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.