ABSTRACT
After the performance at the Volksbühne, my life changed considerably. I had been “discovered.” In no time I was booked solid for almost a year, partly in concerts and often in Kabaretts, and even in nightclubs, which I did not like at all. The “Kabarett der Komiker,” (the best variety show in Berlin, where you could see jugglers and acrobats but also some of the greatest stars of film and theater) held me over for many months, and Arthur Bernstein, the manager of Palucca and the newly discovered Walter Gieseking, signed me for a concert tour through municipal theaters. I was obviously “in.” But the strange thing was that I was not even fully aware of my new status. Of course I read the reviews, and I must have seen my name in lights on the marquees, but none of that sank in. I was painfully shy, but at the same time self-assured and stubborn as far as my work was concerned: a strange mixture of naive and knowing, and certainly very immature. Sometimes people thought I was stuck-up when in reality I was simply scared. This was the most exciting time in the history of the Berlin Theater – a hotbed of creativity and frivolity: Max Reinhardt, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, Valeska Gert, Friedrich Hollander’s Cabaret “Tingel-Tangel,” the night life and the whole avant garde. But unfortunately I shut myself off from it all. I had rented a room in some suburb and came into Berlin only for my performances. I did not take part at all in that rich turmoil. Later I realized what I had missed, and I’ve often regretted it.
