Talk:Paul Lincke

Translation of German Wikipedia article on Lincke

Below is my translation of the German Wikipedia article on Paul Lincke, which some editor requested on the article's main page.

Paul Lincke (born: 7 November 1866 in Berlin; died: 3 September 1946 in Hahnenklee near Goslar; full name Karl Emil Paul Lincke) was a German composer and music director at various theatres. He's regarded as the "father" of the Berlin operetta, and his significance to Berlin is comparable to that of Johann Strauss to Vienna and Jacques Offenbach to Paris. Paul Lincke lived in Berlin and was at the age of 19 already a theatre music director and a music publisher.

Life

Paul Lincke -- the son of August Lincke, who worked for the city of Berlin, and his wife, Emilie -- was born on November 7, 1866 in the vicinity of Berlin's Jungfern bridge.

At that time, his father August Lincke played the violin in several small orchestras. Son Paul was only five years old when his father died {of hemorrhagic smallpox}. His mother Emilie moved with her three children to Adalbert Street, later to Eisenbahn [Railroad] Street, near Lausitz Square.

Paul's musical inclinations were recognized early and revealed themselves especially in connection to military music. Thus, after completing high school, his mother sent him to an apprenticeship in Wittenberge. Here he was trained as a bassoonist in the Wittenberge city band of Rudolf Kleinow. Furthermore, he learned to play the French horn, percussion, the piano, as well as the violin.

His build did not meet the requirements of a military musician when in 1884 he applied for on-the-job training. Instead, he succeeded in obtaining an engagement as a bassoonist with Adolf Ernst at the Central theatre in Alte Jacob [Old Jacob] Street. After just a year, he moved to the orchestra of the Ostend theatre in Great Frankfurt Street. He impulsively fell in love with the sixteen-year-old soubrette Anna Müller, whom he married a year later. Under the name Anna Müller-Lincke, his wife later enjoyed triumphs with audiences in Berlin.

At the Königsstädt theatre, the Belle-Alliance theatre, and the Parody theatre in Oranien Street, Lincke gained valuable experience in entertainment music and dance music. He accompanied music hall shows and provided some compositions for popular singers of "couplets" (songs based on double entendres). His Venus auf Erde [Venus on Earth], a one act revue, was staged in 1897 at the Apollo theatre on Friedrich Street.

For two years, Lincke was lionized at Europe's most famous variety show, the Folies Bergère in Paris. Afterwards he returned with new compositions to the Apollo theatre. In 1899 his operetta Frau Luna [The Lady of the Moon] premiered with enormous success. In the same year, there followed his operetta Im Reiche des Indra [In the Realm of Indra] and in 1902 his operetta Lysistrata. Heinz Bolten-Baeckers provided the libretto for both works.

{In 1901 Lincke divorced Anna.} In the same year, he met a young actress who was known by her stage name, Ellen Sousa. She performed at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Stadt theatre in Berlin and enchanted Lincke at first sight. After Sousa spurned the infatuated Lincke’s initial invitation, which for Lincke was an unusual situation, he repeatedly attended her performances and each time invited her anew. Fortune soon would soon give her to him, and a few weeks after their first encounter, Lincke brought the young Ellen Sousa to his apartment at Oranien Street # 64. Their relation was marked by deep affection and passion. Lincke was not in the position to deny her any wish and so it happened that Sousa sang the operetta Frau Luna in the Apollo theatre.

Fantastic reviews and enthusiastic audiences led Sousa to hope for a great career, but things turned out otherwise. This relation is little known and still less well known is the fact that Ellen Sousa had to discontinue her stage performances because of her pregnancy. In 1902 Ellen Sousa bore Lincke a son. Lincke now demanded that Sousa fulfill her maternal duties and must set aside work on stage for this purpose. Yet only three months later Sousa was heard again singing Frau Luna at the Apollo.

Lincke’s attempts to come to terms with this situation foundered and so he offered to marry Ellen Sousa, demanding in return that she quit the stage forever. She denied him a respite and tried her new role as housewife, mother, and the woman waiting patiently at home for her husband’s return. Paul Lincke experienced during this time a further wave of success since his works were now requested in Paris. Furthermore, he passed the evenings, when he wasn’t at the theatre, in illustrious circles and high society -- gatherings that Sousa could not attend. Lincke now demanded an answer from Sousa and declared that he wanted to see her or their common son no more if she should decide to return to the stage. He gave her ten days to think it over, traveling during this time to a guest performance, and when he returned after six days, Sousa and the child had moved out.

Years later Ellen Sousa married a merchant, with whom she moved to Dresden and who adopted her son, without objections from Lincke. This was the end of Lincke’s relation to Ellen Sousa and his son. From those events came the waltz “Verschmähte Liebe” [Spurned Love].

In 1908 the director of the Apollo theatre, Richard Schulze, engaged Paul Lincke as the first music director and composer at the Metropol theatre, whose elaborately staged revues numbered among the greatest attractions of the imperial capital.

In 1937 he received the silver badge of honor of his native city; on his 75th birthday he was named an honorary citizen of Berlin.

In 1943 Lincke worked in Bohemia’s Marienbad in order to direct his work Frau Luna there, whose premiere in 1899 is regarded as the birth of Berlin operetta. During his absence, his apartment and his publishing firm in Berlin’s Oranien Street were bombed.

At war’s end, Lincke wanted to return to Berlin. For a long time he strove vainly to obtain approval to return from the Allies, who at that time required applicants to be native-born Berliners.

With the help of American General Pierce, he resettled at first in Arzberg in upper Franconia with his housekeeper, Johanna Hildebrandt, who had cared for him for 35 years. That place didn’t offer the proper climate to the ailing Lincke, so friends in Lautenthal (in the upper Harz) provided for his resettlement in Hahnenklee. There he died shortly before his 80th birthday. After the funeral service in the stave church of Hahnenklee, there followed his interment in the Hahnenklee cemetery, where his grave has been tended till today.

Information in curly brackets {} came from:

Wolfgang Helfritsch (April 2000), “ ‘Das ist der Berliner Luft, Luft, Luft,…’: Der Komponist Paul Lincke (1866-1946)” [“That’s Berlin’s Air, Air, Air,…”: Composer Paul Lincke (1866-1946)] Berlinische Monatsschrift, vol. 4, pages 96-100.

Cwkmail (talk) 17:59, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Softlavender (talk) 03:42, 26 March 2012 (UTC)