Lotte Lenya: audio document about Kurt Weill’s flight from Germany (circa 1978)
Lotte Lenya: audio document about Kurt Weill’s flight from Germany (circa 1978)
The actress and singer Lotte Lenya speaks in this audio document about a detail, which likely warned the composer Kurt Weill very early on bringing him to leave Germany already in March 1933. Weill was a member of the circle of friends around Berlin publisher Ernst Rowohlt, who supposedly warned Weill that his name was on the Nazi’s so-called “Black List”. The historian Walter Steinthal, who was in touch with the already imprisoned Hans Fallada, also warned Weill. The composer first of all left Berlin heading for Munich where, together with Lotte Lenya, he waited for the outcome of the Reichstag elections on 5 March 1933. After that he returned to Berlin for a short period to dissolve his household, fleeing from Berlin on 21 March 1933 and brought by friends to the French border. The newly elected Reichstag formed on the same day and two days later Kurt Weill reached the French capital.
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