Hanna Berger

Hanna Berger (born Johanna Elisabeth Hochleitner-Köllchen; 23 August 1910 in Vienna; died 15 January 1962 in East Berlin) was an Austrian dancer, choreographer, teacher, director, theatre director, writer and lifelong anti-Nazi and communist.

She was described as part of the free dance movement.

Johanna Elisabeth Hochleitner-Köllchen was the child of Maria Hochleitner was illegitimate.

Her father was described as coming from the bourgeois social class and she would later describe him as being the wealthy Eduard Wolfram.

Hochleitner's husband was railway worker Wilhelm Köllchen.

As a child she was baptised a Roman Catholic.

She spent the first years of her childhood partly with her grandfather and partly with her mother in the working-class district of Meidling in Vienna.

At the age of eight, she was formally adopted by Köllchen and lived with her parents.

When she was six years old, caught tuberculosis, that affected her eye.

As a child she was subject to abject poverty that coloured her whole existence, resulting in her developing a human condition which she described as "hypersensitivity and a longing for art" ("Überempfindsamkeit und Sehnsucht nach Kunst").

From the age 14 she started to receive piano lessons.

At the age of 16, she married Leopold Berger a machinist but the marriage did not last and the couple separated almost a year later.

From 1927 to 1928 she was a member of the Communist Party of Austria.

From 1929 to 1934 she studied gymnastics modern dance in Berlin along with Jonny Ahemm, Vera Skoronel, Gertrud Wienecke and Mary Wigman in Dresden.

To make a living and to afford her fees, she would give dance lessons working under the name Hanna Wolfram and work as a masseuse.

In 1929 she met the sculptor Fritz Cremer, who was a committed communist.

Her first engagements as a professional contemporary dancer took her on tour with Mary Wigman in 1935 She danced in the Women's Dances (Frauentänze) cycle, ("The Seer", "Witches' Dance"), among others.

In 1936 she was a member of Trudi Schoop troupe and danced in his choreographies "Zur Annoncengabe" and "Fridolin unterwegs!"

during a long tour of the United States and in London and Zurich.

She completed her knowledge of modern dance during several months at the German Master Studio for Dance (Deutschen Meisterstätten für Tanz) in Berlin, where she attended classes in theatre directing, ballet, character and national dance.

By 1936, she was a sworn anti-Nazi and this was confirmed when she wrote articles using the pseudonym "The Stage Artist" titled: "Dance in the Stadium" ("Tanz im Stadion") and "About German dance and its real content" ("Über den deutschen Tanz und seine realen Inhalte") for the Swiss theatre magazine Der Bühnenkünstler, where she attacked Nazi cultural policy.

Among other things, it states:

On 11 October 1937, she made her evening debut as a choreographer and dancer as part of an eleven-part solo at the Berlin Bach-Saal.

She performed a set of dances under specific themes, "Three Romantic Studies: Summer, Late Summer, Summer in Paris", "Everyday Story: Girl, Lover, Abandoned Mother, Mourning Woman".

At the critical time of her solo, she danced one of her best-known dances, the "Solo Krieger", to music by Ulrich Kessler (musician) The dance had been banned by the Nazis and was only shown due to the exigency of the Austrian ambassador, who was patron of the event.

On the 18 October 1937, the solo dance was reviewed by Dietrich Dibelius in the Frankfurter Zeitung (Number 531) in a piece titled: "Kritik zum Debüt-Abend von Hanna Berger anlässlich einer Aufführung des Tanzsolos Krieger op. 13" where he stated:

Berger's solo dance was not well received by the Nazis and she was forced to flee from Nazi Germany to Vienna.

Her Vienna debut took place in December 1937 at the great hall of the Urania.

She found support and protection in the form of city counciller Viktor Matejka who recognised the nature of her dance as being militant and politically expressive and offered her a safe place to dance at the Volksheim Ottakring.

On 5 February 1938, Berger performed the "Krieger" for a second time at the Volksheim Ottakring in Vienna.

The dance was reviewed by an editor in conversation with Berger, in Workers-Weekly (Arbeiter-Woche) newspaper stating that everybody present must have developed disgust for war.

She decided to keep her married name but was never formally divorced until 1943.

She never married again.

They became partners in a relationship that lasted until 1950, when Cremer decided to move to the new East Germany.

They split for a number of reasons.

Cremer did not like the "Americanisation" of Vienna and increased focus on communists who were being stigmatised.

The other more important reason was the scandal over the memorial to the victims of fascism at the Vienna Central Cemetery.

The memorial represented a naked bronze figure of a resistance fighter, which was considered controversial by church members.

Theodor Innitzer, the Archbishop of Vienna wanted a fig leave placed on the sculptor, which Cremer did not accept.

Another reason for the couples split, was Cremer's many affairs.