May, Gisela (1924—)

German singer and actress, celebrated as Germany's "First Lady of Political Song," who reigned as one of the unchallenged superstars of the German Democratic Republic for more than two decades . Born in Wetzlar, Germany, on May 31, 1924; daughter of Ferdinand May (1896–1977, a well-known playwright and author) and Käthe (Käte) Mettig May (1898–1969, a successful actress).

Began acting (1942) and became a permanent member of the ensembles of the Deutsches Theater (1951) and the Berliner Ensemble (1962), two of East Berlin's leading theaters; regarded for a generation as the foremost singing actress of the GDR, combined her singing career with that of a major dramatic actress; among her most famous roles was that of Mother Courage in Bertolt Brecht's play of the same name.

A veteran of the German stage for almost six decades, Gisela May began her career as an actress in Nazi Germany, survived the final days of World War II, was considered the fore-most singing actress of the German Democratic Republic for a generation, and continued to perform after the unification of the two German states in 1990. Regarded by many critics as the greatest interpreter of songs set to the sardonic texts of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Tucholsky, she was still performing in her mid-70s to enthusiastic audiences. She is known as a formidable interpreter of the repertory of pre-Nazi Berlin songs by Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, and other composers, and her use of words is comparable to the styling of Lotte Lenya and artistic newcomer Ute Lemper . Thousands gave May a standing ovation at the end of a two-hour recital of songs by Weill at the Eighth Kurt Weill Festival in his hometown of Dessau, Germany, in February 2000, the year of his birth centenary.

May's repertory and life mirror the history of 20th-century Germany. She was born in 1924 to parents who were successful artists. Her father Ferdinand May was a well-known playwright and author; her mother Käthe Mettig May was a successful actress. Both parents detested Nazism. In 1930, when Gisela, her brother Ulrich, and her parents settled in Leipzig, her mother joined the German Communist Party (KPD), which she viewed as the last hope for a successful resistance against Hitler's brown-shirts. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the May family found itself at the mercy of the regime. Because of Käthe May's revolutionary Marxist sentiments, her family was stigmatized, and their apartment was searched on many occasions by brown-shirted storm troopers, agents of the criminal police, and the dreaded Gestapo. When the Leipzig Schauspielhaus, a hitherto private theater, came under direct state control in May 1938, Käthe May was pressured into ending her acting career lest her family face additional risks. She helped supplement family income by setting up a women's-stocking business and returned to her early love of painting, selling a number of canvases.

As a child, Gisela May was soon attracted to the artistic and intellectual causes which energized her parents. She was gifted in literature, music, and theater, and was aware of the interrelationship between art and politics. From the earliest days of Hitler's dictatorship, Käthe May was an active member of an anti-Nazi resistance circle that included Bruno Apitz (who would later describe his years in a Nazi concentration camp in the novel Naked Among Wolves) and the composer and music pedagogue Alfred Schmidt-Sas, who was Gisela's piano teacher for a number of years. Schmidt-Sas was arrested and executed in 1943 for his anti-Nazi activities. In 1943, the May family received notification that Gisela's brother Ulrich had been declared missing in action; the official date given for his disappearance at the front was April 20, 1943, Adolf Hitler's 54th birthday. Decades later, sharp-eyed visitors to Gisela's Berlin apartment would note a small bust of "Uli" on one of her bookshelves.

Not yet 21 when Nazi Germany surrendered in the spring of 1945, May had experienced much in her short life. The savagery of Nazism, which resulted in incalculable loss of life as well as the physical and moral destruction of her country, was deeply impressed upon her, and she wanted to participate in Germany's cultural reconstruction. May already had considerable preparation for a career in the arts. She had completed a course in acting studies between 1940 and 1942 and appeared on stage during the war years, starting in 1943 at Dresden's Kömedienhaus Theater, then going on to the Municipal Theater in Görlitz and the Landesbühne Theater in Danzig. Now living in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) of Germany, May accepted an offer at the theater in Halle an der Saale. Here, she broadened her repertory by appearing in classic plays by Goethe, Schiller, and other representatives of the German humanist tradition, as well as in plays by modernists including Bertolt Brecht. During the next half-dozen years, she also appeared on stage in theaters in other cities of the SBZ, including Leipzig and Schwerin.

As she was increasingly acclaimed for both the power and subtlety of her performances, May's reputation flourished. In 1951, she became an ensemble member of the East Berlin's prestigious Deutsches Theater. While her career was on the rise, she relied on her mother's advice and support. Käthe May could often be seen sitting at the back of the theater during rehearsals, unobtrusively observing her celebrated daughter. For the next few years, May expanded her repertory, which consisted entirely of supporting roles.

A turning point came in 1957, when at short notice she agreed to stand in for an indisposed fellow actress in a matinee performance of songs by Bertolt Brecht. Although May had never sung on stage before, the performance—in which she shared the spotlight with the famous singer-actor Ernst Busch—was a great success. Noted composer Hanns Eisler, who was in the audience, told May that she had a talent that had to be further developed. From then on, May would be as much a singer as she was an actress. In 1959, she made a wildly successful international debut as a performer of Brecht's songs at Milan's Piccolo Teatro. In the same year, she was awarded the Arts Prize of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Her husky contralto, ideal in many ways for interpreting the bitter songs of Brecht and Weill, rekindled for many in the audience memories of Marlene Dietrich .

In 1962, May joined the world-famous Berliner Ensemble. Founded by Brecht and continued by his widow Helene Weigel , this troupe specialized in performing Brecht's plays, and over the years became a mecca for Brecht enthusiasts on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Weigel had been impressed by May's performances for years and played a key role in making her a permanent member of the Ensemble. May's career flourished there. She soon became one of the theater's leading attractions, starring in most of Brecht's important plays. Her performance in the role of Mrs. Peachum in the Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera) provided perhaps the most successful combination of acting and singing. Her Mother Courage in Brecht's Mutter Courage (Mother Courage) received the highest possible praise from Therese Giehse , who had created the role: "[May] possesses an extraordinary musicality—and a genuinely beautiful voice. Once she has heard a song, she has mastered it. That is really quite unbelievable and truly a splendid thing."

Few dissenting voices were heard when one of May's most impressive achievements, her recording of Kurt Weill's Die Sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins), earned her the coveted Grand Prix du Disque in 1967. Starting in the late 1960s, she began to perform not only in the GDR and eastern bloc, but also in a number of Western nations, where she taught workshops on chanson performance. Official GDR recognition of May's unique talents came when she was invited to begin lecturing at East Berlin's Academy of Music. She also began to appear in motion pictures and television. During her several visits to the United States, a small but growing number of fans snapped up tickets for her performances. In 1974, she performed in Manhattan as well as before a gathering of United Nations delegates.

May's experiences in Nazi Germany had convinced her that the only way to prevent a recurrence of the evil of fascism on German soil was to build a strong society. Loyal to the eastern half of Germany, the GDR, she became a dedicated member of the leading party, the Socialist Unity Party (SED), serving on various boards and committees of artists. In 1966, she became an executive board member of the Association of Performing Theater Artists, and 1972 she received an additional honor by being elected a full member of the GDR Academy of Arts. Among the many GDR prizes May was awarded were the National Prize, third class (1963), the National Prize, first class (1973), and the Fatherland Merit Order in Gold (1980).

In early 1989, on the eve of the collapse of the GDR, May took advantage of her special status by crossing daily to West Berlin to perform in cabaret at the Theater des Westens, where enthusiastic audiences greeted her nightly. Deeply in debt, the GDR regime encouraged such cultural exchanges not only for prestige but as a means to acquire needed hard currency. Gisela May did not play a significant role, as did such women as Bärbel Bohley and Steffie Spira , in the events that brought down the SED dictatorship in the last months of 1989. She did, however, continue her career, remaining immensely popular in her live performances.

Many of May's more than 20 classic recordings, particularly those she made in the 1960s, were remastered and reissued in the compact-disc format in the 1990s. Her recordings of chansons based on Brecht texts are regarded by many critics as the definitive interpretations of these works. In a 1985 interview, May noted: "You must be an actress to interpret the lyrics of Brecht. Singing the songs, I am all the time an actress. You must always keep in mind the social situations of the songs. Singing Marlene Dietrich songs is, of course, a very different experience. You have wonderful melodies and a feeling of nostalgia. I have great respect for her as a woman and as an actress who always had a deeply human touch." She also recorded prize-winning interpretations of chansons based on texts by Heine, Tucholsky, Mehring, Mühsam, Kästner, Hollaender and Wedekind, as well as by Jacques Brel and Pablo Neruda. Ironically, with their sharp criticisms of capitalist and middle-class society, these songs were highly popular among Western intellectuals starting in the 1960s. May's renditions of the songs of Hanns Eisler played an important role in making this brilliant but relatively neglected composer (because of his Marxist allegiances) better known outside the eastern bloc. While becoming an internationally renowned singer of German chansons, May remained active on stage as one of the best-known actresses of the

Berliner Ensemble. By the 1990s, most theatergoers felt that she had earned the unofficial title of the Ensemble's "First Lady."

sources:

Clark, Andrew. "Sign of Glasnost at the Wall," in Financial Times [London]. February 18, 1989, p. XXV.

Cultural Life in the GDR: Review and Current Trends. Dresden: Panorama DDR, 1982.

"Gisela May beim 8. Kurt-Weill-Fest in Dessau gefeiert," in Deutsche Presse-Agentur-Europadienst. February 26, 2000.

"Gisela May—Die First Lady des politischen Liedes," in Der Standard [Vienna]. August 29, 1990.

Harten, J. "Eerste Dame van het Berliner Ensemble," in Maatstaf. Vol. 39, no. 5. May 1991, pp. 62–63.

Holden, Stephen. "Summerfare Festival in Purchase Offers Cabaret," in The New York Times. July 5, 1985, p. C3.

Jäger, Manfred. Kultur und Politik in der DDR 1945–1990. Cologne: Edition Deutschland Archiv im Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik Claus-Peter von Nottbeck, 1995.

Kranz, Dieter. Gisela May, Schauspielerin und Diseuse: Bildbiographie. Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1988.

May, Ferdinand. Die bösen und die guten Dinge: ein Leben erzählt. Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben, 1978.

May, Gisela. Mit meinen Augen: Begegnungen und Impressionen. 3rd rev. ed. Berlin: Buchverlag Der Morgen, 1982.

"May, Käthe," in Frithjof Trapp et al., eds., Handbuch des deutschsprachigen Exiltheaters 1933–1945, Band 2: Biographisches Lexikon der Theaterkünstler, Teil 2: L–Z, Munich: K.G. Saur, 1999, p. 649.

Otto, Hans-Gerald. "Gisela May—Schauspielerin, Sängerin und Diseuse," in Musik und Gesellschaft. Vol. 24, no. 5. May 1974, pp. 298–300.

Papst, M. "Ein Koffer spricht: Gisela May im Theater am Hechtplatz," in Neue Zürcher Zeitung. March 16, 1999, p. 46.

Rehahn, Rosemarie. "Gisela May," in Sabine Ehrhardt-Renken, ed., Chanteusen: Stimmen der Grosstadt. Mannheim: Bollmann Verlag GmbH, 1997, pp. 157–167.

Rockwell, John. "A Concert Will Evoke Berlin in Weimar Days," in The New York Times. September 27, 1974, p. 48.

——. "Gisela May Sings Brecht, Tucholsky With Exhilaration," in The New York Times. October 6, 1974, p. 63.

Schumacher, Ernst. Berliner Kritiken: Ein Theater-Dezennium 1964–1974. 2 vols. Berlin: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, 1975.

Theater der Zeit. Vol. 38, no. 11, 1983, pp. 6–10.

Wekwerth, Manfred. Notate: Über die Arbeit des Berliner Ensembles 1956 bis 1966. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1967.

Wildenhains, Bernhard. Schauspieler sein … Die Erinnerungen Bernhard Wildenhains. Edited by Ferdinand and Käte May. Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1958.

related media:

"Brecht-Songs" (Berlin Classics CD 2165-2).

"Gisela May: Live" (EMI Electrola LP C 062-31 136).

"Gisela May: Reflections on the Theater of Brecht" (videocassette in Creative Arts Television Archive Collection, VAE 0390, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.), Camera Three television program with Gisela May and Carl Weber, November 26,1972.

"Hanns Eisler Dokumente: Musik und Gespräche von und mit Hanns Eisler" (Berlin Classics CD 0090582).

"Reflections on the Theater of Brecht" (videocassette), NY: Columbia Broadcasting System, 1972.

"Die sieben Todsünden" (Berlin Classics CD 2069-2).

"Songs aus Happy End, Das Berliner Requiem, Die Dreigroschenoper, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny" (Capriccio CD 10 180).

John Haag , Associate Professor of History, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia