There are several ways to celebrate Christmas. But how did the illustrious figures of contemporary history deal with it? Some have noticed: A mosaic of the holidays.
Hans Christian Andersen he had traveled from Copenhagen to Berlin in 1845 because he hoped to get close to the singer Jenny Lind, also known as “the Swedish nightingale”, with whom he had fallen in love. But she lived completely for her music and let her famous admirer starve by holding out her hand. She sat there alone and dreamed of the family celebration under the tree: “I could have had a much happier Christmas Eve,” the poet observed.
Cosima Wagner she ran some errands in Tribschen on Christmas Eve 1869. Before that she had set up the puppet theater with Friedrich Nietzsche, while her husband Richard rehearsed for the servant Ruprecht. In the evening, the composer delivered it so convincingly with a roar that the children were terrified.
The painter Love Corinth unpacked the easel himself on Christmas Eve 1913 and painted his family under the Christmas tree, while his beloved wife Charlotte, with a thick white beard glued on, played Father Christmas to the two children Thomas and Wilhelmine: the Emancipation was already most advanced in artistic circles at that time.
The same letter to all relatives – in the hope that no one will notice
His colleague Emil Nolde he had fulfilled a long-cherished wish in the same year and was traveling by steamer to the South Pacific – only to realize filled with nostalgia on Christmas Eve: “It was hardly possible for us to feel Christmas in this heat. Our thoughts roamed the seas and parts of the world to the rooms of the German homeland, where the lights burned bright.” To create at least a crib atmosphere, she placed her self-carved wooden figures on the gift table.
Even as a child, the writer, who was born in Greifswald, had to do this Hans Fallada learn that there is no pure happiness on earth. He should sit down on Christmas day and say thank you for the Christmas packages. “You can’t start early enough,” the father said in a cautionary tone. “They sent your parcels just in time for Christmas, now thank them in time and wish them a Happy New Year!” Thank-you letters were terrible torture. Up to twelve pieces were to be written! “I developed a high ability to write my letters in very large capitals. I also wrote the same letter to all my relatives, always worried that they would notice.”
Champagne, meat pie and nougat
The homosexual Julien Green he was leaving Paris on Christmas Eve 1932 to visit his friend André Gide, slipped, hit his knee and tore his trousers. Gide obviously takes great pleasure in patching it up. “Anyway,” he said, “your bandage can’t move because you have a very plump calf.”
solitary Paul Leautaud received a Christmas parcel from Madame Gould on 24 December 1947, containing champagne, meat pie, a pre-roasted chicken, four bars of nougat and two cans of candied fruit. In his diary, the French writer noted: “Well, I don’t like champagne. I prefer an omelette to chicken. I don’t like meat pies. I hate candied fruit. I don’t like nougat. I’m really lucky.” .
Oscar Kokoschka sat with widow Alma Mahler in 1913 in the dark in her newly built home in Breitenstein, Austria, because the light still didn’t work. That wasn’t a problem on Christmas Eve as the many candles and open fireplace created a Christmassy feel.
Music in the prison choir
The entire Christmas Day of 1933 was spent six years divorced Thea Sternheim spent freezing in bed reading “Job” by Josef Roth. The phone rang around six and André Gide complained that he was as alone as she was. Half an hour later she was at the door with a pineapple and foie gras tart. “I froze all day,” Sternheim later wrote in his diary, “suddenly I feel my blood flowing, take off my fur collar.” In the evenings, the two warmed each other’s icy hands in the Raspailkino.
The Rostocker was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Soviet military court in 1948 for alleged espionage Walter Kempowski survived the Christmas celebrations in Bautzen prison until his pardon in 1954 with music and joining in the prison choir. “We sang the most beautiful motets by Lechner, Orlandi di Lasso, and as soon as we moved in, the faithful were greeted with songs by Quempas: ‘Rejoice today with Mary/in the heavenly hierarchy’. ‘Did you see how they were moved? ‘ was asked later”.
From a journalist he became a universal artist Jean Cocteau he asked on December 25, 1952, what would he like to see hanging on the Christmas tree? Then Cocteau: “The journalists!”
The writer and director Einar Schleef he spent his holidays in front of the television and declared: “In one channel Spartacus fights with Rome, man to man with thumbs down, in the other Urbi et orbi blesses the world, thumbs up”.
“Almost the whole team drunk or absent”
On Boxing Day 1913, the American author disappeared Ambrose Bierce forever without a trace. Even today, bizarre theories circulate: was it actually eaten by Indians in the end?
Since October 1989, the author from East Germany Jochen Schmidt I have not been to the Gethsemane church in Berlin. Christmas Day 2006, however, was amused by the organist’s struggle with the lazily singing congregation. “At least they had the courage to do without ‘Silent Night’, that Christmas ‘litter’!”
Charles Darwin he went around the world on the “Beagle” in 1831 and wrote in his diary on Boxing Day: “A beautiful day, excellent for sailing. However, the opportunity was lost because almost all the crew was drunk or absent”.
Yes, and even during the Nazi era, Christmas was twelvefold: “I am giving the Führer 32 great films from the last 4 years and 12 Mickey Mouse films with a wonderful art album for Christmas,” notes Cineast Joseph Goebbels In his diary in 1937 – and then went on to say that he chatted with Hitler for a long time at the festival: “About Soviet Russia. Stalin and his eunuchs are sick. Crazy! Otherwise you can’t explain all this. It must be eradicated».
