Family Album

Recently, I discovered a photo album belonging to my grandmother, Ilse Davidsohn (from 1930 on, Ilse Intrator, and later Ilse Stanley). My grandmother was born in Gleiwitz in 1906, and moved to Berlin in around 1912 so that her father could take the post of chief cantor at the new Fassenenstrasse Synagogue. My grandmother became an actress, and acted on Berlin stages from 1924 on; she also bit parts in movies. After Hitler came to power, her performances were relegated to Jewish theaters. The pictures start with a chronicle of a successful opera singer and cantor's privileged daughter, and run through a life in theater in Berlin of the 1920s, with social events and parties. The album continues through my grandmother's life in Nazi Germany, where faces are wary, and the Jewish stage much less glamorous than that of Weimar Germany. It concludes with her departure to New York City on the SS Deutschland (an unfortunately named cruise liner), with my then seven year old father Manfred, in August of 1939. The last shots are of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline coming into view from the deck of the ship.

Here are some pictures I scanned from the album. The first two are from the 1920s:

Circa 1925.

This is from some kind of postcard series about Berlin actors, maybe like the Ross cards.

These are from the late 1930s - at least one, and maybe all three, are from 1938:

This is from a press clipping from readings Ilse did of work by Rilke, Morgenstern, Wildgans, Werfel, and Altenberg (attached to reviews from the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, Berliner Tribüne, Vossische Zeitung, and Jüdische Rundschau). This is from another reading. This is a picture of her in a play, from around the same time. And this is a picture of my father in Berlin, also from around the same time.