Lives in the Yiddish Theatre
SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"

1931-1969
 

Adolf Tefner

 

T. was born on 13 February 1908 in Chernalitsye (Czernelica), Galicia.

His father was a "vinkl-shreyber (corner-writer)".

A year later he took his family to Czernowitz, where T.'s father opened a bakery.

He learned in a folkshul and studied Yiddish courses with his father.

He sung with a cantor, afterwards in a chorus of the great synagogue. The chorus director Yosel Tavtshay, who also was chorus direction in Axelrad's troupe, took him in to the theatre and had him play in children's roles.

During the war he switched his studies in the city gymnasium, T. went to Vienna, where he worked in a liquor factory and was a understudy and helper with decorations in the German Karl Theatre. Afterwards he sang  there in the chorus and also acted in small roles. Due to military service he changed his stage career. He acted again at the end of 1918 in the Czernowitz German State Theatre, afterwards in Axelrad's Yiddish troupe, debuting as "Beynushl" in "Pintele yid". Later T. led a management partnership with Sarah Kaner, afterwards he acted with Clara Young and for a long time in Bucharest, leading in a partnership with Leon Berger a troupe in Iasi, touring with Sarah Kaner across Galicia, Poland, afterwards in Czechoslovakia , participating in Yiddish [reviews=revista] in Bucharest, acting in

 

various troupes in Rumania, Poland and Berlin, in Paris and London with Blumental and a season in South Africa.

In 1928 he acted in Bucharest, and later he performed with a Yiddish troupe in Iasi, later guest-starring across the Rumanian province.

Specialty: Fat- and character-comic.


Sh. E.


 

 

 

 


 

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Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the  "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 2, page 889.
 

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