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Berta
Tanzman
(Berlin)
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T. was born in 1856 in Riga,
Latvia. Her father was a tailor. T. had a beautiful
voice, and when he troupe of Spivakovski-Rozenberg had
guest-starred in Riga, they had secretly taken her in
and made her a prima donna. In 1879 T. came with the
troupe to Warsaw, but due to the forbiddance of Yiddish
theatre, T. was forced to perform in concerts. Later she
traveled with a troupe in the province where the
forbiddance to act in Yiddish theatre was not as deep.
There she married Tanzman, and she then performed under
that name.
In the beginning of the
eighth decade of the nineteenth century, T. performed in
the Warsaw Eldorado Theatre, having a great success as
"Shulamit" and later as "Dinah" in ("Bar Kochba") and
"Esther hamelekh (Esther the Queen)" (in "Ahasuerus")
under Goldfaden's direction.
After acting for several
seasons in Warsaw, she traveled with the troupe to Lodz,
where she was very popular with the theatre audience.
Then there she returned to act in Warsaw and to act
there until 1887, when it was again forbidden to act in
Yiddish theatre.
T. then traveled across the
larger cities of Poland, Russia, and Lithuania, and due
to the returning ban in Warsaw, she entered into,
together with her troupe, into Gimpel's theatre in
Lemberg. |
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Berta Kalich relates that
T. was intelligent, beautiful, piquant and had a pretty
little [khn]. In Lemberg, where she had acted for a long
time, one had really worn hands [?]
T.'s name had also been
received in America, and the manager Mandelkern in 1889
she came to Lemberg and she and her husband took to
America, where she debuted in February 1890.
Also in New York she soon
acquired a name with the public. Acting in various
troupes across America, in 1926 T. passed away in
Pittsburgh and left four children: three daughters and a
son, Joseph, a Yiddish actor and playwright.
M. E. from
H. Feinstein and Sh. E. from Pinchas Tanzman.
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B. Gorin --
"History of Yiddish Theatre", Vol. II, pp. 126,
143, 145.
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Yehoshua Mezakh --
"Bmt itzhak un msha gya khziun", Warsaw, 1889.
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Boris
Thomashefsky -- "Thomashefskis theater shriften",
pp. 62-67.
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Bessie
Thomashefsky -- "Meyn lebens geshikhte", p. 132.
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Berta Kalich
[memoirs] -- "Tog", N. Y., 18, 29 April, 1925.
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