Dance, Resistance, and Persecution in the Nazi State
The Lives of Dancers Julia Marcus and Tatjana Barbakoff
Exclusion, flight, and violence during the Nazi era are part of the history of dance in the 20th century. Tatjana Barbakoff and Julia Marcus were two well-known artists in the modern dance movement. The Arolsen Archives hold documents on them both. We are telling their stories to mark World Dance Day, which is celebrated on April 29.
In the period leading up to 1933, the German dance scene was international, experimental, and diverse. Modern dance broke away from classical ballet and put the emphasis firmly on personal expression. Masked dance, grotesque dance, and nude dance were now part of the repertoire, and female dancers in particular were stars, their images circulating widely in photographs, drawings, paintings, and sometimes films.
Jewish artists from across the world shaped the development of modern dance in Germany. But when the Nazis came to power, they set about systematically destroying the vibrant, open world of dance. Dancers were forced out of public life, lost their livelihoods, had to emigrate – or were murdered in concentration camps.
Tatjana Barbakoff (1899-1944) and Julia Marcus (1905-2002) were both well-known dancers. As a solo dancer, Tatjana Barbakoff developed her own stylized artistic language. Julia Marcus fused modern dance with sharp satire targeting politics and society. In 1934, their paths crossed in Paris, where both were in exile and trained together. But while Marcus survived, Barbakoff was killed by the Nazi regime.
Tatjana Barbakoff – Expressionist Dancer Whose Stage Costumes Drew on East Asian Influences
Tatjana Barbakoff was born Tsipora Edelberg on August 15, 1899, in Aizpute, which was part of the Russian Empire at the time and is now in Latvia. She was the daughter of a butcher named Aizick Edelberg and his wife, Genya. She began taking ballet lessons at the age of around ten. Between 1918 and 1920, she went to Germany with a German officer named Georg Waldmann, whom she later married.
Tatjana Barbakoff’s style blended modern expressionist dance (Ausdruckstanz) with elaborately designed costumes and highly stylized movements. She was seen as an important figure in the dance world and was photographed and drawn by artists such as Yva and Otto Dix. Shortly after moving to Germany, she and her husband started performing in cabarets such as the Corso Cabaret in Düsseldorf and the Schall und Rauch in Berlin. Tatjana Barbakoff was often depicted in costumes inspired by east Asian designs. At times, she also appeared to promote the myth that her mother – who died in childbirth – had been Chinese, although no evidence can be found to support this.
When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the dancer’s life changed beyond recognition. As a Jewish woman, she was no longer safe in Germany, so she emigrated to France. But even in exile, she remained in danger. In May 1940, she was held for one month in the Gurs internment camp in southern France. In early 1944, the Gestapo arrested her in Nice. She was deported to Auschwitz via the Drancy transit camp on February 3, 1944, and murdered there on February 6.
Documents from the Arolsen Archives make it possible to reconstruct Barbakoff’s path of persecution. On the transport list of the Commander of the Security Police (B. d. S.) in France dated February 3, 1944, she appears under her civilian name “Waldmann Celly,” born on August 15, 1899; her occupation is given as “dancer.”
An index card from the Arolsen Archives documents Tatjana Barbakoff’s journey from Gurs via Drancy to Auschwitz. The final entry reads: “6.2.44, died there.”
Julia Marcus – Dancing Against Fascism
Julia Marcus was born in 1905 in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Her father was of Jewish descent and worked as a musician, critic, and writer, while her mother was Protestant. She came into contact with music, theater, and the avant-garde artistic movements of the day at an early age. Her training took her to Zurich, Dresden, and Berlin, among other places.
In the 1920s Julia Marcus worked as an expressionist dancer, a choreographer, and a dance teacher. From 1927 to 1933, she was a member of the classical ballet ensemble at the Städtische Oper in Berlin, later renamed the “Deutsches Opernhaus” by Goebbels in 1934 and now known as theDeutsche Oper Berlin.Around 1927, she made a pointed political statement by parodying Hitler in a swastika costume – her dance a deliberate act of protest against the rise of Nazism.
When the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” was enacted on April 7, 1933, many artists lost their jobs. Later that same year, Julia Marcus was denounced as a communist and opponent of National Socialism and was interrogated by the police. Her Jewish ancestry was also used against her. The Städtische Oper dismissed her. In the fall of 1933, a choreography competition in Warsaw gave her the opportunity to leave the country legally, and she received an award for her grotesque dance performance “Gandhi and the British Lion.” From Poland, she fled to Vienna and Zurich, eventually making her way to Paris.
She supported herself in Paris by working as a dance teacher and giving small performances; she remained politically aware and engaged throughout the German occupation. During her time there, she met and soon married French engineer Daniel Tardy. The marriage offered her some protection, and Julia Marcus survived the Nazi era.
After 1945, Julia Marcus worked as a dance critic among other things. She also translated French dance literature into German. In 1986, she established a dance prize in the name of her murdered colleague and former training partner Tatjana Barbakoff. Julia Marcus lived in Massy, a suburb of Paris, until her death in 2002.