SARRASANI BETWEEN THE FABLE AND THE EPIC by Gustavo Bernstein 1 2 To my father, inspirer and instigator behind these pages. 3 4 Homeland is wherever I pitch my tent. Trude Stosch-Sarrasani 5 6 INDEX INTRODUCTION Letter from Trude Stosch-Sarrasani PREFACE By Jorge H. Bernstein SENIOR An early orphanhood………………………………………………………………… Dreams of an artist……………………………………………………………… The court jester………………………………………………………………… Tradition and nostalgia………………………………………………………………… Sensationen! Sensationen!………………………………………………………………. The princess of Elbe (and her “Golden Palace”)…………………………………… A convoy of artists……………………………………………………………………… Europe in flames…………………………………………………………………………. From the Bolshevik Revolution to a gala dinner………………………………………. The conquest of the Americas (or a German in the tropics)…………………………..... The Queen of the Río de la Plata (or the whims of a diva)…………………………… Circus sinks on the high seas…………………………………………………… Arabian Nights (the mirage of technique)…………………………………………… Crash (the tentacles of Wall Street)……………………………………….........…… A typical Freudian cast…………………………………………………..……………… Judenzirkus (or early murmuring of the Third Reich)……………………………… Friday 13th (the Führer’s shadow)…………………………………………………... Stowaway on board (and the siren’s song)……………………………… A thread of light at sunset………………………………………………………… Elephants wear mourning, too………………………………………………………… JUNIOR The show must go on…………………………………………………………………… Junior’s first journey to the New World (including: the fundamental pact with the minister, the purging of the staff, the new agile and swift circus, the political lobbying, the exotic race of Aryan aborigines, the betraying winds that lash the South and the boy that one morning sold him the newspaper on credit).................... Tango for Sarrasani (or the story of a disappointment)……………………………… The Land Registry Office………………………………………………………………. A sapphire surrounded by diamonds (and the dubious honor of emulating the zeppelin)………………………………………………………………………………… Return of the prodigal son……………………………………………………………… The melanin is a subversive substance………………………………………………… A fairy godmother is born in open war………………………………………………... To defeat the magnetic effect…………………………………………………………… Requiem for love……………………………………………………………………. 7 TRUDE A lineage marked by fate……………………………………………………………… A pearl shining bright in the Danube (and an urgent call from Herr Minister)…. New face of the circus………………………………………………………………. The greater political-cultural mission………………………………………………… Fear and trembling (and certain risks of naïveté)…………………………………… Walking through the rubble…………………………………………………………… A soap’s brand ………………………………………………………………………….. Evita dignifies (“Argentinean National Circus”)………………………………… The aluminum palace…………………………………………………………………… The conspirator who looked for redemption …......………………………………… Mathematics are rather imprecise (or the circus requires an act of faith)……………… Goodbye my love, goodbye…….…………………………………………………………. Nightmares for a sleeping beauty……………………………………………………… The snows of time……………………………………………………………………… Remembrances and tributes…………………………………………………………… One last desire……………………………………………………………………………. CHRONOLOGY EPILOGUE FINAL NOTE 8 INTRODUCTION Letter from Trude Stosch-Sarrasani With love and joy I add my words to this book written by author Gustavo Bernstein, who I held in my arms as an infant when his father used to grace us, Gabor Némedy and me, with his visit. Today, thirty years later, it is he who engraves my memories in the history of the Sarrasani Circus; the circus I loved and will always love with all my heart. All my respect and gratitude for this great task and my best wishes for you, Gustavo. Forever yours, Trude Stosch- Sarrasani 9 10 PREFACE Some words awake illusions, suggest fables, radiate fantasies. For some miraculous reasons, they are voices growing in people’s imagination; names which act as archetypes, phonemes that become symbols, sounds that last throughout the centuries. Such is the case with SARRASANI. The mere mention of this word invokes the nostalgia of an exuberant world, a splendor full of magic and color. Not in vain this legendary circus has become a headlight, an unavoidable reference, a mirror for all circuses around the world. This is not a hazard matter. Because, despite of its artistic prestige or its mythic dimension, its adventures or vast anecdotes, Sarrasani’s Circus history is not exempted of most sumptuous and stirring epic facts: those of a gorgeous enterprise dealing with political controversies and the most dramatic crisis of the twentieth century, and those of a family saga that fights to stay at the top among the social upheavals of two stricken continents. Because Sarrasani affronted the worst conflicts, weathered the hardest tempests, survived the most dramatic, turbulent, polemic and hope shattering periods, and faced the persecution and power manipulation; and arose miraculously harmless. It is enough to mention the First World War, the crisis of the 1930s, the spout of Nazism, the Second World War, the rise of the Peronista movement, successive military putches or Berlin’s Wall fall. In Germany, Sarrasani’s family mausoleum has been declared National Monument. In Argentina, their name left inerasable traces in tango’s history, the most popular country’s artistic expression. They existed; they exist and will continue existing new circuses, but Sarrasani, I insist, remained in history as a symbolic name, a sound covering a whole expressive genre, a magic voice which, for the popular imagination, is simply synonym for circus. 11 12 SENIOR 13 An early orphanhood He was just a boy. Young Hans must have been about fifteen years old when he decided definitively to run away from home. With a change of clothes on his back and without a cent in his pocket, he prepared to take a chance on his childhood dreams. Besides, his father’s attitude did not give him much choice. He had stubbornly tried to eradicate all “suspicious” artistic leanings in his son, unceasingly. As if it was a crusade. Although this habitual harassment would come to an end one day after the midday meal when the father rushed into the child’s room to find him once again improvising juggling tricks with oranges: “I’ve told you a thousand times not to play with food!” the parent furiously reproached his son. Immediately afterwards he would confiscate the fruit and warn his child to study. The father could not know that this would be the last time, the straw that broke the camel’s back, and a final stop for that relationship full of conflict. Nor did the child suspect that this impetuous decision would mark his life forever. Much less guess that this sudden escape, this strike for freedom, reflected the features of a classic heroic destiny: a young orphan, and a path marked by arduous challenges. The die was cast. The hero had chosen his route. The fable had begun. Dreams of an artist The circus was the golden dream of this child, the dream that kept him awake at night. From an early age he used to escape with his sister and slip under every new tent that arrived in the city of Lomnitz. His father, a respectable businessman and member of the glass workers union, however, had envisioned a different future for him. His long awaited son, born in April 2nd, 1873, would be a chemist and would transform his modest glass factory into an industrial powerhouse. Yet, young Hans could do little to obey this insistent paternal coercion. The call from within was too strong. Every aspect of the circus fascinated him: the camp, the bohemian lifestyle, the sense of community, the caravans, days spent globetrotting. He had always dreamed of forming part of an elite group of artists traveling around the world. And with 14 this decision he had found his path. Thus, after roaming through storehouses and stables in rural Germany, surviving thanks to the generosity of the locals, the young wanderer came across the modest circus of Oscar Kolzer. His widow – reticent at first – when faced with the tenacious insistence of the child, offered him a place in her troupe in exchange for food and lodging. Full of eagerness, the child began by cleaning cages and yards. With scrupulous attention he initiated his tasks every morning: he swept, shoveled out animal manure, carried hay, cleaned the warehouses. It was not long until the director called him to her wagon. Hans was promoted to animal keeper and would receive a small salary. It was then that young Hans began to suspect that nothing could ever take him away from that world. It was a small circus made up of just a few wagons, a patched tent, a number of animals and a heterogeneous group of artists, which oscillated between young beginners and veterans with graying hair. A certain sepia tone covered that supposed world of fantasy and color, although this detail held little importance in the child’s eyes. In that precarious corner of the suburbs he had found nothing less than a shelter from his state as orphan. Young Hans lived hours filled with loneliness, too. His amusement often consisted of stealing make-up from the clowns and improvising pirouettes in the darkness of the stable. It was not by chance that one night, during a tour through Berlin, he was discovered by the clowns Eugén and Didic when he was trying to train a disobedient donkey, which stood rigid and indifferent to the boy’s efforts. Moved by the scene, the clowns decided to adopt the child almost as a pet for their act. They would teach him the basics and take him early to the stage; a significant gesture in the circus world,