Else Reder was born on December 17, 1890, in Plön. After a two-year engagement in the choir of the Essen Stadttheater, she joined the choir of the Stuttgart Opera in 1918, where she sang with the first sopranos. She caught the theater public’s attention with smaller solo roles such as the First Bridesmaid in Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz and Melanie in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. As the daughter of a Jewish father, she was considered a “Mischling of the first degree” and dismissed from her engagement in Stuttgart in late November of 1933. In 1937 she was expelled from the Reich Theater Chamber, effectively banning her from practicing her occupation. Her marriage to Ludwig Reder, who sang in the choir of the Stuttgart Opera, spared her from deportation. Else Reder died on December 17, 1979, in Stuttgart.
1890 Plön
1979 Stuttgart