Verstummte Stimmen

Margarethe Düsedau was born on May 30, 1916, in Dresden. Her father, Erich Düsedau (born 1886), was a violinist and a member of the Sächsische Staatskapelle from 1919 until his death in 1929. Her mother, Antonie Düsedau, née Weiß, was born in 1880 in Békéscsaba, Hungary.

In her youth, Düsedau attended the State Orchestra School, where she studied cello. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, students at the institute were subjected to “racial” screening. As a result, Düsedau was forced to leave the school in 1935/36: as the daughter of a Jewish mother, she was classified under Nazi racial ideology as a “Mischling of the first degree”.

While her younger brother Hellmuth—who was also forced to leave the school—emigrated to the United States in 1937, Margarethe Düsedau appears to have remained in Germany. How she survived persecution and the war remains unknown. Her mother, Antonie Düsedau, was deported from Dresden to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on January 11, 1944. She survived imprisonment and returned to Dresden after being liberated.

By February 1946, mother and daughter were living together on Stephanstraße in Dresden, where they were located by the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross after Hellmuth Düsedau had begun searching for his relatives after he had emigrated to the United States. “Letter received November 22. Antonie and Margarethe Düsedau well. Address Dresden N 23, Stephanstr. 81C,” read the first sign of life sent by Margarethe Düsedau to her brother.

In the following weeks, Margarethe and Antonie Düsedau planned to emigrate to the United States, but initially only Antonie followed through with the plan and moved there in 1947. Margarethe apparently remained in Germany and still appeared as a cellist in December of 1957 in a concert of Baroque music at Charlottenburg Palace. It was not until October of 1962 that she traveled from Cologne to New York by plane to settle in the United States. The following year, she moved to New Jersey, where her brother Hellmuth also lived. Margarethe Düsedau died on September 16, 2003, in Berlin.

When the National Socialists came into power in 1933, it set off an unprecedented wave of expulsions from German opera and theater stages: For countless singers, actors, musicians, and members of the technical and stage staff, this meant the end of their careers. “Silenced Voices” makes the fates of those persecuted for “racial” or political reasons visible and audible.

An interactive map traces their life journeys: from major stages to the places of exclusion, exile, or murder. This creates a powerful connection between the past and the present: The biographies of those persecuted are narrated by ensemble members from some of Germany’s most important theaters, both past and present—the Hamburgische Staatsoper, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Semperoper, the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, and the Staatstheater Stuttgart.

The portal thus serves simultaneously as a tool for scientific research, a digital space for remembrance, and a resource for exploring local history.