Verstummte Stimmen

Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann was born on July 15, 1878, in Frankfurt am Main as the daughter of the journalist Ludwig Metzger and his wife Rosa. She received her training at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. After making her debut in Halle in 1898, she joined the Cologne Opera in 1900 and, in 1903, moved to the Hamburg Stadttheater as first alto—a post that would become the centerpiece of her career. In Hamburg, she appeared in the premieres of Siegfried Wagner’s Bruder Lustig in 1905, in Leo Blech’s Versiegelt in 1908, and in Eugen d’Albert’s Izyel in 1909. During guest appearances in Hamburg by the world-renowned tenor Enrico Caruso, she performed opposite him in the leading female roles of Georges Bizet’s Carmen and Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida. In 1921, she moved to the Dresden State Opera. As distinguished Wagnerian singer, whose repertoire included the roles of Waltraute, Fricka, Erda, Magdalene, and Brangäne, she appeared at the Bayreuth Festival between 1901 and 1912.

Guest engagements took her to numerous opera houses across Germany as well as to Belgium, Austria, Great Britain, Russia, Scandinavia, Hungary, and the United States, where she performed around 1923 with the German Opera Company under Leo Blech. She was also highly regarded as a recital singer. In 1925, she left the stage and went on to teach at her alma mater, the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. In 1931, she formally applied for retirement from the Hamburg Stadttheater. Her final public appearances came in 1933, in concerts conducted by Bruno Walter in Berlin and Otto Klemperer in Dresden.

After the Nazis came to power, Metzger-Lattermann was persecuted because of her Jewish background. Between 1935 and 1937, she performed with the Jewish Cultural Federation, appearing in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Wuppertal. It was not until July 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, that she fled to Brussels to join her daughter, supporting herself there as a voice teacher. In 1942, Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann was arrested by the German occupying authorities and deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered. The exact date of her death remains unknown.

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.