Verstummte Stimmen

Born on August 20, 1907, in Vienna and raised in Hungary, Rose Book studied at the Vienna Conservatory under Viktor Fuchs. She made her debut in 1925 at the Städtische Bühnen in Nuremberg before moving to the Mainz State Theater in 1926 and the Breslau Opera (present-day Wrocław) in 1927, where she was engaged for five years. Guest engagements followed in Wiesbaden and Berlin as well as other countries in Europe. In 1932 she joined the Hamburg Stadttheater.

For the local National Socialist press, this engagement was proof of the opera directorate’s “biased favoritism of those around Sachse,” referring to the Jewish general director Leopold Sachse. By hiring the “nasty Jew” Rose Brook, the press claimed, they were advancing the destruction of “German” culture.

The singer’s career in Germany came to an end when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Her engagement was terminated on July 31, 1934. Rose Book did not let the impending occupational ban intimidate her and had already been performing with the Hamburg Jewish Cultural Federation since 1933. For Jewish artists banished from the stage, this was the only opportunity to work. While she went to the German Theater in Prague in 1934 and undertook additional guest engagements in Brünn (present-day Brno) and Vienna, she continued working with the Jewish Cultural Federation until 1935. Her contract in Prague was terminated in October of 1938 due to her Jewish background.

Rose Book fled Europe in 1939 and emigrated to the United States, where she was initially active in organizations for émigrés like the German–Jewish Club. In 1940 she began performing at the New York Metropolitan Opera. However, an injury resulting from a fall during a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel in December of 1943 forced her to retreat from the stage for several years. After the war, she toured through France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and Scandinavia, in addition to performing in cities throughout the United States. She later worked in New York as a voice teacher with her sister Johanna Book, also an opera singer. Rose Book died there in 1995.

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.