26 Facts About Hanna Berger

Hanna Berger was described as part of the free dance movement.

Hanna Berger's father was described as coming from the bourgeois social class and she would later describe him as being the wealthy Eduard Wolfram.

Hanna Berger spent the first years of her childhood partly with her grandfather and partly with her mother in the working-class district of Meidling in Vienna.

Hanna Berger decided to keep her married name but was never formally divorced until 1943.

Hanna Berger completed her knowledge of modern dance during several months at the German Master Studio for Dance in Berlin, where she attended classes in theatre directing, ballet, character and national dance.

Hanna Berger performed a set of dances under specific themes, "Three Romantic Studies: Summer, Late Summer, Summer in Paris", "Everyday Story: Girl, Lover, Abandoned Mother, Mourning Woman".

Hanna Berger found support and protection in the form of city counciller Viktor Matejka who recognised the nature of her dance as being militant and politically expressive and offered her a safe place to dance at the Volksheim Ottakring.

On 5 February 1938, Hanna Berger performed the "Krieger" for a second time at the Volksheim Ottakring in Vienna.

Hanna Berger taught at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome.

Hanna Berger danced with the actors Will Quadflieg and Ernst Legal.

However, Hanna Berger's dancing was interrupted when she was arrested on 24 October 1942 in Poznan "on suspicion of preparing high treason" and spent several months in prison in Berlin from November 1942 to August 1943.

Also found was a manuscript written by Hanna Berger titled: "About German dance and its real contents" in which she criticised the Nazi cultural appropriation of dance in Germany along with its attendant rules and offered suggestions in how it should be changed.

Hanna Berger's trial took place at the Berlin People's Court.

Hanna Berger managed to survive her trial due to her skillful defence, presenting herself as politically completely inexperienced.

Hanna Berger managed to escape during her transfer to Ravensbruck concentration camp when Berlin was bombed.

On 15 June 1945, for the first time, Hanna Berger danced in the Great Concert Hall in Vienna with the dance "Solidarity Song".

In 1946, Hanna Berger discovered that Fritz Cremer was still imprisoned, in Yugoslavia and managed to get help from the Communist Party of Austria to free him.

Hanna Berger was drawn to the new country and considered moving there.

Hanna Berger was able to work in other countries, teaching in Sicily and Sardinia and then later in Vienna and Berlin until the late 1950s.

In 1956 Hanna Berger took over the position of movement director of Janacek's opera "The Cunning Little Vixen", directed by Walter Felsenstein in the GDR.

Hanna Berger was not interested in artistic divisions and always used the means and methods that seemed right to her.

Hanna Berger died on 15 January 1962 at the East Berlin Charite Hospital, while being operated on for a second brain tumour.

Hanna Berger is buried in a grave of honour in the Meidling Cemetery in the City of Vienna.

Hanna Berger has fallen into oblivion, but since her rediscovery in Vienna in 1995 with a new interpretation of Bergers solo choreography L'Inconnue de la Seine Op.

Hanna Berger is considered one of the great names in free dance, alongside Grete Wiesenthal and Rosalia Chladek.

Fragmentary works by Berger were choreographed as new creations by Nicholas Adler, Manfred Aichinger, Bernd R Bienert, Rose Breuss and Willi Dorner.