Evidence of a dazzling past: the archive’s holdings include, among other things, the ventriloquist’s dummy “Charly”.
Image: Samira Schulz
A door to the world of acrobatics, magic and illusions: a piece of cultural history is maintained in the Marburg circus, variety show and artist archive. Documents worth preserving lie there next to props worth seeing.
bühne free!” – you can’t really speak of that, because there are no jugglers, clowns, magicians and tamers appearing from behind the curtain. Nevertheless, in a former school building on the edge of Marburg’s old town, the door opens to the world of acrobatics, magic, illusion and dressage shows. This is where the Marburg Circus, Variety and Artist Archive is located, which reflects the art of entertainment over a period of more than a hundred years with documents and exhibits. This is happening on a scale that is hard to find anywhere else.
There are tens of thousands of documents on important and lesser-known circus and variety artists who once performed in Germany in the filing cabinets. More than a hundred well-filled photo albums are lined up in a row, and an entire wall is occupied by the collection of books and magazines, all of which deal with a genre that was recently included in the nationwide register of intangible cultural heritage.
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