Jean Weidt

Jean Weidt is the name generally used by and in respect of Hans Weidt (7 October 1904 – 29 August 1988) who was a dancer and choreographer. As a young man he participated in the Hamburg Uprising. He was born and died in Germany, but between 1933 and 1948 he made his life outside Nazi Germany, chiefly but by no means exclusively living and working in Paris.

Jean Weidt is identified in several sources as a pioneer of expressionist choreography.

Life Hamburg: early years Hans Weidt was born in Barmbek, at that time a village a short distance outside Hamburg on its east side. He grew up in conditions of poverty with a father described in one source as an "alcoholic social democrat". In the economic austerity and socio-political turbulence of post-war Germany he left home aged sixteen in order to pursue his passion to become a dancer. He took gardening jobs and for a time worked in the port as a coal trimmer in order to support himself and fund his dance lessons. He studied briefly with Sigurd Leeder in 1921, also taking lessons with Olga Brandt-Knack. Between 1925 and 1928 he performed with his first dance group, appearing at venues that included the Curiohaus and little Kammerspiele Theatre, both in Hamburg, presenting his pieces "Aufruf" ("The Call"), "Der Arbeiter" ("The Worker") and "Tanz mit der roten Fahne" ("Dancing with the Red Flag"). By the end of the decade he had been talent spotted by Olga Brandt-Knack and made his debut at the Hamburg State Opera, in 1928 taking the lead role in "Der Gaukler und das Klingelspiel" ("The Juggler and the Bell Game"),

Berlin: success and more politics With his company "The Red Dancers", in 1929 Weidt moved to Berlin where he took to presenting socio-political dance evenings. The theatre director Erwin Piscator engaged him at the Renaissance-Theater, after which, starting in 1931, he presented pieces at the Wallner Theatre organising a series of productions that included "Tai Yang erwacht" ("Tai Yang awakened") by Friedrich Wolf, for which the stage set was designed by the young John Heartfield.

Weidt reacted to the growth of Fascism in Germany by joining the Communist Party in 1931. He developed a close co-operation with "Truppe 31" ("Troup 31"), a politically engaged group of performance artists around the actor-director Gustav von Wangenheim, and included Ludwig Renn, , John Heartfield and Arthur Pieck. The group promoted socio-critical productions including (but not restricted to) "Die Mausefalle" ("The Mousetrap"), "Passion eines Menschen" ("Passion of a People") and "Die Ehe" ("The Marriage"). Weidt became a leading protagonist of political theatre under what in retrospect has become known as the Weimar Republic, his choreographies dealing with working class topics. He warned early, loudly and frequently about the growth of Fascism in Germany and across Europe, and created the choreography for "Potsdam" (1932),

Paris: exile and more balletic success In May 1933 Hans Weidt escaped to Moscow, from where he moved into Paris which was becoming the informal headquarters of the German Communist Party in exile. In Paris he got to know Jean Gabin, Maurice Chevalier, Pablo Picasso (for whom he several times sat as a model) and Josephine Baker. Paris now became the focus of his professional life, although he continued to undertake tours that included Prague and Moscow. It was around this time he took to using the French language version of his name, becoming known as "Jean Weidt". Later in 1933 he founded the "Weidt Group" ballet company, which performed at Communist party sponsored rallies. and heading up what he himself later identified, according to his son Andreas, as the country's "Undisputed Number 1" of the modern French dance scene. His choreography was responsible for the French cinema success of "Der Zauberlehrling" ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice") produced by the German Max Reichmann.

War The French and British governments declared war on Germany in September 1939 in response to the implementation of a German-Soviet agreement to partition Poland. It was not immediately clear to the inhabitants of Paris and London what war with Germany would involve, but for Jean Weidt, and for thousands of others who had moved to France or Britain as refugees from political and / or race-based persecution in Nazi Germany, the period of waiting was relatively short. Weidt was identified as an enemy alien, facing arrest and internment. He was able to avoid arrest in Paris by escaping to (French) North Africa and ended up in Casablanca, but after the invasion of May 1940 and the installation of a new government in France, Casablanca came under the control of the Vichy government, and Weidt spent several months in a concentration camp in Algeria. The Dupuys, respectively a dancer and a choreographer, and his youngest protegees who originally met one another in 1946 at a dance-class held by Jean Weidt, would later continue to present Wendt's choreography well into the twenty-first century. In Paris, Weidt built up his company and despite lack of money and frequently dire living conditions, undertook various tours across a shattered continent, including one to occupied Germany and another, in 1947, to Copenhagen. The 1947 tour of Copenhagen, which involved the "International choreography concours" where Weidt one first prize with a revolutionary piece called "La Cellule/Die Zelle" ("The Cell"). Back home in Paris, however, critics were unimpressed by his triumph in Denmark, and Jean Weidt's choreography seemed to have fallen out of fashion since the end of the war. There was a further successful tour of the Netherlands and Belgium, and his reputation remained strong in what remained of Germany, but funding continued to be a challenge. In 1948, he finally relocated to the eastern part of Berlin, since 1945 administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone, where the prospect of relatively generous government financial support for ballet beckoned.

Return to Berlin Still in 1948, Weidt was appointed to take charge of the newly established "Dramatische Ballett" at the Berlin Volksbühne (peoples' theatre). There followed assignments in Schwerin, Hamburg and Chemnitz along with the creation in 1954, in collaboration with Hanns Eisler, of the Störtebeker Festival. In 1966 Walter Felsenstein appointed Weidt to a position with the Komische Oper Berlin. At the same time, with 40 young amateur dancers, he created the "Young Dancers" group, which he headed till his death in 1988.

In his extreme old age Jean Weidt developed the "Dance Hour" series, in which all the top dance companies of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) took part. It was by some criteria Jean Weidt's most successful post-war production.

In 1988, the year of his death, Jean Weidt was made an honorary citizen of Rangsdorf, a district of Teltow-Fläming a short distance to the south of Berlin where by this time he lived.

Personal Jean Weidt married the painter and graphic artist Ursula Wendorff-Weidt in approximately 1952. Through the marriage he acquired as a step son the photographer Michael Weidt.