Word: dresdeners
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From its first concert in 1945, the Mozartchor, Dresden's all-girl chorus, was a success. It meant fun and extra income for 30-odd office girls and factory workers, ages 14-30, who were members. They did not realize that it would also mean politics, danger and bitter personal decisions. The trouble began when Germany's Communist youth organization tried to persuade the group to appear at party rallies, add Communist songs to its repertory of hymns, folk music and lullabies. The singers refused...
...Business Manager Ludwig Pulst-managed to get interzonal passes for a West German tour. But there was a condition: Niebisch had to agree to work as a spy for the Russians. Niebisch's work on the Western tour apparently did not satisfy the MVD. Once back in Dresden, the singers were accused by Communist papers of being Western spies; they found their food rations reduced, their wage taxes raised, the choir's contracts broken, their advertising placards defaced with "Reaktionare," and "Schumacherlinge" (Schumacher stooges). At last, 24 of the choir members decided to try to leave the Soviet...
East Germans were equally disgruntled. "It's a magic show," said an attendant at the Goethestrasse parking lot. "The stuff comes out of nowhere, gets everyone's hopes high for seven wonderful days, and then it disappears again." "Leipzig is a showcase," explained a Hausfrau from Dresden, "and for one brief week they fill it well. But to pay for one week, we have short rations for weeks ahead...
...morning last week, a truck loaded with blue-shirted toughs from the Freie Deutsche Jugend (the Communist youth organization) rolled through a tiny hamlet near Dresden in Germany's Russian zone. As it ground to a stop, the blue shirts piled out shouting: "Farmer Fritz Merkel is a doppelzüngiger Reaktionär (two-timing reactionary)." Two trucks that followed disgorged half-frightened, vodka-drunk workers. On Communist orders, they rushed out to Fritz merkel's farm, smashed and scattered farm tools, opened chicken coops and rabbit hutches. some of them broke down the heavy door...
...Steber could not quite make up in tenderness and charm what she lacked in opulence. Contralto Risë Stevens' attractive singing as Octavian was marred only by her unattractive grimacing. Even so, with Veteran Bass Eugene List as Baron Ochs, and with the help of two new imports, Dresden's Coloratura Erna Berger as a pert, brilliant Sophie, and Vienna's Buffo-Tenor Peter Klein as Valzacchi, Der Rosenkavalier added up to an opening-night success...