Lehmann's Birth Date

One can find a great many birthdates given for Lotte Lehmann. I always assumed that vanity lead her to change the date, and since 27 February was Caruso's birthday, this seemed an intriguing coincidence. Some of the dates I have encountered are 2 July 1888, 1885 or even 1881!

In hopes of resolving the confusion I asked Frank Manhold, a classical radio announcer-producer in Munich, to search for a birth certificate . What follows is his story of the search. -GH

Encouraged by my friend, the tireless LL-researcher Gary Hickling, I made contact last fall with several institutions in Lehmann's hometown of Perleberg.

Perleberg is a small town of about 14,000 inhabitants in the northeastern part of re-united Germany, located in the state, or as we say, "Bundesland" of Brandenburg. It takes about two hours by car to get to Berlin from there.

Several calls finally led me to Reinhard Spiess, director of Perleberg's "Heimatmuseum," which is situated in a former schoolhouse, actually the school LL attended from 1895 to 1902.

Herr Spiess told me about the LL exhibition of l988 in his museum, commemorating the artist's 100th birrhday, and also about the LL memorial plaque that was attached to the outside wall of the building on this occasion.

Herr Spiess was first surprised, then quite enthusiastic to hear about the LLL Newsletter and the Lehmann Archive at the University of California Santa Barbara. He hopes for a collaboration between the Archive and the museum, which could make a permanent LL exhibition possible in Perleberg.

In December he wrote me about an exhibition in 1993, perhaps connected with lectures on Lehmann. In addition, Perleberg city officials are considering naming a street and the local music school after the city's most famous daughter. This is something which, in my opinion, is long overdue.

From the Perleberg registry office I received a copy of the marvellously old-fashioned birth certificate: 'Before the undersigned registrar today appeared..." etc. The hand-written portion of the document was in "Deutscher Schrift," the official German writing (Schriftart) used until the 1940's. I had to ask an 82-year-old friend of mine to "translate" the writing into modern German, because otherwise I couldn't read it.

Having witnessed the German reunification mainly by reading newspapers and watching TV, it was a completely new and exciting experience for me to be in contact so easily with fellow Germans in the east, with no more walls of stone or ideology between us.

A German realization and an English translation of the birth certificate follows.