German singer Agnes Bernelle
Agnes Bernelle’s journey from Berlin to Dublin created a living link between the German cabaret of the 1920s and contemporary Irish music.
She was born Agnes Bernauer in Berlin in 1923, the daughter of Jewish Hungarian-German theatre impresario Rudolf. In 1936 she followed her father who had fled to England in December 1935. When war broke out, she went to work for the British intelligence services as “Vicki”, the siren voice of anti-Nazi propaganda radio broadcasts. She married an upper-class Irish Spitfire pilot Desmond Leslie (whose father Shane was a cousin of Winston Churchill) at the end of the war and performed German cabaret songs, especially those of Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Joachim Ringelnatz, in London. In 1963, she and Desmond moved to his ancestral home, Castle Leslie in County Monaghan.
Later she divorced Leslie, married Irish writer Maurice Craig and moved to Dublin. For young Irish people, her performances at the Project Arts Centre in the 1970s and 1980s and her three albums of German songs were electrifying. Punks idolised her and she had a huge influence on Irish musicians like Philip Chevron of the Pogues and Camille O’Sullivan. Bernelle died in Dublin in 1999.
Details film-footage
Video 1: Rare 1956-footage of a blond Agnes Bernelle and Desmond Leslie, translating German songs at Castle Leslie and visiting Hollywood legend John Ford on location in Ireland. He was directing “The Rising of the Moon”. © Courtesy of Mark LeslieVisitor Information
Project Arts Centre
39 East Essex Street
Temple Bar
Dublin 2
IRELAND
Link
German Traces in Ireland
A project by the Goethe-Institut Irland.
Author: Fintan O'Toole
Translator: Manfred Weltecke