The Double Accountant

Photographer Unknown

1916

Siegfried Berisch (1877–1933) and Josefina Kleine (b. late nineteenth century) are pictured here performing the burlesque Der doppelte Buchhalter (The Double Accountant) at Berlin’s Gebruder Herrnfeld Theater, a popular Yiddish theater for Jewish and general audiences in Imperial Germany. Berisch was a Jewish actor and comedian who started out performing in the cabaret and German Jewish theater scenes in Berlin and Vienna. Berisch’s first major role was in Schmidt will nicht heiraten (Schmidt Does Not Wish to Marry, 1910) and his film debut was in Aus eines Mannes Mädchenzeit (From a Man’s Girlhood, 1913). He starred in more than a dozen silent films through 1929 and a handful of talkies and musicals before he died in Vienna. Nothing is known about Kleine. 

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Credits

In Peter Sprengel, Populäres jüdisches Theater in Berlin von 1877 bis 1933 (Berlin: Haude & Spenersche, 1997). Photo courtesy Harvard University Library.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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The Expansion of Jewish Performance Art: Theater, Dance, and the Birth of Cinema

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