Photograph and memorabilia albums of Bella Prince and Walter Neiss
Content Description
Collection documents the life and travels of a troupe of cabaret and circus acrobats in Turkey, Eastern Europe, Germany, and the United States. Included are around 400 family and performance photographs in albums and loose prints, 100 publicity prints, postcards, clippings, handbills, and other ephemera.
Dates
- Creation: circa 1890-1947
Creator
- Prince, Bella (Person)
Extent
.75 linear feet (1 box)Biographical / Historical
Bella Prince and her husband Walter Neiss were popular cabaret and circus performers during the Weimar Republic who fled Germany for the United States in the late 1930s. Bella Prince and her twin sister were cabaret performers known as the Schwestern Prinz or Prince Sisters. Born in the Balkans, likely from a prominent Jewish family in Bulgaria, they were based in Germany throughout their performing career. Walter Neiss was a high-wire aerialist from the Neiss Troupe, a German family of acrobatic aerialists dating back to the 1870s.
Following Walter's fall from a high wire of 60 feet at the Chicago Coliseum in 1931, and his lengthy recuperation, they performed a new act as “America’s Famous Trampoline and Casting Act” around 1938 after Bella, Walter, and at least three other Neiss family members settled permanently in the United States to escape Nazi Germany. Subsequently billed as the Neiss Trio, the company toured continuously throughout the United States during World War II.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
2018MT-2. Purchased with funds from the Rose and Marion Hannah Winter Fund and the John M. Kasdan Fund, 2017 July 10.
Creator
- Prince, Bella (Person)
- Neiss, Walter (Person)
- Title
- Photograph and memorabilia albums of Bella Prince and Walter Neiss
- Status
- in_progress
- Author
- Melanie Wisner
- Date
- 2017 July 13
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou02827
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
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