Camilla Mayer

High Wire, Swaypole

There have been several high wireA tight, heavy metallic cable placed high above the ground, on which wire walkers do crossings and various acrobatic exercises. Not to be confused with a tight wire. artists by the name of Camilla Mayer. It was actually a generic name adopted by the star female performers of the famous high wireA tight, heavy metallic cable placed high above the ground, on which wire walkers do crossings and various acrobatic exercises. Not to be confused with a tight wire. troupe of Camilio Mayer. The original Camilla Mayer, however, was Lotte Witte, who was born in 1918 in Stettin, Germany (today Szczecin, in Poland). A very attractive young girl, she was sixteen when she joined Camilio's troupe in 1934. Fearless and talented, she soon became the troupe star attraction(Russian) A circus act that can occupy up to the entire second half of a circus performance., and Camilio's first wife. Camilio gave her not only his family name, but also his first name, and she become known as Camilla Mayer.

In 1936, when the troupe performed outdoors in the popular seaside resort of Atlantic City, in the United States, Lotte made the headlines performing on a fifty-three-meter-high (175 feet) swaypoleA high, flexible vertical pole (originally made of a single piece of wood, and today of fiberglass) atop of which an acrobat performs various balancing tricks., a daring feat that was heralded as a world record. Sadly, Lotte-Camilla was killed on January 20, 1940 when her much shorter twenty-meter swaypoleA high, flexible vertical pole (originally made of a single piece of wood, and today of fiberglass) atop of which an acrobat performs various balancing tricks. broke during the Menschen-Tiere-Sensationen show at the Deutschlande Halle in Berlin. Already famous, the name Camilla Mayer entered circus lore—as it often happens with artists who leave accidentally the field at the height of their fame.

But Camilla Mayer had become the main draw of Camilio Mayer's troupe, and two subsequent artists replaced Lotte as Camilla Mayer: First, Ruth Hempel, then Ruth Barwinske. Finally, Camilio met Annemarie Füldner in Stedten an der Ilm, near Weimar in Germany; Annemarie became his second wife and performed with him around the world as Camilla Mayer from 1946 to 1961.

Another Camilla Mayer was Margarethe Zimmerman, who had been part of Camilio Mayer's troupe right after the WWII. A talented performer, she was familiar with the Camilla Mayer's traditional repertoire, and she went on to star in a short-lived Camilla Mayer Troupe, which performed in the South of France in 1948. The troupe disbanded in Marseilles, and Margarethe Zimmerman/Camilla Mayer continued a short solo career; she was featured at the Cirque d'Hiver-Bouglione in Paris in 1948; Margarethe Zimmerman is the biological mother of Gipsy Bouglione-Gruss, who was adopted by Firmin and Violette Bouglione.

See Also

• Camilla Mayer (Margarethe Zimmerman), High Wire, at the Cirque d'Hiver (Paris, 1948)

Suggested Reading

• Adolf George, Camilio Mayer, der Napoleon der Lüfte, (Frankfurt/Oder, Trowitzsch und Sohn, 1921)