Biography

Avant-garde culture would be central to her career, but she began her life as a dancer within the traditions of ballet as it flourished in late 19th-century Vienna.

Born in Vienna in 1885 into an artistic family (her father was a successful academic painter), Grete Wiesenthal grew up at the center of the artistic and intellectual life of late imperial Austria.

Grete's talents were recognized by Hofoper teacher and ballet master Joseph Hassreiter, but by this time she was finding it increasingly onerous to conform:

It became difficult for me to dance in the line; too easily I leapt forward somewhat or stayed back out of fear that the ballet master, the next day in rehearsal, could say: 'And Wiesenthal had again danced out of line, yes; do you always want to be the star?' Oh, I so honestly endeavored to stay in the line correctly and had, for the time being, had enough of the effort to become a star. But I was obviously not created for the line.

Weeks after their appearance at the Cabaret Fledermaus, the Wiesenthal sisters were stars. With the support of the poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, they performed in Berlin and most of Germany's other large cities. In Berlin, they danced at Max Reinhardt's innovative Deutsches Theater, ending a special performance of Lysistrata for which von Hofmannsthal had written a prologue.

As a child, Grete was observant of the movements of the feet of peasants who came to Vienna on Sunday in order to perform dances in the open. To her, the dancers' feet seemed to be carrying on conversations with one another.