Trivia

That his name is still largely unknown today is due to the fact that he was only at the beginning of his career when the takeover of power by the Nazis put an end to it.

His songs written for the day were not published in print at the time, and only a very rare record by Dora Gerson, made in 1935 for the Jewish company Lukraphon (recently published in the elaborate Bear-Family documentary on the Jewish Cultural Association), was recorded.

His many songs (more than 350 chansons have survived), sketches and memories vanquish through humorous playfulness, socially critical cheekiness and sometimes breathtaking political clairvoyance.

Curt Bry was a leading cabaret author in Berlin just as Hitler came to power, but meanwhile he has been unjustly forgotten.

When he fled into exile, he managed to write for European cabaret ensembles and singers for a short time, but the move to America required a career change, which meant that Curt Bry disappeared from the perspective of the German-speaking cabaret and entertainment scene.

Living In the USA he only appeared occasionally at events.

Bry managed to escape, but in his final destination of America, he could not continue his work as a songwriter, and though he lived until 1974, he dropped out of sight of the cabaret scene, and even of the historians.

Bry was a master of surprising narrative art and ambiguous time analysis. His lyrics never seem cheap, always sensitive and highly musical; the settings hit the nerve of the time without gimmickry.

The name Curt Bry (1902-1974) may hardly be known even to the well-read cabaret lover - or even completely foreign. And yet Bry was one of the leading young cabaret authors in Berlin around 1932-33, author of Werner Finck's famous "Katakombe" and also a rare example of double talent as a lyricist and composer in one person - later also a brilliant interpreter of his own songs on the piano.

He first lived in 1938 in New York and worked as a cinema pianist. Then he moved to the West Coast and worked as an accountant and later as an auditor.

His chansons and his biography are an important cultural-historical heritage, which wrongly remains hidden in the dark.

A star on the Cabaret Walk of Fame in Mainz is dedicated to him.

In 1938 he returned from Switzerland to Amsterdam to emigrate to the USA.

His story stands for countless young artists whose careers - and often lives - were interrupted and brutally ended by the Nazis before they could fully establish themselves in the cultural sphere.

Before he could make a major name for himself in the cultural sector, his rise was forcibly interrupted. Most of the performers who had created his songs were also expelled or murdered.

Bry's name has has been overlooked by the public and historians since his death and little information can be found on him or his wife (actress Lilli Lohrer Bry).

In 1933 Bry emigrated to Amsterdam, from where he moved to Vienna in 1935. Ultimately, he had to emigrate to the USA in 1938, where his career in the entertainment industry ended.

In March of 1940 Bry moved to Los Angeles and found success with a revue by Frederick Hollaender.

He wrote, for example, the chansons 'ship boy song' and 'sea shanty song in three colors', which were interpreted by Lale Andersen.

Curt Bry and his wife Lilli Lohrer fled Berlin for Vienna just as the Nazis were coming into power. In November of 1936 Bry and his wife performed on stage until May 1937 by the end of 1938 the couple had fled from Vienna to Italy and then to Holland where they once again performed on stages in cabarets.