ART AFICIONADO: Claire Waldoff

Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Claire Waldoff

Acting Appreciation

Claire Waldoff (born Clara Wortmann, October 21, 1884 in Gelsenkirchen, Westphalia) was the eleventh of sixteen children in a family that ran a tavern. She attended school in Hanover and aspired to become a doctor, but after her parents divorced, financial constraints forced her to abandon that path. Instead she trained as an actress, adopting the stage name Claire Waldoff.

Waldoff’s career on stage began around 1903 with minor roles in provincial and travelling theater companies, including in Bad Pyrmont and Katowice (then in Upper Silesia). In 1906 she moved to Berlin, where her breakthrough came when Rudolf Nelson engaged her at the cabaret “Roland von Berlin.” Her style—bold, comical, ironic, often using the Berlin dialect—quickly won her wide popularity. She was known for songs that critiqued social norms (“Ach Jott, wat sind die Männer dumm” – “Oh God, how stupid men are,” for example), for using staging and clothing (such as wearing male‐style attire) to challenge conventional gender expectations, and for developing a repertoire of some 300 songs.

Over time, Waldoff became a celebrated figure of Berlin’s Weimar‐era cabaret culture. She performed in major varieté theatres such as the Scala and Wintergarten, appeared on radio and records, and associated with intellectuals and artists including Kurt Tucholsky.

However, with the rise of Nazism in 1933, her career was increasingly restricted. Many of her songs, her collaborators, and friends were Jewish; her open lifestyle (including her long‐term relationship with Olga “Olly” von Roeder) and her refusal to conform to Nazi gender and moral norms put her under suspicion.

She continued some performances during the war, but never regained her former prominence. Waldoff died in 1957.