TODAY IN BERLIN: CAMILLA MAYER'S LAST SHOW
On this day in 1940 in Berlin Camilla Mayer, peerless German circus acrobat and tightrope artist, plummeted to her death in Germany’s largest multipurpose venue hall, Berlin’s Deutschlandhalle.
The artiste’s accident happened during a popular circus show "Menschen-Tiere-Sensationen", traditionally attended by many thousands of viewers. She fell down while performing on top of a 20-metre mast - one much lower than the 53-metre mast she used for the world record she set in Atlantic City 1935.
In 1936 Camilla Mayer performed in Atlantic City of the East Coast of the USA, where she won the hearts and the admiration of the American crowds by swaying and presenting daredevil acrobatic tricks on top of a 53-metre pole.
One year later she repeated the show in the British Clacton-on-Sea. The audience were ecstatic but completely unaware of the fact that someone tried to sabotage her show by cutting one of the ropes holding the sway pole she used...
Camilla Mayer was not her real name - she was born Charlotte “Lotte” Witte, a daughter of a plumber from Stettin (today Polish city of Szczecin). Noticed as a 16-year-old by Camillio Mayer, one of the greatest high wire artists of both his and of all times (born in French-German Alsace, he was known as The Napoléon of The Skies), she joined his high-wire act in 1934. Clearly, the girl owed her new name to her “circus Pygmalion” but soon earned her own - Camilla Mayer was dubbed "the Stratosphere Girl".
On January 20, 1940 Camilla Mayer’s performance during the Deutschlandhalle show was the highlight of the day. She climbed up the twenty-metre pole and began to sway, preparing for the right momentum to begin her act, when the pole broke and the artiste plummeted to her death. That moment - both of her fall and of the audience screaming in shock - was broadcast on the radio.
