The images and the entire text used on this and all other USMBOOKS web pages are the copyrighted property of USM Inc.  Those images and the text may be used by others ONLY AFTER completion of a formal international licensing agreement and payment of a licensing fee! It is therefore, illegal for anyone to take any of the material found on USMBOOKS.com and use it for their own purposes without our written permission, irrespective of any excuse they may feel they have for doing so.

NAZI RKK REICHSTHEATERKAMMER ID FOR A STRIKING GERMAN ACROBAT AND CONTORTIONIST WITH ENTRIES FROM 1936 into 1943

Text and images copyright © 2025 by USM, Inc.

The Reichskulturkammer (RKK or State Chamber of Culture) was a very complex and very important department of the German government. Without exception, anyone and everyone involved in "all forms of artistic creation or activity which are made public, appear in print or are transmitted through the air" were required to be members. They paid a membership fee and had to carry an identification card from one of the chambers of the Reichskulturkammer in order to be employed in Germany, or in German occupied territory.

Reich Culture Chambers included the Theater Chamber, Chamber of Visual Arts, the Motion Picture Chamber, the Literature Chamber, Press Chamber, Music Chamber and Radio Chamber and each of them had Fachschaft or branches. The Presidents of all the chambers formed a National Advisory Committee which was supplemented by a Reich Culture Senate composed of "persons of outstanding cultural attainments". Along with Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (State Minister for National Community Clarificaxtion and Publicity), these people oversaw every aspect of everything that got into print, was filmed or that was performed in Nazi Germany or in other German occupied places.

From then on, the they appeared as a pair. First she performed her routine, then he did his, among many other places at the famous Hansa Theater on Steindamm. "This is where we met Caterina Valente in the 1950s. She was a real star," says Helene. She rolls her wheelchair over to the wooden living room cupboard and rummages through the drawers for photos. "It was an exciting time in general. I even went to Monte Carlo with my husband." Even though Helene Regler was no longer performing herself at that time, she continued to introduce her husband's performances. "I made the audience laugh because I spoke in any way I pleased” she said.

That was a talent that she continued to use later on after her life as a performing artist was over. She lived with her husband Ludwig (who died in April 2005) in a small terraced house in Bramfeld and "on the Jasper tour buses, I showed the passengers my Hamburg and told them about my life," says Regler. Today, she tells her neighbors about it in the Max-Brauer-Haus retirement home, where she has lived since 1994. "They like to hear about the circus, and about life on the tightrope.” [END OF STORY]

Her life was a balancing act between the glitter of the stage and nights of aerial bombardment. Between entertainment and doom. Between performing and reality. Blocking out the war. Helping to make it easier for the soldiers to forget. That's what Helene Regler Hornig did between 1939 and 1945 as Germany’s "Elastic Lady". In a backless leotard of jet-black velvet, she performed her acrobatic routine every evening, in different places, but often at the front. "My Wehrmacht tour," was the way Helene Regler described it.

As this is written on her 100th birthday (May 2008), she sits in a wheelchair in her small apartment in the Max-Brauer-Haus retirement home in Bramfeld. She turned 100 a few days ago. "The circus is long gone," she says. Her memory is now her soap box. Helene Regler adjusts her purple crocheted headband. Under her starched white blouse she wears a mint-colored corset, an earlier stage costume. Because the circus is far from over in her memory, it is a part of Helene herself. "I was born for the stage,” and almost on it. She was born in a circus wagon in May 1908, in a small village near Hanover where her acrobat parents were getting ready for their next performance. "My mother is said to have started doing acrobatics again soon after I was born,” she says.

SO, JUST WHO WAS LISA LISETT?

The following story was published under the headline LEGEND: AS "ELASTIC LADY" HELENE REGLER ENTERTAINED HER AUDIENCE THROUGHOUT EUROPE in the German language Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper on 31 May 2008 at the time Lisa Lisett turned 100. We offer an English translation of the interview here as a way of providing more fascinating background and provenance for the very rare original Third Reich Lisa Lisett items we are selling on this USMBOOKS web page.

The acrobatic artist who became famous throughout Europe as Lisa Lisett was born Helene Regler in a circus wagon in 1908. She performed at the war front during World War II for soldiers and in the Hansa Theater in Hamburg for much more respectable civilian audiences in the 1950s. Her parents were also famous acrobats.

Offered for sale here is the original 10.5 x 14.3 cm (4-1/8 x 5-5/8 inches) pink 10-page Third Reich Mitgliedskarte or membership identity card issued to acrobat/contortionist/dancer/gymnast/performer Helene Hornig (née Regler) who worked under the stage name Lisa Lisett. She was a member of the Fachschaft Artistik of the Reichstheaterkammer (State Theater Chamber) of the RKK. Helene Hornig was member number 8738 and her ID shows her home address was Schmalerweg 1 in Altona/Elbe, a community in the western part of central Hamburg immediately north of the Elbe river.

For example, in May 1936 she performed at the Deutsches Theater Central Palast in Munich and in September 1938 she performed at the Metropol in the North Sea resort of Cuxhaven.

In February and March 1939 she was employed by the famous Olympia-Palast in Berlin, from May to September 1939 she performed abroad (handwritten entries Ausland), and in April 1943 she worked in Litzmannstadt in German occupied Poland at the Tanzkabarett Tabarin (see photo left).
<<<<

In October and November 1943 she was part of DAF Kraft durch Freude shows in Berlin, Dessau and Magdeburg and was seen by tens of thousands of people. The last entry in this ID is for her performances in Berlin in December 1943.

The dramatic 36 x 50 mm (1-½ x 2 inches) ID photo of Lisa Lisett / Helene Regler Hornig has its original staples and is correctly over-stamped with the 35mm round red Nazi eagle and swastika stamp of the Reichskulturkammer’s Reichstheaterkammer, Fachschaft Artistik.

Stapled to the pink cardstock of the Reichstheaterkammer Ausweis are six Einlage or additional pages showing Lisa Lisett was a very busy and popular performer between January 1936 and December 1943. Stamps indicate she faithfully paid her membership dues and that she worked in theaters, on stages and in other performing arts venues all over Germany and throughout German occupied Europe.

She worked in theaters large and small in Karlsruhe, Hamburg, Flensburg, Leipzig, Berlin and Bremen.

In addition to Lisa Lisett’s fine original RKK membership ID we include a very rare 12 x 16.5 cm or 4-3/4 x 5-3/4 inch period publicity piece that is a collage of photos that bear the name PHOTO SONYA BUDAPEST (Hungary) showing pictures of the “Elastic Lady” or “Gummi Lady” in action.

Written on the back is the same address, Schmalerweg 1, Apartment 2 in Altona/Elbe, as that which is listed in Lisa Lisett’s pink cardstock RKK Mitgliedskarte. It is very likely that Lisett’s home address was obliterated in the summer of 1943 during the concentrated Allied bombing of Hamburg and Altona while Lisa Lisett was performing elsewhere.

This 100% original 88+ year old RKK membership identity document and her original photographic publicity piece are in nice used condition. At no additional cost we include an framed 8 x 10 inch enlargement of the unique publicity photo collage (shown second picture from the bottom, below). The rare Nazi ID shows it was used by a lady on the move, a busy traveling performer! Condition of both pieces exactly as shown, no odor.

On 18 June 2015 Norbert’s Internationale Circuswelt announced that “Hamburg’s oldest acrobat” Helene Regler had died at 107.

The parental duo was in great demand as, “Variety performances were the television of the time and my parents earned a great living.” That is, until the First World War broke out and her father was drafted into the German Army. At the end of 1917 he returned from Russia a different man, but his passion for acrobatics remained strong. In Hamburg, immediately upon his return, he stretched a wire cable in the courtyard of the home of a locksmith friend. "Now we're going to practice, Lisett," he said to little Helene, and she practiced until she could keep her balance perfectly, and until she was ready for her debut as a performing artist.

In 1919, when Friedrich Ebert was appointed the first President of the Weimar Republic by the National Assembly, Helene Regler was doing the splits in Nauke's Variety Show on Hamburg’s infamous Reeperbahn. "Nobody was looking for an eleven-year-old girl like me on their radar," she says. Her fee was a bit of chocolate, but the agent who had also already booked her parents was enthusiastic about her and began to organize more solo performances. Small shows became bigger ones and Little Lisett became the "Elastic Lady" by the 1920s. She entertained audiences from Ankara to Zagreb. "I've seen a lot of the world," says Helene Regler. "I learned foreign languages as I was passing through.”

From 1933 onwards, Helene Regler travelled a lot in her homeland. The National Socialists discovered how they could keep people happy with bread and amusements. Helene added to their amusement, saying "When a new section of the Reichsautobahn was completed, I performed my acrobatic acts for the exhausted construction workers" and "made good money.” Back then, Helene said she made up to 60 Reichsmarks (US$24.00) per performance, ”But then the bad times came to Germany.”

War came again. Chaos again. Memories of her beloved father, who had died in 1923 and who was never able to overcome the physical and mental injuries of World War I. Helene Regler had to go to the front too, for "soldiers' entertainment," as she calls it but she never had to go hungry, as "I always had free food and drinks." Once she was flown to Russia, "because there was no way to get there by overland transport anymore," she says, taking a thoughtful drag on her menthol cigarette, “But the pilot was very nice. On the return flight, after he had dropped me off, his plane was shot down - a terrible time.”

But it was precisely during this time of horror that she found her true love - Ludwig, a fellow artist from Bavaria. In 1944, he suddenly appeared in front of her in Königsberg at the reception desk of the small hotel where all the performing artists for the evening show were staying. "When he told me his date of birth, I was blown away," says Helene. "We were born on the same day in 1908." A year later, shortly after the end of the Second World War, the couple married in Berlin. "Although Germany was in ruins, we were even able to find two glasses of champagne.”