Jules Marx

Passions

Vocation

German-Jewish director of theatre and vaudeville opera who ran variety shows in Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, Dortmund and Mannheim. At times, Marx also served as president of the International Variety Theatre Directors Association. After the seizure of power by the Nazis Marx had to flee Germany and he settled in Paris where he opened the "Empire" Variety Theatre in 1937, which was closed again in June of the same year. Two months later, Marx, together with author and critic Bernhard Diebold of the Frankfurter Zeitung, founded a literary agency in Zurich. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the 57-year-old Marx was arrested by the French as an "enemy alien" and interned in the Gurs transit camp. After the occupation of France by the Wehrmacht, Marx was handed over to the Gestapo at the beginning of 1943, who transferred him and other Jews via Trier and Berlin to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in February of the same year. Jules Marx died there 15 months later, on 8 May 1944, aged 61. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)