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Constance Micaela Busch was a third-generation member of one of the oldest circus dynasties in Germany. The famous Circus Busch was founded by her grandfather Paul and grandmother Constance Busch on June 29th 1884 in Svendborg, Denmark.  In 1888, the circus moved to Germany. Three years later, they opened a circus building in Altona, Hamburg. Read More…

Alma Vizla was born in 1915 in the small Latvian town of Opekalna. There is an almost total lack of information about her family. The only thing known is that her (probably older) brother Viktor became an acclaimed soccer player – which points to the increasing popularity of the physical culture movement flourishing at that Read More…

Theodor Wonja Michael was born in Berlin in January 1925. He was the youngest of four children of the Cameroonian colonial migrant Theophilus Wonja Michael and his German wife Martha, who originated from Posen (Poznań). When he was one year old, his mother died of a severe illness. Out of economic need, his father joined Read More…

Therese Zauser was born on December 4, 1910 in Feldkirch/ Austria. Her father Johann was the court clerk’s chief director at the Feldkirch Public Prosecutor’s Office. In his spare time, he was a passionate angler and therefore also chairman of the Fisheries District Committee. Her mother Theresa was a housewife and part-time zither teacher. Therese Read More…

Albert Queyrois, a Frenchman also known by the stage name Karmah, lived a life full of eclecticism and change. He also possessed an uncanny ability to incite political provocation. Born in Bordeaux in 1893, he was originally a cabinetmaker by trade, working in Faubourg Saint-Antoine in Paris. His father, Jean Queyrois, earned his living as a carpenter. His mother, Catherine Despéries, was Read More…

Raymond Gurême was born in 1925 near Paris into a French Manouche (i.e. Sinti in French) family. As did several generations of the family before them, his parents owned a small circus and a travelling cinema: the family toured France and parts of Belgium and Switzerland where they were warmly received in villages deprived of Read More…

The transcript of the escape story of the Schauerjans family is the result of a collaboration between descendants of the circus family and the French historian Laurence Prempain. Until 1943, Rosa (born 1902) and François Jacob Schauerjans (1903) lived with their children Edwige (born 1928) and Roger (born 1938) in Grenoble, France. Two versions of Read More…

After WWI, Baptiste Esther (1893-1973) and his wife Méli Falck (1896-1955) run with their children a small circus. About the daughters Rita and Zélie Esther we know that they worked with horses. Baptiste Esther trained also his Spanish godson Marius Swils who lived with the family and later became an agile horse rider. The Esthers Read More…