The Circus Busch used to be in the James-Simon-Park in Berlin – a colorful fairytale castle with a dome, turret and a huge hall with over 4000 seats.
Photo: IMAGO / Stefan Zeitz
»I’ll come by the Ebertsbrücke at the municipal swimming pool and see how the renovians and jross clean it up. You know every plank…”
»Wasserminna« was first published in 1933. In it, the Berlin circus director Paula Busch paid tribute to her artiste, stuntwoman and housekeeper Minna Schulz in Panke-Berlinerisch. From the Berliners soon Wasserminna called, the just 15-year-old found work around 1900 at the river swimming pool on the Ebertsbrücke, a newly built bridge between the Bode Museum and Friedrichstraße, the lamp bases of which were decorated with boar heads. Minna swam in the Spree alongside women with weak hearts, stopped a Fraulein von Riffenthal from bathing so that she wouldn’t catch a cold, and dived to look for a “golden watch with diamonds” that had just fallen into the water. “I dived in and down. Can stay under water for two and a half minutes.” There was a hurrah as she reappeared like a walrus and spluttered, “I got it!”
In July and August, Minna and her colleagues had to look after 5,000 people: hold sheets in front of the ladies who had to change because of overcrowded cabins on the bridge; Pulling children who couldn’t find an end out of the water with the cant hook; quoting a naked woman from the Spree or rescuing a young lady from the river who had a stone thrown at her head from the bridge by a “dumb fellow with lust-murdering ideas.” After this incident, a wire net was stretched over the bath and the summer drew to a close.
“And now it was already queasy at the beginning of September and after seven.” Then a “little girl” read an advertisement to the water minna: “Circus Busch is looking for experienced divers and swimmers”. Minna makes her way to the Busch Circus, which was not far down the Spree at the Boerse train station (today Hackescher Markt, the circus was on the slope of James Simon Park), and is very excited soon employed as a swimmer.
The circus was a colorful fairytale castle with a dome and turret, a huge hall with over 4000 seats, stables, a retractable arena and a pump that could pump thousands of liters of water from the Spree into the circus. Gigantic spectacles were staged, naval battles, dramas under waterfalls, pirate plays and »The Sunken City«. For the ring show »Camora or the Bandits of Abruzzo« there was a blue grotto in the last act, Minna swam through a tunnel to suddenly appear in front of the amazed audience – as a mermaid with a blue tail »which was studded with blue bulbs all around and which I let call and step down while swimming from wejen the effect and which et ooch looked natural«.
With her they were twelve swimmers, “I was her queen or her leader or something like that”; Aquaminna wrestled with bears (one “nibbled” her), slid down rocks, dived for swimmers, and danced on artificial seabeds draped in green spangles. With the advent of cinemas, the big pantomimes came to an end in Berlin too. Minna stayed with Paula Busch until the end of her life, endured with her the demolition of the circus house (because of Albert Speer’s plans for the Reich capital), war and evacuation. She is buried in the Busch family grave on Liesenstrasse in Berlin’s Wedding district, not far from the streets of her childhood that led to the Spree river baths.
