Benno Bing

Born in Würzburg, Benno Bing came from a Jewish merchant family. He moved to Munich at the age of nine, and attended the Maximiliansgymnasium in Schwabing. Three years after graduating from school, in 1897, Benno Bing married in London 20 year-old Karoline Tausend, who came also from Munich. She was Catholic. The couple had three daughters, Rosa, born in 1898, Beatrice, born in 1902, and Antigone, born in 1906. After ten years in London, Benno Bing moved with his family to Berlin for a short time, then in November 1909 returned to Munich. The Bings moved into Keuslinstraße 4 in Schwabing, where their son Rudolf was born the following year. In 1913 Benno Bing was appointed business director of the theatre “Münchner Kammerspiele in der Augustenstraße 89”. This theatre, founded in 1911 by Eugen Robert, rapidly became a major stage for contemporary German and foreign writers, the literary avantgarde and experiments. From the 1917-1918 season onwards, the artistic director was Otto Falckenberg. As general representative of the theatre’s management Benno Bing negotiated from 1924 the engagement of artists, guest appearances and performing rights with publishers. But from the end of the 1920s, the Nazis were becoming ever stronger and putting increasing pressure on the Kammerspiele theatre, demanding the dismissal of Jewish and “un-German” people. In October 1933, following the Nazi seizure of power, Benno Bing fled, going firstly to Prague. In April 1935 he emigrated to Paris and again in December 1938 to Ploer à Port-Saint-Hubert in Brittany. In Munich, the Gestapo (Secret Police) coerced his “aryan” wife Karoline into divorcing him in 1938. She would otherwise have lost her livelihood, a hemstitch and pleating business at Augustenstraße 16. Like her children, Karoline Bing survived the Nazi period. Benno Bing, however, was arrested in La Ferté-Bernard in the Sarthe Departement west of Paris on October 9, 1942 and deported to Auschwitz via Drancy transit camp on November 6, 1942. He died there on December 21, 1942. (text Janne u. Klaus Weinzierl, editor C. Fritsche, translation C. Hales)