We Lost The One and Only Ernest Albrecht, Circus Author, Critic and Historian

Circus News

We Lost The One and Only Ernest Albrecht, Circus Author, Critic and Historian

I am writing this on behalf of myself and my dear friend and wonderful circus photographer Maike Schulz about someone who was a steady part of both our lives for many years- hers way more than mine- Ernest Albrecht.
Ernest Albrecht and Jessica Hentoff
Portrait of Albrecht by friend and artist, Karen E. Gersch

There are some people who are always there, and you expect them to always be. Ernie interviewed me in the late 1980s for one of his several books about circus. Maike started photographing for him in 1999. He introduced Maike to the world of circus and she was a favorite photographer for many acts.

I saw him every year at Circus Flora and often at many other circuses around the world. We went to all the Paris winter circuses together in 2013. Maike started accompanying him to St. Louis when Ernest would come to review Circus Flora. I looked forward every year to having them stay with me. Circus folks are used to being apart and coming together again and it being as if no time has passed. You just share the circus stories you’ve both experienced while you’ve been apart and discuss different aspects of the circus business. So it was with Ernie.

Ernie was unassuming, charming, quiet, and observant. He was a knowledgeable gentleman with strong opinions that he would express without pushing to the point of controversy. He served as an historian, a critic, and a cheerleader in the world of circus. Ernest shared his view of the past and future of the circus. His Spectacle Magazine became the top international circus magazine in America and was usually full of Maike’s photographs.

Maike Schulz

He never tired of the circus. Ernest knew all the players and the parts they played in the larger picture that made up the world of the circus. Even though he may have just been in the audience, he seemed to be at every show. As Maike put it, “He was a true believer in the power and importance of the circus arts.”

I last saw him in Monte Carlo for the International Circus Festival in 2020, right before the world shut down. Especially during the pandemic, time has gotten away from us. People we would see regularly, we did not in the past almost three years. Yet, the feeling was that they would be there when things got back on schedule. Maike and Ernie would come back this June to cover Circus Flora. Then the news, Ernie Albrecht has left this stage.

Even someone you haven’t seen recently leaves a hole in the fabric of your life when they leave. Their loss rends the pattern of your life. Ernie will be missed by many in the circus world. There will be an empty seat in the front box where he should be sitting taking notes on the show.

May his memory be a blessing.

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Ernest Albrecht was the founder of the print version of Spectacle, which he served for all of its fourteen years as Editor/Publisher. He is also the author of The New American Circus, which was published by the University Press of Florida. It has won world wide recognition and is considered to be one of the most important books on the American circus published in the past 25 years. His first book, A Ringling By Any Other Name—The Story of John Ringling North and His Circus, published by Scarecrow Press, was hailed as “a major contribution to the scholarship of the modern American Circus,” and his third book, Creating the Contemporary Circus, also published by Scarecrow Press has been called “a spectacular journey into the processes, aesthetic and commercial, that go into the big ticket big tops of the 21st Century.”
His latest book From Barnum & Bailey to Feld, the Creative Evolution of the Greatest Show on Earth has been hailed as “the most extensive and comprehensive review of the artistic and performance side of the Greatest Show on Earth to date.” “Fascinating” and “Astonishing.”
For 28 years he was the theatre critic for the New Brunswick (NJ) Home News. During that time he published over 3,500 reviews of New York, London and regional theatres and interviewed numerous personalities ranging from Judy Garland to Liza Minelli and Pablo Casals to Gunther Gebel-Williams.
He has published articles in Time, Variety, Theatre Crafts, Bandwagon, Grit, Circus Report, Le Cirque dans l’Univers, Planet Circus, and Circus Zeitung. He has also contributed several biographies of circus artists to Oxford University Press’ American Biography, the entry devoted to circus in The Encyclopedia of American Folk Art, and L’Annuaire Théâtral 32: Cirque et théâtralité nouvelles pistes.
Prior to returning to his first love, the circus, he was for 15 years Producing Director of Plays-in-the-Park, an outdoor musical theatre that has been the springboard for many performers, designers and directors.
Albrecht earned his BS degree from Rutgers University in 1959, winning the award for outstanding contribution to university dramatics in his senior year. His MA in theatre is from Northwestern University, where he also completed post-graduate work in theatre under a University Fellowship in 1964.
He taught composition at Middlesex County College from 1967 to 2005. He has also taught dramatic criticism at Rutgers and Princeton Universities. Source: From the Spectacle Magazine, March 2020 Edition

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Images are courtesy of the author Jessica Hentoff and Karen E. Gersch.

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Cards and memories can be shared with his wife, Pearl Albrecht at 43 Ainsworth Ave, East Brunswick, NJ 05516-1206

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Jessica Hentoff
Artistic Director, Founder, Executive Director -United States
Jessica Hentoff has been teaching and performing circus arts for over 41 years. She has been the recipient of St. Louis Arts Innovator of the Year, Outstanding Arts Educator of the Year, American Youth Circus Organization/American Circus Educators’ Excellence in Circus Education Award, and the Youth Development Practitioner Award by the Youth Learning Institute. Jessica was a founding member of both Big Apple Circus and Circus Flora and is the founder and Artistic/Executive Director of Circus Harmony, a St. Louis based social circus that builds character and expands community by helping children defy gravity, soar with confidence and leap over social barriers, all at the same time!
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Jessica Hentoff

Jessica Hentoff has been teaching and performing circus arts for over 41 years. She has been the recipient of St. Louis Arts Innovator of the Year, Outstanding Arts Educator of the Year, American Youth Circus Organization/American Circus Educators’ Excellence in Circus Education Award, and the Youth Development Practitioner Award by the Youth Learning Institute. Jessica was a founding member of both Big Apple Circus and Circus Flora and is the founder and Artistic/Executive Director of Circus Harmony, a St. Louis based social circus that builds character and expands community by helping children defy gravity, soar with confidence and leap over social barriers, all at the same time!