Charlotte Oelschlagel Neumann Ice Skating Correspondence

Charlotte Oelschlagel Neumann (1898-1984) was a celebrated and popular figure skater in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Germany, she excelled as both a musician and an ice skater. She first attracted notice performing in ice shows in Berlin around 1910, and she was signed by a New York City theatrical producer to headline the Broadway show Hip-Hip-Hooray! The show played at the Hippodrome Theater in 1915 for almost a year. She perfomed under the stage name "Charlotte" and quickly became a celebrity, starring in the motion picture Frozen Warning in 1916. She skated in other productions on Broadway and in traveling shows around the U.S. and in other countries, including Mexico, Cuba, and Spain. A talented and athletic skater, she was one of the earliest women to perform axel jumps in her shows, and she invented the skating moves the death spiral and the Charlotte spiral. She married her second husband Curt Neumann in 1925, with whom she often skated as pairs. She continued to skate throughout the 1930s, but when she returned to Germany for her mother's funeral in 1939, she was unable to leave the country when World War Two started. She survived the war and lived a quiet life teaching skating in West Germany in the years after the war.