Cissy Kraner

Austrian actress, chanson singer and cabaret performer She was born January 13, 1918 in Vienna, Austria and died February 2, 2012 in Baden near Vienna. After studying classical singing education she turned more and more to cabaret and played at several little stages in her hometown Vienna. 1938 she went on a revue tour to Bogotá, where she met Hugo Wiener. They married and stayed in South America during WWII, opening a bar in Caracas. In that time she sung songs written by her husband in five languages. In 1948, they went back to Vienna and immediately got hired to perform at "Kabaret Simple", a still well-known place for cabaret in Austria. In that time she had success with her husbands chansons like Der Novak Läßt Mich Nicht Verkommen / Eine Verzwickte Verwandtschaft, in which she talks about what a free woman wants (getting many men, smoking marihuana, getting into a fistfight with a prostitute). That and a lot of her other lyrics are definitely very liberal for the early sixties in Europe. She sings in a unique spoken world style, while Hugo Wiener plays piano. She performed with him till he died in 1993. After Hugo Wieners death, she was accompanied by Herbert Prikopa. In 2001 she stopped performing, because she didn't want to end up like Johannes Heesters.