Month: May 2023

While Mona was living at No.6 Hellerstrasse, a neighbour was Gisela Griffel. Gisela was three years older than Mona (20^th May 1923 as opposed to 21^st June 1926) but their career paths had many similarities and they had appeared together in the film ‘Spiel Mit Dem Gluck’. But Gisela gave up showbusiness to support her husband, Paul L’Arronge, in making a success of his business, the L’Arronge, an upmarket coffee shop. L’Arronge was soon the place to be seen in Hamburg and there is no doubt that Mona would have been a frequent visitor.

We don’t have any images of Mona at L’Arronge but there can be little doubt that she would have attended events like the one pictured below (Gisela is at the back surveying the scene from above).

After taking the UK by storm, Mona soon spread her wings and found even greater success on the continent. Long before the Beatles, Hamburg was a favoured destination for many British artists and Mona was one of them. She was signed up for a number of personal appearances by the German impresario Oskar Liebermann and in 1952 her success as an artist in Germany led Mona to make her home in Hamburg where she took an apartment at 6 Hallerstrasse. She lived here from 1952 for several years, only returning to England because she wanted her son, Marcel, to be educated there.

This was (and still is) an upmarket part of the city. The road is much busier than it would have been in Mona’s day and now faces onto an ugly block of municipal housing but the house itself is much as it was when Mona lived here. A plaque in front of No.8 confirms that 6-8 are indeed original and date from 1886/7.