The Great (or Flying) Wallendas Biography

A family of high-wire aerialists, including Elizabeth Pintye "Angel" Wallenda (1968-1996), Gunther(1927-1996), Helen Kreis(1910-1996), and Karl(1905-1978), the Flying Wallendas is one of the most well known high-wire circus acts of the 20th century. Working without a safety net and in unconventional locations, they are known for performing such dangerous stunts as headstands, bicycle riding, and the human pyramid.

The family was headed by Karl Wallenda, the fifth generation of a Germancircus family, born in Magdenburg, Germany in 1905. He first walked thehigh wire in 1920. Circus impresario John Ringling saw Wallenda and hisbrother Herman perform in Havana in 1928 and immediately signed them forhis Ringling Brothers Circus, where they performed until World War II. The troupe also performed with the Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Karl Wallenda and fellow performer Helen Kreis were married in 1935. It was Helen's role to balance at the peak of the seven-person pyramid, a feat the Wallendas were first to perfect in 1947. In this act, four menlinked by shoulder bars walked the wire, with two more men standing on theshoulder bars and a woman standing on a chair balanced on a pole supportedby the two men on the second level.

In 1970, at age sixty-five, Wallenda walked over the 750-foot deep Tallulah Gorge in Georgia in front of 50,000 spectators. Twice during the 1,110 foot walk he paused to perform headstands on the wire. Later that year he did two handstands in a 640-foot walk across Veteran’s Stadium in Philadelphia. And in 1977 he walked a wire strung between the Eden Roc and Fountainbleu Hotels in Miami.

The Wallendas endured many tragedies over the years. A sister-in-law fell to her death in Omaha in 1963. While performing the seven-person wire-walking human pyramid to the strains of “The Washington Post March” in Detroit on January 30, 1962, Dieter Schepp, Karl Wallenda’s nephew, who was on the bottom tier, reportedly lost his footing and fell, toppling the pyramid to the concrete floor in front of 7,000 spectators. Schepp and Richard Faughnan, Karl Wallenda’s son-in-law, were killed instantly. Mario Wallenda, Karl’s twenty-two year old adopted son, fell to the floor and was permanently paralyzed. In 1972, Wallenda’s son-in-law, Richard Guzman, died in a fall in West Virginia. Karl Wallenda fell twenty feet in a Detroit performance in 1972, but escaped injury. In 1978 he was not as lucky. He died in March 1978, after being buffeted by gusty winds and falling 120 feet as he walked between the towers of the Condada Holiday Inn in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was seventy-three years old. One of his pallbearers was Emmett Kelly, the famous circus clown.

In a letter to the newspaper a few weeks after her husband’s death, Helen Wallenda explained that the act would continue. “Despite the many tragedies which have befallen us as a result of our profession,” she said, “this was and still remains our life. We live to entertain and thrill those who are circus-oriented.”