Brigitte Horney

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Brigitte Horney, 1935

Brigitte Horney (born March 29, 1911 in Dahlem (now Berlin), † July 27, 1988 in Hamburg-Eppendorf ) was a German-American actress ( theater and film ) and radio play speaker .

Life

Family and education

Brigitte Horney as General von Reuss in the film Night fell over Gotenhafen , 1959
illustration by Helmuth Ellgaard

Horney was the eldest of three daughters of the psychoanalyst Karen Horney and the Berlin industrialist Oscar Horney. Her great-grandfather was the Dutch hydraulic engineering director Jacobus Johannes van Ronzelen . For the most part, she and her two sisters were raised by English-speaking nannies, and thus grew up bilingual. As a result, Horney learned fluent English at an early age , which later helped her to take on roles in several British film productions without difficulty. She spent her school days at selected Berlin schools and partly at the Bellaria School in Zuoz , Switzerland , because she had been suffering from tuberculosis since she was six and received special treatment for her lung disease in Switzerland . At the age of 16 she began training as an actor at the Ilka Grüning School in Berlin and took dance lessons from Mary Wigman . Her classmates at Ilka Grüning included Inge Meysel and Lilli Palmer . Horney admired Meysel, and Lilli Palmer was on friendly terms with her throughout her life.

Stage and film engagements in the 1930s and 1940s

After passing the exam with Ilka Grüning, Horney got her first engagement at the Stadttheater Würzburg for the 1930/1931 season . She had her first stage appearance on October 31, 1930 as Rita in the comedy Trio by Leo Lenz . Subsequently, she accepted an offer from the Reinhardt-Bühnen in Berlin after she had received the Max Reinhardt Prize for best young actress in 1930 . As a result, she gained greater fame at the beginning of her career, so that the UFA wanted to do test shots with her. Before Horney started her engagement in Würzburg, she made her first film, directed by Robert Siodmak , entitled Abschied , in which she was entrusted with the female lead. Following her engagement in Würzburg, Horney played Fanny in Marcel Pagnol's play Zum Goldenen Anker in the Lessing Theater in Berlin under Heinz Hilpert . Her stage partner was Mathias Wieman . In the period that followed, Horney played at other theaters in Berlin, such as the Deutsches Theater in Kat , a play based on Ernest Hemingway's novel In Another Land . Käthe Dorsch and Gustav Fröhlich played the main roles alongside Horney. For the first time she fully understood - with heart and soul - the meaning of acting , Horney said afterwards. When Hilpert became director of the Volksbühne Theater am Bülowplatz in 1932 , the actress moved there with him. An artistic collaboration began that lasted a lifetime, as did the friendship between the two. Horney's first role at the Volksbühne was that of Pauline Piperkarcka in Gerhart Hauptmann's Die Ratten . The renowned theater critic Alfred Kerr wrote in the Berliner Tageblatt on October 10, 1932 : “[...] Everything episodic comes out strikingly. The Piperkarcka, Brigitte Horney, speaks very tactfully, not too Polish . Fortunately not that fantasy Polish that gets so embarrassing outside of the operetta. It also looks like […] Yes, there is still masterly theater and masterly theater being performed in Berlin. ”In 1946 the actress was engaged for Max Frisch's play Santa Cruz at the Schauspielhaus Zurich . Heinz Hilpert again directed. During her time in Switzerland, she also played at the Stadttheater Chur and the Stadttheater Basel . From 1953 to 1959 and then again in 1975 she played in numerous plays at the Deutsches Theater in Göttingen , where Heinz Hilpert took over the direction.

Despite her many theater roles, Horney also found time for the big screen. So she played in the 1932 film Rasputin , which also ran under the German title The Demon of Women , Conrad Veidt's Siberian lover, whom he abandoned. The actress thought nothing of her next film, Heideschulmeister Uwe Karsten . She described the film as "just awful" because scenes that were important to understand the plot had been removed afterwards. She rated her collaboration with Marianne Hoppe , whom she “loved and admired”, as positive . In 1934 Horney made the film Love, Death and the Devil based on Robert Louis Stevenson's novella The Bottle Goblin, in which she played the laid-back port girl Rubby. Again she worked with Heinz Hilpert, who directed. For Horney, this role meant her great artistic breakthrough in film. The song So oder so ist das Leben, composed by Theo Mackeben for the film, has become famous . In the Berliner Morgenpost one could read about the film “[…] Brigitte Horney delivers the most mature performance of his actors. Her amazing versatility allows her to play the instinctual nature child just as convincingly as the drunken port whore or the sophisticated cocotte. ”In 1936 Horney made the English film The House of the Spaniard in London , which is set in Spain during the civil war , her second English film wears the Title Secret Lives . In it, Horney played an Alsatian spy who spied on Mata Hari. The film is based on the true story of Claude France. The film was not allowed to be shown in Germany at the time and was never shown there later. Between these two films, the actress jumped in for the sick Pola Negri and took over her part in Savoy-Hotel 217 . City of Anatol was her first film directed by Viktor Tourjansky . Her partner was Gustav Fröhlich. The film is set in the Balkans . An oil discovery makes a small town there famous and rich. Another film followed in 1938 under Tourjansky's direction Verklungene Melodie , in which Willy Birgel and Carl Raddatz were her film partners. Brigitte Horney herself considered her film You and I with colleague Joachim Gottschalk , also made in 1938, to be her most beautiful film. During the shooting, she said she fell in love with Wolfgang Liebeneiner , the director of the film. In 1939 she starred again in a Tourjansky film entitled The Governor . Willy Birgel was her film husband, and Hannelore Schroth made her film debut as her little sister. In 1941, the film Illusion with beautiful music by Franz Grothe was supposed to show people that there was something other than war. Again Tourjansky directed. Johannes Heesters , O. E. Hasse and Nikolai Kolin were Horney's film partners.

Horney played mostly strong women in her roles. Although she was able to celebrate a number of successes as a young actress during the National Socialism , she tried to maintain her independence and stood up for threatened colleagues. So she was ready to fly to Switzerland for her colleague Joachim Gottschalk, who was banned from acting by the Nazis because of his marriage to a Jewish woman , in order to obtain a commitment for him, while other colleagues advised a divorce. When Horney returned after the negotiations with the theater, she found out about the suicide of the Gottschalk family and attended the funeral with her husband, fellow actors Gustav Knuth , René Deltgen and Werner Hinz and other friends, despite Goebbels' instructions, To stay away from this as a celebrity.

In addition, she supported the Jewish landlady of her Norwegian friend Gerd Høst-Heyerdahl in Berlin and maintained contact with Carl Zuckmayer in exile . In her villa in Neubabelsberg , which she had acquired in the course of Aryanization in 1939, Horney accommodated Erich Kästner in 1942 , who wrote the screenplay for the UFA anniversary film Münchhausen under the pseudonym Berthold Bürger , in which Horney played Tsarina Catherine the Great in 1943 , one of the main roles. In 1948 Horney made her first post-war film The Woman on the Road , directed by Eduard von Borsody . In it she played the wife of a border guard. Horney himself thought it was a good film, but it was not a success with the audience.

Horney's closest and lifelong friends also included the later CDU politician Erik Blumenfeld . Since Horney stayed in Swiss sanatoriums several times during the Second World War because her tuberculosis had broken out again , the press prematurely announced her death on March 20, 1946, although she was on Swiss stages, in the meantime regained her strength. She answered the letters of condolence to her husband herself.

Relocated to the USA and last years

Brigitte Horney

After the death of her mother in 1952, Brigitte Horney moved to Boston , USA , to continue her life's work and polyclinic. Brigitte Horney became an American citizen in 1953. Her first marriage (1940 to 1954) was to the cameraman Konstantin Irmen-Tschet and her second marriage (1954 to 1985) was to the art historian Hanns Swarzenski .

In the last years of her life she became a crowd favorite, especially on German television, for example as Aunt Polly in the German-Canadian children's and youth series The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn , in Jakob and Adele alongside Carl-Heinz Schroth or in the title role as Devil's grandmother . Shortly before the end of the shooting of the second season of the series Das Erbe der Guldenburgs , the actress, who suffered from cancer in 1986, died of the consequences of this disease. She died of a heart attack. Since Brigitte Horney had played a leading role in the series, the script for the third season had to be completely rewritten. Her grave is in the cemetery of the Bavarian community of Wielenbach in the district of Wilzhofen.

Her written estate is in the archive of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin.

Filmography (selection)

cinemamovies

watch TV

  • 1959: Closed society
  • 1962: Daphne Laureola
  • 1963: The seagull
  • 1964: Then go to Thorp
  • 1968: A somewhat strange lady
  • 1970: Auction at Gwendoline
  • 1971: Paradise of the old ladies
  • 1971: The resurrection of Stefan Stefanow
  • 1972: Old Mamsell's secret
  • 1972: The showcase
  • 1973: The Commissioner : Death of a hippie girl
  • 1974: The Commissioner: An interesting relationship came to an abrupt end
  • 1977: Derrick : One Night in October
  • 1977: The old man : The old man strikes twice
  • 1977: Eichholz and Sons
  • 1978: House of Women
  • 1978: Small, colorful donors of joy
  • 1978: Heidi
  • 1979: One Night's Miracle
  • 1979: single room
  • 1979: Sun, wine and hard nuts : The thing with the oven
  • 1979: where love falls
  • 1980: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
  • 1980: Derrick : The Decision
  • 1980: Tea biscuits and blank cartridges
  • 1981: Billy - A young man in search of his identity
  • 1982: One way or another life is
  • 1982: Vacation by the sea
  • 1982: The old man : devil's kitchen
  • 1982–1989: Jakob and Adele
  • 1983: Murder is obvious
  • 1984: The dream ship : The cardsharp
  • 1985: Mom's birthday
  • 1985: Old crooks : The great test
  • 1986: Devil's grandmother
  • 1987–1988: The legacy of the Guldenburgs

Radio plays

Theater (selection)

( City Theater , Würzburg)

  • 1930: Trio - comedy by Leo Renz ... as Rita
  • 1930: ... being a father, however, is very much! - Comedy by E.Ch.Carpenter ... as Maria Credaro
  • 1931: Olympia - game by Ferenc Molnár … as Olympia
  • 1931: Elisabeth of England - play by Ferdinand Bruckner ... as Isabella
  • 1931: Marguerite through three - comedy by Fritz Schweuert ... as Marguerite
  • 1931: Hurray, a boy ! - Schwank by Franz Arnold and Ernst Bach … as Helga Lüders
  • 1931: Preliminary investigation - play by Max Alsberg and Otto Ernst Hesse ... as Melitta Ziehr

( Lessingtheater , Berlin)

  • 1931: To the golden anchor - Comedy by Marcel Pagnol ... as Fanny

( German Theater Berlin )

( Theater am Kurfürstendamm , Berlin)

  • 1931: The saint from the USA - history of Ilse Langner ... as Auguste Stetson

( Volksbühne Theater am Bülowplatz , Berlin)

( Volksbühne, Theater am Horst-Wessel-Platz , Berlin)

( German Theater Göttingen )

( Zurich theater )

( City Theater , Chur)

( City Theater , Basel)

Awards

Discography

  • 1934: One way or another life is (from: Liebe, Tod und Teufel , film and shellac version)
  • 1936: The confession
  • 1936: Why is love so loved?
  • 1937/38: There's No Escape (only in the movie Secret Lives - I Married a Spy , GB)
  • 1938: I only loved you (only in the movie Melody faded away )
  • 1986: Plaisir d'amour (only in Jakob und Adele , episode A house with bright windows )

Fonts

  • Either way, life is - an unforgettable actress tells her life . Recorded by Gerd Høst-Heyerdahl. Scherz Verlag, Bern, Munich, Vienna, 1992.

literature

Web links

Commons : Brigitte Horney  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Brigitte Horney: Either way, life is recorded by Gerd Høst-Heyerdahl , Scherz Verlag, Bern, Munich, Vienna, 1992, p. 7 , 17, 24, 27-29, 32, 33, 42, 44, 45, 58-60, 70, 71, 76, 87, 111, 112, 115, 137, 138, 178, 284, 286, 287
  2. ^ Rainer Nolden: Brigitte Horney: Spröder Star, unmistakable voice at pagewizz.com, July 27, 2013. Accessed December 1, 2013.
  3. ↑ One way or another, the life is sung by Brigitte Horney. Retrieved December 1, 2013.
  4. ↑ Villas Kamp in Babelsberg In: Der Spiegel No. 4/1996, January 22, 1996. Accessed December 1, 2013..
  5. ↑ Horney lived in the Villa Gugenheim on Johann-Strauss-Platz, which was built in 1921 by the architect Hermann Muthesius for the Jewish manufacturer Fritz Gugenheim ( Michels & Cie. Silk weaving mill).
  6. ↑ Brigitte Horney findagrave.com. Retrieved August 15, 2015.
  7. ↑ Brigitte Horney In: Der Spiegel 31/1988, August 1, 1988.
  8. ↑ knerger.de: Brigitte Horney's grave
  9. ↑ Brigitte Horney Archive Inventory overview on the website of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.
personal data
SURNAME Horney, Brigitte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actress
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin ,
DATE OF DEATH July 27, 1988
Place of death Hamburg