Ursula Castle

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Ursula Burg (born February 3, 1919 in Hamburg , † February 23, 1996 in Munich ) was a German theater and film actress .

Live and act

As a child Ursula Burg wanted to become a doctor, but she did the same for both parents and siblings and went to the stage. She attended the drama school of the Hamburg theater in the mid-30s.

In 1936 the seventeen year old made the seamless transition to her first engagement . In Göttingen she first embodied Käthchen von Heilbronn , then Juliet ( Romeo and Juliet ) and Luise ( Cabal and Love ). At this time, the director Heinz Hilpert came into contact with her.

The second engagement was in Magdeburg. Here again it was the like Hilpert in Berlin acting theater critic Herbert Ihering , coming toward them.

In 1941 Hilpert finally brought Ursula Burg to the Deutsches Theater Berlin . She expanded her sphere of activity to include the Freie Volksbühne . The Berliners experienced it a. a. as Stella and as Emilia Galotti .

After the birth of her daughter Konstanze, she found a new job at the Künstler-Theater Bremen in 1945. From there it went to Hamburg in 1947. One of her last roles at the Schauspielhaus was Regine in Ibsen's Ghosts at the side of 82-year-old Albert Bassermann .

Decisive for its lasting reputation was that the director Wolfgang Langhoff and Ihering asked them back to the Deutsches Theater in 1949. She now played u. a. Minna von Barnhelm , Elisabeth in Don Karlos , Desdemona in Othello (1953), Sittah in Nathan the Wise , Lady Milford in Kabale und Liebe and Candida in George Bernard Shaw 's play of the same name (1960). The National-Zeitung attested to their portrayals of Ruth Sonnenbruck ( Leon Kruczkowski's Sonnenbrucks ), Maria Stuart , Olivia ( William Shakespeare's What You Want ) and Roxane ( Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac ) as exemplary “impressive achievements” .

A parallel career began in 1950/51 with a film version of the Sonnenbrucks . The next three films were presented every year: 1951/52 career in Paris based on Honoré de Balzac , 1952 the first non-classical material Frau Fatesale and 1953/54 the implementation of Fritz Reuter's verse epic Kein Hüsung .

In 1957, the next DEFA film with her in the lead role was completed, but it was not allowed to go into the cinemas . The most beautiful was partly in West Berlin and with some western actors, e.g. B. Siegfried Schürenberg , shot. The decisive factor , however, was presumably the insufficient propaganda representation of the capitalist western family and the domestic workers' household for the Ministry of Culture . Numerous cuts, scene changes, nachgedrehte with schlichterem decorative scenes, outtake insertions and a background story changed in 1959 nothing in the performance ban. It was not until May 2002 that the film was reconstructed and then premiered .

At about the same time she got television roles, mostly in classic adaptations . This lasted until 1961, the year in which she received the art award for her artistic work at the Deutsches Theater. Also in 1961, she made her last film appearance in Professor Mamlock , Friedrich Wolf's anti-fascist drama . She commented:
“Ellen Mamlock mostly just stands around sad and perplexed, she has little text to speak. But that is precisely what makes the small role so difficult. And yet it has something to say, something to say, if you will. She is one of the thousands of sheltered women of the 'apolitical' bourgeois intellectual who either did not even notice the fate because their lives continued in the usual ways, or who collapsed under the weight of what happened when the disaster hit them directly. "

With the construction of the wall in the same year, Burg's life no longer ran as usual, because she lived in the western part of Berlin. However, she escaped the disaster: She only kept her theater engagement for a short time; together with her colleague Kurt Conradi, she decided to start over in Gelsenkirchen .

In 1963 she made a guest appearance in Lucerne . In Nuremberg , where she met her future husband Edgar Walther, she ended her career, only to take part in television games and radio broadcasts if necessary .

Secondary quotes

Characteristics of their theatrical acting

“Ursula Burg is not a tragedy in the traditional sense, but a character actress of a more comprehensive format, who knows how to use her well-groomed appearance, her sonorous organ and her significant acting skills in the most contradicting roles in such a way that the other actors are always assigned to her in a natural way appear without being dominated by their sovereign skills. "

Characteristics of their film acting skills

"[...] Ms. Burg is an actress who, endowed with an almost instinctive ability to change, knows how to aptly characterize not only radiant, but also morbid figures."

Filmography (selection)

theatre

Radio plays

DVD

The most beautiful (original and censored version) (2 DVDs), 200 min., 2003

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The statement "Berlin" made under http://defa-sternstunden.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=219&Itemid=4 contradicts early newspaper articles such as B. Tw .: "The artist portrait: Ursula Burg" in the Berliner Zeitung of September 3, 1949, as well as the plausibility.
  2. ^ Tw .: "The artist portrait: Ursula Burg", Berliner Zeitung , September 3, 1949
  3. ↑ BKD: "The Portrait: Ursula Burg", National-Zeitung am Mittag , September 24, 1953
  4. ↑ Presumably GDR lexicon page without citing the source.
  5. ↑ Anonymous: “Theater in Luzern”, Neue Zürcher Zeitung , April 1, 1963
  6. ↑ BKD: "The Portrait: Ursula Burg", National-Zeitung am Mittag , September 24, 1953
personal data
SURNAME Castle, Ursula
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theater and film actress
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1996
Place of death Munich