Anna Letenská

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Anna Letenská (before 1930)

Anna Letenská (born August 29, 1904 in Nýřany , Austria-Hungary as Anna Svobodová ; † October 24, 1942 in Mauthausen concentration camp ) was a Czechoslovak actress and resistance fighter.

Life

Anna Svobodová's parents Marie Svobodová (1871–1960) and Oldřich Svoboda (–1939) as well as her sister Růžena Nováková (1899–1984) were actors. In 1925 she married the actor Ludvík Hrdlička, who had taken the actor name Letenský. The son Jiri was born in 1926 and the couple divorced in 1940. Letenská first played in the provincial theaters and smaller theaters in the capital. In 1937 she had her first appearance in a film, in 1938 she appeared in a film with her husband. In 1939, when Czechoslovakia had been broken up and Bohemia and Moravia had been occupied by the Germans, she was given a permanent position at the Prague Theater in the Vineyards .

Letenská married the architect Vladislav Čaloun in 1941, who worked in the Czech resistance. After the assassination attempt on the de facto Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich on May 27, 1942, Letenská and Čaloun were involved in rescue operations for resistance members. When Heydrich Čaloun was arrested, while the Gestapo despite the existence of " clan arrest warrant " Anna Letenská and her son apparently spared. At that time Letenská was engaged in the production of the film Přijdu hned ( I'll be right there ). The film producer was the Czech film entrepreneur Milos Havel .

During the filming, director Otakar Vávra saw Letenská at the enormous psychological tension that hovered between hope and despair and did not know what would happen to her and her 16-year-old son when the film was over. In order not to endanger him and her imprisoned husband, she even rejected an offer to flee and continued to play a burlesque caretaker in front of the camera. She didn't know whether she was still gambling for her life and that of her son, or whether her fate was already sealed.

Letenská was arrested after the shooting was over. She was interrogated by the Gestapo in Pankrác prison and then deported in a group of women to Theresienstadt women's prison . From there she got into the Mauthausen concentration camp , where she was murdered with a shot in the neck. Her husband Vladislav Čaloun was shot on January 26, 1943.

The son Jiri Letensky survived the persecution, he also became an actor and died in 2002. He could still be interviewed by the German filmmaker Fred Breinersdorfer , who had started to work on the material in 2002. Various veterans of the Czech resistance were involved in the creation of the film, as well as fellow actor Zita Kabátová and director Václav Berdych , and Ivan M. Havel , brother of Václav Havel , was also interviewed. In the documentary fiction shown in cinemas in 2009 , Hannah Herzsprung portrayed Anna.

The fate of Anna Letenská was already dealt with in 1958 in the novel Kat nepočká by Norbert Frýd . The novel was filmed in 1971 by František Filip with Jiřina Bohdalová .

A street in Prague-Vinohrady is named after her.

Filmography (selection)

  • Dlouhý, Široký a Bystrozraký , 1942
  • Městečko na dlani , 1942
  • Přijdu hned , 1942
  • Ryba na suchu , 1942
  • Valentin Dobrotivý , 1942
  • Pražský flamendr , 1941
  • Rukavička , 1941
  • Z českých mlýnů , 1941
  • Babička , 1940
  • Čekanky , 1940
  • Minulost Jany Kosinové , 1940
  • Okénko do nebe , 1940
  • Pelikán má alib , 1940
  • Pro kamaráda , 1940
  • Prosím, pane profesore! , 1940
  • Děvče z předměstí anebo Všecko příjde na jevo , 1939
  • Dvojí život , 1939
  • Mořská panna , 1939
  • Srdce v celofánu , 1939
  • Umlčené rty , 1939
  • Ženy u benzinu , 1939
  • Manželka něco tuší , 1938
  • Milování zakázáno , 1938
  • Slávko nedej se! , 1938
  • Kříž u potoka , 1937

literature

  • Jaroslav Čvančara : Z jeviště na popraviště. Příběh herečky Anny Čalounové-Letenské . In: Paměť a dějiny, 2/2009, pp. 101–115
  • Václav Berdych: Mauthausen; k historii odboje vězňů v koncentračním táboře Mauthausen . Praha, Naše vojsko, 1959.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Růžena Nováková , at Filmová databáze
  2. ↑ Ludvík Letenský in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  3. ↑ a b c d e Fred Breinersdorfer: “Why Nazi Issues Are Important in Films” , in Die Welt , October 7, 2010
  4. ↑ Jiří Letenský , databáze at Filmová
  5. ↑ a b Facts and background to the film “Andula - Visiting Another Life” , at Cinefacts , November 5, 2011
  6. ↑ Frantisek Filip in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Letenská, Anna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech actress
DATE OF BIRTH August 29, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Nýřany
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1942
Place of death Mauthausen concentration camp