Brigitte Mira

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Star for Brigitte Mira on the Boulevard of Stars
Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Koenigsallee 83, in Berlin-Grunewald

Brigitte Mira (born April 20, 1910 in Hamburg , † March 8, 2005 in Berlin ) was a German folk actress , cabaret artist and chanson singer. She was known as the Berlin original from television series such as Drei Damen vom Grill as well as for the lead role in Fassbinder's melodrama Angst Eat Seele auf , for which she received the German Film Prize in 1974 .

life and work

Brigitte Mira was the daughter of the pianist Siegfried Mira, who immigrated from Russia , and his wife Elisabeth, née Strässner. She grew up in Düsseldorf and began training in ballet and singing at the age of eight. In the 1928/29 season she was engaged as a group dancer under the pseudonym "Valencia Stramm" at the Städtisches Theater in Düsseldorf and moved with almost the entire Düsseldorf dance group for the next season as a member of the dance choir at the Cologne Opera House, where she a. a. participated in the world's first performance of Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps outside the Ballets Russes . In the late 1920s, she made her debut as a singer in the role of Esmeralda in Smetana's The Bartered Bride in Cologne . The first engagement as a soubrette and from now on for several years under the name "Gitta Mira" in Bremerhaven in 1931 was followed by further engagements at German-speaking theaters, including 1931 at the Operetta Theater in Leipzig , 1932 and 1933 in Reichenberg with summer engagements to Kolberg and Marienbad , 1934 to the Städtischen Bühnen Graz and from 1935 to 1939 at the Kiel City Theater , where she appeared on stage with stars like Richard Tauber , Fritzi Massary , Leo Slezak and Lizzi Waldmüller . In Hamburg , Mira was seen in the German premiere of Franz Lehár's operetta Giuditta in 1939 . In 1941 she came to Berlin and worked at the theater on Schiffbauerdamm . There Willi Schaeffers discovered her comic talent and brought her to the comedian cabaret .

Mira, who was considered a “half-Jew” according to the Nazi race laws , but hid this with false papers, gained her first film experience in the short film series Liese und Miese , which was thought of as Nazi propaganda and was shown in the supplementary program of the German weekly newsreel . The Volksgenossin Liese was the "good one" who behaved correctly in the sense of Nazi propaganda, while the "lousy" did everything wrong, listened to enemy radio stations , complained about scarce food and got involved with spies. Brigitte Mira's performance ensured that Miese was more popular with the audience than Liese played by Gisela Schlüter , so that the Propaganda Ministry canceled the series after ten episodes.

After the war, Mira played at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, first in productions by Walter Felsenstein at the Hebbel Theater , later at the Komische Oper in Berlin, and had singing roles in various radio companies, including in numerous operettas for the Bavarian Radio . Her open, blunt manner also brought her to cabaret stages , including in Günter Neumann's Die Insulaner . Mira made her feature film debut in 1948 in a small role in the post-war satire Berliner Ballade with Gert Fröbe as the average consumer . In addition to her stage work in musical comedies and folk plays, she took part in hit films and comedies from the 1950s . For a long time she was committed to supporting roles as comical aunts or housekeepers in films, but she was seen in operettas, singing games and entertainment programs on television as “soubrette on duty”.

Honor grave, Fürstenbrunner Weg 65–67, in Berlin-Westend

In 1972 Rainer Werner Fassbinder discovered her at the Schauspielhaus Bochum with Peter Zadek and finally helped her break through as an internationally recognized actress with the film Anxiety Eats Soul . At the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, celebrated for her role as the widowed cleaning lady Emmi , who falls in love with a twenty-year-old Moroccan, Mira was awarded the German Film Prize for Best Actress in the same year . She was best known to the television audience as Grandma Färber in the extremely popular early evening series Drei Damen vom Grill , which was produced from 1977 to 1991.

In 1989 Mira was honored with the gold film band for her many years of outstanding work in German film . In 1998 she made an acclaimed appearance at the anniversary gala on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Komische Oper in Berlin. At the end of the 1990s, Mira, who did not reveal her real age when she was older and stayed forever 69 , went on tour with Evelyn Künneke and Helen Vita with the self- deprecating chanson evening Drei alten Schachteln , initiated and accompanied by Frank Golischewski . This ended suddenly with the death of Helen Vita in February 2001. Shortly afterwards Evelyn Künneke also died. Mira, over ten years older than her colleagues, then put together her own solo program. With this she appeared at the Madame Lothár Theater in Bremen , where she also took part in a gala show on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the theater in June 2002.

Brigitte Mira embodied - like Günter Pfitzmann and Harald Juhnke , who also played with her in Three Ladies from the Grill - like hardly any other actress the old West Berlin . Hellmuth Karasek, for example, called her an “icon of Berlin's self-confidence that feeds on self-irony as well as emancipation”, The Guardian “the archetypal funny old Berliner with a heart.” On October 13, 2004, Mira suffered an attack of weakness from which she never felt recovered again. She died at the age of 94 and was buried on March 16, 2005 in Luisenfriedhof III on Fürstenbrunner Weg in Berlin-Westend . The grave site is one of the honor graves of the city of Berlin .

Private

Brigitte Mira was married five times, her first marriage in 1940 to the actor Peter Schütte and her second marriage to the artistic director Paul Cornelius. Her two sons Thomas and Robert come from the third marriage with the reporter Reinhold Tabatt. The fourth marriage to an engineer also ended in divorce. In 1974 Mira married the director Frank Guerente, with whom she was married until his death in 1983 and lived together for over 25 years.

Filmography

theatre

Radio plays (selection)

  • 1955: Walter Niebuhr: The real corner stand. A one-act play about the Berlin original Nante (cook) - Director: Hans Henjes ( RB )
  • 1957: Henry Jessen , Hans Weigel : Mr. Knigge complains - Composition: Franz Ort (RB)
  • 1963: Horst Pillau : A people watches TV or Death plays on the far right. A fictitious factual report about the events around a crime television game - Director: Günther Schwerkolt ( SDR / SFB )
  • 1979: Dorothea Macheiner : Reviere - Director: Hans Bernd Müller (SFB)
  • 1983: Werner E. Hintz : The daughters of Madame Dutitre. Back then it was - Stories from old Berlin (Madame Dutitre) (Story No. 36 in 10 episodes) - Director: Horst Kintscher ( RIAS Berlin)
  • 1986: Ursula Drews [based on an idea by Werner E. Hintz]: Five Müller's and one million. Back then it was - Stories from old Berlin (Ms. Babette Dröhmer, neighbor) (Story No. 39 in 8 episodes) - Director: Horst Kintscher (RIAS Berlin)
  • 2003: Michael Ebmeyer : Henry Silber comes to an end (Brigitte Guarente) - Director: Paul Plamper , Nils Kacirek ( WDR )

Awards

Inauguration of Miras Stern on the Boulevard der Stars in Berlin with Mayor Wowereit (2012)

literature

Web links

Commons : Brigitte Mira  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch , 1929, p. 372; 1930, p. 498; 1931, p. 339; 1932, 1933, 1934. About the pseudonym and the Cologne participation: Frank-Manuel Peter : They kissed and they beat him. On the history of dance in Cologne . In: Arnold Jacobshagen: (Ed.) Music City Cologne . Verlag Dohr, Cologne 2013, pp. 239–261, here p. 254 (ill.!) U. 255.
  2. ↑ The last islander has also left. Pfitzmann, Mira and now Juhnke - obituary for old West Berlin . In: Die Welt , April 10, 2005
  3. ^ Brigitte Mira: Character actor who epitomized the spirit of old Berlin . In: The Guardian , March 25, 2005; Obituary
  4. ↑ Brigitte Mira grave knerger.de
personal data
SURNAME Mira, Brigitte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actress, cabaret artist and chanson singer
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 2005
Place of death Berlin