Else Lehmann

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Else Lehmann in 1898 in Fuhrmann Henschel at the Deutsches Theater Berlin

Else Lehmann, married . Kuh, also Lehmann-Kuh (born June 27, 1866 in Berlin , † March 6, 1940 in Prague ) was a German actress .

Life

The daughter of an insurance director attended a convent school and then took acting lessons from director Franz Kierschner. She made her debut in 1885 at the Bremen City Theater as a page in Lohengrin .

She then toured Germany and made guest appearances in Trier , Metz and Sondershausen . In 1888 it came to the Wallner Theater in Berlin. Otto Brahm gave her the role of Helene Krause in the (matinee) world premiere of Before Sunrise on October 20, 1889 by the Free Stage in the Lessing Theater in Berlin, which the association rented for this purpose . This performance helped her breakthrough, but also established her as an interpreter of German naturalism, especially the pieces by Gerhart Hauptmann . One of her theatrical peculiarities was the natural, sympathetic "being able to laugh through tears", for which contemporary theater criticism already paid her credit.

In 1891 she got an engagement at the Deutsches Theater . At the premiere of Die Weber in 1893 she impressed as Luise Hilse and even more in the same year as Mrs. Wolff in Der Biberpelz . In 1898 she played Hanne Schäl in Fuhrmann Henschel , in 1903 she took over the title role from Rose Bernd . In 1905 she followed director Otto Brahm to the Lessing Theater .

In 1911 she portrayed the first "Frau John" in Die Ratten and in 1920 "Frau Vockerath" in Lonely People . In addition to Hauptmann's plays, Else Lehmann was seen in Karl Schönherrs Volk in Not (1917), as "Ella Rentheim" in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman (1917) and as "Frau Alving" in his ghosts and in Kabale und Liebe (1924 im Theater in der Josefstadt ).

Early hearing loss forced the end of her theater career as early as the 1920s. She moved to Prague to live with her husband, the journalist and newspaper owner Oskar Kuh (1858–1930). There she became a member of the German-Czech stage club. Shortly before her death, Erich Kästner visited her here in December 1939 .

reception

In the novella bigram of Bruno Frank (1921), the protagonist Paul bigram maintains in Venice with Italian actress Gemma Pavese:

"It seems to me that there is only one woman who
beats you, one single one." "Well, the shower, of course," said Gemma, shrugging her shoulders as if about something unfortunately taken for granted.
“I'm not thinking about the shower .”
“So another second one! And in Germany of course? ”
“ In Germany, yes. Her name is Else Lehmann. This woman is not beautiful, she is extremely inelegant, she hears badly and she lisps ... "
" You make fun of me. "
" ... but when she opens her big arms to embrace a child, or when she stutters out of fear or shame or restrained love, or when she brings her hand to her mouth in dire need - so, you see, with closed fingers and rocking her clumsy head a little to and fro, then it is as if he were leading you get the most out of people, and compassion burns your chest. No, there is nothing more beautiful on earth. "

literature

Web links

Commons : Else Lehmann  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. Austrian National Library: ANNO, Prager Tagblatt, 1912-05-28, page 7. In: anno.onb.ac.at. Retrieved October 24, 2016 .