Gisela Uhlen

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Gisela Uhlen with Robert Ley and Heinrich George during a guest appearance by the Schiller Theater in occupied France in 1941

Gisela Uhlen (born May 16, 1919 in Leipzig , † January 16, 2007 in Cologne ; actually Gisela Friedlinde Schreck ) was a German actress , dancer and screenwriter . From 1936 she played in more than 60 films, 80 television plays and embodied over 100 stage roles.

life and work

Gisela Friedlinde Schreck was born in Leipzig in 1919 as the fourth child of the spirits manufacturer and opera singer Augustin Schreck and his wife Luise Frieda . The cabaret artist and silent film star Max Schreck , known from Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau 's classic silent film Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror , was her uncle. As a five year old she attended the Mary Wigman Dance School for modern expressive dance at the Leipzig Conservatory . At the age of eleven she ran away from home and reached Hamburg from Leipzig . She later learned classical ballet and acrobatics . When she was around 15, she secretly performed in the Leipzig cabaret, thus building on the traditions of her uncle. During this time she decided to become an actress. She chose 'Gisela Uhlen' as a pseudonym .

After completing her acting training with Lilly Ackermann (1891–1976) in Berlin , she made her debut in the UFA film Annemarie in 1936 , where she played the leading role as organist . She had great success with her first films and quickly became very popular. In the same year she made her debut at the Schauspielhaus Bochum , where she received an engagement under the artistic director Saladin Schmitt . Two years later Heinrich George brought the actress to the Berlin Schiller Theater . In the same year she played a French actress as Hendrickje Stoffel's muse in the film Tanz auf dem Vulkan . Increasingly she became a star of the UFA, embodied soldier brides, young naive women and already her first character roles. During the time of the National Socialist dictatorship , Gisela Uhlen also appeared in Nazi propaganda films several times . For example in the film Ohm Krüger . Here she acted as the main actor's daughter. In the same year she starred in the film The Rothschilds . However, her main area had been set since 1938 by her membership of the ensemble of the Berlin Schiller Theater. And in 1942 she played the painter's wife in the film Eternal Rembrandt .

After the Second World War , she also began writing scripts, but initially played mainly theater. In 1949, she and her third husband, director Hans Bertram (1906–1993), directed the film drama A Great Love , where she not only played the leading female role, but also worked on the script. The film fell through with audiences and critics alike. It was similar with the film A Lifetime , for which she wrote the screenplay. Regardless of this, she remained loyal to the theater and played in the following years on the stages in Berlin, Bochum , Frankfurt am Main , Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart .

Due to a legal dispute with Bertram about the custody of their daughter Barbara, she fled to East Berlin in 1954 via Switzerland , where she performed at the Stadttheater Basel and the Schauspielhaus Zurich , on April 22, 1954 . Here she played at the Deutsches Theater , the Maxim-Gorki-Theater and the Berlin Volksbühne . She also became a film star at DEFA in Potsdam-Babelsberg . In her fifth marriage she was married to the DEFA director Herbert Ballmann , in whose film productions she played several times. In 1960 Uhlen returned to the Federal Republic, where she was again committed to the Schiller Theater by Boleslaw Barlog . In the 1960s she starred in three Edgar Wallace films, including The Door with the Seven Locks . The casting by Rainer Werner Fassbinder as mother in The Marriage of Maria Braun was quite successful in 1979 . For this role she received the Federal Film Prize in gold in 1979 . During this period she wrote her first memoir, which was published in 1978 under the title Mein Glashaus .

Grave in Melaten cemetery

At the beginning of the 1980s she founded the "Wanderbühne Gisela Uhlen", where she acted with her daughter Susanne in the drama Ghosts . It achieved late popularity through the success of the television series Forsthaus Falkenau in the early 1990s. She was also a regular guest on crime series such as Derrick . In 1991 she caused a scandal in Zurich when she played the actor Oskar Werner (1922–1984) in one play . The following year she starred in Jaco van Dormael's (* 1953) film Toto, the Hero . In the following years, two more memoirs by Gisela Uhlen were published. At the end of 2005, she gave part of her private collection of photos, newspaper articles and film accessories to the Filmmuseum Potsdam for storage and use.

Gisela Uhlen was married six times. Her first marriage was with the ballet master Herbert Freund (1903–1988). Her second marriage was with the director Kurt Wessels. The third time she married the pilot and director Hans Bertram (1906-1993). Their daughter Barbara Bertram (* 1945) comes from this marriage with Bertram . In 1953 she married the actor Wolfgang Kieling (1924–1985) , her fourth marriage . On January 17, 1955, their second daughter Susanne Uhlen was born, who also started a career as an actress. Her fifth marriage led her to the director Herbert Ballmann (1924-2004), with whom she worked together on the TV series Das Traumschiff . And her last marriage was to the sound engineer Beat Hodel, who also divorced in 1985.

She recorded her life memories in three books. The first book, Mein Glashaus , was published in 1978, the second book, My Drug Is Life , was published in 1993, and finally the third book in 2002, Hugs and Revelations. Collages of a lifetime . For the last few years she has been living in seclusion in Cologne. She developed lung cancer and after a long illness Gisela Uhlen died on January 16, 2007 in Cologne. She was buried in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne (lit. D, between lit. V + W), in the immediate vicinity of Gunther Philipp , who had played her husband in films in the series Forsthaus Falkenau until his death.

Filmography (selection)

Theater roles

Radio plays

Fonts

literature

Web links

Wikiquote: Gisela Uhlen  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.steffi-line.de/archiv_text/nost_filmdeutsch2/21u_uhlen.htm
  2. ↑ Die Welt , Immer Sie sich - On the death of actress Gisela Uhlen from January 16, 2007, accessed on March 4, 2017
  3. ↑ Biography about Gisela Uhlen, cinema archive at: https: www.kino.de/star/gisela-Uhlen/
  4. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Gisela Uhlen
personal data
SURNAME Uhlen, Gisela
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schreck, Gisela Friedlinde (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actress
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 2007
Place of death Cologne