Grete Berger

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Grete Berger (ca.1907)

Grete Berger , born in Margarethe Berg , (born February 11, 1883 in Jägerndorf , Austrian Silesia ; died on May 23, 1944 or a little later in Auschwitz ) was an Austrian- German actress .

Life

Theater and film

Grete Berger received her training from the acting teacher Rosa Roth in Vienna. She made her stage debut on September 1, 1903 in Berlin at the New and Small Theater. In 1904 she got an engagement at the Deutsches Theater under Max Reinhardt .

Here she acted in youthful character roles . In 1911 she went on guest tours to Prague and St. Petersburg together with Reinhardt's ensemble for performances of the play King Oedipus . Her roles in Berlin included Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream , the title role of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Elektra, Désirée in Richard Beer-Hofmann's Der Graf von Charolais, Marikke in Hermann Sudermann's Johannisfeuer and Rahel in Die Jüdin von Toledo .

In 1913 and 1914 she stood in front of the camera for several silent films and was best known for the female lead of Countess Margit Schwarzenberg in the movie classic The Student of Prague . Director Stellan Rye cast them in other of his productions, multiple horror stories, which often come from the pen of Hanns Heinz Ewers , Grete Berger's partner at the time. When war broke out in 1914, she turned back to the stage and played, among other things, the wet nurse in a production of Romeo and Juliet in 1928 . In the 1920s she only got very small roles in some important productions, including several productions by Fritz Lang . After her last silent film Das Land ohne Frauen , which already featured a few sound passages, Berger was no longer employed in the cinema.

Persecution and death

The accession to power by the National Socialists meant the final end of her artistic career for the married Jew Margarete Reich. She fled with her husband to Italy, where she was arrested by the German occupation authorities on April 7, 1944 in Rome as part of the general hunt for Jews . Her deportation to a National Socialist concentration camp was scheduled for April 10, 1944. German agencies transferred Margarete Berger to the Jewish collective and transit camp Fossoli near Carpi . There she met her long-term colleague from both time together at Reinhardt's German Theater, Jacob Feldhammer . The German occupying forces deported both artists from Fossoli to Auschwitz on May 16, 1944, where Grete Berger and Feldhammer were murdered shortly after their arrival on May 23, 1944.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

literature

  • Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 1: A - C. Erik Aaes - Jack Carson. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 341.
  • CineGraph : Grete Berger, Delivery 56, 2016

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Margarete Berger on digital-library.cdec.it
personal data
SURNAME Berger, Grete
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berg, Margarethe (maiden name); Reich, Margarete (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian actress
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Jägerndorf , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz concentration camp